How would you go about detecting an ancient, advanced civilization?

I watched the Netflix series, Ancient Apocalypse after the holidays, and while it is an intriguing premise. I found it to be long on speculation and short on real solid evidence. So I started to think, using the methods of modern science, how could you go about finding the "signature" of an ancient, advanced civilization. So for utility's sake I will define an ancient, advanced civilization as something approximating where we are now. Global trade and communications, advanced travel, large scale agriculture and industry, technology as advanced as or slightly better than our current technology. If we dissapear off the Earth, what would still be detectable of us 12,000 years from now? Here are some ideas:

1. Evidence of resource extraction: After 12,000 years, there might still be remnants of mines, and strip mines. There could also be areas with waste products, IE chemical compounds not found in nature that would still be detectable.

2. Evidence of biodiversity bottlenecks: We have exterminated or brought close to extinction many animal and plant species through our activities. There could be evidence of non-natural reductions in biodiversity in the fossil record. Humans could be included in this; our DNA tracing could reveal sudden drops in world populations due to war or disease. There is one that is attributed to the Toba eruption 70,000 years ago that created a human genetic bottleneck. More recent ones could be attributed to some global catastrophe of our own making.

3. Technological remnants: There are currently satellites that are predicted to have orbits that will last thousands of years. We also left hardware ont he moon and planets that could be found by a future civilization. If an ancient civilization was a spacefaring one, their technology might still exist on the moon or planets. Also there could be artifacts on Earth that are yet undiscovered.


Those are the 3 major things I can think of. I think any serious foray into investigating the possibility of an ancient advanced civilization should adress these, and not just the fact that there are megalithic structures that are mysterious.

I think it is like trying to find hidden treasure that is never to be found. We just don't know how ancient people vanished.
I also think if I were to be an explorer I would start looking under the sand dunes for clues.

I think Hancock is completely wrong.

It wasn't an advanced ancient civilization, but a small group of beings, of sages, who had advanced knowledge and technology. And they would travel around the world visiting the native populations of humans and brining them knowledge, in the form of symbols, buildings and myths. The Pyramids of Egypt, for example, are encoded with the most important math constants of the universe, and they even have the size ad shape of the earth encoded in the Great Pyramid.

The primitive ancients confused these advanced beings as "gods". I think the group of Elongated Heads are probably the most plausible target. These elongated skull people were always a minority and were treated as royalty by their own populations. Plus, in the real cases, the brain capacity of those skulls were far larger than those of a regular human....

I never liked Hancock, he is a bit like Sitchin. He lets his fantasy go wild and create megalomaniac narratives that have no base on reality. He clearly writes books to make money from the low level minds, not to expand knowledge.

a reply to: openminded2011

I would add: finding cut diamonds in a layer of sediment that could be dated. Diamonds do indeed last forever (pretty much), and they cannot cut themselves Potentially, they should last millions of years ... and potentially billions, due to their hardness factor.

a reply to: openminded2011

They won't find the pyramid of the moon under the pyramid of Ryugyung.
And if the excavation site has been shuffled over time by earthquakes or war it may not reflect any civilization at all.

a reply to: ltrz2025

He clearly writes books to make money from the low level minds, not to expand knowledge.

Right, because no academic ever writes a book to make money. They do it strictly for educational purposes and for charity.

Could try talking to a lot of remote indigenous communities and what lore has worked its way down through their cultural stories. Some of it might only go back so far, as for trying to find those sites where something special is going on its an option.

I did come across one place on my travels through the Flinders Rangers. It was one dried out river bed that on the surface did not look like much. I did find some marks along one rock wall that did not look natural. I was not there long enough to decode it all. The stories of this site was that it held a map that assisted the aboriginal tribes as they moved around. As for who made these markings?

a reply to: Klassified

Some people write books to expand knowledge (in fact, many don't even charge for them and you can download them free from the internet).

