The Completly Lost Civilization....

If a civilization is lost then how do we know it exists till after we've found it. The point is that we've seen how our world can change from a tornado, earthquake, flood, mudslides and any number of natural disasters. There does seem to be some evidence that something catastrophic happened to the earth that wiped out large portions of the population that existed at that time. So with all the various civilizations that are gone how many more exist that we haven't found? Now what about a civilization that is lost but isn't dead. If you look at all the many cultures around the world, there are whispers and echos of those civilizations that have long passed. It's because of these elements that we have clues that a civilization MIGHT exist. So I say, what if there was a civilization that knew of impending doom and made a choice to go into hiding. If they stayed there, then they would be lost but not gone and there would not likely be any indications in other cultures to indicate their existence.
This is where I'm going with this.
If you found an intelligent creature with a pale body, large eyes and small stature could we not say that it's a human race that has evolved due to living underground? Could not some of the non-terrestrial entities that some believe to exist actually be a completely lost civilization? Could this not explain how some cultures show evidence of non-terrestrial beings but don't seem to have suddenly adopted any new cultural behaviors. This is not to be confused with developing a new behavior based on an extraordinary event.
To close this thought up, with all the archeological investigations and scientific inquiry could there be evidence of a civilization specifically hiding themselves from the world in general and could this evidence only make sense if all data is taken together as a whole?

In this day and age it would be hard for a race to hide although I think they recently found an unknown tribe in the Amazon rain forest, but I get where you are headed.
I think in the past many, many races have come and gone and left little to show their passing.
You have the underwater ruins of Yonaguni of the coast of Japan, who built that and when?
Its not hard to believe that in the dim past a major devastation may have wiped all trace of some civilisation although the academics will tell you we are at our peak right now. I am not so sure.
We couldn't build the Pyramids as they were built in the past, some of that technology is still beyond us.
Especially with the working of stone. It is also interesting to remember that if we disapeared tomorrow, any evidence we ever existed would be gone in 5000 years, unless built with stone.
The ancestors knew what they were doing by building with stone, they knew it would survive the test of time.

Graham Hancock's stories about the global sea level being lower 10-12,000 years ago and how civilisations living close to shore lines for fish etc. Well they were all wiped out when a "global flood" occurred when the icecaps melted at end of the last ice age.

Also if you look at Hopi Indian's legends of how they come from the earth, as in they come from like down in the earth and people theorise that they took refuge there to avoid a catastrophe and come out many generations later.

Like the Hopi stories of their "birth" many other cultures have stories of coming out of hiding, maybe there was a "global" event at some point in history.

Like you said, maybe if greys are real they are human's that took refuge in the earth and somehow evolved to be smaller in height, bigger eyes, smaller mouths, grey skins etc.You hear about many so called bases in places like Tibet etc. I suppose if you went underground, overtime your thoughts may be kind of internalised and because you don't have that external stimuli of light, sounds of nature, scenery, weather, etc your brain capacity increases as all you have are your thoughts to keep you company. Maybe a whole civilisation focused more on thinking in that sense and over generations the "strong" survived but strong in the sense of mind power and body better designed for their surroundings, well maybe they have advanced technology at a faster pace.

Say for instance that if they are underground they can't like do test fights like the brothers did on the surface, if they are in a confined space they would have no other option but to develop something that can float and doesn't need a "run way" etc, do you see what I'm getting at. This is all theory of course.

Also they are "legends" or should I say "tales" of "inner earth" or "hollow earth" beings, maybe there's more to that than meets the eye. You heard about monks in Tibet apparently being the keepers to the entrances into this inner chambers. In reality would we really know if this were true, like it's highly possible they have access to caves and stuff we don't even know exist. Maybe there really is an enterence to "shamballa" or "aghartha" there or someplace else.

Another thing is we hear of like tunnels under the Amazon and even tunnels under Egypt. In places like the Amazon apparently they lead to like bigger chambers and over the years some of the civilisations built underground cities to hide from invaders or shelter from disasters. Recently we've read about underground rivers bigger than the amazon river, maybe they are huge chambers are along the way that have been discovered by previous civilisations and used as a "safe" for them, if not people, maybe treasures of some sort.

Think of the deserts of the planet and what they could hold, lost civilisations there. They are natural caves there that lead who knows where really. If you wanted to hind and save your self some work you likely would use an existing cave system and then at the "end" of it you start tunneling your self and creating an entrance to your refuge.

