it is estimated that we only know 10% of our human history, so why aren't we more open to new ideas and theories regarding our ancient past ?

how many of you believe that there were ancient civilisations before us ?

such as atlantis or lemuria ??

There were certainly ancient civlisations. But given a lack of actual evidence, anything suggesting atlantis or Lemuria has to be treated skeptically until you find more evidence, for example, lots of pottery and gold work wherever you say they are, that is unlike anything we have ever found before, and moreover, is found in strata dated at say, 12,000 years ago.

Yes it's quite fascinating that the oldest written stories only go back about 3,000 years, to Homer, the old testament, and so forth. Not much written material exists before that, although there is some, such as the procession of rulers in Egypt, going back to, what, maybe 4,000 BC? And the odd pottery shard here or there with a few scribblings concerning who-owes-whom.

Carl Sagan has, as I dimly recall, a great passage in his last book, "The Demon-Haunted World", in which he talks about how the oldest known written record is a small scrap of parchment from ancient Sumeria or somesuch, thousands of years old, which says, in effect, that "these kids today don't respect their elders!" (grin) I always get a chuckle out of that. :-)

We know mostly about them from their physical remains, such as temples, pottery, the occaisional body. Thats what makes it all very difficult to reconstruct. For example, in the UK there were quite rapid changes in pottery and physical remains maybe 500Bc or so, that suggested the local culture had changed/ been overwhlemed by the Celtic one. The old theory for that was physical invasion, now its thought to be more likely to be cultural diffusion. But either way, we cant tell exactly, and the fact the arguments happened shows how little evidence we have to go on.

Pangloss:

Yes it's quite fascinating that the oldest written stories only go back about 3,000 years, to Homer, the old testament, and so forth. Not much written material exists before that, although there is some, such as the procession of rulers in Egypt, going back to, what, maybe 4,000 BC? And the odd pottery shard here or there with a few scribblings concerning who-owes-whom.
Then what of the epic of Gilgamesh?
Chinese love poems?
Hammurabi's code?

All of these predate your 3000 year old time frame.
I see humanity as having grown globally, some with less incentive to record than others.
In this way our story suffers- pity.

The strong similarity between Meso-American and Egyptian architecture has always been striking.
To this day no one can replicate the pyramids in Giza using the tools we presume our ancients had.
There is a map dated to around either Columbus' time or the Renaissance which clearly shows Antarctica scribbled onto the margin.
Antarctica was not discovered until the early 19th century.

Brazil houses 300, 000 year old bones and to this day we can't figure out who the Peking man was- who by the way, according to this Dictionary of Misinformation, was not a single humanoid creature but the bits and pieces of what looks like about 40 different people.

There is also an unbelievable find in Turkey of a civilization predating the Egyptian and Sumerian ones by some 5000 years.


http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/282/5393/1442

Amazing. It really is a pity we know so little- if only speaking and writing evolved simultaneously with the brain's development. Start to finish, first to last.

Oh yes, I wasn't trying to say that there was nothing at all written down prior to 1k BC. As I said, there's just not much. Fragments, broken tablets, wall paintings, a smattering here and there. Gilgamesh is a good example -- someone actually bothered to write it down a thousand years after the fact, maybe a thousand years before the Trojan War, but all we have on it are fragments, mostly handed down by oral tradition (much like Homer).

You have to be careful about drawing vast conclusions on minor bits of evidence, though. Archeologists have learned this lesson the hard way any number of times. For example:


The strong similarity between Meso-American and Egyptian architecture has always been striking.

Yes, but if you're implying that there's a connection there, that would be an error. The Mayans, for example, lacked the wheel, something the Egyptians certainly did not lack. On the other hand, the Mayans actually had a concept of zero as a number, something the Egyptians lacked, which is useful in counting and engineering.

It wouldn't make a whole lot of sense for one civilization to be in direct contact with another to the extent that one would teach the other how to build pyramids, but fail to translate far more basic concepts like the wheel of zero number systems. Far more likely that both civilizations built pyramids for the same reason that other civs built them. They're an obvious shape, simple in form, possibly to build tall, similar to mountains, and the symbolism with regard to religion is useful.

it is estimated that we only know 10% of our human history,

wow, is it that much? I'd have guessed more like 0.005%.