Some authors, specially scholars, are always trying to fight down the prices of their books with the publishers, because they only want the book to be read and shared. If fact, it's very very very difficult to make money by selling books, unless you are Hancock, who is a marketing machine.

Anyway, this is not the subject of the thread. Think whatever you like. I couldn't care less.

a reply to: openminded2011

The Silurian hypothesis eh?

It's interesting ile give you that.

a reply to: openminded2011

If they were advanced as we are now.

Even if all structures were lost to ice ages and erosion over time, I think there would still be evidence of sewers, subways, pipelines... Stuff like that.

a reply to: openminded2011
There are many methods scientists use to determine how old a culture is and particulars about their progress. Too many to list here. Do some reading on Gobekli Tepe. It matches the date range you're talking about and will give you a good idea of what archaeologists look at in piecing together the history of a site nearly 12,000 years old.

They look at tools used, pottery, the food they ate, the clothing they wore and how they made it, their writing and math, or lack thereof, indicators of their beliefs about the world they lived in. If they were agricultural or nomadic, the list goes on and on. The methods aren't foolproof, but they can answer a lot of basic questions...

...but the one thing you don't do is ignore the megalithic elephant in the room because it doesn't confirm your preconceived notions and beliefs about what is and is not possible.

As to Graham Hancock, I have found his biggest critics have likely never read any of his books and have probably never researched the evidence he presents. Graham the heretic was talking about an ancient cataclysm long before science finally admitted it was a likely scenario.

Is Graham right about everything? No, like his academic counterparts, some of his hypothesis and speculations likely won't hold water in the long run, but at least he's open minded enough to think outside the barricade of consensus.

originally posted by: Klassified
Graham the heretic was talking about an ancient cataclysm long before science finally admitted it was a likely scenario.

This is a COMPLETE LIE, the discipline of Catastrophism dates back, at least to the 1800s, and if you include Plato's Atlantis, to 500 BC.

Hancock did nothing original. In fact, most of the "data" he anchors on to bring his completely ludicrous narrative is based on the works of Schwaller de Lubicz, Robert M. Schoch, John Anthony West, real scholars who wrote many decades before Hancock even showed up in the map.

The only difference it hat Hancock ALWAYS had the support of the biggest publishing companies in the UK... which says you A LOT of the type of friends he has. In my opinion, Hancock is a GATEKEEPER, trying to mislead people with his lies and flimsy theories, that are completely disconnected from reality.

Just like Zecharia Sitchin, who accomplished for decades that people remained confused regarding the real myths of the Sumerians (which are key to understand human civilization).

a reply to: openminded2011

If a cataclysm were to strike the earth today and wipe out nearly all life the only ones to survive would most likely be those who presently are considered 'primitive' and still live close to the earth.

Those that have lived all of our lives with modern technology wouldn't fare as well, but should they cross paths with a more primitive group they could share a bit of what knowledge they had before it all came crashing down-just like the rapid advancement in technology that Egypt experienced for a brief time before regressing again.

When writing is rediscovered in 500-600 what might the lore/legends of our current era be? Flying machines? Wars in the sky? Gods who could see and talk to anybody anywhere in the world using a little box in their hand?

It might be hard for survivors possessing a rudimentary education to explain how advanced society is today should it suddenly vanish. It might sound like the world had previously been populated by a bunch of highly advanced alien overlords once ruled earth with such fantastic, unbelievably advanced technology.

a reply to: ltrz2025

This is a COMPLETE LIE, the discipline of Catastrophism dates back, at least to the 1800s, and if you include Plato's Atlantis, to 500 BC.

Hancock did nothing original. In fact, most of the "data" he anchors on to bring his completely ludicrous narrative is based on the works of Schwaller de Lubicz, Robert M. Schoch, John Anthony West, real scholars who wrote many decades before Hancock even showed up in the map.

I agree with most of what you wrote above, except for the "complete lie" part. I didn't say he was the first to talk about it, neither does he say he was the first, but he was one of those saying we need to look further into this in his books and presentations.