Even in modern times the Queen has a underground "town" with a pub, bakers etc that she would use in the event of a "world war" etc. Apparently under the house's of parliament and the bank of England, as well as the Queen's residence, all have underground rail roads that lead to this underground place. So I guess what I'm saying is in modern times we don't just develop bunkers, some people like to make it more like a home or a city. If we knew for a fact something was "coming" then maybe they would make it a lot more like home so as to affect the inhabitants as little as possible (mentally).

Maybe you've seen the movie "city of ember", I'm not saying this is based on fact or anything silly like that I'm just going to say that the premiss, the like "time locked" kind of chamber designed to hold them until the end of a disaster but then are forgotten about etc. Maybe they are just waiting to be found or freed.

I love thinking about what's underground and hidden from sight, so fascinating.

There would have to be countless Civilizations that have gone unaccounted for. Not all were literate or took an interest in art.

Considering between 40-50% of the world's population live less than 60miles from a coastline; it would be easy to imagine how rising water levels would wipe out evidence of previous civilizations.

The difficulty is that humanity is living at a time where the 5 senses rule and nothing else is ever considered.

I have to say i really like this idea even if the evidence is somewhat lacking . However lets not forget all the references to hidden underground illuminate/general secret society things. Also the morelochs from the time machine . I personally find it more plausible that an ancient advanced civilization hid underground and after returning to the surface a few generations later (or some science fiction like freezing) and took control of the savages they found on there return. These peoples descendants would now be royals/illuminate/nwo or general elite groups.
Thats just my thoughts nothing more significant , however the historical and fictionally references are intriguing.

Originally posted by liquidxxxgold
I have to say i really like this idea even if the evidence is somewhat lacking . However lets not forget all the references to hidden underground illuminate/general secret society things. Also the morelochs from the time machine . I personally find it more plausible that an ancient advanced civilization hid underground and after returning to the surface a few generations later (or some science fiction like freezing) and took control of the savages they found on there return. These peoples descendants would now be royals/illuminate/nwo or general elite groups.
Thats just my thoughts nothing more significant , however the historical and fictionally references are intriguing.

Ah but if you remember from the Time Machine the elites and their society had become so evolved,where they had become such cultured,higher beings,focused on art,philosophy,spiritual matters,love and oneness they'd lost contact with their lower animal nature leaving them so utterly defenseless they couldnt admit the morelochs were preying on them.Their only way to deal with it was to not talk about it and when somebody was taken not even acknowledge that person had ever existed.

Take note New Agers !!!

Originally posted by liquidxxxgold
I have to say i really like this idea even if the evidence is somewhat lacking . However lets not forget all the references to hidden underground illuminate/general secret society things. Also the morelochs from the time machine . I personally find it more plausible that an ancient advanced civilization hid underground and after returning to the surface a few generations later (or some science fiction like freezing) and took control of the savages they found on there return. These peoples descendants would now be royals/illuminate/nwo or general elite groups.
Thats just my thoughts nothing more significant , however the historical and fictionally references are intriguing.

Ah but if you remember from the Time Machine the elites and their society had become so evolved,where they had become such cultured,higher beings,focused on art,philosophy,spiritual matters,love and oneness they'd lost contact with their lower animal nature leaving them so utterly defenseless they couldnt admit the morelochs were preying on them.Their only way to deal with it was to not talk about it and when somebody was taken not even acknowledge that person had ever existed.

Take note New Agers !!!

Would it be reasonable to assume that anyone who would spend an extended amount of time cut off from the sun would die? Would it also be reasonable that anyone who lived in caves and had access to the land would be discouvered due to the landscape being worked for food? I believe mining alone has pretty much revealed every inch of land on the world, short of the poles.

Originally posted by Myth024
If a civilization is lost then how do we know it exists till after we've found it.

A good question, and one that people don't stop to think about (other than superficially.)

Most don't understand that civilizations don't just "pop up" because a cave man said "the heck with caves. I want cell phones." A civilization means multiple cities, a culture that is unique (and has unique art and artifacts), established trading routes and roads to resources (like farms and water and seaports) and technology.

That doesn't happen overnight.

Nor does collapse.

What usually happens is that the civilization weakens (drought, bad rulers, invasion) and gets taken over by another culture. They use the city sites (and farms and everything else) and tear down the old stuff and build their own new stuff.

The point is that we've seen how our world can change from a tornado, earthquake, flood, mudslides and any number of natural disasters.

