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ORIGINAL: DomKen

No. No meteor big enough has hit the Earth since hominids evolved.

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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.

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ORIGINAL: littlewonder

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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.

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ORIGINAL: Karmastic

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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.

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ORIGINAL: Karmastic

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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.

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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.

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ORIGINAL: LadyConstanze

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ORIGINAL: Karmastic

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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..."

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ORIGINAL: DomKen

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ORIGINAL: Karmastic

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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

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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.

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ORIGINAL: DomKen

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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.

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Karmastic
...and as FrostedFlake pointed out, much of it is probably in shallow seas, or atop mountains where seas once were nearby.

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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.

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ORIGINAL: SpaceSpank
immortal pagan superbeings that have no evidence of existence beyond fictional stories and sci fi.

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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.

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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.

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ORIGINAL: SpaceSpank
And once in space,in order to travel, you need thrust to set you in motion,

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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.

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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.

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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?

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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.

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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.

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ORIGINAL: SpaceSpank
Also, a generational ship would be an agrarian living... not hunter gatherers... they would be, by definition, raising their own food.

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ORIGINAL: SpaceSpank
Unless you're talking a continent (or larger) sized ship... which adds yet even more challenges to the construction.

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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?

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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?

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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.

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ORIGINAL: SpaceSpank
People are "busy" in modern societies because there's complex social structures in place that designate that as the norm.

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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).

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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.

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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.

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ORIGINAL: DomKen

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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.

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ORIGINAL: Rule

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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.

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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.


< Message edited by Karmastic -- 8/14/2012 6:53:02 PM >

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[Awaiting Approval]

If my experience level makes you feel superior, that is your problem, not mine.

(in reply to Rule)

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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. :)

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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.

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ORIGINAL: SpaceSpank
I base all of my information on fact.. cold, hard, fact.

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ORIGINAL: SpaceSpank
You base yours on nothing.

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ORIGINAL: SpaceSpank
And yes, mythology IS fictional...

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ORIGINAL: SpaceSpank
Last I checked there's no Greek/Roman gods sitting on the top of Mount Olympus for instance.

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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. :)

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plenty of ideas were lost for hundreds of years. we have not only evidence, but proof - Babylon Battery.

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ORIGINAL: littlewonder

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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/