Sometimes Whole Civilizations Just Vanish

Everyone has heard of the lost city of Atlantis but there are plenty of other civilizations throughout history that we know existed but do not know exactly why they vanished. Here are a few ancient civilizations from all over the world that mysteriously disappeared.

The Clovis People.

Around 12,000 to 13,200 BC.

The most mysterious aspect of the Clovis people is that there has only been ONE human burrial accociated with them. It was of an infant boy. DNA testing was done and it was found that 80 percent of all present-day indigenous people in North and South America are direct descendants of the family of the boy.The other 20 percent are more closely related to the Clovis than any other people on earth.

The Clovis were great tool makers, especially credited with fluted spears aptly called the Clovis Point. Clovis sites have since been identified throughout much of the contiguous United States, Mexico, and Central America.

The oldest Clovis site in North America is believed to be El Fin del Mundo in northwestern Sonora, Mexico, discovered during a 2007 survey. It features occupation dating around 13,390 calibrated years BP.

Around 10,500 years ago, Clovis abruptly vanish. No one knows for sure why they disappeared.

The most commonly held perspective on the end of the Clovis culture is that a decline in the availability of megafauna, combined with an overall increase in a less mobile population, led to local differentiation of lithic and cultural traditions across the Americas.

More Info
Further Info



The Picts

A very tough people from northern Scotland, they are the reason why Roman ruins are not found in the northern highlands. They were able to repel Roman advances. In fact, Romans are the reason they are called the Picts (meaning painted or tattooed people) and much of what we know about them is from Roman writings. They spoke a language that is now extinct and no one knows how to speak or translate it.



Though not as old as other civilizations in this OP, it is still not known exactly what happened to the Picts.

Pictish recorded history begins in the Dark Ages. At that time, the Gaels of Dál Riata controlled what is now Argyll, as part of a kingdom straddling the sea between Britain and Ireland. The Angles of Bernicia, which merged with Deira to form Northumbria, overwhelmed the adjacent British kingdoms, and for much of the 7th century Northumbria was the most powerful kingdom in Britain.[14] The Picts were probably tributary to Northumbria until the reign of Bridei mac Beli, when, in 685, the Anglians suffered a defeat at the Battle of Dun Nechtain that halted their northward expansion. The Northumbrians continued to dominate southern Scotland for the remainder of the Pictish period.

“What is undoubtedly mysterious is the extraordinary disappearance of the culture of the Pictish people within the course of the first two or three generations of mac Alpin kings,” noted Michael Lynch in his book Scotland: a New History.

Theories on disappearance
More Picts info



Cucuteni–Trypillia

The first great civilization of Europe, The Cucuteni-Trypillia (CT) culture covered a massive area of what is now Ukraine and Romania 3500-4000 BC.



They built some of the largest settlements in neolithic Europe. Some cities may have contained up to 46,000 people.



The CT were forward thinking for their time as they had no political elite and no social stratification. Whats really weird is around every 60-80 years they would burn their own cities and rebuild them.

Due partly to the fact that this took place before the written record of this region began, there have been a number of theories presented over the years to fill the gap of knowledge about how and why the end of the Cucuteni–Trypillia culture happened. These theories include invasions from various groups of people, a gradual cultural shift as more advanced societies settled in their region, and environmental collapse.

Theories on Disappearance

There is a ton of info on this interesting culture, if you like to read more click HERE or HERE



Sanxingdui Culture

Around 12,000 BC, the discovery of this ancient Chinese culture has challenged the traditional story of how Chinese culture began. The Sanxingdui were exceptional at metal working. Their works include the oldest known life sized stature of a human.





First discovered by a peasant in 1929. Imagine going out to fix a sewer and instead, discovering an ancient city.