But none of them (short of an asteroid) could wipe out a civilization (in the case of an asteroid, it would have to be a very small and local civilization.)

Think about it: The huge earthquake didn't destroy Japanese civilization last year. The Christmas Christchurch earthquake didn't destroy New Zealand's civilization. Vesuvius (volcano) destroyed Pompeii, but it did not destroy the Roman civilization.

There does seem to be some evidence that something catastrophic happened to the earth that wiped out large portions of the population that existed at that time.

In popular fiction, yes. In real world examples, no. There was one population bottleneck when humans were close to extinction but that was only homo sapiens (modern man) and it happened well over 70,000 years ago before there were any civilizations.

So with all the various civilizations that are gone how many more exist that we haven't found?

We have no idea. However, Google Earth is making it easier.

So I say, what if there was a civilization that knew of impending doom and made a choice to go into hiding. If they stayed there, then they would be lost but not gone and there would not likely be any indications in other cultures to indicate their existence.

You can have organizations that go into hiding, and some civilizations can ban outsiders, but everyone knows they're there. It's too difficult to hide what everyone already knows.

If you found an intelligent creature with a pale body, large eyes and small stature could we not say that it's a human race that has evolved due to living underground?

No. If it lived with no light, it would have lost its eyes. If it has a civilization and needed light to see, then (like we do) it would take its light sources underground with it.

To close this thought up, with all the archeological investigations and scientific inquiry could there be evidence of a civilization specifically hiding themselves from the world in general and could this evidence only make sense if all data is taken together as a whole?

No.

Lost because of combining with other groups, yes. Deliberate hiding (a civilization), no.

Tribes could and have hidden, yes, but they are "cultures" (tribes) and not "civilizations."

reply to post by Byrd


I was thinking primarily of caverns that have reached so far below the surface of earth that even today we haven't explored everything. I also mentioned underground and that doesn't mean no light. There are many bio-luminescent species that exist and of course the obvious is fire. Today we are spread out over a much larger portion of the earth and I could argue that thousands of years ago a civilization could take up a much smaller area and it might not have been that difficult to move an entire civilization under-ground. Or even for a small tribe to create a new civilization. With our advancements today I can see a group of humans living underground for a very long period of time. Could we not then assume that a civilization had technology that we only dream of and used it to disappear and then choose to stay "lost'? I mostly mentioned this concept because it seems that many people look to the skies for an alien civilization that is more advanced than we are and I don't see any reason why one can't exist here on earth that has been here for a very long time.

Originally posted by Myth024
reply to post by Byrd

 

I was thinking primarily of caverns that have reached so far below the surface of earth that even today we haven't explored everything.

There's a couple of problems with that (including the fact that caves do collapse, and the further down you go, the hotter it gets. And any civilization that went underground had to start somewhere. You, yourself didn't emerge into the world as a fully grown and fully educated adult -- so any civilization would have had to start SOMEwhere and would have left traces.

I could argue that thousands of years ago a civilization could take up a much smaller area and it might not have been that difficult to move an entire civilization under-ground. Or even for a small tribe to create a new civilization.

Could they live there? We need meat and vegetables (we are omnivores) and can't live completely on fish and fungus. The amount of mass needed to feed a civilization is considerable, and they also have wastes (everyone poops and pees) and one has to dispose of that.

With our advancements today I can see a group of humans living underground for a very long period of time. Could we not then assume that a civilization had technology that we only dream of and used it to disappear and then choose to stay "lost'?

Again, the problem is that an advanced civilization always develops from a less advanced civilization and those develop from still less advanced civilizations. We didn't go from "falling out of trees" to "inventing digital watches" in one step. There's a lot of things we had to develop first (manufacturing, science, writing, circuit boards, factories, robots) and in order to do that, we have to mine a lot of metals and quarry a lot of stone and use a lot of resources. Those leave a LOT of marks on the land.

