Ancient Civilizations: Mind Boggling what we do NOT know

When thinking about some numbers and recent finds, some things are really mind boggling.

I have big troubles already imaging how we lived in the middle ages, say, 12th century in Europe.
But this is nothing, let's just mentally go back to the time when the pyramids were build. approx 2500 BC.
What do we really know about their society, beliefs etc. Some are still arguing about the purpose of the pyramids - what do we REALLY know? Now we are already back 6000 years in time and now it becomes really fuzzy.

Some "scholars" for some odd reason said that "modern" civilizations should have started around that time, 2500BC etc....but i think this is only because we can (somehow) track our own history back to that time because we have scrolls and scriptures from that time....but...hold on because the ride in the time machine has just begun:

Göbleki Tepe en.wikipedia.org... was built 9000 BC and was just recently discovered. A city dating BEFORE we supposedly learned the bare essentials like animal husbandry, pottery, the wheel etc..

Imagine that for the people living at the time of Göbleki Tepe the ancient pyramids were some 6500-7000 years *in the future* - this thought is so mind boggling. Can we imagine how our world will look like in 7000 years?
Can we even expect to even remotely understand the people living 11.000 years ago, their society, their technology etc.?

But hold on..if you think Göbleki Tepe is fascinating...what about that classic stone figure "Venus of Willendorf" en.wikipedia.org... which has been dated to have been made 24.000 BC!

For whoever person who had this "Venus" in their hands 26.000 (!!!) years ago...Göbleki Tepe was 13.000 years in the future..

What's my point here?

My point here is that i think there is a big likelihood we had civilizations thousands and tens of thousands of years ago where we do not know ONE thing they ever existed. Such civilizations might have come, lasted many thousands of years..and then they went and are now forgotten.

Our modern times..what we consider the "modern" civilization..how old is it? Let's take the middle-ages, like 14th or 15th century as a start...makes barely 6 HUNDRED years in history what we consider modern civilization. If we go back to the Romans, it's only 2 thousand years. But we know people existed 28.000 years ago already..and i really wonder how many mysteries and secrets are buried in such crazy amounts of time.

How likely is it there were extremely high developed civilizations with technology....as developed as we are now...or maybe even further advanced...and they vanished for various reasons...10.000 years ago. What would we find? Would we even be able to find anything...would tens of thousands of years simply have erased everything and then being over-shadowed by civilizations coming afterwards?

reply to post by flexy123


The movie "Men in Black" said it best - "2000 years ago they knew the Earth was the center of the Universe. 400 years ago they KNEW the Earth was flat. Just imagine what what we will all KNOW tomorrow."

There are more mysteries out there than we will ever know about due to the erosive effects of weathering and mainly due to the fact that TPTB would never allow the truth to come out as to our real ancient history out of fear that we would see past the lies we are taught in school.

I think that human civilization is far older than we have been taught, possibly up to 50,000+ years. There are way too many unexplained "coincidences" in the world regarding civilizations and their connections on different continents around the world.

The thing is why do we not find fossil records for these civilizations 1,000's of years ago but we find dinosaur fossils...

The thing that some people forget is that these ancient civilizations were highly religious, they weren't interested in furthering technology and learning how science and physics worked they were quit happy to live for 1,000's of years worshipping the god's and building statues in their image.

We have the same thing today, look at the tech we have and still there is highly religious country's who live in basic condition's and sleep around camp fires who are not interested in having the latest xbox, as they are to busy doing rain dances and praying to their god.

reply to post by flexy123

Thanks for the information on Göbleki Tepe. Taken with other sites around the world, the hints of a rich and interesting deep history to our species really boggle the mind!

Even this site appears to have been fairly close to the surface and just sitting there, waiting for someone to question why a natural feature looked a little odd. I wonder how many dozens or hundreds of other sites are almost as accessible and also waiting for someone to become curious enough to start digging?

Here is one funny thing...because i read a little about Göbleki Tepe yesterday.

So.."mainstream science" is saying this was built and used when humans were hunters and collectors, in other words there was NO real society structure and Man basically lived in caves and they moved about the country wherever they could hunt animals to kill.