In 1929, a peasant in Sichuan province, on the western borders of China's traditional territory, uncovered jade and stone artefacts whilst repairing a sewage ditch. This was a site that was located about forty kilometres (twenty-four miles) from Chengdu, but following these initial, accidental finds it was largely forgotten for second time. The significance of the jade and stone was not understood until 1986, when archaeologists unearthed two pits of Bronze Age treasures that included jades, about a hundred elephant tusks, and stunning, giant bronze sculptures 2.4 metres-high (eight feet) that suggest an impressive technical ability, one that was present nowhere else in the world at the time at which they were made.

The culture mysteriously disappeared around 3000 years ago. No one knows for sure what happened but there are a few theories on what happened.

"The current explanations for why it disappeared are war and flood, but both are not very convincing," Niannian Fan of Sichuan University told LiveScience. The discovery of the ancient city of Jinsha 40km southwest of Sanxindui deepened the mystery, but may also help solve it. Objects at Jinsha have very similar images on it to those found at Sangxingdui, suggesting the two civilizations were at least connected, and their ages suggest Jinsha have been Sangxingdui's successor.

This is another very interesting culture, if you'd like to read more about them, check out here, here, or here.



These are just a few examples of civilizations that have abruptly vanished throughout history. There are plenty of these to read about and if you would like here are more examplesfor you to keep boredom at bay today.

a reply to: FauxMulder

Rise and fall they do. And for many a great reasons.

You've been missing out on my new documentary series. I've started from the beginning...

a reply to: FauxMulder

Many ancient Native American cultures have gone 'missing'.

Or been covered up.

Good read, S+F for a quality thread.

I've never heard of the Picts, the amount of mystery still lurking in our past is phenomenal, I'll never tire of learning about it.

Thank you for posting this. I always like reading more about these civilizations. It seems it's always these cultures 4000 bc and older that are always the ones to have mysteriously vanished. It's really too bad there's been so much slaughter and conquering throughout history. We've lost so much that's come before.

I live in the shadow of the Pictish hillfort of Dundurn. It's a little unfair to say they disappeared without trace, we pretty much know what happened to them. They were just slowly converted to Christianity and consumed by the emergent Scottish identity as their Royal line was extinguished and they lost their tribal identity.

There are lots of smaller Scottish tribes like the Picts that were similarly consumed, the Dalriada Celts, the Scotti. The culture of ancient megalithic monument builders who seem to have originated on the Scottish Islands and spread their knowledge to the south, eventually resulting in Stonehenge.


It's not that surprising that the really ancient ones disappeared completely. Not much survives in the earth after thousands of years. Bodies disappear, wooden structures become very hard to detect...

a reply to: FauxMulder

Nice thread and interesting read. I wonder what clues we will leave behind for future civilizations to discover. Will they be able to figure out we were all expendable sheep that got culled after we were no longer needed? Or will history as we know it be re-written forever?

Since history tends to repeat itself, I think we all know the answer to that one.

#MAGA

(Make ATS Great Again)

a reply to: Painterz

I would say the Picts are the least mysterious of the ones I listed (though there is SOME mystery about them) but I wanted to include them because they are one of the coolest. Romans couldn't even F with them.

a reply to: FauxMulder

The big problem is that you're confusing civilizations with cultures.

Cultures vanish all the time... They're a very fragile social structure.

Civilizations mean the people live in cities, have a formal government structure, have domestic animals, and farm. A cult (or tribe) can live on the plains with no fixed housing and no leaders (anarchy.)

a reply to: Byrd

OK, where did I confuse them? Are you talking about because I wrote Sanxingdui Culture? That is the name it goes by.

If they vanished where did they go? Or perhaps a better question might be where did they come from to begin with?

a reply to: FauxMulder

Clovis is not a "civilization" it is a culture, and clovis did not "disappear", as the environment around them changed they had to adapt their range and lifestyle. And as they moved away from their ancestral core range in the southern plains/south east and eastern seaboard, they met and mixed with different peoples and integrated into existing groups.
The anzick child is a product of the clovis meeting up with south americans who had migrated north bringing their thick bodied points with them. This meet up likely happened in montana/idaho area, where an ancient stone quarry shows that three distinct groups of people used the quarry at the same time.
In california clovis gave rise to the chumash and the yokuts and influenced the dieguito culture of so cal.

