Why the pseudo-religion about ancient aliens?

[SpuriusMaximus]

This is basically an offshoot of the "why did ancient aliens build stuff out of stone?" thread, but I figured my question is different enough to be worth stopping derailing that thread with it.

My question is more like WTH do people find so great about those aliens? I can see why someone would replace gods with love us and care about us, with aliens who love us and care about us, but actually what you get when looking at the details of what those aliens supposedly did, they are complete psychos.

So let's say some aliens did come down and play God to Egyptians, and Sumerians, and Mesoamericans, and taught them to build mighty buildings and writing and all. And it wasn't just a one-off thing either, but for hundreds of years many ships came and went and oversaw it all.

Yes, I know it's ridiculous, but let's assume it true for the purpose of this deconstruction exercise. Let's see what kind of aliens that gets us.

Well, for the Mesoamericans we'd need some aliens which played Gods that required cruel human sacrifices, and rites like draging a barbed rayskin spine through one's penis. Or skinning women alive. And built giant pyramids with altars on top, where such sacrifices would happen. Yeah, the flat bit and altar at the top are not later additions, but the whole reason to exist for those pyramids.

Even if somehow humans corrupted the message of those aliens, nevertheless, those aliens came and went, and saw all those horrible sacrifices. They saw herds of children being driven like cattle to be sacrificed to whichever alien astronaut set himself up as Tlaloc, and having their fingernails pulled out first because crying and tears are good omens for a god of rain. They saw herds of women being herded to be flayed alive and hung to bleed to death in the honour of whichever astronaut set herself up as Yaocihuatl. And so on.

And not only they didn't try to stop that barbarism, but actually built great big pyramids at the top of which such sacrifices should take place. And they went home and nobody had anything against it either.

Or in Sumer they saw some horrible endemic warfare, followers of one astronaut God against the followers of another astronaut God. And horrors like whole villages impaled because their capital city didn't surrender. Captured rebelling vassal rulers being flayed alive and having their skin nailed to the city gates as a warning. Etc. And those guys weren't exactly secretive about it either. They carved bass-reliefs around palaces and throne rooms and temples depicting such cruel genocides. So, you know, when the alien astronaut talked to the king or took a shore leave in the city worshipping them, it would be wall after wall decorated all around in such scenes that would make a modern man or woman lose his or her lunch.

And those ancient astronauts were OK with that too, you know? Not one of them thought to say, "Dude, lieutenant-commander Inanna is my daughter and closest friend. Trust me, I DON'T want her followers slaughtered. And if I had a problem with her, I could reprimand her myself."

In Mycenaean Greece, they could look at children being sacrificed to the bull god (we actually have a baby on an altar where volcanic ash from Thera froze that scene), and said bull god astronaut could probably think, "aye, it pleases me." And all the crew members on their ship wouldn't file a report saying, "OMG, the captain is nuts, he made a primitive alien civilization sacrifice their children to him," when they got home either.

I mean look at what modern people did when they encountered such atrocities. The Brits in India basically went, "You say that it is your custom to burn widows. Very well. We also have a custom: when men burn a woman alive, we tie a rope around their necks and we hang them. Build your funeral pyre; beside it, my carpenters will build a gallows. You may follow your custom. And then we will follow ours." (Charles James Napier.)

Whereas those ancient astronauts would have gone more like, "Sweet! Can we watch? In fact, wait, let us build you an elevated place so the whole town can get a good view." Not even as much a hypothetical, as they too actually had ancient gods condoning and rewarding widow-burning.

How the heck are such alien psychopaths worthy of, basically, worship by any other name?

 

[Orphia Nay]

As far as I understand it, the New Agers mostly seem to believe that the brown people in those cultures couldn't have built these terrestrial structures, and that some "lost civilisation of white aliens" did, 10,500 years ago. So, they don't believe the lost civilisation were the doers of the evil deeds that happened as you rightly say.

Basically, they get morality, history, archaeology, and logic all wrong, for the sake of being "alternative".