Right buffys,

I think antisipatience means that a history professor may only know a bit of mankinds history.

I agree with the concept. Exacly where did linear b script evolve from? Where did the minoan civilization go? How old is Jericho? What is the purpose of the Nasca lines? How far did ancient trade routes travel? There is an incomplete picture to be sure. Written historical evidence fails completely to answer these enticing questions.

This doesn't even begin to fathom pre-ice age civilizations. So of course there were other ancient civilizations that learned historians and dedicated archeologists and whacky transchanelling mediums have yet to discover. As to Atlantis or Lemuria, well with language a great barrier let's just say "whats in a name"

Stonehenge might be another example.

It's a mistake, by the way, to assume there were earlier civilizations we know nothing about. It's quite possible there were none prior to, say, 10,000 years ago. Archeology and science in general tell us that if such civilizations existed and had construction technology equal to civilizations of the 5,000 BC time frame, evidence of their existence would still exist.

That's not to say that it's impossible. Just very unlikely.

oh so pangloss you are assuming that bits and peices of bocies and bones dating to more than 1 million years ago are of creatures with no cevelization


i have a novel which i m writing where a war between satan and humans took place in which a considerable amount of humans were transformed to vampires at the end of the novel the counsel of unconverted humans make all the living humans forget by taking babies under five and raising them seperate from the rest of the population until all these who know are
and the vampires travel to an isolated brane world where they live

im not saying that this is happend
this is my own sick mind fantasy
but what about !!!???

Stonehenge might be another example.

It's a mistake, by the way, to assume there were earlier civilizations we know nothing about. It's quite possible there were none prior to, say, 10,000 years ago. Archeology and science in general tell us that if such civilizations existed and had construction technology equal to civilizations of the 5,000 BC time frame, evidence of their existence would still exist.

That's not to say that it's impossible. Just very unlikely.

Many maintain that the piramides and the sphinx along with many other ancient buildings around the world originate from10 250 B.C.(It could also be 12 500, I don't remember eaxctly). This would prove the existance of an ancient civilisation older than what we believe existed. These researchers are usually not taken seriously by the establishment. But their arguments make sense, IMO.

:m:

Archeology and science in general tell us that if such civilizations existed and had construction technology equal to civilizations of the 5,000 BC time frame, evidence of their existence would still exist.

That all depends on where one's looking. We've tried underground, let's try underwater. And there's been quite a few finds of submerged buildings along various coasts (India, Japan, I betcha there's more in the waters of the Middle East), it's just too bad not much funding goes into those projects.

Coastal areas are prime locations to build port cities (especially if those old maps are legit or not), and if there were antidelvuvian civilizations who existed before the last ice age, their cities would have been submerged over time. So if we want to find evidence for that, try looking underwater, not in some desert further inland. What is our coast now used to be many miles inland. Let's further explore the Persian Gulf, Red Sea, Arabian Sea, Bay of Bengal, Sea of Japan and China, all those older seas that border the coasts where civilization "supposedly started". If there were more ancient civilizations, they're probably all submerged now and obviously we won't find much, if any, evidence. Heck, it's not as if we have an ungodly amount of evidence from civilizations that weren't submerged as it is.

- N

Coastal areas are prime locations to build port cities (especially if those old maps are legit or not), and if there were antidelvuvian civilizations who existed before the last ice age, their cities would have been submerged over time.

Organised civilizations which emerged during the last ice age will have been more directly drowned. Since the World was considerably cooler, areas now uncomfortably hot &/or dry would have been well suited for cities and agriculture. This assumes, of course, that the glacial period climate was stable: Antarctic ice cores show that carbon dioxide levels fluctuated dramatically at times, which could have led to multiple, severe changes in temperatures and weather patterns over the course of a century. This could have precluded a dependable crop or settled lifestyle.

