How far back to you think "advanced" civilizations go back?

How far back to you think "advanced" civilizations go back? (Full Version)

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Karmastic -> How far back to you think "advanced" civilizations go back? (8/13/2012 11:14:53 PM)
we can't even start to understand our own human history, because it's buried and melted in perhaps a few hundred thousand years of molten lava. it's laughable that up until just a few years ago, we believed the "first" great civilizations were only a couple thousand years old. we just learned that the Mayans were at it at least a couple more thousand years earlier (at least 4 thousand BC). it's not hard (for me) to imagine that advanced civilizations were around hundreds of thousands of years ago, and that every trace of them was buried or sucked under (the earth's plates are always slowly moving, and sucking in and spitting out, so to speak, in a continuous cycle). do you believe we have pretty much discovered what our human history is in regards to advanced civilizations? or do you agree, that we really don't have a clue, and probably never will. thoughts.

JeffBC -> RE: How far back to you think "advanced" civilizations go back? (8/13/2012 11:24:59 PM)
I assume you're talking advanced technologically.. hunter/gatherer, agricultural, etc? Because if not... man... I don't know that I'd want to make a stab at defining "advanced". In general it's kind of hard for me to believe we could've missed an entire, major high-tech civ. Look at our own high-tech civilization. It's left marks on the moon, crap flying all over the solar system, etc. I strongly suspect we've missed a few agrarian or lower ones though. I doubt that goes back 100,00 years or more though. I'd have to go look again but I'd thought we knew a bit more about migration patterns from back then.

twonearvancouver -> RE: How far back to you think "advanced" civilizations go back? (8/13/2012 11:26:56 PM)
quote: ORIGINAL: Karmastic How far back to you think "advanced" civilizations go back? If you tell me what you mean by advanced, I can easily answer your question.

littlewonder -> RE: How far back to you think "advanced" civilizations go back? (8/13/2012 11:43:22 PM)
I would have to know what you consider advanced and what you consider civilization. Once I know what you mean then I may be able to give you an answer. But I am with Jeff on this one. Everything leaves a trace. We may have not found the oldest yet but that does not mean it's lost and we won't ever know. As of right now the oldest that scientists feel was the first "cradle of civilization" is no longer Mesopotamia but Göbekli Tepe in Turkey, built 11,500 years ago.

Karmastic -> RE: How far back to you think "advanced" civilizations go back? (8/14/2012 12:12:01 AM)
thanks, i should have clarified that. by "advanced", i meant, like the Egyptians, or the Mayans. Large organized cities (and empires) and governments. with aqueducts and/or controlled water supply. and clear architectural prowess, such as pyramids. and knowledge of the stars (calendars and star charts). and perhaps even rudimentary knowledge of electricity (e.g., Babylonian battery). but i have to admit, i think it's even more, but wouldn't ask others to indulge what's presently considered lunacy. i.e., advanced as in satellites (lost orbit and burned up), and full fledged technology to at least our present level. my initial gut tells me there would be traces, as Jeff suggests. but then i realized just how technologically feeble and infantile we presently are, and just how many basic forces and powers we don't understand. e.g., what we call "dark matter", which is another way of saying we know there's something out there affecting matter that we don't yet grasp. or that they just recently discovered that they were 100% wrong about the behavior and speed of our universe expanding (slowing down, or speeding up, we were wrong). and we still cannot see beyond the "event horizon", nor have we accurately figured for various gravity affecting bodies or forces. and that's not to mention that they are still "discovering" sites, and recently learned the Mayans went back at least a couple thousand years further than originally thought. thanks for indulging me :)

JeffBC -> RE: How far back to you think "advanced" civilizations go back? (8/14/2012 12:23:40 AM)
Here's the thing. We know too much about the fossil & DNA history to be missing the "window of opportunity" by too much. We didn't get out of Africa till ~100k years ago (see link). It's hard to believe we got to pyramids before we even got off the first continent. Walking isn't hard. Pyramids are. So that doesn't leave you enough time to wipe the entire surface of the eath, moon, and solar system clean. 1 or 2 billion years? Sure, absolutely. So I'm ruling out any advancement ours or higher without getting into random speculations about dark matter. There is always that unknown in science. The other way you could go is even further back in time. Maybe humans existed on this planet more than once... Wiped ourselves...tried again. If the last go around was WAY long ago ... Nope even that doesn't work. I think you have to give up on "high tech" at least. A high tech civilization just leaves too big a mark to get swept under so quickly... As does the population densities implied by that. On the other hand I'd be terribly surprised if we didn't uncover a few more from somewhere or another that were at least past "crouching in caves"

