Ancient High Technology Question (for naysayers)

This is actually directed at those members who routinely deny the possibility of civilizations that might have possessed technologies and capabilities beyond our current level of development:

Why is it assumed that these civilizations would have developed the SAME technologies we have (plastics, skyscrapers, highways)? It occurs to me that a civilization with a slightly different mindset might have developed other technologies that have no analog in our own culture.

For instance, a civilization with little population pressure would have no need to develop skyscrapers (the Egyptians created pyramids, but for different purposes). If you have advanced, personal flight capabilities (vimanas, perhaps?), what need have you for automobiles? Especially if you have a reasonably advanced mass-transit system.

Simply because we encounter material cultures in the distant past that are not identical to our own should be no reason to close the door on the possibility that these civilizations were as developed as ours.

This is not to say that all civilizations we see in our past must be as advanced materially as ours. I simply put to you that, perhaps, we shouldn't jump to conclusions based on dissimilarity.

One, of course, expects to find many things in common with other societies, but that is not to say that all societies product the same artifacts.

Generally those of us who'd fall into the "naysayers" category aren't doing so because we dismiss any and all possibilities that there were advanced civilizations before our current one, just that we have no scientifically verifiable evidence for it. We look for things like steel-framed building ruins, or plastics, or other long-lasting artifacts because those are things we know and associate with technology. I'd imagine if our technology was based on genetic manipulation, we'd be looking for fossils of creatures that we believed were impossible to arrive at through natural evolution.

We're skeptical because there are a lot of cranks, and worse crooks, out there. We're interested, we'd most of us love to find evidence of former civilizations, whether they were human, saurian, or giant-intelligent-arthropod based, but we're also cautious. We know that if we jump onto the newest or shiniest bandwagon without taking a close look at whether or not the evidence holds up to scrutiny...well, we all remember the asteroid hoaxes from earlier this year. We point out the flaws we see in such stories, not because we want to shoot the story down, but because we hope that you have the evidence we want, and just didn't do a good or complete job of expressing yourself the first time.

Thank you. That is the answer I was hoping for. I was fearing something less reasoned or balanced.

At the risk of belaboring the point, though:Using those criteria it would be extremely difficult to prove the existence of an advanced culture in our distant (perhaps blotted out) past, if that culture didn't use the same technologies that we do. That would seem to negate the possibility of arriving at a point at which skeptics could be convinced.

On the other hand, your point is well-taken: There are a lot of wackos with equally nutty ideas that they just toss about seemingly at random. Ideas like: "I had a dream that we were all reptiles and our ancient civilization collapsed because we morphed into mammals and we didn't know how to take it" or something equally bizarre.

Thanks again.

At the risk of belaboring the point, though:Using those criteria it would be extremely difficult to prove the existence of an advanced culture in our distant (perhaps blotted out) past, if that culture didn't use the same technologies that we do. That would seem to negate the possibility of arriving at a point at which skeptics could be convinced.

Not really. If we were to come across something of an ancient advanced culture, and it were to be more advanced than anything we could do, surely it'd be recognized as:

1. manmade
2. having some kind of operation that is beyond our current tech
3. incapable of being produced by the technology we know of at the time

So far, we have no such artifacts, and many OOPARTs turn out to have rather mundane explanations (remember the spark plug in the rock?)

The other points are equally valid...

1. Why no intense scrutiny and recording of such a civilization?
2. Why didn't these inventions spread to other cultures through trade/theft/copying, etc.?
3. How did such tech get lost? Surely SOMEONE would have remembered enough to not let us all slip so far....
4. Comparison to today. Let's say there was a nuclear war tomorrow. I'd be willing to bet there'd still be some towns using electricity, etc. well after this, rising from the ashes. Sure, most places would be pretty backwards, but there'd always be those trying to recapture what was lost.

No such evidence is there for ANY of the above points for such a civilization.

As Whiskey Jack stated, it isn't the dismissal of the possibility, but the simple lack of supporting evidence....