Interesting thread OP, what about the Gauls? I've read historical accounts from Roman historians that claimed there were giants up to 8-9 feet tall among the Gauls they conquered.

a reply to: FauxMulder
I don't think the Picts disappeared, as such. They just changed their name.
The kingdom of the Picts acquired a Scottish dynasty; became the kingdom of the Scots and the Picts; and finally "Scotland" for short.
As for the Pictish language, it got buried under the northward creep of a version of English, as in what is now southern Scotland.

a reply to: FauxMulder

Seems odd to me that academics for the most part flat
out deny that a global flood is even possible. Never mind
the countless civilizations that ended suddenly or just
vanished mysteriously at some point, Nevermind how
finding ruins from a past we know nothing about is
exactly what we should have if we consider what
scripture has to say.

A gobal flood should certainly leave the ruins and wash
away the people. Damned if that isn't what we have all
over the world. Science that dismisses a historical
document because it is also a religious text isn't even
science.

It's propaganda.

a reply to: randyvs

Exactly, science = propaganda...

Confirmed by Michael Ellner as well(sig quote).

a reply to: Murgatroid

That's an inane statement by someone who doesn't seem to understand what science means. Yes your statement may be to some extend truthful but only for those who have no idea about the meaning of science.
Science isn't an entity or a statement. It is a way of finding the truth. Proper science has very rigorous ways on how to find out if a statement is true or not.
That's all.

Before scientific ways were established, humans could just claim anything. With scientific standards and certain ways that have to be adhered to we can now test any hypotheses if they are replicable.

So to any religious folk in theory, science might one day prove your god exists- if it exists at all. So don't bash it mindlessly.

Science is excellent, if done by the right people and the right way. Strangely enough your meme alone could be treated as a hypothesis and tested by science. I have the feeling though that it wouldn't stand up to much.

a reply to: Hecate666

If the quote in my sig were in fact untrue, you would be correct.

The fact remains that it IS true, stating a fact and bashing are two entirely different things.

You mentioned "religious folk"...

I view the Scientific community as some of the most fanatically religious people I've ever met.

With respect to its great contributions to society, I think it is important to make a case that science is really affecting society more like a religion now than a field of study or a resource base of useful information.

Modern Scientific beliefs are based upon a leap of faith in the big bang theory. It has become a belief system based on faith and therefore another form of religion. Scientists, like priests can explain their beliefs but the everyday people accept it all on faith. Scientists and doctors are the priests of this new religion, getting angry and crying "heresy" when anyone respectfully disagrees with them.

Has Science become a Religion

Science - The Illuminati Religion and Mind Control Tool for the Masses

"...the Illuminati eventually controlled the science departments in all colleges and institutions of higher learning. The plan was to stifle scientific knowledge and then twist what was left to fit the science they wanted the people to believe. They accomplished this by adopting new rules in regards to scientific research.

Secret Societies - Who Controls Knowledge?

"Throughout recorded history, the Illuminati has successfully withheld from humankind major aspects of history and science in order to subjugate the masses"

By manipulating the souls evolving on earth, the Illuminati have deliberately suppressed the spiritual facts of life, not to mention liberating technologies, which could bring plenitude to all.

Secrets of Suppressed Science and History

Clovis people have been thought to have disappeared due to a extreme solar flare event or even a distant supernova that caused intense bombarbment of the North American continent. It would have damaged the DNA of every mammal and even the North polar ice sheets. It was thought to have taken the Earth out of the ice age.

a reply to: Murgatroid

I mentioned that science 'done properly' and by proper scientists. That excludes all of your examples and still keeps my post true.