HOWEVER - during their primitive life of moving about the countryside to hunt and eat (they haven't learn animal farming yet etc.) - they found time to work those giant monoliths and built this big complex, they must have used some kind of tools because they engraved animal pictures into the stone etc..etc...

If they already had knowledge about how to build such structures...then how can they still have been "hunters and collectors"? They must have already been in some higher developed society/culture since hunting cavemen don't just start building such structures.

Originally posted by Wrabbit2000
reply to post by flexy123

 

Thanks for the information on Göbleki Tepe. Taken with other sites around the world, the hints of a rich and interesting deep history to our species really boggle the mind!

Even this site appears to have been fairly close to the surface and just sitting there, waiting for someone to question why a natural feature looked a little odd. I wonder how many dozens or hundreds of other sites are almost as accessible and also waiting for someone to become curious enough to start digging?

Yes sorry i just put a single link in it..this deserves far more exposure but i think there are better people on the forum for this...if it has not been covered already (which is very likely) because it is a rather significant, recent find. Really very fascinating. I am sure there are better posts about this somewhere.

There are quite some mysteries with this site..one for sure the fact that at a later time they filled up the whole site again and buried it under tons of sand.

Good thread, OP. We really don't know much at all about the past. There could have very well been a civilization as advanced as us for all we know.
I think Atlantis was one such civilization. There's quite a few rumors that this is true, and they even had flying machines.
You know what they say, "A rumor's not a rumor that doesn't die."

Göbleki Tepe en.wikipedia.org... was built 9000 BC and was just recently discovered. A city dating BEFORE we supposedly learned the bare essentials like animal husbandry, pottery, the wheel etc.

You really don't want to confuse "cities" with "civilization", civilizations encompass so much more than just the construction of stone buildings and walls. A number of ancient cities are known that preceded the creation of a true civilization. Göbleki Tepe was built about the same time as agriculture was invented (10th c. BCE), for the first time hunter-gatherer's had a need for permanent dwellings. What they still lacked were literacy and a system of writing, trade and commerce, a uniform system of weights and measures, etc., etc., etc., in other words, they were not yet a civilization.

Jericho is another example of an ancient city that preceded civilization, at 9000 BCE it too coincided with the advent of agriculture and the settling down of hunter-gatherer's into a domestic lifestyle.

In many respects these cities were just stepping stones on the path to true civilization, which wouldn't occur until the Sumerians migrated into Mesopotamia.

A quote from the Wikipedia entry for Ancient History:

A fundamental difficulty of studying ancient history is that recorded histories cannot document the entirety of human events, and only a fraction of those documents have survived into the present day. Of those that have, the reliability of the information obtained from these records must be considered. Few people were capable of writing histories, as literacy was not widespread in almost any culture until long after the end of ancient history

reply to post by flexy123


This is a quote from wikipedia on the discovery of Gobekli Tepe

When discovered, it had been deliberately filled in and buried, for reasons unknown.

In other words, the mainstream establishment don't want us to know that human history goes back way before 5000 years - the "official dates" for civilisation starting.

I'm guessing they want to keep it that way thanks to the Christian/Vatican Lobby who like to keep the dates of the origins of mankind and civilisation as close to the events in the bible.

Originally posted by flexy123
HOWEVER - during their primitive life of moving about the countryside to hunt and eat (they haven't learn animal farming yet etc.) - they found time to work those giant monoliths and built this big complex, they must have used some kind of tools because they engraved animal pictures into the stone etc..etc...

If you are particularly interested in the subject, take some Anthropology...or at least read the first year text. Consider the North American analogy, where there were hunter-gatherers more or less sharing a landscape with agriculturalists up to European contact. Some chose to farm, some to exploit the larger environment. And 'primitive' is a very subjective term. You had cities and monumental structures built in the Mississippi region and beyond. Personal artwork was created by nomadic people. Essentially, society was as complex as folks cared to make it. One thing Anthro 101 points out is that folks expended less time and energy making a living in a hunter-gatherer society than we do today. Something to think about when you take your 2 weeks off to go camping.

