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

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Karmastic -> RE: How far back to you think "advanced" civilizations go back? (8/14/2012 1:27:39 PM)
quote: ORIGINAL: DomKen No. No meteor big enough has hit the Earth since hominids evolved. And your presumption there is that extinction event meteors (which we seem to agree happened) didn't wipe out traces of earlier unknown hominids. quote: ORIGINAL: DomKen It may take an artist to show you what it looked like before but it was found because, even buried, human structures do not look like natural formations. Archaeologists have found undiscovered sites by examining satellite images. was this a typo? if it takes an artists rendering, then it logically follows that human structures DO (or can) look like natural formations. sorry no links, but i remember watching a show about a site where the stone was clearly worked with tools (cut), yet it looked like a natural formation. and re discoveries via satellites - further evidence for my point, that only new technology is allowing us to discover what's right in front of our collective noses, and again, appearing to be natural formations.

LadyConstanze -> RE: How far back to you think "advanced" civilizations go back? (8/14/2012 1:38:35 PM)
quote: ORIGINAL: littlewonder quote: They would not be in any place long enough to worry about mining and therefore advanced metallurgy. They wouldn't be building anything more advanced that a temporary shelter... therefore no architecture or structural engineering. Not necessarily. With the discovery of Gobekli Tepe, it is now thought that it was a temple built by hunters/gatherers who probably traveled as nomads but worshiped at this temple that they built around 11,000 years ago. No actual human remains or remains of their living at the site are present to show they actually lived there. This discovery has started to change the way we view early civilization. It is usually thought that man didn't start to build temples to worship at until they became an agricultural society and had time to worship and work on building a society. But Gobekli Tepe has now made us reevaluate that theory. Actually that changed, they dug out some structures they believe have served as living quarters and from the animal bones they found (where they aren't sure if it was just sacrifices or also nourishment for the people living there), they have a strong suspicion that quite a few of the animals weren't wild anymore but domesticated animals (so it's assumed they knew about animal husbandry), and the grains while technically "wild grain" remains found on the site seem to plentiful to not come from agriculture. It would have required lots of people a long time to gather them growing wild and might not have been enough to feed the people who lived at the site (which they now think is pretty sure, because the now discovered structures have living and sleeping quarters) I believe the current theory is that Gobekli Tepe marks the change from hunter gatherer to agriculture and cultivating and breeding animals. Sorry, a good friend of mine is a Turkish historian and of course insanely proud of the discovery, so she always tells me about new findings and theories, if I like it or not.

LadyConstanze -> RE: How far back to you think "advanced" civilizations go back? (8/14/2012 1:42:19 PM)
quote: ORIGINAL: Karmastic quote: ORIGINAL: DomKen No. No meteor big enough has hit the Earth since hominids evolved. And your presumption there is that extinction event meteors (which we seem to agree happened) didn't wipe out traces of earlier unknown hominids. Well, with all our technology now, we would have found meteors big enough... Even smaller meteors hitting the earth are very easily visible via satellite images, one that big would certainly leave a dent (i.e. an irregularity on the surface) that would make scientists go "Oh hello, wait a second, let's test the soil there..."