reply to post by Byrd

All of those conclusions are accurate when taken in the context of how we currently believe a civilization rises and falls. So let me propose a purely hypothetical scenario so I can better illustrate my line of thought.
A civilization expands across the world and develops incredible levels of technology. In an attempt to further space exploration this civilization develops closed loop systems. This means that given a confined space, they have developed ways to provide all the nutritional requirements as well as recycle resources. The scientists are exploring the heavens with telescopes that reach further and are far more advanced than anything we have today. They discover that a large rock is going to hit the planet and the devastation will be far reaching and cataclysmic. Taking everything they developed for space travel underground seems to be the only way they can survive. It would have to be very deep underground and they would have to essentially build a very large "ship" under the earth. They would be able to carve our huge areas, re-enforce cavern walls and provide everything needed to survive underground. (something our technology can do to a limited extent today.) This great cataclysm arrives and wipes out most of the life on the planet. Over several thousand years life returns but time has hidden any civilization that had ever previously existed and any current life essentially starts from scratch. Meanwhile a large civilization under-ground has grown and evolved and there is no longer anyone left who remembers that there is anything more than what is under-ground.
So yea, that's a hypothetical scenario and while I will admit very far-fetched (dam my over-active imagination lol) given our current technology I can see the possibility existing.

reply to post by Myth024


What if they did not move into caves but to the ocean floor?

reply to post by Myth024


Well, we´d either find them the same way we found the dinosaurs, or we don´t find them at all.


But assuming something exists because nobody has seen it yet is a dangerous road with no end.

reply to post by ThinkingHuman

Actually, I hadn't considered that, but that's also a possibility. It might even explain some of the "Atlantis" myth's and folklore.

reply to post by Nightaudit

I completely agree that trying to find things that exist where there is no evidence that they do is indeed a dangerous road. However, I've often felt that the idea that there are beings from another planet visiting us seemed to eclipse the idea that it's entirely possible that some of them may live here instead of another planet. If you look at the generally accepted body type of the alien gray's, it seems to me, that body type would be well suited for dark underground caves. So I posited the idea of a lost civilization however it may have actually been more accurate to call it a hidden civilization.

Originally posted by Myth024

 

Actually, I hadn't considered that, but that's also a possibility. It might even explain some of the "Atlantis" myth's and folklore.

Atlantis did not "sink" into the ocean, aliens decided to move there. After they had built it, on the day they picked they went.

reply to post by Myth024


Hey, I'm pale (by choice), I have large eyes, and I'm only 5'5" so technically I'm short...adding in that I'm considered to be an attractive young woman, would that mean that I qualify as a member of a new race of cute girls who could easily adapt to living underground if a situation called for it? Like the antithesis of the stereotypical Amazonian woman? LOL, LOL, I'm just kidding! Sorry...I joke aroundtoo much. Also, this is only my third post ever, so please excuse me, I'm a bit nervous!

On a serious note, I find your theory to be absolutely intriguing. I think that the likelihood of a new race arising from a group of humans cutting themselves off from their native culture and/or the outside world is very low...on the contrary, the group would stay rather homogenous genetically due to their self-imposed isolation. Also, while I agree that the idea that the group most likely would, over time, develop and adapt (physically and mentally) to whatever situations/environments they subjected themselves to in their efforts to self-isolate, I would have to say that said adaptations would not qualify them as a new race but rather as a new culture altogether. After all, a group of people who already exhibit practices and characteristics of an existing culture starting anew in a different location and gradually blend them with new practices and characteristics resulting from their new environment and living habits and experiences (adaptations, if you will) into the overall makeup of the group's traits are not creating a new race but a new culture altogether that is distinct and specific to that group of people. In a way, even if a group of people went into hiding and isolated themselves, they would still take on new practices and characteristics resulting from their choices to alter their lifestyles resulting in a new cultural flavor belonging exclusively to that group...so in a way, you could view it as a lost civilization but then again, you could also view it as a new civilization.

Either way, I think it's a fantastic theory. Great thread, OP!

Originally posted by jcutler12888
reply to post by Myth024

 

Hey, I'm pale (by choice), I have large eyes, and I'm only 5'5" so technically I'm short...adding in that I'm considered to be an attractive young woman, would that mean that I qualify as a member of a new race of cute girls who could easily adapt to living underground if a situation called for it? Like the antithesis of the stereotypical Amazonian woman? LOL, LOL, I'm just kidding! Sorry...I joke around too much. Also, this is only my third post ever, so please excuse me, I'm a bit nervous!

First off... ROFL... I think I about fell out of my chair hehe. Second, welcome to the ATS madness.

You have an excellent point. A civilization could actually disappear as it adapts to a new way of life. I'm also thinking of changes that could happen over thousands of years. Could it be possible that a human physically changes as they adapt to a new environment? Not that this theory is new as you can find a plethora of information based on Darwin theories. (hmm.. may have just opened a can of squiggly things there..)
Excellent response. Give me something to think about.