What constitutes an advanced civilization?

reply to post by Hanslune

---

Wow, you get paid? And here I thought you just got your jollies out of busting his stones and countering his theories.

In all seriousness though, pushing him to further his research is a good thing, in perusing this he might even prove even a portion of his theories, you never know.

Back on topic,

It seems many people have ideas as to what would constitute an advanced civilization, which I find interesting in itself.

Many of the 19th century concepts like tool making and containers have been falsified.

There is no concensus on this subject within the archaeological and related communities - there will probably never be.

A quick an easy one is. Any culture that is above the hunter-gather norm. But even that has exceptions and is flawed by the fact that there is no concensus on what the hunter-gather norm IS.

No kidding! Those theories were founded on the idea that any civilization with people with very pale skin (Whites) was the most advanced throughout all the ages and everyone else was an inferior and animalistic group of people.

And, of course, the 19th century scientists worked very hard to find the right skulls to measure to confirm their concept that people with darker skins were mentally and physically inferior.

Thankfully we've gotten beyond that.

reply to post by Byrd

---

Other Byrd, yes a lot of it was based on getting science to follow the concepts of the Bible or to 'prove' the Bible. That intellectual train wreck continues to plague scientists to this day.

That was a time when almost all scientists were Christian or Jewish and many were influenced by the strong social religious environment in which they lived.

The nationalism of the time also distorted science with the French and Germans(Prussians) fighting a cultural war within science, looking for firsts and attempting to discredit each other work...especially after the 1870 war.

reply to post by zazzafrazz

---

The word "gold" that you mentioned in this post are refers to Sci-fi Technology.