SpaceSpank -> RE: How far back to you think "advanced" civilizations go back? (8/14/2012 1:51:06 PM)
Rule, you proved nothing. Your evidence is science fiction and... whatever you're talking about with immortal pagan superbeings that have no evidence of existence beyond fictional stories and sci fi. And building aircraft is not "simple" Making a paper airplane sure. But not something that can be propelled from the surface of a planet and into outer space... that requires thrust and clever design. If it's so easy, go design one right now, we'll be here when you get back. Make sure you actually fly it too, I'm sure it will be worth your time since there are several aerospace firms that would love that design. And once in space,in order to travel, you need thrust to set you in motion, and then a minimum to maintain velocity (space is not truly empty, just close to it). You would also need to be able to correct your heading, slow down, and speed back up again with a trip that long. And "our" technology was to show you that even a relatively advanced society, creating things with no moving parts, existing in the relative emptiness of space, still only lasts a few hundred years. You're arguing that a ship made by people who would have no real motivation, stimulation, or opportunity to create a space craft could make one that was vastly more complex, with a very fragile balance needed to maintain life, AND it would be able to last hundreds.. perhaps hundreds of thousands of times longer than what we put into space, and all without any real maintenance, need for repair, or need for any sort of refueling? It's a pipe dream at best. The large ships you mention would still need a great deal of energy and maintenance to keep a workable biological habitat inside... and would be a far cry from "simple" to create. No matter what way you look at it. Anything short of "magical" space travel is complicated, costly, and riddled with numerous challenges to overcome. Also, a generational ship would be an agrarian living... not hunter gatherers... they would be, by definition, raising their own food. Unless you're talking a continent (or larger) sized ship... which adds yet even more challenges to the construction. And travel in space with out a suit... Where is the evidence that such a thing is possible. Show me one person who has a verifiable account of it being true. Do you even know why exposure in space is dangerous? Much like the immortal pagan gods, the elixir of youth, and he-man these things only exist in stories, fiction, and the minds of people who can prove nothing about them. And you do no "pagan" is a catch all term for several different religions don't you? It's a term that has, and still does, tend to refer to a great deal of different religions. So "immortal pagan gods"? Which ones? As for hunter gatherer societies again (to get off the space talk a bit) it's not about leisure time. That has nothing to do with it. It's about how their lives are spent and what purpose. You have down time, but you need to plan for the next hunt, you need to gather/prepare food, etc. You don't get to sit around every day on the internet and just have no issues. People are "busy" in modern societies because there's complex social structures in place that designate that as the norm. Hunter gatherer societies would NOT be that complicated. I'm aware some made semi permanent structures at times. But even that was part of their evolutionary process towards a more agrarian society. Why? Because they had moved around enough finally to designate that as a good spot for whatever purpose they built it. Maybe for food/water storage, weapons, tools, raw materials, etc. All of those things are precursors to finding a good spot to actually build a lasting settlement where they raise their own food (or at least know they can reliably trade with those who do). While some may set up a few semi permanent structures, they are not there long enough to The reason why our societies, and any that follow any semblance of progression like ours, would require agrarian nature is that it bands us together, packs us into cities, and creates a great deal of self made issues we spend centuries working out. The need for food, shelter, water, and transportation have all spurred a great deal of our technological innovations. Then of course comes warfare and fighting. Population growth exacerbates all of those with it's own issues. All of that leads to a continual drive to advance technologies and techniques to maintain and improve daily life. There's never been a single Hunter/gatherer society that has ever come close to being what one would call technologically advanced... every single one of them was primarily agrarian with major hub cities for commerce and government. Inca, Mayans, Aztec, Greek, Roman, Babylonian, Egyptian, etc... every last one of them has followed a similar model independently... that's not just a coincidence, it's because that is how it works. You go from a less complex system and you then develop into a more complex system. You don't magically go from bow and arrow to stealth bomber.

DomKen -> RE: How far back to you think "advanced" civilizations go back? (8/14/2012 2:09:21 PM)
quote: ORIGINAL: Karmastic quote: ORIGINAL: DomKen No. No meteor big enough has hit the Earth since hominids evolved. And your presumption there is that extinction event meteors (which we seem to agree happened) didn't wipe out traces of earlier unknown hominids. We know where and when hominids evolved, East Africa in the last 5 to 10 million years. The last rock that caused even a localized extinction event was the Eastern US coast in the Eocene and two other probably associated sites 35 million years ago. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chesapeake_Bay_impact_crater quote: quote: ORIGINAL: DomKen It may take an artist to show you what it looked like before but it was found because, even buried, human structures do not look like natural formations. Archaeologists have found undiscovered sites by examining satellite images. was this a typo? if it takes an artists rendering, then it logically follows that human structures DO (or can) look like natural formations. sorry no links, but i remember watching a show about a site where the stone was clearly worked with tools (cut), yet it looked like a natural formation. and re discoveries via satellites - further evidence for my point, that only new technology is allowing us to discover what's right in front of our collective noses, and again, appearing to be natural formations. You may clearly remember it but I'll need a link to a structure built by man that was only identifiable as such by the tool marks. The problem with the sites being found by satellites is that generally they are in very isolated or hard to access areas, like the central American jungle. It's not that a man on the ground wouldn't identify it as unnatural but that no one who cared about such had been there and noticed before.