Bottom line? First off, if there was such an advanced society as you speak of, we'd find the signs. Secondly, the fact that new discoveries continue to change the story as we know it refutes the allegations of academic cover-up.

The peopling of North America is just such an example.

reply to post by flexy123


I am always amazed at how little most people know about their own lineage... i would bet 85% of the people in America couldn't name their great grandparents off the top of their head... and most couldn't name their great-great grandparents at all... I was lucky as a high-schooler we had to make a heritage paper so I traced my roots back to 'discover' the name of my great great grandmothers father... and that was only around 1825!!!

I have since been able to trace my lineage all the way to the Mayflower which was 1600 (or thereabouts) and my line traces under the wagner or warren name (i would have to go get the papers!)

but the point is - most humans can't trace their own family back 200 years...

anyone want to throw out how far they can go back - without doing research right now?

I also found it amazing that surnames were only given out around 500 years ago!

Originally posted by Blackmarketeer

Göbleki Tepe en.wikipedia.org... was built 9000 BC and was just recently discovered. A city dating BEFORE we supposedly learned the bare essentials like animal husbandry, pottery, the wheel etc.

You really don't want to confuse "cities" with "civilization", civilizations encompass so much more than just the construction of stone buildings and walls. A number of ancient cities are known that preceded the creation of a true civilization. Göbleki Tepe was built about the same time as agriculture was invented (10th c. BCE), for the first time hunter-gatherer's had a need for permanent dwellings. What they still lacked were literacy and a system of writing, trade and commerce, a uniform system of weights and measures, etc., etc., etc., in other words, they were not yet a civilization.

Jericho is another example of an ancient city that preceded civilization, at 9000 BCE it too coincided with the advent of agriculture and the settling down of hunter-gatherer's into a domestic lifestyle.

In many respects these cities were just stepping stones on the path to true civilization, which wouldn't occur until the Sumerians migrated into Mesopotamia.

Nice post Blackmarketeer.

I just wanted to add that Gobekli Tepe was not a city at all, whereas as you pointed out, Jericho was.

Well, more like a small town.

Harte

Originally posted by roughycannon
The thing is why do we not find fossil records for these civilizations 1,000's of years ago but we find dinosaur fossils...

The thing that some people forget is that these ancient civilizations were highly religious, they weren't interested in furthering technology and learning how science and physics worked they were quit happy to live for 1,000's of years worshipping the god's and building statues in their image.

We have the same thing today, look at the tech we have and still there is highly religious country's who live in basic condition's and sleep around camp fires who are not interested in having the latest xbox, as they are to busy doing rain dances and praying to their god.

Then you my friend, have never learned about indo-europeans, the Celts, the Druids, the Ancient Britons. They were mastercraftsman and furthered technology, could they heat a hotpocket using the power of the sun in a box? No, but can you left a giant stone ontop of another? Oh, and their 'religion' was exactly that, learn how science and physics work.

Remember, it was probably pythagoreas that learned from the druids, not the other way around. It was a college after all.

reply to post by flexy123


Great post. Thanks for teaching me about Gobekli Tepe. It looks like something Robert E. Howard would write about. I can picture Conan stopping there. And those Venus of Willendorf were produced in a factory of sorts back then, I read about it somewhere, if only I could find it.

Star & Flag.

Originally posted by CasiusIgnoranze
reply to post by flexy123

 

This is a quote from wikipedia on the discovery of Gobekli Tepe

When discovered, it had been deliberately filled in and buried, for reasons unknown.

In other words, the mainstream establishment don't want us to know that human history goes back way before 5000 years - the "official dates" for civilisation starting.

I'm guessing they want to keep it that way thanks to the Christian/Vatican Lobby who like to keep the dates of the origins of mankind and civilisation as close to the events in the bible.

edit on 6-9-2011 by CasiusIgnoranze because: .

I think you read into it wrong. What they meant was around 8000b.c. it was filled in and buried.