ARIES83 -> RE: How far back to you think "advanced" civilizations go back? (8/14/2012 12:47:34 AM)
Humans (Homo sapiens), the only living members of the genus Homo, are mammals of the primate order originally from Africa, where they reached anatomical modernity about 200,000 years ago and began to exhibit full behavioral modernity around 50,000 years ago. The process of sedentarization is first thought to have occurred around 12,000 BCE in the Levant region of southwest Asia though other regions around the world soon followed. The emergence of civilization is generally associated with the Neolithic, or Agricultural Revolution, which occurred in various locations between 8,000 and 5,000 BCE, specifically in southwestern/southern Asia, northern/central Africa and Central -Wiki

PyrotheClown -> RE: How far back to you think "advanced" civilizations go back? (8/14/2012 12:50:40 AM)
We never give our distant ancestors enough credit yeah, we got shitz pretty well figured out now, but as long as people been round(even in our most primitive forms),we've had to get shit done and "civilization" is one easily accessible way for us naked-weak-die-easy monkies to do it. even before we had digital watches, we've been pulling water for miles with absolute perfect(or near as one gets)angled aqueducts, plotting heavenly bodies with out any aid from telescopes,divining hundreds of different pretty accurate forms of calendars for plotting seeding and harvest ect.ect. So I guess it all depends on what ya call advanced? when a civilization discovers that it can keep track of goods and trades(and taxes,when most written languages start popping up) ,or when a large group of slightly clever monkies can work together and devise a way of life from each other and become "civilized"

PyrotheClown -> RE: How far back to you think "advanced" civilizations go back? (8/14/2012 12:57:43 AM)
quote: ORIGINAL: ARIES83 Humans (Homo sapiens), the only living members of the genus Homo, are mammals of the primate order originally from Africa, where they reached anatomical modernity about 200,000 years ago and began to exhibit full behavioral modernity around 50,000 years ago. The process of sedentarization is first thought to have occurred around 12,000 BCE in the Levant region of southwest Asia though other regions around the world soon followed. The emergence of civilization is generally associated with the Neolithic, or Agricultural Revolution, which occurred in various locations between 8,000 and 5,000 BCE, specifically in southwestern/southern Asia, northern/central Africa and Central -Wiki when talking bout human beings, think of a whole there's a few fishing "civilizations" that are thought to pre date 8,000 BCE mostly consisting of simple fishing villages on shore lines co-operating with fish net making villages in the hills of western Africa speculative only, mostly cause the only remnants are massive piles of shells and fish remanes with few human remains

ARIES83 -> RE: How far back to you think "advanced" civilizations go back? (8/14/2012 1:24:28 AM)
I believe that just like spider webs and beaver dams are a fundamental genitic/instinctual expression of those creatures, so are roads and buildings a intrinsic characteristic of developed man. I think any significant example of that in the 200,000bce to 50,000bce pre-history, human development would have left some sort of trace, but I would be open to the idea of something like that happening, I guess we'll never know. -ARIES

PeonForHer -> RE: How far back to you think "advanced" civilizations go back? (8/14/2012 4:19:39 AM)
FR I understand that archeologists have found strong evidence that people knew how to make fire and write in simple runes in North America as long ago as last Tuesday.

hardcybermaster -> RE: How far back to you think "advanced" civilizations go back? (8/14/2012 4:46:19 AM)
quote: ORIGINAL: Karmastic thanks, i should have clarified that. but i have to admit, i think it's even more, but wouldn't ask others to indulge what's presently considered lunacy. i.e., advanced as in satellites (lost orbit and burned up), and full fledged technology to at least our present level. thanks for indulging me :) I would love to hear you theories about the above. I am organising a comedy night at my local pub, there are still a couple of slots free and this is exactly the sort of thing I am looking for

Rule -> RE: How far back to you think "advanced" civilizations go back? (8/14/2012 4:52:39 AM)
I have a clue. I am quite an expert on the first human civilization of the pagan gods. However, I do not know when their civilization started.

Rule -> RE: How far back to you think "advanced" civilizations go back? (8/14/2012 5:01:55 AM)
quote: ORIGINAL: littlewonder As of right now the oldest that scientists feel was the first "cradle of civilization" is no longer Mesopotamia but Göbekli Tepe in Turkey, built 11,500 years ago. Quite. I was looking for that name; thank you. However, I suspect that was no product of us later humans, but a remnant of the earlier civilization of the pagan gods.

Rule -> RE: How far back to you think "advanced" civilizations go back? (8/14/2012 5:06:58 AM)
quote: ORIGINAL: Karmastic wouldn't ask others to indulge what's presently considered lunacy. i.e., advanced as in satellites (lost orbit and burned up), and full fledged technology to at least our present level. It is not lunacy. When our civilizations started, that of the pagan gods already was advanced far beyond our modern level. I cannot imagine how much more advanced they are now, several thousand years later. They are out there among the stars, waiting for us to stop circumcizing our males and to evolve from animals into civilized beings - and some of us already are fit to move off Earth and into our galaxy..

