# Ancient Civilization Discovered! **URL:** \ **Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\ **Created:** [June 12, 2005, 5:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ancient-civilization-discovered/307947 "2005-06-12T05:35:00Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 12\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Tuckerfan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/eada6e/32.png) [@Tuckerfan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tuckerfan)\ **Post date:** [June 12, 2005, 5:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ancient-civilization-discovered/307947/1 "2005-06-12T05:35:00Z")
[Oldest in Europe.](http://news.independent.co.uk/europe/story.jsp?story=645976) > [@](#): > > Archaeologists have discovered Europe’s oldest civilisation, a network of dozens of temples, 2,000 years older than Stonehenge and the Pyramids. > > More than 150 gigantic monuments have been located beneath the fields and cities of modern-day Germany, Austria and Slovakia. They were built 7,000 years ago, between 4800BC and 4600BC. Their discovery, revealed today by The Independent, will revolutionise the study of prehistoric Europe, where an appetite for monumental architecture was thought to have developed later than in Mesopotamia and Egypt. ---
**Author:** ![monavis](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/e0b2c6/32.png) [@monavis](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/monavis)\ **Post date:** [June 12, 2005, 10:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ancient-civilization-discovered/307947/2 "2005-06-12T10:42:21Z")
> [@Tuckerfan](#): > > [Oldest in Europe.](http://news.independent.co.uk/europe/story.jsp?story=645976) As a student of Archeology I would love some more information; do you have a site I can go to? Monavis ---
**Author:** ![ParentalAdvisory](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/53a042/32.png) [@ParentalAdvisory](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ParentalAdvisory)\ **Post date:** [June 12, 2005, 11:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ancient-civilization-discovered/307947/3 "2005-06-12T11:14:06Z")
150 gigantic monuments from 7,000 years ago and no pics huh? ---
**Author:** ![Baker](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/bb73d2/32.png) [@Baker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Baker)\ **Post date:** [June 12, 2005, 12:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ancient-civilization-discovered/307947/4 "2005-06-12T12:21:39Z")
Did Ayla make them? ---
**Author:** ![The\_Scrivener](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/eada6e/32.png) [@The\_Scrivener](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Scrivener)\ **Post date:** [June 12, 2005, 12:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ancient-civilization-discovered/307947/5 "2005-06-12T12:42:05Z")
…and no tall, black monolith? 😃 Hmm, I wonder if this could be evidence of a fabled “ancient Aryan civilization” that the Nazis were obsessed with documenting. I just hope these people kept their pigs, goats, etc. outside of their living areas, or things would’ve gotten pretty messy! ---
**Author:** ![Laughing\_Lagomorph](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/6bbea6/32.png) [@Laughing\_Lagomorph](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Laughing_Lagomorph)\ **Post date:** [June 12, 2005, 12:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ancient-civilization-discovered/307947/6 "2005-06-12T12:42:52Z")
> [@Baker](#): > > Did Ayla make them? When would she find the time? ---
**Author:** ![Tuckerfan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/eada6e/32.png) [@Tuckerfan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tuckerfan)\ **Post date:** [June 12, 2005, 4:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ancient-civilization-discovered/307947/7 "2005-06-12T16:16:26Z")
> [@monavis](#): > > As a student of Archeology I would love some more information; do you have a site I can go to? > > Monavis Nope, that’s all I got. ---
**Author:** ![Squink](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/b5e925/32.png) [@Squink](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Squink)\ **Post date:** [June 12, 2005, 4:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ancient-civilization-discovered/307947/8 "2005-06-12T16:40:04Z")
> [@Baker](#): > > Did Ayla make them? Sure, musta been Ayla: > [@](#): > > The effect was that of a Cyclopean city of no architecture known to man or to human imagination, with vast aggregations of night-black masonry embodying monstrous perversions of geometrical laws. There were truncated cones, sometimes terraced or fluted, surmounted by tall cylindrical shafts here and there bulbously enlarged and often capped with tiers of thinnish scalloped disks; and strange beetling, table-like constructions suggesting piles of multitudinous rectangular slabs or circular plates or five-pointed stars with each one overlapping the one beneath 😛 ---
**Author:** ![tomndebb](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/b9e5f3/32.png) [@tomndebb](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tomndebb)\ **Post date:** [June 12, 2005, 6:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ancient-civilization-discovered/307947/9 "2005-06-12T18:10:19Z")
> [@](#): > > do you have a site I can go to? The article from the _Independent_ has a link to its own related story: [How 7,000-year-old temples reveal the elaborate culture of Europe](http://news.independent.co.uk/europe/story.jsp?story=645972). Most of the other stories I’ve found have been synopses of these two. (Using the name of the director, Harald Staeuble, has been less than helpful: it seems that they found some neolithic erotica a few years ago and nearly every time his name shows up in an English web site, they only want to talk about “stone age porn.”) ---
**Author:** ![Mops](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mops/32/16494_2.png) [@Mops](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mops)\ **Post date:** [June 13, 2005, 8:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ancient-civilization-discovered/307947/10 "2005-06-13T20:30:50Z")
There is [an article](http://www.spiegel.de/wissenschaft/erde/0,1518,360246,00.html) (German-language, I’m afraid) today on Spiegel Online. Summary: [ul] [li]the spokesman the Saxon State Department for Archaeology (i.e. the state agency that is responsible for the Dresden and Leipzig sites mentioned) says: it’s nothing new - everything has been known and published for some some years _[so the Independent’s “revealed today by The Independent” is at best journalistic hyperbole - tschild]_ [/li][li]what was found was essentially ditches and postholes, and any guess at the sites’ function would be baseless speculation at this point [/li][/ul] ---
**Author:** ![CalMeacham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/calmeacham/32/35_2.png) [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)\ **Post date:** [June 13, 2005, 8:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ancient-civilization-discovered/307947/11 "2005-06-13T20:37:05Z")
They’ve found The Hyborian Age!! Conan Lives! ---
**Author:** ![tomndebb](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/b9e5f3/32.png) [@tomndebb](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tomndebb)\ **Post date:** [June 14, 2005, 2:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ancient-civilization-discovered/307947/12 "2005-06-14T02:22:23Z")
> [@](#): > > Conan Lives! What? You’ve never left the TV on after Leno ended?