Karmastic -> RE: How far back to you think "advanced" civilizations go back? (8/14/2012 2:11:41 PM)
quote: ORIGINAL: LadyConstanze quote: ORIGINAL: Karmastic quote: ORIGINAL: DomKen No. No meteor big enough has hit the Earth since hominids evolved. And your presumption there is that extinction event meteors (which we seem to agree happened) didn't wipe out traces of earlier unknown hominids. Well, with all our technology now, we would have found meteors big enough... Even smaller meteors hitting the earth are very easily visible via satellite images, one that big would certainly leave a dent (i.e. an irregularity on the surface) that would make scientists go "Oh hello, wait a second, let's test the soil there..." sure, agree, but: 1. there's nothing to find within the site since most everything is vaporized, or at least burned and buried when the topsoil blasted out returns back. i think almost all of Mexico is such an impact site. 2. impact sites can be thousands of miles across. it's (presently) humanly impossible to search all that. 3. you give our tech abilities way too much credit. we're like toddlers playing in a sandbox. e.g., just now using satellites to discern new sites that have been in front of our noses for thousands of years. there's so much we don't even know we don't know, let alone grasp.

Karmastic -> RE: How far back to you think "advanced" civilizations go back? (8/14/2012 2:19:33 PM)
quote: ORIGINAL: DomKen quote: ORIGINAL: Karmastic quote: ORIGINAL: DomKen No. No meteor big enough has hit the Earth since hominids evolved. And your presumption there is that extinction event meteors (which we seem to agree happened) didn't wipe out traces of earlier unknown hominids. We know where and when hominids evolved, East Africa in the last 5 to 10 million years. The last rock that caused even a localized extinction event was the Eastern US coast in the Eocene 35 million years ago. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chesapeake_Bay_impact_crater quote: quote: ORIGINAL: DomKen It may take an artist to show you what it looked like before but it was found because, even buried, human structures do not look like natural formations. Archaeologists have found undiscovered sites by examining satellite images. was this a typo? if it takes an artists rendering, then it logically follows that human structures DO (or can) look like natural formations. sorry no links, but i remember watching a show about a site where the stone was clearly worked with tools (cut), yet it looked like a natural formation. and re discoveries via satellites - further evidence for my point, that only new technology is allowing us to discover what's right in front of our collective noses, and again, appearing to be natural formations. You may clearly remember it but I'll need a link to a structure built by man that was only identifiable as such by the tool marks. The problem with the sites being found by satellites is that generally they are in very isolated or hard to access areas, like the central American jungle. It's not that a man on the ground wouldn't identify it as unnatural but that no one who cared about such had been there and noticed before. re the 5 to 10 mil, and last extinction 35 mil timeline...assuming that's true, that leaves, what, roughly a few billion more years for many other cycles to have occurred? there's no debate that we just don't know much about earth's earlier history. mea culpa and sorry, not gonna link it, call it my opinion if you wish. re satellites finding remote spots, so what? my rebuttal stands - we're just NOW using tech to find sites that have been there waiting to be re-discovered. so the jury is most definitely NOT in, and it's not as cut and dried as you make it seem.