Since humans of the modern type have existed for at least 100,000 years, it seems reasonable to suppose that some of them could have advanced beyond the hunter-gatherer stage much earlier than the present interglacial.
Perhaps unknown nations in the last ice age were responsible for exterminating so many of the Earth's large mammal species, which had lived through many previous climate changes and mysteriously vanished over a few millennia. Fully-fledged civilisations could have done it more easily than a small, scattered population of paleolithic hunters.

:( If there were advanced, urbanised societies way back then, they must all have been quite thoroughly destroyed - no trace of their knowledge, art or architecture seems to have been retained by the early civilisations we know of, who had to rediscover everything from scratch. One can hardly believe that the sea level rose literally overnight, or even within a few years - and that thriving cities and farmlands on the ancient coasts of India or Africa were abruptly deluged, with maybe a handful of survivors who ran for the hills. Something worse than simple global warming must have happened... :bugeye:

One can hardly believe that the sea level rose literally overnight, or even within a few years - and that thriving cities and farmlands on the ancient coasts of India or Africa were abruptly deluged, with maybe a handful of survivors who ran for the hills. Something worse than simple global warming must have happened...

Don't forget about the sunken pyramids of Japan. Surely there must be a reason why almost every civilization all around the world has some sort of deluge tale. It can't be that much of a coincedence. Too bad so much stuff gets tossed up as myth.

And another mystery, what about some of those frozen wooly mammoths with fresh veggies in its mouth as if it were flash-frozen while grazing? What the heck could cause that? It's like something outta Day After Tomorrow, heh.

- N

It seems like the whole world developed writing systems around the same period, within centuries of each other. Is this all a coincidence? Or must it have been possible to travel across continents in ancient times? I believe that there were such great ancient civilizations in prehistorical times, whose clues are but completely lost in the depths of time. We only have so much limited evidence of thousands of years worth of history, and very few anthropological relics extending back millions of years, but I think we can only hypothesize about these mythical civilizations.

Another thing to think about is older relatives of modern humans.
What about a civilization from some of the older species that were not modern humans but were very similar. Like the neanderthals or homo erectus?
There have been a few rare potential findings of things older than modern humans where they normaly wouldn't be. Like this:
http://cnews.canoe.ca/CNEWS/Science/2004/10/03/654599-ap.html

If the story aluded to in your link should prove to be true, Dinokg, it would mean that either America was reached by a random homo erectus migration, long before the Clovis arrived; or that such primitive humans actually had the means to cross an ocean(!) The former seems more likely. I mean, surely the Bering Strait land bridge must have existed in older glacial periods just it did in the last one.

If the erectus types or the neanderthals had developed a fully-fledged civilisation with farms, town and ocean-going ships, it seems strange that the modern human subspecies could have displaced them - let alone forced them into extinction.

I think Homo Erectus has been found in just about all of the old world continents.
Like Africa,Asia, and I think Europe as well. So I think that its fairly likely that they may have gone to other areas as well too.
Even though it would be possable to migrate to South America without a civilization, there would have to be some evidence of Homo Erectus in North America before it got to South America.
If it is proven that Homo Erectus really was in South America but wasn't in North America it would basically prove that the only way it got there was by boat.
But if a migration root is found then that will mostly rule out ocean travel.

So until more info is found it will remain unknown.
But even it Homo Erectus migrated only by land if its proven to have been in South America it will still be a major change in what is known about prehistoric people.

Perhaps they were in North America as well; we just haven't found their remains there yet. It's a big continent, and only a few hundred of those apemen need to have existed there at any given time for a group to eventually reach South America.

I mean, many people still believe that a certain huge, bipedal primate manages to survive today in parts of North America - and no-one has ever found its bones, hair or faeces. Just the footprints...

There are a few similarities that could be drawn from a Bigfoot Homo Erectus Connection.
Well mostly the connection is that both were found in the Old World and may have migrated to the new world.
If Bigfoot (Which is thought to be an Australapithicus) is proven to have gotten to North America, it would increase the likely hood of Homo Erectus also getting to North America and eventually South America. Plus Homo Erectus is thought to have been smarter and therefore more adaptable so it would be even easier for it.