 

[SpuriusMaximus]

But nevertheless, building those structures happened within an interval spanning thousands of years, and at that an interval when such atrocities were committed in the name of the same astronaut gods. You can't really get around the fact that the pyramids were built by whoever set himself or herself as god there, WHILE people were being sacrificed to him or her.

In fact, let me illustrate the kind of alien society you'd need for such encouraging atrocities to be as systematic and continue over thousands of years all over the globe. It's not even some over-the-top taking the piss, or indeed even funny at all, but, shall we say, an honest artist's impression of such a society.

Captain-Lieutenant Quetzalcoatl:

Captain-Lieutenant Quetzalcoatl reporting for debriefing, Sir.​

Rear-Admiral Akbar Zeb:

At ease, captain. I was going over your report and wanted to go through it with you. Starting from the beginning... setting up a standard pantheon?​

Captain-Lieutenant Quetzalcoatl:

Standard procedure, according to article 249 of the Prime Directive, variant D.​

Rear-Admiral Akbar Zeb:

Describe in your own words what that entailed.​

Captain-Lieutenant Quetzalcoatl:

Well, sir, I set myself up as god of the sky, magic and afterlife, and demanded able men sacrificed to me, lest even the very sun ceases to rise. The science officer, Commander Tlaloc set himself up as rain god and demanded children sacrifices. Chief of security, lieutenant-commander Yaocihuatl set herself up as goddess of warrior women and demanded that women be "made warriors" in her honour by being flayed alive and having their skin worn by priests during ceremonies.​

Rear-Admiral Akbar Zeb:

Any troubles or resistance?​

Captain-Lieutenant Quetzalcoatl:

None, sir. One wise-guy protested that the sun was rising even before we got there -- there's always one, sir -- but we made them sacrifice him first, on threat of destroying their village otherwise. As usual, that kept the rest in line.​

Rear-Admiral Akbar Zeb:

Moving on... Setting up checks and balances?​

Captain-Lieutenant Quetzalcoatl:

Standard variant C, according to article 250 of the Prime directive. The king can override our high priest, but only if he gets a vision by dragging a barbed fish spine through his penis until he hallucinates. His vision must be corroborated by the queen who is to drag another barbed spine through a hole in her tongue. Just the usual, really.​

Rear-Admiral Akbar Zeb:

Let's move on then... Did you build the sacrificial pyramids that go with version D of the pantheon?​

Captain-Lieutenant Quetzalcoatl:

Not personally, sir. We applied the allowed variation as allowed by article 252, paragraph 20, section J.​

Rear-Admiral Akbar Zeb:

If I remember what that means, you made them enslave a neighbouring tribe and use the slaves to build the pyramid?​

Captain-Lieutenant Quetzalcoatl:

Yes, sir. The slaves were of course sacrificed afterwards to us, according to their age and gender.​

Rear-Admiral Akbar Zeb:

I see... While that is indeed allowed, it must be based on one of the allowed reasons. Which reason do you invoke for applying article 252?​

Captain-Lieutenant Quetzalcoatl:

That would be section H, sir.​

Rear-Admiral Akbar Zeb:

"Just for lulz?"​

Captain-Lieutenant Quetzalcoatl:

For great lulz, sir. We made it a whole day event for the crew to watch the hundreds of sacrifices. Especially flaying the women was a great hit with the crew and greatly improved morale.​

Rear-Admiral Akbar Zeb:

Moving on... resources taken by the expedition?​

Captain-Lieutenant Quetzalcoatl:

Hand carved idols, sir. We made them work overtime to make as many as they could.​

Rear-Admiral Akbar Zeb:

I assume they were taken care of apropriately?​

Captain-Lieutenant Quetzalcoatl:

Indeed they have, sir. According to article 190, paragraph 10, section B about alien cultural artefacts, they went straight down the incinerator chute.​

Rear-Admiral Akbar Zeb:

There is just one more issue, captain. You went a whole two months over the assigned deadline. What was the reason?​

Captain-Lieutenant Quetzalcoatl:

Well, sir, as detailed in my report, there was no local species of fish with a barbed enough spine to cause maximum destruction and pain. Commander Tlaloc had to splice the genes of several species to get a species of ray that was good enough for that ritual.​