Firstly, if there is no evidence of an advanced civilisation, why assume that one might have existed? If you can't see, hear or feel a monster under your bed, the chances are there isn't one.

Secondly, can we envisage any sort of advanced civilisation that could have existed - with whatever form of technology - such that it left no traces?

Whilst anomalous artifacts do turn up from time to time, most have very dubious provenance and/or can readily be explained without invoking a lost civilisation. Of course, it is possible that a conspiracy exists to hide any real evidence - but to what purpose?

Most of us 'debunkers' would love to find some real evidence though

Fast Camel, I think that everyone who has posted to this thread so far, comprising you and a bunch of us debunkers, share one thing in common:

We would love to know that, at one time, there existed here on Earth an advanced civilization from which we could learn (not necessarily technology; but art, culture, or even basic hitherto-unforseen historical facts).

I do not get any enjoyment out of believing and saying that Atlantis (at it is envisaged) never existed; I wish it did.

But, as my colleagues here, including Messrs. Essan, Gazrok, and Whisky Jack point out, without evidence we delude ourselves.

I think most of us here are strong enough to stand up to the truth, even if it is an unpalatable one!

I do not get any enjoyment out of believing and saying that Atlantis (at it is envisaged) never existed; I wish it did.

Just wanted to emphasize, that the historical account of Atlantis (i.e. Plato's Critius Dialogue) never states that Atlanteans were any more or less technologically advanced than his beloved Ancient Greece....

How about where did over 50,000 tons of copper go that was mined in the north east americas over 20,000 years ago? What civilization was here that A had mining tools sufficent to extract such a large amount and B a civilization that actually used smelted copper for something.

They just discovered a race of "mini" beings on an isolated Island.

What about the huge carved "balls" and figure heads in South America and Mexico that look "african" in physical qualities.

Or the giant Idol Heads on the Island of (? sorry I forgot the name) where were they quarried from, how did they get there and what kind of tools were used in their formation.

Maybe the past down history of an advanced race really did get past down in a manner that could only be understood at the time by the succesive generations that were basically many generations behind there forefathers due to global conflict. Read about the Hopi and the great stories from antiquity.. Maybe they are real.

Why is there so many examples of "flying crafts" in the bible?? Maybe they were not "alien" but remainders of an advanced human race that hoped to leave a legacy for those humans that were trying to rebuild the civilizations around the world. An advanced human race that was now capable of travelling to other planets because of the rages of war and left their generation damaged by some enviromental factor that todays modern humans have adapted to.

Maybe nitrogen of some other component in what we call "air" is hazardous to them in continuned exposure. Limiting the amount of time they can spend on the planet forcing them to find other worlds to inhabit.

Who knows, but there are many mysterious on this planet that science and even the brightess minds have yet to find a conclusive anwser for.

Look at Coral Castle, no one even knows the truth of how one man, a frail loner built such amazing works. Sure they know how he could have split the massive coral blocks using spring steel, but lifting and milling the massive stones without mechanical means (like a crane etc) still escapes even the smartest engineer the goverment has.

But then again maybe the goverment does know, along with a whole host of other facinating things, yet the continue to concel them from the people of this planet in an effort to control them, control the money and to control the outcome of Nations and lives.

We, living now, did not live 30,000 years ago or maybe 100,000 years ago, maybe oil is the remains of an ancient earthly surface burned and consumed by evil, greed and destruction. Maybe Fossil fuel is the remains of the ancient technological advanced society that you seek "proof" of their existence.

All that we know is what we can touch and feel today, we are in the now and we will make the future, whatever that may be.

The past has been long forgotten and buried by the times of changes, destruction and rebirth. Eventually the planet will become a cold rocky wasteland, un -inhabited by anything and then it will be burnt in the fire of the sun and consumed wholelly into a burst of energy and the legacy of man and earth will be no more. There will be no trace of "us" for some future space fairing civilization will peer into the void and darkness of space and only see a fleeting glimpse of our sun. A nova impulse of hot gaseous speeding through the universe leaving no traces of the marvels and achievements of the human kind to ever be discovered.