I like this stuff too.
Amazing what we dont know is right!
Amazing what we havent found yet!

About the history... we cant even get history right with computers and technology, I mean the simple fact of what our president "Lincoln" was and what the civil war was fought over, those are lost in just a few centuries!

reply to post by flexy123

You make good points.

But you are speaking from the viewpoint of traditional science.

Traditional science does not trust human memory in any form. (Except what is required to observe the reading on an instrument and record it.) They completely distrust the human mind and the data in it. They demand "physical" evidence for everything and claim that human memory is not physical. Meanwhile their neurologists are trying to get us to believe that human memory resides in the brain. In which case it would be physical!

In turning their backs on human memory as "hopelessly unreliable" they turn their backs on the largest and most potent repository of data in the known universe. The idea that this data is not physical and can not be validated in any way is ridiculous. They just lack the confront to do what is necessary to access this data in a reliable manner. If they really confronted the job at hand and learned, or developed, the technologies needed to make human memory as reliable a data source as archeological artifacts, they could find out almost anything they wanted to know.

Human memory is no more or less easier to counterfeit than physical evidence. And we have seen plenty of false physical evidence over the years. The key to reliable data is number of data points. The reliability of your data increases the more data points you can find. A lot of data points will create a consistent pattern, or they won't if there is no consistent pattern to be found in the data.

So, if we open up the discussion to include human memory as a data source, then a different, though still incomplete, picture begins to emerge.

Here on earth, a loose pattern can be discerned. The underlying pattern has been discovered by science and could be described as "evolution" for lack of a better term. The first "overlay" on top of this pattern consists of catastrophic events. Science should be able to find most of these, but seems reluctant. It makes our history less tidy. And the second overlay is the real kicker: ET interventions. We don't have a lot of data points on this subject yet. What ones do exist point to a coming and going that superimposes weird, localized shifts of culture that are considered significant but never seem to have had much staying power. It includes the "usual" cultures that science considers strictly mythological. That would include Atlantis, Lemuria, Hyperborea, a place called "Gor" located on what is now Antartica, and probably others.

What is unique about the history data points that come from human memory is that they extend off earth. They tell us stories of how the various humanoid races that we in the ufo research community are familiar with developed off planet. They are pretty sketchy and span millions, billions, even trillions of earth years. But those data points are there. We need to develop more. It shouldn't be impossible. Scientology has been working for decades now on the "whole track amnesia" problem, and eventually a few will come forward out of that work with data for us. Meanwhile, other groups are working on their own techniques for developing data. Most of it so far is transferred down to us from off-world sources. I don't trust that data too well. We need more from strictly human sources.

We do have the potential to greatly improve our understanding of the distant past. But we need to confront the task and what it will really take to do it. I think our biggest barriers are our own fears of what we will find out!

This is just my opinion, but I believe that over the course of the 4.5 billion-year history of this planet, there have been a multiple (perhaps dozens) of civilizations, some of which were extremely advanced. Some probably lasted longer than others. Some may have not even originated on this planet. Unfortunately, natural processes have erased the evidence for all but the most recent ones. Even then, the little evidence which remains still leaves a lot of questions unanswered.

I fear we will never know the entire story. I just don't think it's possible to.

Originally posted by JohnnyCanuck
Bottom line? First off, if there was such an advanced society as you speak of, we'd find the signs. Secondly, the fact that new discoveries continue to change the story as we know it refutes the allegations of academic cover-up.

I'm not buying this at all. The earth has a way of reclaiming stuff very efficiently. Metal and other parts of engines for example could easily be broken down into substances that are used by the earth or animals in a few thousand years at most. Look at things that are buried that are known now at how much they deteriorate. There are acids in the ground that can do this and plants and animals can quicken the process.

Who's to say we haven't found some of these things? There are plenty of stories of odd metals and such found that we cannot explain as well as structures that were built that had to be built by tools we cannot account for. The only things we have that lasted the longest are made of stone or rock and yet these too do crumble.

i believe it is entirely possible there are some coverups in this field.. the field is so large, there has to be some things that are hidden