I thought Bigfoot was more like gigantopithicus (closer to gorillas than to us), since it's generally reported to be far larger in stature than a human. Extant populations of australapithicus would more closely match the "marked hominids (http://www.geocities.com/capedrevenger/fieldguide.html)," as cryptozoologists call another type of contemporary apeman reported from many parts of the Northern Hemisphere.

bigfoot shows some af the traits of early humans:
family units
basic verbal communication unique to that unit
but also some ape characteristics:
hair covered body
only walks for short distances
lives generally in high mountains

so its really a toss up between them. which furthermore indicates this species to be the missing evolutionary link between humans and apes

Perhaps, since the discussion has reached back to our predeccesor species which were around long before 100,000 years ago, the title of this thread such be amended.

We only know 0.5% of human history...

I second that.
Also I put australapithicus instead of gigantopithicus by a mistake.(Im always mixing up the pithicus's a little bit)
So just mentally switch them in my previous post so it makes more sense.

Even thought australapithicus is interesting to.

Are you well-versed in anthropology, Dinokg? It's not something I've read about extensively.

Im currently in a Prehistory class at my college.
But it's only partially about some of the things I have been refering to.

In summation: I doubt that pre-homo sapiens humans could have built cities or ships or farms, or indeed moved beyond hunting and gathering. Their brains were not like ours, and they probably lacked our concept of history in terms of progression. Their lives were changeless and followed an immemorial pattern, locked to seasons and migrations.

Indeed, so was our own species until relatively recently. But I guess there may have been complex lost chapters in our hundred millennia or so of existence, and who knows where it might have led once in a while? Let's keep our search-engine eyes open for new discoveries.

I'd agree that there's a lot we don't know about Human history--after all, how much will our remote descendants know of our civilisation in 100,000 years time, after the next ice age has wiped almost all traces of our civilisation of the map?

I don't know about that... the glaciers of the last 2 million years have never reached much further south than London or the northern USA, and there is clearly a lot of modern civilization below those latitudes! Why should the next glaciation be much more severe than those before it (especially with humans now busy pumping up the greenhouse effect?)

If the northern hemisphere was plunged back into an ice age next winter (as in The Day After Tomorrow), the rest of the world would carry on somehow. Perhaps the Third World would be better off, without our northern economies to dominate them and bleed them dry through debt service?

Long, long ago, there were giants on earth. They lived at the place where the Sahara desert is now. But you don't have to believe me..

We know much less than 10% of human history, since we know nothing about the lives of most people (especially the ordinary people). Only the select few.

True, Starthane. The equatorial areas would be safe from the effects of all but the most massive iceage. However, should there be a widespread rise in sea-level, followed by an ice age at some time in the future, the damage would be much more widespread. It only takes a couple of generations of either illiteracy or poor teaching for people to forget the past totally, or be aternatively totally confused about the details. Which would I guess explain a lot of the legends we have from ancient times, garbled truths perhaps.

Scary to think that civilization could degenerate back into an illiterate dark age so easily. Some people, somewhere, though, would surely manage to seal themselves off from the general chaos and preserve their knowledge, or at least archive it safely for future generations...

Scary to think that civilization could degenerate back into an illiterate dark age so easily. Some people, somewhere, though, would surely manage to seal themselves off from the general chaos and preserve their knowledge, or at least archive it safely for future generations...

that's the dream, and it's reasonably easy when you can fit all of a cultures knowledge on a few clay tablets.

Unfortunately, having enough information (accessable to relative primatives) to educate a society above the bronze age would take an enormous "noah's ark" kind of effort and trying to get them to a present day understanding of the world would make that ark look simple.

Personally, I think that would be a good way to spend a few billion dollars but no one will ever do it. We don't even spend the cash to track potential earth impacting asteroids so I think it's unlikely someone will make a library for potential future cavemen to use.

it is estimated that we only know 10% of our human history, so why aren't we more open to new ideas and theories regarding our ancient past ?

400,000-year-old stone tools discovered in Mazandaran (http://www.mehrnews.ir/en/NewsDetail.aspx?NewsID=192883)
Recent discoveries by a team of archaeologists indicate that the coast of the Caspian Sea in Mazandaran Province was home to the earliest hominid habitation in that region.