FrostedFlake -> RE: How far back to you think "advanced" civilizations go back? (8/14/2012 2:25:11 PM)
quote: ORIGINAL: DomKen quote: ORIGINAL: FrostedFlake Most people live near the sea. It is where the food is. Where the transportation is. It is tough to get anything done when you have to haul everything up a hill to get it home. A hundred twenty meters is about 400 feet. This is the zone folks would have built in prior to the classically recognized advent of civilization. And this zone is now under water. The place to look for evidence of early advanced civilization is in shallow seas. And, inexplicably, atop Andean Mountains. That is to say, where the tops of Andean Mountains USED TO BE. We've done a lot of archaeology in such areas and we have found nothing indicative of advanced technolgy. Anyway why wouldn't an advanced culture simply move inland as the sea level rose, it took centuries. I didn't say they didn't move. The QUESTION was (insert title of thread, here). As for what we have found, there is no need for you to take anyones word for anything. You could instead book a hotel, fly there, learn to scuba, and take a tour. http://www.yonaguni.jp/en/uw/index.html Do you have the impression that 'advanced technology' means electric light? I think High Technology includes cyclopian architecture. I think that because we can't do that, today. quote: Karmastic ...and as FrostedFlake pointed out, much of it is probably in shallow seas, or atop mountains where seas once were nearby. I am sorry, and need to clarify. I mentioned that particular collection of mountains because of the very weird flat tops. Tops which MIGHT have a simple geological origin. But, even if so, have peculiar Nazca like lines which are clearly artificial and very difficult to explain, while supposing a lack of high technology.

LadyConstanze -> RE: How far back to you think "advanced" civilizations go back? (8/14/2012 2:41:16 PM)
Well, if a meteor, you usually also got rare minerals and metals, so science tends to be quite interested in where they hit the earth. Sure there could have been some really small and primitive tribes of hominids around that were killed, but that's a bit grasping at straws, don't you think? There are all sorts of really weird theories out there (look at the freaking scientologists for example, Thetans and stuff), for a lot of things we really have no answers, like if you take Egypt, an incredibly sophisticated culture from apparently out of nowhere? So far nothing that leads up to their hieroglyphic writing or their knowledge in building, it was there all of a sudden, prospered for a while and then went into decline, of course you get the usual conspiracies with "aliens landed" or "the people from Atlantis told them" some even claim they are descendent of Atlantis who mixed with locals and all sorts of obscure theories. It is puzzling but the convenient meteors just seem too far fetched if you look at the reality of it.

DomKen -> RE: How far back to you think "advanced" civilizations go back? (8/14/2012 3:30:28 PM)
quote: ORIGINAL: Karmastic re the 5 to 10 mil, and last extinction 35 mil timeline...assuming that's true, that leaves, what, roughly a few billion more years for many other cycles to have occurred? there's no debate that we just don't know much about earth's earlier history. mea culpa and sorry, not gonna link it, call it my opinion if you wish. re satellites finding remote spots, so what? my rebuttal stands - we're just NOW using tech to find sites that have been there waiting to be re-discovered. so the jury is most definitely NOT in, and it's not as cut and dried as you make it seem. Yes it is that cut and dried. These are facts, no significant land mass has been destroyed/subducted/hit by meteor during the existence of the any animals that could be remotely called human. Probably the biggest such, and the likely source of the Atlantis myth, is the Thera volcano and we know quite a lot about the town that was there.. While we may have lost small settlements and isolated structures there is absolutely no evidence to support the idea that some technologically advanced culture existed and then was wiped out/disappeared. Technology is a stepwise series of advances with each generation building on the advances and infrastructure of the previous. So a miraculous culture thousands of years in advance of its neighbors is simply unreasonable. Why would its technology not have spread? How could they develop such wthout having many settlements and many people studying the sciences and the infrastructure to support such? Consider modern civilization. Even if every one of us died right now it would be many millions of years before all the obviously artificial causeways, canals and road cuts would erode away. And even then future archaeologists would still find unmistakable traces of our civilization. Our many dump sites would be obviously artificial and the plastic materials in them would last essentially forever.

