Re: Note - Archeological Evidence Pointing More To Ice-Age Super-Civs

On 4/11/25 2:53 AM, Borax Man wrote:
> ["Followup-To:" header set to talk.politics.misc.]
> On 2025-04-11, Siri Cruz <[email protected]> wrote:
>> On 10/4/25 22:55, c186282 wrote:
>>> Some TV idiots like to claim 'aliens' or 'god-like beings'
>>> were responsible. Kinda doubt it. The old structures are
>>> damned good, but not 'alien civ' sophisticated. Hey, humans
>>> are CLEVER - don't necessarily NEED 'aliens'.
>>>
>>> HOW some of these things were built, STILL a big mystery
>>> however ... it'd be super-difficult even with modern
>>> methods/machines.
>>>
>>> Maybe the oldest thing anyone wants to ADMIT to are
>>> the Gobekli Tepe 'temples' ... WAY better than
>>> Stonehenge. 10-12000 years old. Was NOT so long ago
>>
>> Humans require 2000 to 3000 calories a day. Before agriculture
>> that food to be gatherred/hunted (no significant food storage)
>> each day. Because everything had to be carried from camp to camp,
>> the technology was inefficient.
>>
>> This meant after a big kill the family could loll around a few
>> days telling stories and crafting more artistic arrowheads. Then
>> on to the next camp getting hungrier and hungrier until the next
>> big kill.
>>
>> Our ancestors had long distance trade, fine arts, rocking hot
>> music nobody can hear today, but they had trouble getting enough
>> calories in one place for a sustained time to survive as well
>> spend calories carving and moving big chunks of rock. We were
>> thinking deep thoughts about how the universe worked. Sometimes
>> the effort was deemed worthwhile.
>>
>> The surprising thing about Gobekli Tepe is not the intellect,
>> artistry, and skill. Humans be smart. The surprise is the degree
>> of social engineering that fed it.
>>
>> There is an argument about the age of the Sphinx. The argument of
>> archaeologists against the geologists is at the time of proposed
>> construction there is no evidence of an economy that could
>> sustain the work. Then Gobekli showed up. It is too far from the
>> Nile to prove anything, but it did show hunter gatherrers could
>> organise and feed large communal projects.
>>
> 
> I think part of our modern day assumption, that humans back then were
> not as sophisticated as they actually were, was due to us looking for
> evidence for civilisation where we thought we would find it.  Like
> looking for your keys under the street lamp, not because that is where
> they last where, because that is where the light was best.  Sea levels
> have changed, but it was always easier to excavate on land, where we
> found previous artefacts and evidence.

   Seashore civs are most logical and of old civs we know
   the great bulk were at or near the sea. Combine and AND
   sea resources and you've got a good equation.

   But, as said, sea levels changed drastically about 11,000
   years ago. Physical evidence of older civs is surely now
   under three or four hundred feet of water and sediment.
   Finding that is going to be close to random chance at
   this point. Newer tech is sure to help, but even then
   it is going to be a HUGE area to search even with some
   best-guessing applied.

> Not much survives of the past, and our understanding is based on what we
> have been able to uncover, which I think is a fraction of what existed.
> Take for example the antikythera mechanism.  There must have been more
> than one, or at least, there must have been precursors, a technological
> arc that leads to that.  We just haven't found it.

   That thing IS a mystery - and what you mentioned, the lack
   of any previous OR contemporary post mechanisms/methods,
   makes it even more mysterious. Tech usually leaves a long
   shadow but there's none here.

> But then, look today.  You'll see iPhones and sleek Apple laptops.  Its
> very, very difficult to stumble across older computers now.  How many
> Millennial's have seen a 1980s microcomputer?  Probably only in a
> museum.  These were ubiquitous, and now you can go years without seeing
> one.  If they disappear within a couple of decades, surely decades of
> civilisation, and centuries after that would have erased so, so much.
> Only stone remains.  We see stone and assume that's all there was.
> Books is another.  Public libraries in the suburbs have few old books.

   I have an Apple-II ... and a VIC-20 somewhere under the
   heap. However when I'm gone whomever comes next will throw
   them in the bin and their circuit boards will be melted
   down for the gold.

   The Euros are better at conserving old books and such,
   longer sense of history. The Americas, no - the only good
   stuff is the NEW stuff and the rest goes in the fire.
   I suppose there are advantages to each approach.

> Methods of social organisation, if not written down AND uncovered, would
> also be lost.
> 
> I think our view of history is therefore way off, because we've
> constructed our view based on what survived, which perhaps, isn't enough
> to go on after all.

   A useful perspective.

   Every so often we come across bits of the "softer"
   history, accidentally preserved. They expand the
   picture but sans detailed writings they won't tell
   us everything. The tales of Gilgamesh are about the
   oldest things that 'bring the times to life', and
   those barely reach back into the 3000s. Alas while
   writing goes back twice as far, it was almost
   entirely the province of the elites and bureaucrats -
   meaning propaganda and bean-counting.

   We can INFER some things from the odd bog body or
   'ice man' - but we see those through contemporary
   lenses and perhaps get it wrong as much as right.