How much human history antisipatience has been lost compared to what tiny amount we still know?

if you read the thread, you'll find that's one point almost everyone has made.

Long, long ago, there were giants on earth. They lived at the place where the Sahara desert is now. But you don't have to believe me..
oh i belive you alright, iv seen some photos of archiological digs, and the human forms they found are fecking MASSIVE ;)

oh i belive you alright, iv seen some photos of archiological digs, and the human forms they found are fecking MASSIVE ;)

? i'm sure there were giants on earth... why else do you think there are so many stories about them? in greek "myths" for example... and... several religious scripts mentions giants. The "GIANTS" weren't as massive as you imagine them... but they were over 2 meters at least. maybe 3. OUR human race is born from that giant race... they had children with primitive humans (neanderthals maybe) then this human race was born from the cross breeding. Ever wondered why some people seem so much ahead of their time? (Hermes T, Socrates, Tesla, Nostradamus, Michelangelo etc...) It's because they inherited the mind of the giants.... in the beginning, some also inherited their size, that's why there are stories about them, in the Bible for example (david and the goliat)

Theory one-Atlantis used to be connected to one of the continents but it broke off and drifted to the south pole and froze over therefore becoming Antartica
Theory two-Atlantis was a civilization of aliens who had extremely advanced technology and Atlantis sank under the ocean due to the misuse of their technology. Some of them made it to where present day Egypt is and they had the pyramids made so they could hide their technology so it can be slowly revealed to us so that we don't destroy ourselves with it. Also, Egyptians are descended from Atlanteans and Atlanteans originally came from Mars and Mars has something that looks remarkably like the Sphynx because that was what they worshipped.
none of these theories are mine btw:P

Giant humans of the past? If there was a superior varient of homo sapiens once, it's strange that they didn't evolve a high civilization (industry, electronics, space travel) back then.

Giant humans of the past? If there was a superior varient of homo sapiens once, it's strange that they didn't evolve a high civilization (industry, electronics, space travel) back then.

It's not strange! They were "spiritual"... they were rational... and they knew Everything. They didn't devolop many technological things because THEY DIDN'T NEED THEM. But these people still had things like electronic lamps and machines which they used to build structures like the pyramids... they could convert energies into another... they could convert light into matter for example... they could make stones smooth as a polished mirror. IT IS NOT HARD IF YOU UNDERSTAND THE STRUCTURE OF ENERGY.

They hide some of their equipment into the pyramids so that humans would not cause destruction (!), they locked the DOOR from the inside so that no human can find it. Then he who locked it, used the machine to get rid of his body (he "killed" himself) The same way as Moses did, so that nothing is left. The ark of the covenant from the Bible was not a technological equipment...

WE devolop technological things because we inherited little of their wisdom but also the primitive mind from the other human race. For example, we need to create a telephone because we can't communicate telepathically. We study the outer world more than ourselves. The giants knew that the world was in our mind. They could also see into the future and into the past, because the MIND exists at all levels at the same moment.

the flood 5000 years ago... sahara,.,.. mutations like 'cyclops"'.... long necks... when the dematerialization has begun... it produces a chainreaction in matter... it can not be stopped until the whole place has been terminated... the homeland of the giants was destroyed... it rained down on earth... in many different energy forms... also living creatures and blood... then the new world and the new humans began to live.

increase of gravity... pharaoh and his men were stuck on the ground... the sea split open... the staff, moses and his mind. Even thoughts are made of energy, even though we can't see them with our eyes. Only with higher organs in the brain... we can comprehend them. So... it's all in the mind.

increase of gravity? That's a neat trick. Even star trek doesn't try to bend physics to the point of increasing the mass of an entire planet.

why not choose mars for the giant's homeland? You could explain away the gravity issues and the lack of artifacts easily that way. Once mars is seriously explored you'll likely run into problems but our generation will be dead by then so it won't matter.

you don't understand. antigravity is possible... and so is the increase of gravity. i don't know if moses increased the gravity of the whole planet... one thing i do know... he increased gravity with the help of that staff. i doubt he increased the mass of the planet, so he must have manipulated the earth's gravity. after all... earth is just a magnet, really. gravity is generated by the synchronous spins. the giants didn't live on mars.