Rule -> RE: How far back to you think "advanced" civilizations go back? (8/14/2012 3:48:48 PM)
quote: ORIGINAL: SpaceSpank immortal pagan superbeings that have no evidence of existence beyond fictional stories and sci fi. You think that mythology is fictional? quote: ORIGINAL: SpaceSpank And building aircraft is not "simple" Making a paper airplane sure. But not something that can be propelled from the surface of a planet and into outer space... that requires thrust and clever design. I already stated that it is not necessary to propel a spacecraft and neither is it necessary to have thrust nor wings. And if by clever design you mean that it has to be streamlined, well in space there is no need for streamlining. quote: ORIGINAL: SpaceSpank If it's so easy, go design one right now, we'll be here when you get back. Make sure you actually fly it too, I'm sure it will be worth your time since there are several aerospace firms that would love that design. Me? I am just a bragging fool and all my assertions are lies. quote: ORIGINAL: SpaceSpank And once in space,in order to travel, you need thrust to set you in motion, No, you don't. (I have had a rather large spaceship move about six meters over my head. It had no obvious means of thrust. Except for the music it was completely silent as well,) quote: ORIGINAL: SpaceSpank and then a minimum to maintain velocity (space is not truly empty, just close to it). You would also need to be able to correct your heading, slow down, and speed back up again with a trip that long. Boy, you have been completely brainwashed, haven't you? Can you spell: n-o-r-o-c-k-e-t-p-r-o-p-u-l-s-i-o-n? For whatever it is worth: the civilization of the pagan gods did have rockets as well. I have identified several types. quote: ORIGINAL: SpaceSpank And "our" technology was to show you that even a relatively advanced society, creating things with no moving parts, existing in the relative emptiness of space, still only lasts a few hundred years. 'relatively' is a word well chosen. Let's see: nearest star at distance of 4.4 lightyears. Velocity of spacecraft say two percent of the velocity of light. Travel time 4.4/0.02 = 220 years. It seems to me that without making repairs the distance is within your estimate of doable. quote: ORIGINAL: SpaceSpank You're arguing that a ship made by people who would have no real motivation, stimulation, or opportunity to create a space craft could make one that was vastly more complex, with a very fragile balance needed to maintain life, AND it would be able to last hundreds.. perhaps hundreds of thousands of times longer than what we put into space, and all without any real maintenance, need for repair, or need for any sort of refueling? How do you know that they had "no motivation, stimulation, or opportunity to create a space craft"? They did. So they must have had. I do know that they did have maintenance and repair for one of their major technologies. I do not know where you got the idea that they would have no need for maintenance and repair. quote: ORIGINAL: SpaceSpank It's a pipe dream at best. The large ships you mention would still need a great deal of energy and maintenance to keep a workable biological habitat inside... and would be a far cry from "simple" to create. This is some kind of straw man, yes? I said that it is easy to make a ship to leave the atmosphere and get into space. And you twist it into "It is easy to make interstellar travels." This is unclean thinking. quote: ORIGINAL: SpaceSpank No matter what way you look at it. Anything short of "magical" space travel is complicated, costly, and riddled with numerous challenges to overcome. Sure. And doable. quote: ORIGINAL: SpaceSpank Also, a generational ship would be an agrarian living... not hunter gatherers... they would be, by definition, raising their own food. Demeter made and introduced various crop foods. quote: ORIGINAL: SpaceSpank Unless you're talking a continent (or larger) sized ship... which adds yet even more challenges to the construction. A Babylon 5 habitat wiil do fine, I guess. So what if there are challenges? Challenges are fun for an advanced civilization. quote: ORIGINAL: SpaceSpank And travel in space with out a suit... Where is the evidence that such a thing is possible. Show me one person who has a verifiable account of it being true. Do you even know why exposure in space is dangerous? Where did you get the idea that the civilization of the pagan gods did not have space suits? You really should read a lot of mythology: there is a space suit in there. quote: ORIGINAL: SpaceSpank Much like the immortal pagan gods, the elixir of youth, and he-man these things only exist in stories, fiction, and the minds of people who can prove nothing about them. And you do know "pagan" is a catch all term for several different religions don't you? It's a term that has, and still does, tend to refer to a great deal of different religions. So "immortal pagan gods"? Which ones? [8\|] Them pantheons are all about the same people. quote: ORIGINAL: SpaceSpank As for hunter gatherer societies again (to get off the space talk a bit) it's not about leisure time. That has nothing to do with it. It's about how their lives are spent and what purpose. You have down time, but you need to plan for the next hunt, you need to gather/prepare food, etc. You don't get to sit around every day on the internet and just have no issues. You really have no idea what you are talking about, do you? When the Europeans got to Australia they found an uninhabited paradise where the wallabies and other delectables practically walked into your mouth. Half a year later there were suddenly heaps of aboriginals that came from the desert. When asked why they went to the desert when there was so much good and abundant and delectable food on the coast, do you know what they answered? They answered: "Sure this is the best of land with the best of food. We went to the desert because we got bored with the lazy life and because we wanted to eat something different". quote: ORIGINAL: SpaceSpank People are "busy" in modern societies because there's complex social structures in place that designate that as the norm. Or because we are all idiots? quote: ORIGINAL: SpaceSpank Hunter gatherer societies would NOT be that complicated. I'm aware some made semi permanent structures at times. But even that was part of their evolutionary process towards a more agrarian society. Why? Because they had moved around enough finally to designate that as a good spot for whatever purpose they built it. Maybe for food/water storage, weapons, tools, raw materials, etc. All of those things are precursors to finding a good spot to actually build a lasting settlement where they raise their own food (or at least know they can reliably trade with those who do). And why cannot hunter-gatherers build permanent structures? Some do, you know. Like for example fishing villages. quote: ORIGINAL: SpaceSpank The reason why our societies, and any that follow any semblance of progression like ours, would require agrarian nature is that it bands us together, packs us into cities, and creates a great deal of self made issues we spend centuries working out. The need for food, shelter, water, and transportation have all spurred a great deal of our technological innovations. Then of course comes warfare and fighting. Population growth exacerbates all of those with it's own issues. All of that leads to a continual drive to advance technologies and techniques to maintain and improve daily life. There's never been a single Hunter/gatherer society that has ever come close to being what one would call technologically advanced... every single one of them was primarily agrarian with major hub cities for commerce and government. Inca, Mayans, Aztec, Greek, Roman, Babylonian, Egyptian, etc... every last one of them has followed a similar model independently... that's not just a coincidence, it's because that is how it works. You go from a less complex system and you then develop into a more complex system. You don't magically go from bow and arrow to stealth bomber. Bla-bla-bla-bla. Complete brainwash. Have you ever produced an original thought? I do not award points to talking parrots.

