Lost Civilisations

Is there any chance that there were civilisations so long before recorded history that all traces/almost all traces of them have disappeared?

Are there any legitimate hypothesis regarding this or is it all new age pseudoscience? Are discoveries like Gobleki Tepe forcing us to change our previously held view of when civilisation started?

Other urls found in this thread:

google.com/amp/www.ancient-code.com/a-previously-unknown-ancient-civilization-discovered-in-the-amazon/amp/
en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cucuteni-Trypillian_culture
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sphinx_water_erosion_hypothesis
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terra_preta
westerndigs.org/category/southwestern-archaeology/
twitter.com/NSFWRedditVideo

>Is there any chance that there were civilisations so long before recorded history that all traces/almost all traces of them have disappeared?
No. If such a civilization existed, evidence of it would have survived. So far, nothing has been found, and the only explanations about why that's the case (if such civilizations really did exist) are pure pseudoscience.

>is it all new age pseudoscience
Yes.

>Are discoveries like Gobleki Tepe forcing us to change our previously held view of when civilisation started?
Not in the way you mean. The biggest thing Gobekli Tepe tells us is that people were willing to put effort towards building religious structures before permanent settlements. That's pretty huge, and it tells us a lot about what society was like at the time, but it has absolutely nothing to do with earlier civilizations, and it doesn't change the prevailing wisdom on when civilization started.

So is civilisation still considered to have started with the Mesopotamians.

Going by all common definitions of civilization, yes. Although the Indus valley civilization started around the same time.

WHO THE FUCK WERE THE SEA PEOPLE

Corsicans

the albinos from the tarim basin , pontic-caspan steppe, ughygurz, tocharians

I'd assume we had at least some form of proto civilization going on before the ice age, but I've got nothing to back it up.

A civilization located near the coast could have quite easily been lost to time as sea levels rose. Unlikely but hardly impossible.

Yes. There are plenty of civilizations that were almost lost, that we've just found out about in the past 200 or so years through archaeology. It's likely that there are ones that are totally lost, or yet to be discovered

Here OP, look up the lost civilizations of the Amazon.

google.com/amp/www.ancient-code.com/a-previously-unknown-ancient-civilization-discovered-in-the-amazon/amp/

en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cucuteni-Trypillian_culture

Yes. Loads of land mass went underwater. Clever societies tend towards coasts or rivers.
There are loads of sunken cities too, just look at india.

If there were some really old societies they may quite easily have been covered in water long after the fact. Worse still, evidence of those groups would be all but destroyed thanks to being under water.
Neolithic creations wouldn't last and nor would wooden structures either.

Whether they exist or not is a fun question but whatever the answer, we're not going to find them.

True, but those civilizations also would have left some traces. Small villages from around 14-15 thousand years ago have been found off the coast of British Columbia and other places. If an actual civilization (that included buildings, monumental architecture, and other stuff like that) was submerged, it would have been found by now. People have been looking, which is why misinterpretations like the Bimini road and Yonaguni monument exist.

All those guys the sea people obliterated out of existence

This is based on a lot of assumptions. Just because some underwater conditions allowed for both exploration and preservation, that does not mean that all will or do.
This is especially true for anything further away from modern day coasts. There were large swathes of land at certain points. It wasn't just an extension of modern masses in the sense that the next civilisation is buried just off the beach.

Further, people have trouble finding floating plane wreckage and things like that. While yes that has a much wider search area it just goes to show that nautical observation is lacking. To presume that people are capable of the attention to detail require to find these things or that they have the funding to search a sufficient area consistently is pretty ridiculous, whether lost civilisations are real or not.

>There were large swathes of land at certain points. It wasn't just an extension of modern masses in the sense that the next civilisation is buried just off the beach.
No, but you have to remember that civilizations don't exist in vacuums, either. For something to be considered a civilization, it needs to have things like monumental architecture, agriculture, writing, and things like that. They leave pretty noticeable traces in the surrounding areas. Because of that, it's not only damning that no submerged centers of civilizations have been found, but also that no evidence of such places has been found anywhere else.

I mean, lets say that Uruk was submerged somehow and wasn't accessible. We'd still end up finding traces of writing and unified artifact types (pottery and stuff like that) scattered pretty far around it. So far, something like that hasn't been found with these supposed ancient civilizations. And again, it's not like people haven't looked for traces of them. But a very consistent trend in the archaeological record has shown civilization, and evidence of it, not really emerging before when we already know it did.

It's really a matter of evidence. Is it possible that something could have been around earlier? Of course, and it would be super cool if that happened. But there's no evidence of it. So if you want to argue about what could have happened, then go ahead and do it, but you also have to admit that such arguments aren't consistent with the evidence.

I can agree with this. It's a plausability.
All I was taking issue with was the idea that they would be easy to find. You can suggest that evidence of their existence would be near by but the older things get the harder they are to find and the more luck comes into play around whether they were destroyed, looted, repurposed and so on.

I'd think Mohenjo-daro and perhaps the Mississippi civilizations illustrate the potential for a post-apocalyptic kind of regression in technology/know-how. Mohenjo-Daro went from running water, language, good metallurgy, amazing city-planning back to primitive cultures of small villages and towns.