^^^case in point

Seriously though, robertfenix, you do come off as a bit over the top. Some of the stuff you've posted, such as the Easter Island monuments, are well documented. Native histories discuss the creation of the monuments, as well as the resulting ecological disaster caused by the deforestation during the monuments' construction.

Other things, such as the missing copper, seem intreguing. Do you have a good source for that topic? It's the first time I've heard of that, and if it's true, it's pretty cool.

And don't take our skepticism of ancient civ/ufos/magic/etc too personally. We're not saying that whoever is making the claim is dumb or lying, just that there are a lot of frauds out there.

I think, also, that a lot of people get hung up on just what a "technologically advanced civilization" is. Sure, to us it implies things like matter replication, flying vehicles and space travel. But honestly, it'd be just as amazing, to me, to find remnants of an iron-forging culture during the neolithic era.

[edit on 12/3/2004 by Whiskey Jack]

Originally posted by on a fast camel
This is actually directed at those members who routinely deny the possibility

Routinely deny the possibility or unfortunately have to conclude the non-occurance?

It occurs to me that a civilization with a slightly different mindset might have developed other technologies that have no analog in our own culture.

Hardly matters what kind of technology they developed. Unless you want to make it up that they have technology that in no way leaves any evidence of its accumulation, usage, spreading, and ultimate destruction then the specific tech doesn't make a difference.

For instance, a civilization with little population pressure would have no need to develop skyscrapers (the Egyptians created pyramids, but for different purposes). If you have advanced, personal flight capabilities (vimanas, perhaps?), what need have you for automobiles? Especially if you have a reasonably advanced mass-transit system.
Any technology is going to require an industry to get the raw materials, another industry to process and ready the materials, another ot use them, another to design uses for them, another to educate a population to be able to develop them in the first place, and an entire system to coordinate, regulate, house, feed, furnish, and entertainall these people.

I mean, I agree that one could come up with some scenario that is unarguable, but is that a reasonable way to go about it?

robert fenix
How about where did over 50,000 tons of copper go that was mined in the north east americas over 20,000 years ago?

Whats that all about, never heard it

They just discovered a race of "mini" beings on an isolated Island.

Yes, precisely, there was something unexpected and controversial, and it wasn't covered up. And even those people left tools and evidence of their existence, and thats just a population on a few jungle islands. Where are the remains of the advanced ancient civilizations?

What about the huge carved "balls" and figure heads in South America and Mexico that look "african" in physical qualities.

What about them? They're big sculptured heads that look 'african'. Actually supposedly the people in that specific part of the world look like the sculptures.

Or the giant Idol Heads on the Island of

Easter Island. Again, what of them? People don't need advanced technology to get, transport and carve rocks.

Read about the Hopi and the great stories from antiquity.. Maybe they are real.

And maybe they are not real. Maybe they are just stories about how things were better in the glorious golden past and all crummy and dirty in the here and now.

Look at Coral Castle, no one even knows the truth of how one man, a frail loner built such amazing works.

Yes, look at it. He was able to make it all. Why can't an entire society?

There's all sorts of maybes. And thats the problem. One can consider lots of different plausible possibilities. How does one choose which 'resemble the truth' better?

Certainly not be making up even more stories and accepting the ones one likes.

How about where did over 50,000 tons of copper go that was mined in the north east americas over 20,000 years ago? What civilization was here that A had mining tools sufficent to extract such a large amount and B a civilization that actually used smelted copper for something.

An advanced space-faring race could easily mine plenty of copper from an asteroid versus Earth. Do you have a link or other source for this?

They just discovered a race of "mini" beings on an isolated Island.

Yet no evidence they were advanced by any stretch of the imagination, so what does this have to do with the price of tea in China?

What about the huge carved "balls" and figure heads in South America and Mexico that look "african" in physical qualities.