Rule -> RE: How far back to you think "advanced" civilizations go back? (8/14/2012 4:05:22 PM)
quote: ORIGINAL: Karmastic re the 5 to 10 mil, and last extinction 35 mil timeline...assuming that's true, that leaves, what, roughly a few billion more years for many other cycles to have occurred? there's no debate that we just don't know much about earth's earlier history. It is fun to speculate about such things. However, there is no reason whatsoever to believe that any Earth species other than our own ever evolved beyond the common low animal status. (We are in a stage of high animal status: use of language and tools.)

SpaceSpank -> RE: How far back to you think "advanced" civilizations go back? (8/14/2012 6:07:03 PM)
A rocket is a type of propulsion, it does not mean propulsion itself. If you want to "move" something through the air, you need propulsion. Propulsion means energy. Moving something MASSIVE like a large ship, or super massive like a generational ship would require huge amounts of it. And babylon 5? Do you realize how big that is? You don't think that would take massive amounts of engineering skill to creat and maintain, as well as massive amounts of power to even keep running? Even if you theoretically built all this in space, it would take huge amounts of power to get it to move, maneuver, slow down, and move again. all as needed. And space suits are not propulsion vehicles. You show me a guy traveling interstellar distances in a suit and I'll show you someone dead long before they get there. Interstellar "is" possible. but even 220 years for such a massively complex ship would be a long time. That's assuming it "was" 220 years. I base all of my information on fact.. cold, hard, fact. You base yours on nothing. And yes, mythology IS fictional... that's why it isn't called fact, or history. Last I checked there's no Greek/Roman gods sitting on the top of Mount Olympus for instance. There are portions of it that may be based in fact, and parts that may even be historically accurate at times. But for the most part they are as much a "fact" as the soap operas are on TV. At any rate, as you can only argue in circles.. IE: I'm wrong because you say I'm wrong, even when you have no facts or anything to even remotely back up anything you say. I'll just leave it at that, it's not worth my typing anymore. :)