Rule -> RE: How far back to you think "advanced" civilizations go back? (8/14/2012 5:20:00 AM)
quote: ORIGINAL: JeffBC A high tech civilization just leaves too big a mark to get swept under so quickly... As does the population densities implied by that. No, it does not leave such a mark. The pagan gods did not have a mass production civilization, but a hunter gatherer civilization - which is the civilization that is ideally suited to colonize other planets near other stars in our galaxy. Besides: there was the Deluge, which must have swept away into the sea much of their works and artifacts.

DomKen -> RE: How far back to you think "advanced" civilizations go back? (8/14/2012 5:38:46 AM)
quote: ORIGINAL: Karmastic we can't even start to understand our own human history, because it's buried and melted in perhaps a few hundred thousand years of molten lava. it's laughable that up until just a few years ago, we believed the "first" great civilizations were only a couple thousand years old. we just learned that the Mayans were at it at least a couple more thousand years earlier (at least 4 thousand BC). You got a link to that? quote: it's not hard (for me) to imagine that advanced civilizations were around hundreds of thousands of years ago, and that every trace of them was buried or sucked under (the earth's plates are always slowly moving, and sucking in and spitting out, so to speak, in a continuous cycle). plates aren't subducted anywhere near fast enough for that to have happened.

RemoteUser -> RE: How far back to you think "advanced" civilizations go back? (8/14/2012 6:14:36 AM)
quote: ORIGINAL: DomKen quote: ORIGINAL: Karmastic we can't even start to understand our own human history, because it's buried and melted in perhaps a few hundred thousand years of molten lava. it's laughable that up until just a few years ago, we believed the "first" great civilizations were only a couple thousand years old. we just learned that the Mayans were at it at least a couple more thousand years earlier (at least 4 thousand BC). You got a link to that? quote: it's not hard (for me) to imagine that advanced civilizations were around hundreds of thousands of years ago, and that every trace of them was buried or sucked under (the earth's plates are always slowly moving, and sucking in and spitting out, so to speak, in a continuous cycle). plates aren't subducted anywhere near fast enough for that to have happened. (decides to be helpful) The Mayan long calendar starts at either 3114 or 3113 BC, depending on the source you reference. People had to develop a calendar system before that, so something as early as 3500 BC is not farfetched. This doesn't mean they were civilized per se, but they were studying astronomy, which is noteworthy. I could give you links, but Google will provide you hundreds if you type in +"long calendar" as your search term. Tectonic plates don't shift fast enough to bury a civilization, but ground can break that fast, depending on the region and fault lines. California is more likely to move and raise than it is to sink; but sinking is feasible under the right circumstances. Addressing the OP directly: there any indicators throughout history that people began trains of thought that derailed, and were started unwittingly again at a future date. My fave example is Da Vinci's concept for a tank. (Link has no popups but there is an ad that plays first.) Some ideas never met fruition and were attempted again later in history, by accident or on purpose. This only proves two things: one, we're smarter than we think. Two, we die easily, and death trumps smarts. [:D]

ChatteParfaitt -> RE: How far back to you think "advanced" civilizations go back? (8/14/2012 6:52:22 AM)
You're theory might hold a bit of water, since we don't really have a clue how old our universe is, we just have theories. There is one huge detractor. We do have definitive evidence of our own evolutionary progress, and the dates just don't go that far back. Our early ancestors that can be called hominids lived 4.4 millions years ago. Yes, it seems like a long time. It's not enough time to wipe out the type of footprint a highly technological civilization would leave. And though I agree the Egyptians and the Mayans were very impressive civilizations, there were not anywhere nearly as technologically advanced as we are. BTW: this explains a lot. quote: ORIGINAL: Rule It is not lunacy. When our civilizations started, that of the pagan gods already was advanced far beyond our modern level. I cannot imagine how much more advanced they are now, several thousand years later. They are out there among the stars, waiting for us to stop circumcizing our males and to evolve from animals into civilized beings - and some of us already are fit to move off Earth and into our galaxy..

Rule -> RE: How far back to you think "advanced" civilizations go back? (8/14/2012 7:16:48 AM)
quote: ORIGINAL: ChatteParfaitt And though I agree the Egyptians and the Mayans were very impressive civilizations, they were not anywhere nearly as technologically advanced as we are. Quite, nor as the Europeans were when they discovered the America's. But in the evolution of populations from animal status to civilized status, I deem the increased frequency of the ethical function more important than the level of technological advancement - though I am rather convinced that both are correlated.

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