Not quite in the case of Mohenjo-Daro a total collapse or disappear, but with the Mississippians I think so.

Anyone selling the whole "we wuz ancient astronauts" are full of shit but it seems entirely practical and realistic judging from our own discoveries that civilizations did exist and get 'forgotten' - the Hittites, Mohenjo-Daro, ectera. They just aren't going to be plastics and steel and electricity producing peoples.

>the older things get the harder they are to find
Weirdly enough, this isn't always the case. I currently work in the American southwest, and things relating to the archaic period (roughly 2000-2500 year ago) are incredibly common to find on the surface. It's actually much more of a challenge to find more recent stuff in lots of locations, mostly because archaic-period occupations were more spread out.

>more luck comes into play around whether they were destroyed, looted, repurposed and so on.
Not necessarily. People tend to settle in areas that have the same kinds of qualities, usually because those kinds of places are easier to make a living in. I've been out with people who have been able to successfully predict where things will be, just based on topographic features. Geographic modelling is something that's been pretty huge in archaeology for the past 20 years or so.

I'm not saying your points are invalid or anything like that, I'm just giving some counterpoints. I pay attention to the usual discussion that happens on the internet about this subject, and the vast majority doesn't seem to know about what archaeologists actually do, so I felt like point out some things that i thought people might not be as aware of. I mean, it's easy to picture archaeologists as people who go out and randomly find things through luck, but that isn't the case most of the time, at least not now.

>is it all new age pseudoscience?
All the pre-ice age civilizations claims are bullshit, usually pushed by "alternative Egyptologists" who claim the old kingdom was an older, unique civilization.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sphinx_water_erosion_hypothesis

There are certainly "lost" civilizations in the New World, but that has more to do with the extinction of those people and their lack of recorded history. Anything before the 1500's is more of less guess work when it comes to the Americas. We know they exsisted though because they routenly burnt down both continents.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terra_preta

Very insightful user. Don't feel ashamed to shit on people, though, you're on the internet. Being aggressive is half the fun.

>I currently work in the American southwest
Involved in any of this?
westerndigs.org/category/southwestern-archaeology/

As an aside, how easy is it for a layperson to volunteer on figs in the US? I'm a geology undergrad and I've lucked my way onto a couple in Aus, but I imagine overseas there would be heavy competition with students and postgrads desperate for positions.

Not as far as I can tell. My research is centered in historical archaeology, which doesn't get a lot of press in the Southwest. I've been on a few prehistoric digs, but they're also not the kinds of things that get press, mostly because they're small projects carried out on a low-profile basis. The one large project I've worked on also wouldn't be major news, because the principle investigator is a lazy asshole that hasn't published his research in over a decade.

on digs* obviously

>The one large project I've worked on also wouldn't be major news, because the principle investigator is a lazy asshole that hasn't published his research in over a decade.
That must be a bit of a cunt for your career

It's probably way easier than you're assuming. For projects run through a university, most of the time, if you just ask, professors will let you come out and volunteer for a little while; tenured professors tend to be a little vain, and very underfunded, and appreciate the free help and ego boost of knowing someone wants to volunteer with them.

For longer-term digs, or other kinds of projects, it's also not really that hard. There are a shit ton of field schools run in the US, and all of them are tied to research projects that need people to help do the work to complete them. If you really want to work in the US, my best advice would be to find a few projects that interest you, and email the contact person. Just be honest with them about your situation and what you want to do, and most will be willing to work with you.

That being said, I'd avoid working in the Southwest. From my experience in the area, most field schools here are very old school, and in a bad way. You'll be treated as free labor and won't end up learning much about the archaeology you're actually doing. Other places will be much better for actually learning about archaeology. Of course, if you want to know anything else, go ahead and ask; I'll probably be here for a while, and I'm drunk enough to be honest.

the south american ones and china started independently too.

Sort of. The guy a mess because he hasn't put much effort into his work since he's gotten tenure. He's done a lot of good work, but hasn't published any of it. Specifically for me, the most frustrating part is that the season I volunteered for the guy, I ended up teaching one of his field crews a lot about field methods (because that doesn't usually get taught to undergrads in the region, and I was the most experienced person working with my crew), and I can't put that on my CV because I didn't have an official position. You sort of get used to things like that in archaeology, though. In a lot of ways, the lower levels don't operate like other fields.

Who were Tuscans? Are they pre-indoeuropean people like Basques? Are they long lost colonists?

That's a bit of a bastard. On one of the paleo digs I was on I did a lot of public demonstration on an ad hoc basis, but I got a fantastic reference out f it which has improved my prospects a lot.

Sounds good, I'll keep that in mind.

>Is there any chance that there were civilisations so long before recorded history that all traces/almost all traces of them have disappeared?
Depending on how you define civilization this is possible to virtually inevitable.

>Are there any legitimate hypothesis regarding this or is it all new age pseudoscience?
Sure? new civilizations are still being discovered and cultures who make people debate the fluidity of the term "civilization". The so-called Danube civilization (old-european) discussion is a good example of that.

...

The southwest is also pretty much ideal for preserving artifacts - no rain, no vegetation, no humidity, no coastline, no tectonics, everything gets buried in dust and it's sparsely populated even by animals.