Karmastic -> RE: How far back to you think "advanced" civilizations go back? (8/14/2012 6:41:55 PM)
quote: ORIGINAL: DomKen quote: ORIGINAL: Karmastic re the 5 to 10 mil, and last extinction 35 mil timeline...assuming that's true, that leaves, what, roughly a few billion more years for many other cycles to have occurred? there's no debate that we just don't know much about earth's earlier history. mea culpa and sorry, not gonna link it, call it my opinion if you wish. re satellites finding remote spots, so what? my rebuttal stands - we're just NOW using tech to find sites that have been there waiting to be re-discovered. so the jury is most definitely NOT in, and it's not as cut and dried as you make it seem. Yes it is that cut and dried. These are facts, no significant land mass has been destroyed/subducted/hit by meteor during the existence of the any animals that could be remotely called human. Probably the biggest such, and the likely source of the Atlantis myth, is the Thera volcano and we know quite a lot about the town that was there.. While we may have lost small settlements and isolated structures there is absolutely no evidence to support the idea that some technologically advanced culture existed and then was wiped out/disappeared. Technology is a stepwise series of advances with each generation building on the advances and infrastructure of the previous. So a miraculous culture thousands of years in advance of its neighbors is simply unreasonable. Why would its technology not have spread? How could they develop such wthout having many settlements and many people studying the sciences and the infrastructure to support such? Consider modern civilization. Even if every one of us died right now it would be many millions of years before all the obviously artificial causeways, canals and road cuts would erode away. And even then future archaeologists would still find unmistakable traces of our civilization. Our many dump sites would be obviously artificial and the plastic materials in them would last essentially forever. see bolded - yes, so we agree. we're working on a time scale of BILLIONS (around 4.5?) for the age of the earth. i guess we can disagree. re tech building on itself - plenty of ideas were lost for hundreds of years. we have not only evidence, but proof - Babylon Battery. re no evidence - that's simply not true. there are reams of EVIDENCE. now, if you want to say that's not PROOF, i would agree. thanks.

Karmastic -> RE: How far back to you think "advanced" civilizations go back? (8/14/2012 6:44:56 PM)
quote: ORIGINAL: Rule quote: ORIGINAL: Karmastic re the 5 to 10 mil, and last extinction 35 mil timeline...assuming that's true, that leaves, what, roughly a few billion more years for many other cycles to have occurred? there's no debate that we just don't know much about earth's earlier history. quote: It is fun to speculate about such things. However, there is no reason whatsoever to believe that any Earth species other than our own ever evolved beyond the common low animal status. (We are in a stage of high animal status: use of language and tools.) i didn't limit it to non-humans. since there's no fossil record, it could be earlier humans, or another species.

