civilisations that vanished long ago

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Just a wondering kind of question, resulting from a pre-dawn conversation with a friend who claimed that, with the planet having endured so many "true ice ages, like at least 50", chances are there were many many previous ( and technologically advanced ) civilisations existing-thriving-being destroyed without a trace.

My knowledge on this topic is way too scant for me to hazard a guess either way.
Who has studied / is studying this stuff and can enlighten me?

― donna (donna), Friday, 1 October 2004 18:07 (twenty years ago)

It's unlikely.

― caitlin (caitlin), Friday, 1 October 2004 18:49 (twenty years ago)

there are no records or artefacts or archaeological remains of civilisations from before the last ice age.

given that the last ice age did not cover the whole world, it would hardly have wiped out a global technological civilisation, though it would have squashed it into the equatorial area.

― DV (dirtyvicar), Sunday, 3 October 2004 10:13 (twenty years ago)

Stick around, Western civilisation appears to be on its way out

― Didoismus (Dada), Sunday, 3 October 2004 11:11 (twenty years ago)

Fringe pseudoarchaeologists such as Graham Hancock or Rand Flem-Ath like to say that around the end of the last ice-age there was a great 'Atlantean' civilisation, in an ice-free Antactica. It's awfully convenient for them that "all the evidence points to" the one place on earth where searching for actual physical evidence is completely and utterly impossible.

― caitlin (caitlin), Sunday, 3 October 2004 14:28 (twenty years ago)

I'd like to believe in this kind of stuff (it makes for a great story), but I suspect it's bullshit.

― Wooden (Wooden), Sunday, 3 October 2004 14:58 (twenty years ago)

-- caitlin (wpsal...), October 3rd, 2004.

OTM

― latebloomer (latebloomer), Sunday, 3 October 2004 15:00 (twenty years ago)

Next question: Did aliens build the pyramids?

― Wooden (Wooden), Sunday, 3 October 2004 15:03 (twenty years ago)

no, the predators did.

― keith m (keithmcl), Sunday, 3 October 2004 15:15 (twenty years ago)

uh no, it isnt a hippy quest to locate Atlantis.

― donna (donna), Sunday, 3 October 2004 17:22 (twenty years ago)

Atlantis may be found inside us all. We have only to search deep in our hearts.

― ricki spaghetti, Sunday, 3 October 2004 18:08 (twenty years ago)

Waaaaaay DOOOOOOOOWWWWWWWWWWWWN, beelow THE OCEAN!
(*kicks Billy Batts*)

― Pleasant Plains (Pleasant Plains), Sunday, 3 October 2004 18:13 (twenty years ago)

there are some huge-ass pyramids in china near xi'an that are bigger than the great pyramids in giza. i read a little bit about it and the chinese deny their existance and theyre closed to foreigners, but the book is 20 years old, so maybe not anymore.

― phil-two (phil-two), Sunday, 3 October 2004 18:22 (twenty years ago)

It's OK, really, because seeing as how they mastered technology way before the last ice age, they had already invented SPACEFLIGHT by the time the glaciers started advancing, and jetted off to Alpha Centauri or somewhere warmer, and now only return periodly to scoop up unsuspecting yokels for kicks.

― Danger Whore (kate), Monday, 4 October 2004 08:18 (twenty years ago)

I love this thread.

― Professor Challenger (ex machina), Monday, 4 October 2004 13:13 (twenty years ago)

Maybe that's where the neanderthals went. Cro-magnon man was, what, 35,000 years ago?

― Markelby (Mark C), Monday, 4 October 2004 13:19 (twenty years ago)

http://home.att.net/~drdipstik/pow/pow14a.jpg http://www.costadelsolportal.com/culture/assets/images/The-Gibraltar-Neanderthals.gif

= = =

http://www.think.cz/issue/19/grey-ALIEN.gif

― Professor Challenger (ex machina), Monday, 4 October 2004 13:23 (twenty years ago)

Homo sapiens have only been around for, what, 100K years?

― oops (Oops), Monday, 4 October 2004 16:36 (twenty years ago)

That's about right.

― Michael White (Hereward), Monday, 4 October 2004 16:41 (twenty years ago)

all this anal probing and the only thing we've discovered is that 1 out of 10 humans don't seem to mind.

― Dan Selzer (Dan Selzer), Monday, 4 October 2004 17:00 (twenty years ago)

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civilisations that vanished long ago - how many?