Look, I get it. You don't like Hancock. I have those I don't like either, but I try not to let it blind me from hearing and considering what they have to say without necessarily accepting it.

a reply to: Klassified

Many people said, say, and will say that we need to look further. That doesn't make Hancock special or original in anyway. I've read and "considered" Hancock many times, his theories are always far fetched, lack of all evidence, he uses other people's data to support his loony narratives... If you think that being fair is being blind, well, nothing I can do about that.

And the fact that he is getting a show BY NETFLIX, a media corporation that makes series with the sole purpose of promoting the WOKE agendas all the time, that even dared to make a Pedophile movie ("Cuties")... says a lot about the type of people Hancock relates to. Don't trust anyone face value. Be critical.

a reply to: ltrz2025

Many people said, say, and will say that we need to look further. That doesn't make Hancock special or original in anyway. I've read and "considered" Hancock many times, his theories are always far fetched, lack of all evidence, he uses other people's data to support his loony narratives... If you think that being fair is being blind, well, nothing I can do about that.

That's your opinion, and you're welcome to it.

And the fact that he is getting a show BY NETFLIX, a media corporation that makes series with the sole purpose of promoting the WOKE agendas all the time, that even dared to make a Pedophile movie ("Cuties")... says a lot about the type of people Hancock relates to. Don't trust anyone face value. Be critical.

Guilt by association? Really? I won't argue that associations are worth noting, but character assassination is hardly the way to prove a persons theories are bunk, it's an easy out. In case you haven't noticed, Hollywood and the media as a whole are owned and operated by "woke agendas".

I'm VERY critical, of both the accepted scientific consensus and their alternative counterparts. Taking anything at face value is a mistake. Graham's theories aren't the only ones out there that could be considered far fetched, lack evidence, and use other peoples data to support looney narratives. I see that from all sides concerning this topic. Singling out Hancock is disingenuous in my opinion.

a reply to: Klassified

No one said that Hancock's theories are the only ones out there that could be considered far fetched, lack evidence, and use other peoples data to support looney narratives. Many do so. But at least now you seem to agree with the fact that Hancock's theories are far fetched, lack evidence, and use other peoples data to support looney narratives. That's all I've been saying.

Then, media corporations don't give contracts to any one that shows up at their doorstep. We all know how it works. We know that these companies have the TASK to misinform us, confuse us, and bury the truth as much as possible, don't play disingenuous.

And we are talking about Hancock, because the thread is about Hancock... no one is singling him out out of nowhere, you dummy!

a reply to: ltrz2025

But at least now you seem to agree with the fact that Hancock's theories are far fetched, lack evidence, and use other peoples data to support looney narratives.

Some of them, yes, but not all.

...you dummy!

I had some respect for you until you went ad hominem. EOC.

a reply to: openminded2011
You spent some time on making your thread. Rather strangely, I notice that you never used the term UFO or anything similar at any point. You want to look outward and not inward to the meaning of what the world faces today as governments and its handmaiden Science totally ignores the presence of alien ships in our midst.

If you want to theorize about distant intelligences while ignoring what is in our faces and F-118 gunsights, then I suggest you go deeper into the meaning of other life forms and their cosmologies and wonder how those alien views might be transported to us as they bring us up to speed to join their club.

Acknowledging the existence of UFOs here and now would be a good start for you. Obviously, you are an intelligent person but you avoid the direct impact that the UFOs are having on our world. What is out there is not truly important as we have our first-hand situation to deal with which you avoid or are oblivious about. In some views, the UFOs bring to humanity a new perception on the nature of the Universe which then reflects upon who we are and how we are. The resulting picture is not at all generous toward our kind. So, let's forget about armchair explorations and deal with what we see directly before us. I'll give you a hint, "wokeness" is an aspect of a general alien cosmology.

originally posted by: Klassified
I had some respect for you until you went ad hominem. EOC.

Really took "dummy" as an ad hominem?

Ok, my apologies then! Sorry if this little word offended you sir.