?
What the hell was that for???

The "GIANTS" weren't as massive as you imagine them
What???I just told you i'd SEEN images, dont tell what i saw wasnt rite.... :mad:

What the hell was that for???

i just thought you didn't believe me. people use so much sarkasm.


What???I just told you i'd SEEN images, dont tell what i saw wasnt rite.... :mad:

hehe... cool down. are you sure they weren't fake. a while ago, there was photos of a giant skeleton which was supposed to be fake. i dunno much about it though, so it might have been real also... but it was just so big... I guessed the giants were about 3 meters... but i never saw one...

earth is just a magnet, really. gravity is generated by the synchronous spins. the giants didn't live on mars.

So you're anticipating grand unification which will successfully describe gravity as having a common origin with the other 3 forces?

Regardless: Earth's gravity is NOT generated by its rotation, or by synchrotron radiation, or whatever mechanical process. I mean, Venus has surface gravity almost equal to Earth's - but spins 243 times more slowly.

I guess the answer to the problem of preserving knowledge for future societies to use is that we place it on another planet altogether (such as the Moon, 'cos it's closest) and if our successors are smart enough to develop space flight without blowing themselves off the map first, they'll get to the moon and find the material. Hopefully by then they'll have enough smarts to figure out how to use the information--so we'd better be careful what we leave them. :p :p

Just like the aliens on Arthur C. clarke's Space Odyssey books - they weren't concerned with races just struggling up from savagery. We had to reach the Moon first, before we were worthy of their notice.

i just thought you didn't believe me. people use so much sarkasm.



hehe... cool down. are you sure they weren't fake. a while ago, there was photos of a giant skeleton which was supposed to be fake. i dunno much about it though, so it might have been real also... but it was just so big... I guessed the giants were about 3 meters... but i never saw one...
No worrys, sorry 4 losing it a bit :m: :D

Just like the aliens on Arthur C. clarke's Space Odyssey books - they weren't concerned with races just struggling up from savagery. We had to reach the Moon first, before we were worthy of their notice.

That's exactly what I was thinking about, Starthane--the imagry of that movie is still with me years after seeing it. I think it was one of the most thoughtful movies I've ever seen. Not surprising considering who wrote the story. Seriously though, Jared Diamond (in his book "Collapse") talks about a population crash and abandonment of civilisation (as with the Mayans, whom he quotes as an example of previous such behaviour). He reckons this will happen some time this century. If the most dire predictions of the warming earth scenario are correct--collapse of the ice sheets in this century, and a rise of 70-80 metres in sea level by 2100 AD-- :eek: : :( it would be a VERY good idea to do something like that; namely establish a library/ies on the Moon, Mars, etc, and get people to find them by some sort of prearranged signal. (The details of which would have to be sorted out by people more intelligent than me. :)

If it becomes possible to secrete the sum total of human knowledge and history in a secure facility on the Moon or on Mars, why not a self-sustaining colony of living people? Given the imminent collapse of modern civilisation here on Earth, I'm sure the richest and wisest individuals, corporations etc would be prepared to pool their funds for that purpose - even if only a very limited number of people could be accomodated, perhaps a few thousand.

These interplanetary expatriots and their descendents could wait for the climatic and social chaos on Earth to die down - perhaps a century or two - then return home, to help the survivors here recover their civilised past.

Download human minds into a computer, create children by combining egg and spern in artificial wombs, gradually download the information and personalities of the people who are stored on computer into the minds of the growing children, while raising them in a totally artificial but completely realistic holodeck environment--then send them back to Earth whenever they're ready, or whenever the orbiting spycams send information that the situation on Earth has stabilised enough that the people being sent down arn't just going to be fried or eaten on the spot.

If the Lunar or Martian colony can support children long enough for them to grow to maturity, why not just have people live there as normal from the beginning? No need for a holodeck, except to show them what they're missing back on Earth; no need for computers with enough memory to somehow store entire human minds, or for completely automated, failure-proof ex situ incubators and childcare facilities.