Don't forget the figurines found in South America (pre-Columbian) that depict African animals, etc. I have little doubt that South America and Africa once traded in the ancient world (remember Egyptian mummies stuffed with cocoa and tobacco?) Still, the tech of the time would have allowed this (as proven by a trip in an Egyptian reed boat by researchers).

Or the giant Idol Heads on the Island of (? sorry I forgot the name) where were they quarried from, how did they get there and what kind of tools were used in their formation.

You're thinking of Easter Island...Not much mystery there, in fact, a great thread here at ATS on it, just a few days ago....

Why is there so many examples of "flying crafts" in the bible?? Maybe they were not "alien" but remainders of an advanced human race that hoped to leave a legacy for those humans that were trying to rebuild the civilizations around the world. An advanced human race that was now capable of travelling to other planets because of the rages of war and left their generation damaged by some enviromental factor that todays modern humans have adapted to.

There aren't "alot" of examples, but more intriguing is them showing up in so much of the art, such as in the Renaissance. Still, this shows a sighting, not that the civilization in question was advanced...again, no evidence such advances were known to us on Earth.

Look at Coral Castle, no one even knows the truth of how one man, a frail loner built such amazing works. Sure they know how he could have split the massive coral blocks using spring steel, but lifting and milling the massive stones without mechanical means (like a crane etc) still escapes even the smartest engineer the goverment has.

Not so. Actually, there is an Englishman (name escapes me, a thread here about a month or so ago), who figured out (he's an engineer) a way that just one man could move megalithic stones, such as in Stonehenge, Coral Castle, etc. It was really quite ingenious, and required no tech beyond the use of levers, etc.

The past has been long forgotten and buried by the times of changes, destruction and rebirth. Eventually the planet will become a cold rocky wasteland, un -inhabited by anything and then it will be burnt in the fire of the sun and consumed wholelly into a burst of energy and the legacy of man and earth will be no more. There will be no trace of "us" for some future space fairing civilization will peer into the void and darkness of space and only see a fleeting glimpse of our sun. A nova impulse of hot gaseous speeding through the universe leaving no traces of the marvels and achievements of the human kind to ever be discovered.

Perhaps, perhaps not. Many structures have stood for thousands of years (the Pyramids, etc.) and no doubt the massive cities of today, even if we were all wiped out, would leave a trace of our existance for eons to come.... It's because of this, that it's so implausible for such ancient advanced cultures to have existed... There's simply no way that ALL traces would have vanished....

Originally posted by on a fast camelWhy is it assumed that these civilizations would have developed the SAME technologies we have (plastics, skyscrapers, highways)? It occurs to me that a civilization with a slightly different mindset might have developed other technologies that have no analog in our own culture.

One, of course, expects to find many things in common with other societies, but that is not to say that all societies product the same artifacts.

Actually (speaking as archaeology and anthropology student) we have pretty good evidence that they do NOT exist.

Technology doesn't exist in a vacum. In order to produce (say) a computer, you have to have plants that manufacture components, devices to run those plants (power), plants to build the power devices, things to transmit the power, things to transport the raw materials, things to transport the products to assembly plants, housing for the workers, plants to build the robotic components of the plants, housing for the engineers and programmers, food for the people, raw materials for the robotic components, manufacturing plants for the robots, manufacturing plants for the equipment inside the factories and so on and so forth in a HUGE chain of product and assemblage. And then there's the lost bits and pieces (you know; you walk around and you might drop a nickle somewhere or lose your cell phone or drop a pen and so forth) And the garbage pits. And all the buildings and roads and landing pads and so forth.

Beyond that, there's the civilizations that would lead up to this point... the less efficient ones/lower tech ones that would have left their marks, their pencils, their roads, their garbage pits, their tools lying around, bits of their transportation systems, and so forth.

And let's not forget their pollution.

