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Proof or Not, ancient civilization

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posted on Feb, 24 2007 @ 10:21 PM
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This is a “what if” post

What would happen if the world as we know it today suddenly went to all out war? The major powers of the world were destroyed by mutually assured destruction. Some people would survive. In 10000 years what would be the stories that these survivors descendants would tell. How advanced would these people be? How corrupted would the truth be? Would we become the Atlantis of that generation? Would our monuments be their Stonehenge? How would they know where to look for our remnants? How many traces of our civilization would survive? Would we pass into the realms of myths and legends? Would these descendants advance the same way we did with technology? How different would their land masses be?

The reason that I ask these questions is that I wonder if there was an advanced ancient civilization. How can we be so sure that there never was? Archeology and similar scientific disciplines have made mistakes in the past regarding our myths and legends. I know that with our advanced civilization, we do not build with any material that would survive for 10000 years. So the traces that we would leave would not be our buildings. What traces of our technology would survive that length of time?

I would ask that you, the reader, help prove or disprove that an ancient civilization could have existed in the past.

Thank you.


[edit on 24-2-2007 by ultralo1]

[edit on 24-2-2007 by ultralo1]



posted on Feb, 24 2007 @ 10:24 PM
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Not sure some plastics will be left behind or glass that shows some type of chemistry and man made radition if future earth wants to find out. Some where we have built underground facilities that will be preserved or found sometime, some secret place anyway that will have been preserved.



posted on Feb, 24 2007 @ 10:28 PM
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Even with global thermonuclear war, there will still be evidence of our world's existence. There will still be debris from the atomic blasts, there will be the remains of cities that weren't hit, there will be things like graveyards and cemetaries that wouldn't be targeted, there'd be the craters left from our industrial mining projects, etc.

There'd probably even be a radio-isoptic signature showing that there was massive creation of radioisotopes. And there'd also be the satellites.



posted on Feb, 24 2007 @ 10:43 PM
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Some where we have built underground facilities that will be preserved or found sometime, some secret place anyway that will have been preserved.


Without maintenance these facilities will rot and disapear. Steel rusts, Concrete crumbles.





There will still be debris from the atomic blasts, there will be the remains of cities that weren't hit, there will be things like graveyards and cemetaries that wouldn't be targeted, there'd be the craters left from our industrial mining projects, etc.


Yes, but what would survive the 10000 years, where would they look for it.
Troy was tought just a myth. How deep was it buried? If not for the myth still being relatively young how would we have known where to look?




Not sure some plastics will be left behind


How small would these peices be. Could they actually be intact after that lenght of time?



there'd also be the satellites.

Again, without maitenance i doubt it



posted on Feb, 24 2007 @ 10:45 PM
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Very interesting thread.

How many traces of our civilization would survive?

Well, if the destruction is a world-wide nuclear scale, then don't expect to survive unless underground... Our traces would be the same as that can be seen on Mars.

Would we become the Atlantis of that generation?

Yes, a destruction of extreme measurments will change our geography

How would they know where to look for our remnants?

Well, if we dunno preserve our knowledge (books, compact discs, fibre optics, internet), then forget it. Our Atlandis will become difficult to find and the next generation will be confronted with the same problem of the 21 century.

Would we pass into the realms of myths and legends?

What is myth and legends? Truth, slightly changed to be funny and believed as tradition.
Have you ever seen LOTR? At the beginning it sais (volume #1):
"All that should remembered lost, history became tradition, tradition became myth and myth became legend'',
quite telling don't you think?

Would these descendants advance the same way we did with technology?

If our Hstory and knowledge lost, they will have to initiate from the beginning.

[edit on 24-2-2007 by Dragonlike]



posted on Feb, 24 2007 @ 10:45 PM
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Double post- delete it

[edit on 24-2-2007 by Dragonlike]



posted on Feb, 24 2007 @ 10:47 PM
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Originally posted by ultralo1
Without maintenance these facilities will rot and disapear. Steel rusts, Concrete crumbles.

It certainly doesn't dissapear into nothing, and even if it does that, it still leaves evidence of its existence. We have post holes from wooden huts from the prehistoric era, we'd certainly have remains of buildings from our era thousands of years from now.





If not for the myth still being relatively young how would we have known where to look?

It would't need to have a myth to have people looking for it, they'd have trouble not stumbling across archaeological remains of our civilization. Many of our own discoveries weren't made when anyone was looking for anything.




How small would these peices be. Could they actually be intact after that lenght of time?

Sure. Why not? Not under all conditions perhaps, but heck we're pulling bogmen out of the much every so often, so why not some shopping bags out of a landfill?



Again, without maitenance i doubt it

I'd've doubted that a campfire from homo erectus could survive til today, but it does.



posted on Feb, 24 2007 @ 11:16 PM
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I loved the "Lord of the Rings - The Fellowship of the Ring" reference.
It's quite appropriate for the subject.