Rear-Admiral Akbar Zeb:

It seems to me, captain, that then you could have just implemented one of the other kinds of checks and balances, that don't require one. Still, your resourcefulness has been noted. Now, moving on... any final remarks or recommendations?​

Captain-Lieutenant Quetzalcoatl:

Yes, sir. We have spotted several other tribes advanced enough to be of interest, yet too far to get their rites from the tribe we processed. For example there is a tribe on the other side of the world which seems obsessively protective of their children. I would strongly recommend they be given section K of the allowed pantheons, that is, the one where they have to burn their babies alive to their god. More expeditions are needed to process such tribes on a per-region basis.​

Rear-Admiral Akbar Zeb:

Very well, I shall forward your recommendations to starfleet. Dismissed, captain.​

Captain-Lieutenant Quetzalcoatl:

SIR!​

Basically, really, you can't get something as systematic unless that's the standard psycho way to deal with primitive aliens.

 

[Jodie]

You have to look at occult practices and wonder about the origin of those too since they also involve sacrifice of one type or another, usually involving blood. Vampire legends may also be related to the history of sacrifice. The Maasai still drink the blood of cattle to survive although that tradition is decreasing as they gravitate away from the nomadic lifestyle.

If any of this is true, I lean more towards some ancient civilization being here prior to some catastrophic event like the onset of the ice age. If most of civilization was located on the shores as it is today then the subsequent drop and rise in sea level would have obliterated any evidence of a high tech society,even one that was only as advanced as the iron age.

So what do I think of sacrifice? Maybe it's based on some previous racial memory of medical practices or dietary practices that got lost in translation somewhere in the proceeding thousands of years after the theoretical collapse of a society. All just speculation on my part, but it makes better sense than some prehistoric alien invasion to me.

 

[Correa Neto]

Why people like the ancient aliens stuff?

1. Makes you feel special. You know something most people do not, including those egg-headed labrats, despite not having a formal academic degree. You are [f-word]ing good, eh?

2. Makes you feel special. You know your creation was due to something other than sheer chance, there's a higher purpose, a reason for your existence. You are [f-word]ing good, eh?

3. Makes you feel special. You know, those guys from the past were dummies. If you can't figure out how they built those things, someone or something better, more intelligent than you must have been involved. You are [f-word]ing good, eh?

4. Makes you feel special. Real life is boring and fantasy can build a nice cozy special place. After all, you are [f-word]ing good, eh?.

5. With current science's advances, all the tales about your origins provided by conventional religions became outdated. This created a hole that must be filled by some sort of modern magic compatible with (1), (2), (3) and (4).

Not happy with human sacrifice? Simple. The aliens never actually asked for it. It's human invention, a rite born out of despair after the aliens went back to the stars. Build the image you're comfortable with for your alien god and worship it.

Oh, Jodie, the start or the end of ice ages can't be blamed for erasing the signs of ancient advanced civilizations. Its a hidden archeology woo excuse; sorry to say that, don't get me wrong, no offense intended, but considering it as plausible requires a good dosis of ignorance about Earth sciences, archeology and the way civilizations work. Sorry for being blunt but there's no other way to say it. Ice ages start and end slowly. You would have plenty of time to move your cities away from the advancing glaciers at the start and away from the advancing seas at the end. Also, even bronze age- level civilizations would need resources which can not be found at the shorelines. They would need to have cities located inland, not to mention there are lots of nice places to live far from the seas. Oh, and since glaciers have covered just a bit of the suitable places for setting up cities... As soon as you start to think about it all, you'll see how silly it is. Its a nice romantic idea, can be used to create interesting movies, books and stories but thats as far as it can go.