In order to postulate a "super evolved tech society" you also have to assume that they had some sort of method of (when they were done) flying around the planet, probing all our geological layers, and removing ALL trace of themselves (no matter how tiny or how lost, even if it's underwater.) Including pollution levels from their earlier stages.

And after they'd done THAT, then they would have to fly around the planet again and remove every single last trace (no matter how tiny) of the thousands of years of civilizations (cities, artifacts, etc) of ALL the civilizations that they evolved from and THEIR pollution.

And they and their precursor civilizations would have to be located in some area that was completely untouched by the "normal chain" of human history and technology that we know today.

And no, some gargantuan war wouldn't have done that. It would have left plenty of artifacts and fragments and a whopping amount of pollution.


And that's why we don't find it plausible.

Originally posted by Gazrok
Just wanted to emphasize, that the historical account of Atlantis (i.e. Plato's Critius Dialogue) never states that Atlanteans were any more or less technologically advanced than his beloved Ancient Greece....

Well said, Gazrok. Apparently the Greeks kicked their booties but good with Greek tech.

That said, I'll reiterate some observations from a pilot's perspective. Extreme high tech can minimize artifact remains. For example, the airframe and powerplant materials we use today have very short artifact lifetimes. Aluminum becomes dust, iron becomes rust, and plastics biodegrade in ways that still amaze me. Especially in seashore/marine environments. Add a crash landing fire and there can be literally nothing left in a matter of centuries. Another factor is dwell time: when I land a helicopter on a hilltop, any native sees exactly what Ezekiel reported in the Bible. He goes home and tells the village. By the time they come to see, I am gone without a trace. Except in the folklore of the village. If an alien race visited this planet- perhaps long ago- and crash landed, or simply seeded it and left there could be little or no physical trace evidence. Something that interests me is that one of the many versions of the Roswell Incident has a team of Archaeologists as the discoverers of a crashed alien craft that everyone assumes was a fresh crash and not a newly uncovered ancient craft revealed by a washout in the arroyo.

There is a book I reccomend for an interesting perspective on all this: Darkover Landfall by Marion Zimmer Bradley from her Darkover Series.

I also reccomend reading the Book of Ezekiel in the Bible. Whenever I start up a helicopter at night, and see the display of panel lights reflected in the bubble I can't help but be in awe of this humble man's accurate description of a cockpit display. A NASA engineer wrote a book a long time ago on this called God Drives a Flying Saucer.

All that said, I remain a skeptic. I see Atlantis plausible as a precolumbian American sailing-canoe flotilla raid on the Mediterranean, but more than that? Cherokee legends claim more, but I have nothing beyond geoglyphs, a few petroglyphs, pyramids and language fragments to form an opinion with. Until I see more, occam's razor says no. But, like Fox Mulder, I want to believe.

If evidence of ancient high technology existed, and I had jurisdiction over it, I would classify it Cosmic Top Secret. Why? Knowledge is power.

[edit on 3-12-2004 by Chakotay]

I think theres no evidence of these civilizations because of nuclear war
Its like Einstein said " I do not know how world war 3 would be fought but world war 4 would be fought with sticks and rocks." What Einstien mean was that with all the powerful nukes and missiles we have now it would destroy everything. I think that atlantis had this world war 3 probably with India because of there romadon texts (not sure if i said that correctly). It tells of anti gravity craft and other stuff.

And if all this stuff i said is true then i feel sad because in another 10 thousand years people will probably be saying there was no ancient America or mexico and we'll just be doomed to an endless cycle of destroying ourselves.

Well, there are varying accounts of inventions that have been suppressed, etc;



Hypatia was written to have invented what we would call electric power toys 1500 years ago

Hero invented the steam engine a thousand years before Europe rediscovered it

the greeks invented the Analog computer 3000 years before Europe rediscovered it

the Mayans had the most advanced calender system until the invention of the Atomic clock 800 years later

the polynesians could navigate the worlds oceans without sextant, lattitudes or time piece


this goes on and on. The remaining issue is that a truly advanced culture would place the heath, welfare and well being of its people at the forefront,. BY that measure there are cultures that existed thousands of years ago that are light years ahead of anything on the earth today

There is always the possiblity they are so advance that. They do not use the conventional method we have today to make other things?

