“Paleo-tech”: why I don’t think there was any.

One of the defenses I hear when I ask for evidence of long-lost advanced technological civilizations – which I call “paleo-tech” --is that all traces of them have been obliterated by either (relatively recent) Pleistocene ice sheets or (further back) by tectonic subduction.

This approach, from the viewpoint of a defender of "paleo-tech", is comforting, but wrong.

There are a lot of places in all the continents that were not covered by any Pleistocene ice sheets, including the bulk of the Indian Subcontinent, Southeast Asia, all of Africa, the Lower Mississippi Valley, the Gran Chaco, and most of what is now the area surrounding the Mediterranean Sea.

Yet there is no real evidence whatsoever of "paleo-tech".

By “real evidence”, of course, I mean artifacts. The Nacza lines are better explained as irrigation than they are as landing patterns for Neolithic spaceships; drawings of Gods and legends of ancient heroes can best be explained by people looking to mythology to explain things they don’t understand, “researchers” like Erich von Däniken and Zecheria Sitchen to the contrary.

Where is the single piece of alloy beyond bronze or steel? Where are the thermoplastics? Where are the huge limestone, marble, or granite quarries of ten to twelve thousand years ago? Where are the broken shards of machine-produced glass?

Not even a single one of these has been found.

Ancient batteries? Quite possibly. The Mesopotamian batteries, which may have been used a millennium ago to aid in electroplating, are signs of a possibility at the very least. But vinegar and a rough rod in a clay pot sealed with pitch, brilliant as the concept is, is hardly "paleo-tech".

And I find it surprising indeed that defenders of "paleo-tech" blow off my questions with the comment that all the real artifacts went down with Atlantis or whatever, because that simply isn’t so. The entire United States could sink beneath the waves tomorrow, and there would be shards of Coca-Cola bottles rattling around the rest of the Earth for millennia to come.

Any civilization worthy of the "paleo-tech" description would have to be one that explored and traded (at one level or another) world wide. Who cares if the Atlanteans never built a satellite city in what’s now Biloxi, Mississippi or Asuncion, Paraguay? God knows there should be some ancient trade goods from somewhere!

I’m sorry. As romantic and exciting as the concept of Atlantis or Mu sounds, there is simply no real evidence for them. Worse still, for the "paleo-tech" believers, is that the very absence of evidence argues for its non-existence.


[edit on 13-10-2004 by Off_The_Street]

You know I think this way, too. Didn't we do this recently? I remember writing a piece on the difference between having a large population and large artefact residue (what I call "scale") and having cool-looking ruins (what I've called "splendor").

Arrowheads in every plowed field in Tennessee is an example of scale. Stonehenge is an example of splendor.

"Paleo-tech" must not have had much of either.

Compare that with classical Rhodes, which gives us both its harbor as well as the "Antikythera Device."

A freeway "clover-leaf" interchange will leave a massive scale, if not a whole lot of splendor after a thousand years of rust and acid rain dissolving the cement, as well as roving tribes of barbarians who burn asphalt to keep warm . . .

Mt. Rushmore, even after a 1000 years of erosion, would still have splendor, even though it is effaced like the sphinx.

I think the Denver Airport will have plenty of both, and be viewed as a "haunted Murkin burial-ground." No doubt with stories of UFO's and the unquiet graves underground.

It is possible to have one without the other. The Nazca lines are an example of scale. That took a lot of work, when you think about it. Stonehenge, on the other hand, was probably built by a fairly small population, probably less than 30k people or so. There ARE artefacts from neolithic stonehenge; and those artefacts show a pretty low population density.

So it is possible, in theory at least, for some paleo-tech-ers to build some cool monuments with only a few tens of thousands of population. But with no scale and no splendor, it wasn't much of a civilization. 3 guys with a primitive doesn't count as a whole society.

Interesting Post.

I agree that people get carried away with the romance of Atlantis, or the requirement that aliens must have ehlped build the pyramids.

There are some incredible structures the world over. The Monoliths on Malta are very old, carved out of solid rock, and the underground church has acoustic chambers built in. Impressive engineering feat.

The constructions in Bolivia, Teahuanacu (spelling?), the pyramids in Egypt, Ankor wat in Cambodia, these would be considered accomplished feats of construction, engineering, astronomy and geometry today. Let along thousands of years ago.

the truth is usually in the middle of two extremes; there were some civlizations that were more advanced than we give credit for. they did not invent flying machines or gravity defying methods of propulsion.

good post.

I guess it boils down to what is considered "ancient" or "tech". There are some cool finds that certainly appear even high tech for the times,. The navigation computer found in a Greek wreck in the mediterranean come to mind. It was a box of complex gears that one could use a navigation computer. So, fairly advanced for the times, no? Now stuff liked to be Atlantian tech and stuff like that is hooey.

Der Kapitan do you have a link about this wreck? I'd be interested in seeing the pictures.

But anyway, talking about advanced technology. Would it not be foolish of us to search for technology similar to ours (glass, metal alloys etc)? Is it not possible previous races were technologically advanced, but advanced in terms of organic technology? Instead of a whopping big metal structure, they had some sort of biological one. Instead of creating an artificial environment filled with plastic, maybe they used more natural organic resources. If this was the case then there wouldn't be any artifacts left as with the exception of some sort of cataclysm or accident most of the "technology" would have decomposed into nothingness.

Also advanced is a relative term. I am sure the first tribe to discover fire was highly advanced in comparison to all the other tribes. The first city/tribe/race to have agriculture or running water and plumbing were probably highly advanced at their time.

The shipwreck is off the island of "Antikythera." Search Antikythera Device using google.

I have thought about the organic technology, too. According to H.P. Lovecraft's novels, the Ancient Ones used genetically engineered organisms instead of machines. This is best portrayed in his classic story "At the Mountains of Madness," which he wrote in 1927 I believe.

The term "advanced civilization" is considered judgmental by many anthropologists now. They talk in terms of complexity, citing the division of labor that results from city dwelling.

Note that this avoids passing judgment on, say, the Lakota, who had an extremely intricate religious system, which of course cannot be seen in the fossil record.

Same with the Jews, for that matter. If you've ever read Thomas Cahill's "the Gift of the Jews" or "How the Irish Saved Civilization," you know that physical and military technology is automatically the same as being advanced or complex. I.e. The Mongols had a very simple nomadic way of life, with little differentiation of social roles. But their composite bows destroyed several more complex societies . . .