 

[Jodie]

An ice age would only be one factor to consider ( climatic change), usually societal collapse is based on multiple causes working together. The fact that there are plenty of deserted ancient civilizations located far away from the coastal areas is testament to that. However, if you have a global infrastructure that can no longer be supported for various reasons how long would an inland city be able to maintain the same standard of living and support it's population if dependent on outside resources? I wouldn't think it would be for very long. If stone was not used for buildings then I would think very little would be left to excavate unless it was something suddenly cataclysmic, like Pompeii, that would preserve the signs that buildings were once there. I have this on my "to read" list, maybe you've already read it:

http://www.amazon.com/Collapse-Complex-Societies-Studies-Archaeology/dp/052138673X

 

[SpuriusMaximus]

Actually, here's an even simple explanation for cruel human sacrifices.

Before I start, regardless of what you may think they may have started as, they are continued long past the point where there is any memory of ancient medical procedures or anything.

Now that's even skipping over the fact that no iron age civilization would have had the technology for open heart surgery, to inspire sacrificing people by cutting through their sternum and cutting their heart out. Or that sacrifices like being made to jump in a pit full of spears or such have no medical parallels. Or I'm drawing blanks about what medical procedure would involve burning someone alive in a wooden cage, like at least one Roman general was sacrificed to Tyr by the germanic invaders. Or exactly what medical procedure would involve burning a baby alive as sacrifice. Or exactly what kind of medical procedure would involve flaying a woman alive and a priest wearing her skin? Etc. But ok, let's skip over that.

The more important fact is that by the time we met for example the Aztecs, who turned human sacrifices into a whole assembly-line operation, they know of no such thing. Their legends point out at some priest doing that for the first time during a migration. Ok, the legends may be distorted, but at any rate they keep on doing it for no other reason than that the priests say so.

What is the explanation for THAT? Why do they continue?

My hypothesis or conjecture, is that just like the burning campaign by the Inquisition against the conversos who don't know their place, or how the witch-hunts destroyed any woman profession like midwife, it's just a terror campaign against the population. It's the easiest way to keep the population in line. As long as the priests are the ones who decide who gets the honour of being killed next, nobody has the guts to speak against the priests. Or the very few who do, see above, get sacrificed.

It's basically no different from the Romans using crucifixion to keep the slaves terrorized and in line, or the severe beatings and lynchings used in the American south to keep the slaves terrorized and in line.

 

[Pup]

The question in the OP would apply equally well to those who want to believe in the God described in the Old Testament. I think there must be some common attraction to believing in a creature who is powerful and in control, even if the creature is cruel and arbitrary.

Ready for a harebrained hypothesis? I wonder if it has something to do with continuing to want a parent in adulthood. Children generally survive their vulnerable youth best if they follow what parents tell them and continue to love their parents despite occasional punishments that seem arbitrary and cruel. "Just leaving the cave after dark didn't deserve that bad a spanking" thinks the kid who doesn't know when man-eating animals hunt.

So I expect that we've evolved to want that kind of relationship when young. Otherwise, every child would be just as happy striking out on his own and discovering everything by trial and error. Obeying even what seems like a cruel, arbitrary parent will ensure better survival than blundering away on your own.

Some part of that sometimes doesn't get turned off in adulthood, so there's still more or less of an urge to be connected with a more-powerful, more-knowledgeable entity. But when one is an adult, other adults no longer fit the bill, so we need to make up gods or aliens. Even if they're cruel or incomprehensible, we at least have a relationship with an entity that's smarter and stronger than us, rather than just blundering around the universe on our own, and that's what we've evolved to believe is the important thing.

 

[SpuriusMaximus]

1. Indeed the OT god is as big a mess, but I can imagine people simply going along with the status quo. For many the church is the center of their community, plus they have been raised with the idea that that crap is true, had it corked in with fear and guilt, etc. Letting go of that crap may not be a trivial step.

However for those who do that step, it kinda makes me wonder why choose a replacement every bit as atrocious.

2. That gods are surrogate parents is clear enough, I should say.

It still beats me though why people would choose psychopaths who are far more cruel and injust than, well, just about any parent who isn't a psycho too.

I mean, it's one thing to grow up with a brutal parent who beats up everyone in sight, and another thing to choose a surrogate who wants you to cut your brother's heart out and flay your sister alive. There's spanking, there's even brutal child abuse, and then there's being a homicidal pyscho. A lot of gods seem to be the third. And I don't see how having even the second, would drive one to seek a replacement that's the third.