"And somethings that should not have been forgotten, were lost.
History became legend, legend became myth and for two and a half thousand years the ring passed out of all knowledge.
Until, when chance came..."


Poetic, insn't it?



posted on Feb, 24 2007 @ 11:28 PM
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We have post holes from wooden huts from the prehistoric era


Yes, but how many huts were there versus how many post holes survive? I agree that some trace of our buildings would be left

After 10000 years how deep would most of it be buried?



Lindow Man had died between A.D. 50 and A.D. 100.


The bog man is only 1900 years old. what would it have been in 8000 more years? A body is more resilent than a plastic bag. And if it wernt for the bog and the special circumstances that it creates then it is highly doudbtful that we would have found those bodies.

How many camp fires did they make compared to how many reminants survived


[edit on 25-2-2007 by ultralo1]



posted on Feb, 24 2007 @ 11:51 PM
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I do wonder what people will tell about these huge buildings after thousands of years of our destruction. When you look them from inside, it's like feeling the glory of the divine while the human nature so trivial, so weeny.







OMG, the early humans should be giants!




posted on Feb, 24 2007 @ 11:54 PM
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if we dont go MAD before 2030 we will have a base on the moon, which because of the vacuum will stay intact, unless an asteroid hits it, not to mention the original moon landing site.

there will be definably plenty of buildings left, because steel take much longer to to rust than iron, and not to mention aluminum. and our bases in antartica will survive because it is a demilitarized zone.



posted on Mar, 1 2007 @ 08:21 PM
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yea man i think this has already happen
with ppl finding battery in iraq and stuff like wass good



posted on Mar, 1 2007 @ 10:21 PM
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Nygdan, I was enjoying our discussion. where did you go??
I was also hoping for the mighty marduk, and the wonderful byrd to help enlighten me.



posted on Mar, 1 2007 @ 10:49 PM
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I must've lost track of this thread for a bit. But I just caught it again, just in time too, it was the bottom thread at the first page of 'todays posts' (meaning in any instant another thread might get a new post and push this one off the page!


Originally posted by ultralo1
After 10000 years how deep would most of it be buried?

Some of it wouldn't even get buried though, it'd depend on sedimentation rates at that local.


And if it wernt for the bog and the special circumstances that it creates then it is highly doudbtful that we would have found those bodies.

Absolutely. And there will be places where there are special circumstances now and stuff gets spectacularly well preserved, and other places where it just barely gets preserved.


How many camp fires did they make compared to how many reminants survived

We have evidence that they were making campfires. Future archaeologists would have evidence of our civilization. Consider that we make millions of times more artifacts than our ancient ancestors did, so there's even more likelyhood that there will be remains to reconstruct our world.

I mean, for every picasso that gets destroyed in an inferno, there's a thousand landfills, stuffed with millions of artifacts, neatly buried already.



posted on Mar, 2 2007 @ 12:06 PM
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TextSome of it wouldn't even get buried though, it'd depend on sedimentation rates at that local.

I was watching the show lost worlds on A&E, they were tracing the life of Paul the Apasotle(sp?) in his home town of Tarsus they just recently discovered a Roman road and Roman housing. It was approx 20 feet below the surface. The the residents did not know anything about this. The point being that it was not that deeply buried and it was not 10000 years old but the poeple who live there had no idea.




I mean, for every picasso that gets destroyed in an inferno, there's a thousand landfills, stuffed with millions of artifacts, neatly buried already.

Point taken, only arguement that I have is that those landfills may be very deep and the trash in them will not be preserved very well if at all. Some trace will be left but will there be enough for some future archeologist to form a correct opinion of our civilization and culture?



posted on Mar, 2 2007 @ 01:59 PM
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True enough, there's no way to be sure that people would be digging for archaeological remains in the future.
As far as there being enough in landfills, I think that since we're able to find the 'trash middens' of ancient cultures, even prehistoric ones, and reconstruct their lives from it, that future archaeologsts after some world destroying catastrophe, could find enough to reconstruct ours (and what an exciting time that would be eh?!)


A teacher of mine was explaining how he was on an archaeolgical project, he studied roman archaeology and was working on the limes system, the barriers or 'limits' between Rome and "barbaric" Germany at the time. In one habitation (some sort of camp or fortification I beleive) there was the remains of a water well. They found rubble in it, showing that the romans had abanonded the fortification and wanted to seal up the well, to prevent the germans from making use of it. And to be especially sure, they polluted the well, dumping their human waste, feces, into it. As the professor said it "one lucky grad-student' got to crawl down into the well and work on it.

From that, they were able to find the partially digested remains of black pepper. So they were able to say something about the camp, and that the people there were eating black pepper as a spice, AND, they were able to trace that black pepper species or subspecies back to southern india, thus illustrating the state of international trade at the time too (indeed, people sometimes to this day find buried stocks of Roman coins in southern India).

In a sense, trashheaps are the most informative things you can find about a civilization, everything you make use of ends up there, in fantastic numbers.



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