Beyond our imagination?

I believe it is not very uncommon in these times a sort of despise for the old, or an excessive astonishment of the "advanced" stage, technically, culturally, where some parts of the world find themselvs today.

Not too long ago it was common to hear that everything had been invented, as a kind of excuse for a lack of new substantial developments.

Another aspect sometimes put forward is that mankind was a lot more supersticious and religious before, and that now we are in possess of a fantastic amount of facts , as compared to the past.

What some people fail to realize, is that the supernatural supersticion of the past could be compared to the modern technical supersiticion of the present.

An example:

a man in 4000 BC watches in horror as his house is set on fire by a lightning. he does not understand the lightning , so he thinks he must have made something bad or angered some magical entity or some God.

a man in 2000 AD reads about a very unusual phenomenon which he does
not understand, not knowing what it is he believes that whatever it is ,
it surely must have a scientifical explanation, by doing this he is putting his faith that science can explain all.

This modern supersticion then, could be perhaps an explanation why some people of the present demand that ancient societies or civilizations be explained in modern terms. Anyone minimally aware of languages knows well that in some ocasions it is quite difficult to acheive a perfect translation of an idea, it is only possible to translate the aproximate idea, precisly because of a cultural difference.

And if this is true regarding modern languages, then indeed it is so much more when it comes to comparing the language of human beings 4000 years ago, or their mindset.


In these times there are airplanes, ships, a panoply of veichles.

If we compare a sophisticated veichle of this century to a sophisticated veichle of antiquity, most likely the former is much more capable, even if in brute force alone.

But of course the technology can be quite different, and the materials used.

But say for example, when a group of enthusiasts decide to attempt to make replica's of ancient ships keeping modern helps to a minimum to try to create something as faithful as possible to the original one.

And then a strange thing happens, not a few times, they end up not being capable of doing it the way it was done in ancient times. This is true for ships and for a number of other things.

So, in a way we can say that we don't possess the same technology, most incredible of all, with all the resources available now, we cannot match the ingeniosity of someone who had very little resources to go with and managed to make something out of almost nothing.
Perhaps this happens because of an abundance of means in these times?
Perhaps technicians and scientists are spoiled? and can only create something with vast fortunes of funding?

one thing not to be understimated is the technological advances permited by massive trial and error throught centuries. tried and tested.

In Ancient civilizations it is also not very unusual to find a tendency to keep things secret, so in some aspects it is in fact impossible to know the full extent of some ancient civilizations technical abilities since there is nothing left to examine, courtesy either of nature or of the ancient civilization itself.

Regarding Atlantis and Advanced Ancient Civilizations one should consider that they were viewed as advanced by some of their ancient rivals, not meaning necessarily that Ancient Advanced are as, or more advanced than modern societies. (advanced using the modern definition of course)

The author of this thread put forward the idea of a civilization with a slightly different mindset , well, i would go even further, any ancient civilization, or even vaguely recent one is guaranteed to have colossal differences in mindset, if we consider a generation gap and transpose it to something like a 4000 year old cultural gap, perhaps it is even impossible to compare, meaning by this that assuming that they could communicate (had knowledge of a common language) humans of 2004 AD and humans of 2000 BC would not, could not understand each other precisly because of a huge mindset difference.

Lack of evidence or simply no evidence at all. Evolutionary factors. Many reasons to explain why there were no "high" technologies. Sure, there have been many prototypes and concepts to modern invention like the computer, but OMFG they are nothing like what we have today. It would be like trying to explain to a group of areospace engineers today that medievil technology of flight is on par with that of todays simply because DeVinci had concepts of gliders and the "Gilligan Wings".

What technologies did these ancients have in their possesion that is of no use for our culture today?