 

[Jodie]

And don't forget humanity's tendency to seek out a scapegoat when there is no one obvious to blame. There is a deep spiritual belief in some kind of "life force" present in the human body.

The only way to appease a so called angry god is to feed it that life force that is equally invisible. Think of the christian communion ritual, the wafer signifies the body of Christ and the wine represents the blood of Christ, in Catholicism it truly becomes the body and blood of Christ through transubstantiation.

In those terms, and I don't know how else you could view it, the symbolism of ritualistic cannibalism brings us closer to Christ.........the sacrificial theme is still with us.

 

[Dinwar]

If stone was not used for buildings then I would think very little would be left to excavate unless it was something suddenly cataclysmic,

You would be wrong. Take a modern skyscraper: it has all sorts of glass, metal, and other bits that would clearly indicate that something is going on. And if nothing else there's this great bloody hole in the ground where the foundation used to be, arranged in a manner that simply doesn't exist outside of human involvement. We've found all sorts of ancient buildings from that sort of evidence. Then there are the ancillary facilities--the farms, the mines, the factories/processing stations, etc. Even stone-aged peoples left processing stations (debatoge, limestone pit ovens, things like that); a city would require immensely greater numbers of all of that, which would make it far easier to detect.

To get rid of a city you have to scour the area down to at least the maximum depth of the deepest foundation. And there's really very little that can do that.

As far as sea level rising, submurged artifacts may in fact be better preserved than their terrestrial counter-parts. Water doesn't make iron rust--repeatedly dipping iron into water and exposing it to air makes it rust. Just putting it in water would do remarkably little. The issue would be more that the wildlife would cover the artifacts, making them a tad difficult to detect (but certainly not impossible; we do this all the time).

 

[ehcks]

Everyone knows magic doesn't exist, but sufficiently advanced technology? That might just work.

 

[Jodie]

You would be wrong. Take a modern skyscraper: it has all sorts of glass, metal, and other bits that would clearly indicate that something is going on. And if nothing else there's this great bloody hole in the ground where the foundation used to be, arranged in a manner that simply doesn't exist outside of human involvement. We've found all sorts of ancient buildings from that sort of evidence. Then there are the ancillary facilities--the farms, the mines, the factories/processing stations, etc. Even stone-aged peoples left processing stations (debatoge, limestone pit ovens, things like that); a city would require immensely greater numbers of all of that, which would make it far easier to detect.

To get rid of a city you have to scour the area down to at least the maximum depth of the deepest foundation. And there's really very little that can do that.

As far as sea level rising, submurged artifacts may in fact be better preserved than their terrestrial counter-parts. Water doesn't make iron rust--repeatedly dipping iron into water and exposing it to air makes it rust. Just putting it in water would do remarkably little. The issue would be more that the wildlife would cover the artifacts, making them a tad difficult to detect (but certainly not impossible; we do this all the time).

It would depend on how far back you went in time looking for evidence. Water has oxygen and carbon dioxide in it that would facilitate the formation of rust on iron, I would think, if it's sea water I imagine the salt would increase the rate of decay. After 10,000 years, for example, I don't think anything iron would be left regardless of where it was.

If you are talking pre-iceage wouldn't the receding glaciers destroy any evidence of foundations or anything to do with a civilization for that matter? I would think it would carve up a whole new landscape.

 

[StankApe]

I think it's a combination of 3 factors:

1) not so smart people can feel that they are smarter than everyone else because they "know the truth" it's a similar mentality of almost any CT'er out there, who feels a bit socially awkward and/or lonely and unimportant, this makes them feel important and smart!

2) Aliens are mysterious and pretty cool with their fancy ships, cool uniforms and advanced technological know how! I mean, seriously, how cool are aliens?

3) some people don't seem to be able to separate the two concepts of "knowledge" and "intelligence". Ancient man was just as smart as we are know, he just didn't have as much knowledge. Some people seem to think that ancient man wasn't smart enough to devise clever ways of getting around problems because he was dumb ...or something like that. this is patently false.