Karmastic -> RE: How far back to you think "advanced" civilizations go back? (8/14/2012 6:51:06 PM)
quote: ORIGINAL: SpaceSpank A rocket is a type of propulsion, it does not mean propulsion itself. If you want to "move" something through the air, you need propulsion. Propulsion means energy. Moving something MASSIVE like a large ship, or super massive like a generational ship would require huge amounts of it. And babylon 5? Do you realize how big that is? You don't think that would take massive amounts of engineering skill to creat and maintain, as well as massive amounts of power to even keep running? Even if you theoretically built all this in space, it would take huge amounts of power to get it to move, maneuver, slow down, and move again. all as needed. And space suits are not propulsion vehicles. You show me a guy traveling interstellar distances in a suit and I'll show you someone dead long before they get there. Interstellar "is" possible. but even 220 years for such a massively complex ship would be a long time. That's assuming it "was" 220 years. I base all of my information on fact.. cold, hard, fact. You base yours on nothing. And yes, mythology IS fictional... that's why it isn't called fact, or history. Last I checked there's no Greek/Roman gods sitting on the top of Mount Olympus for instance. There are portions of it that may be based in fact, and parts that may even be historically accurate at times. But for the most part they are as much a "fact" as the soap operas are on TV. At any rate, as you can only argue in circles.. IE: I'm wrong because you say I'm wrong, even when you have no facts or anything to even remotely back up anything you say. I'll just leave it at that, it's not worth my typing anymore. :) i think you're promoting "common knowledge" but it's a fallacy. the fact is, pushing air for propulsion is about as advanced as doing the dog paddle in water. there are all sorts of "propulsions" that don't use air. magnetic is one present day technology for that. Gravity is another, also commonly used for spacecraft (and later to be used within an atmosphere, when they can figure out how to harness it, or should i say, use the opposite of it to harness it). re energy - obviously my opinion, but energy is ALL around us, waiting to be harvested. our present day feeble understanding of it is evidenced by scientists calling this energy (they know is there but don't understand) "dark matter". it's literally everywhere matter (the kind we grasp) is not.

Rule -> RE: How far back to you think "advanced" civilizations go back? (8/14/2012 6:54:31 PM)
quote: ORIGINAL: SpaceSpank And space suits are not propulsion vehicles. You show me a guy traveling interstellar distances in a suit and I'll show you someone dead long before they get there. I never said that space suits are propulsion vehicles. You ought to wrap your brains in diapers: they are leaking. quote: ORIGINAL: SpaceSpank I base all of my information on fact.. cold, hard, fact. No you don't. If you did, you would not be twisting my words into things that I never asserted. quote: ORIGINAL: SpaceSpank You base yours on nothing. Jealous are you, eh? [8D] quote: ORIGINAL: SpaceSpank And yes, mythology IS fictional... And the dodo never existed, yeah. quote: ORIGINAL: SpaceSpank Last I checked there's no Greek/Roman gods sitting on the top of Mount Olympus for instance. You did not check. I know this because I know that you cannot find Mount Olympus; nor can anyone else. (It is not in Greece at the moment.) quote: ORIGINAL: SpaceSpank At any rate, as you can only argue in circles.. IE: I'm wrong because you say I'm wrong, even when you have no facts or anything to even remotely back up anything you say. I'll just leave it at that, it's not worth my typing anymore. :) Preliminary diagnosis about the constitution of your mind: you may be a narcissist, seeing as you cannot stomach the notion that you might be wrong. (A sociopath on the contrary would have no problem in considering that he might be wrong.)

littlewonder -> RE: How far back to you think "advanced" civilizations go back? (8/14/2012 7:07:42 PM)
quote: plenty of ideas were lost for hundreds of years. we have not only evidence, but proof - Babylon Battery. Hate to burst your bubble but it's not a battery. It is a vessel that held a copper scroll. http://archyfantasies.wordpress.com/2012/06/22/the-10-most-not-so-puzzling-ancient-artifacts-the-baghdad-battery/

Karmastic -> RE: How far back to you think "advanced" civilizations go back? (8/14/2012 7:30:35 PM)
quote: ORIGINAL: littlewonder quote: plenty of ideas were lost for hundreds of years. we have not only evidence, but proof - Babylon Battery. Hate to burst your bubble but it's not a battery. It is a vessel that held a copper scroll. http://archyfantasies.wordpress.com/2012/06/22/the-10-most-not-so-puzzling-ancient-artifacts-the-baghdad-battery/ that's ONE person's theory! lol, burst my bubble? you seem so invested in being right - sometimes i have to wonder if you're fer real.

Rule -> RE: How far back to you think "advanced" civilizations go back? (8/14/2012 7:33:36 PM)
I didn't know that. Now I do. Thank you.

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