 

[Dinwar]

It would depend on how far back you went in time looking for evidence.

I've seen debotage from 15,000 years ago.

Water has oxygen and carbon dioxide in it that would facilitate the formation of rust on iron, I would think, if it's sea water I imagine the salt would increase the rate of decay. After 10,000 years, for example, I don't think anything iron would be left regardless of where it was.

The degradation of metals in salt water is rather well-known. Finding high concentrations of iron-rich minerals (hemetite, geotite, etc), copper-rich minerals (azurite, malechite, etc), and other materials in areas where they should not be according to the geologic data would be a strong indication that something weird is going on. Add foundation exacations, which are extremely obvious (I've seen wells in cross-section, and can attest to the fact that they stick out like a lighthouse), and the conclusion becomes obvious.

If you are talking pre-iceage wouldn't the receding glaciers destroy any evidence of foundations or anything to do with a civilization for that matter?

Glaciers don't work that way. They scour some portions of the area down pretty far, but they also fill some in. So it really depends on where the buildings were, and what the glaciers did in those areas. Glaciers are huge, complex systems, and it's far, far more complex than just "Glaciers go through, scrape everything off". You also have to deal with mines, which will be even deeper than foundations (if it's not grown, it's mined).

Also, if they scrape out the material it has to go somewhere--morains, till, outwashes, etc. It's not that hard to identify where the materials in those formations came from, and what they were previously.

This illustrates another reason why ancient aliens are popular: people simply don't understand geology, and don't know what we can know and what we can't about the past. No insult to Jodie; this stuff is HARD, far harder than people give it credit for. The problem is, it LOOKS easy--so people look for an easy explanation. When they can't find it, they make up stories, because figuring out the actual explanation frequently requires technology well beyond your average person on the street (mass spectrometers, for example).

 

[SpuriusMaximus]

Just to add something a lot more trivial to the hard stuff Dinwar said, I hope people realize that most of the history of the human species has been before the last ice age. The majority those flint arrow heads and whatnot are from before the end of the last ice age. The glaciers didn't destroy those. As are a buttload of skeletons and skulls, some showing signs of healing after wounds, and some still having arrow heads embedded in them.

Yet we have none that show any advanced surgery done on them, nor any from before 1000 BC or so that have iron arrow heads in them.

I suppose one could conceive a civilization that was INCREDIBLY good at removing all such traces, including removing all arrows and whatnot after a battle... many of which they would have lost, and destroying all pieces of advanced pottery, and finding and destroying all skeletons, etc. But it's kind of a conspiracy theory, innit? Nobody in practice is THAT perfect at keeping a secret, especially when they have no reason to.

Also I think people overestimate what the ice age meant. It was NOT the Pixar version where everything is ice, as far as the eye can see. Actually, it's just a bit colder. This means you have arctic weather a bit south of where it is now, but down south you just get some snow.

Basically there is a reason why the last glaciation created fjords in Scandinavia, but not in Italy. There were solid ice sheets down to around 45 degrees north latitude, but south of that, there weren't. For reference, that's about the latitude of the southern end of Austria. A civilization around the Mediterranean (so it can then get drowned) or central America would NOT be covered in miles of ice. It would still get warm enough each spring for the snow to melt off.

And sure, the sea level did drop by some 110m (some 350 ft or so) during the ice age, but that is actually a rather narrow band of new shore. There is no sane reason to assume that a civilization would be concentrated only in that narrow band, and absolutely shun hunting inland.

Plus, that difference in water level existed only during the glaciation, and got that extreme only by the end of it. I.e., such a strange civilization concentrated only along the shore line would have to have existed only around 15,000-10,000 BCE. Something from BEFORE the ice age would still have the same water line as today. It'll only be under water if it was underwater in the first place.

I.e., if it's R'lyeh or something

 

[Correa Neto]

An ice age would only be one factor to consider ( climatic change), usually societal collapse is based on multiple causes working together. The fact that there are plenty of deserted ancient civilizations located far away from the coastal areas is testament to that. However, if you have a global infrastructure that can no longer be supported for various reasons how long would an inland city be able to maintain the same standard of living and support it's population if dependent on outside resources? I wouldn't think it would be for very long. If stone was not used for buildings then I would think very little would be left to excavate unless it was something suddenly cataclysmic, like Pompeii, that would preserve the signs that buildings were once there. I have this on my "to read" list, maybe you've already read it:

http://www.amazon.com/Collapse-Complex-Societies-Studies-Archaeology/dp/052138673X

"Complex" is the key word here. You can not build a complex society, even if its a single city, without a large support infrastructure. Mines, farms, roads... These resources are not clustered at a small area. Bits would survive, bits enough for us to at least suspect about their existence at a non-woo, non-fantasy level. Iron tools and ceramics, for example. Remember, we have found remains of bonfires as well as bone and flint tools which are quite older than the ice ages. As other posters wrote, you are underestimating the geologic and archeologic records. I've seen the marks of raindrops and insect tracks in sands wich are tens of millions years old; I've seen ripple marks which are 2.7billion years old, for example.

Note also that any catastrophic geologic event capable of obliterating such a civilization (major volcanic eruption, asteroid impact, megatsunami, you name it) would have its geological records already known (ash/tuff layers, tsunami-related deposits of various types). So, sorry. Ignorance of Earth sciences, archeology and about the ways complex societies work are what keep beliefs in advanced unknown civilizations floating. Hidden archeology woo feeds on this.

 

[Dinwar]

Well, to be fair there is one way in which a catastrophe could wipe out a civilization and all records: if it was an island nation, and the island exploded. Krakatoa-like event or something similar. That said, such a civilization would necessarily be fairly small; they'd only have the resources of that island, after all (otherwise we'd see evidence of them). And extremely small groups tend to not develop high technology by themselves.

Something from BEFORE the ice age would still have the same water line as today. It'll only be under water if it was underwater in the first place.

Sea level bounced around a bit, following the glacial/interglacial sequence. During glaciation there's lower seas, during interglacials the seas are higher. Anything built during MIS 12 would have been inundated during MIS 11 (MIS=marine isotope stage; evens are glacial periods, odds are interglacials, and the numbers count backwards from today). That said, you're right, we're talking about a fairly narrow--and intensely examined--band of sea here. Continental shelves tend to be extremely profitable, so a lot of people have done a lot of mapping. We've found a few buried cities, but nothing like an unexpectedly advanced civilization that was previously unknown (we've found evidence that known civilizations were a tad more advanced than we credit them for, but that's about it).

 

[SpuriusMaximus]

Considering that MIS-11 is about 400,000 years ago and humans, even by the most generous estimates, are AT MOST 250,000 years old, that wasn't quite the timeline I had in mind there. It would surprise the pants out of me if anyone found a city from MIS-12 and flooded during MIS-11

When I meant from before the glaciation, I meant before the last one, of course. Something like maybe MIS-3 tops. Any earlier, like MIS-4 and you wouldn't have humans in Europe, much less America. (If the Aztecs are to learn human sacrifice from some hypothetical ultra-advanced civilization, it's gonna be in America.) In fact MIS-4 is about when humans migrated into the middle east, so, you know, there's still some way to go.

But basically, yeah, that's what I'm getting at: water lines are lower during glaciation, higher during intergalciation periods. Some city on the shore in roughly MIS-3 times will still be at least close to the shore nowadays, in most cases. Even going back and assuming some advanced civilization in MIS-4 or MIS-5 times, well, almost anything that was on the shore back then will still be on the shore right now. Well, in most cases.

A pre-glaciation city is only gonna be in deep water if it's R'lyeh

IMHO, and I could be wrong, and all that.

 

[bobwtfomg]

Over the past 40 years new discoveries and new technologies have revealed an amazing amount of information about our distant past, and have in general pushed back estimations of when our ancestors first learnt various technologies and formed complex societies. Is it totally unreasonable to think there might be another Nevali Cori or Golbekli Tepi under some place as yet unexplored by modern archeology?