Human civilizations before the last ice-age?

Factual Questions
1

I’m certain this one’s been done before and my search-foo is weak. But I just watched a couple episodes of “Life After People” (I could only get through a couple–it’s fascinating and boring as shit at the same time, somehow) and got to thinking 'bout stuff. Basically, it looks like if humans went feral, all our buildings and artifacts would turn into a combination of iron oxide deposits and dust over the course of a couple thousand years of weathering.

Now Humans have been humans for like 300,000 years, by all accounts capable the entire time of coming up with neat stuff like agriculture, which caught on big-time only about 10,000 years ago leading ultimately to, well, all the neat stuff we have today.

Now, for me, it kind of strains credulity to believe we have only done this once. That for 290,000 years NOBODY figured out planting seeds and hanging around to see what happens next. So the next step in this question is, given the power of weathering to reduce evidence of us to various kinds of dirt in a few millenia, combined with the annihilating grinding power of a continental ice sheet, is it really reasonable to believe nothing like us has has ever graced the planet before just because we’re not finding 175,000 year old car parts? Evidence to the contrary having been wiped out by time & nature? Or do we base the assumption of our uniqueness on the presence of 200,000 year old pottery shards in caves someplace, which would somehow not be there if human civilization rose and fell three times since?

2

1> The necessary resources for our civilization were still there. All the easily mined metals all over the world, just for starters.
2> No diaspora of plant species. Right now species from all over the globe are being transplanted everywhere else on the globe. The fact that this clearly did not happen pre-modern era tends to disprove any ideas of a pre-historic world civilization.

Did regional civilizations fall and rise in that time period? Perhaps. Perhaps the evidence has been swallowed up or destroyed by later groups of humans. But there really isn’t sufficient evidence for us to say it happened.

3

Based on archaeological evidence, while H. erectus spread through Eurasia earlier, H sapiens certainly hadn’t wandered outside of Africa more than 100k years ago, much less 300k years ago. So, that’s one knock on the theory.

Also, while some individual products of advance civilization tend to decay quickly, not all do, nor do the footprints of cities.

For one, any manufactured glass is going to be around for hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of years, especially if buried in the rubble of decayed cities. There’s never been any sign of it.

The footprint of cities will also be around. They tend to be built in places near sources of water and other resources. And at least older cities tend to get buried under their own garbage and accumulating dust. That’s especially true for cities built of stone, but even our modern cities would leave bits of concrete, metal, glass, etc that won’t all decay, especially as it gets buried under rubble, which protects stone and such from weathering.

It doesn’t all weather away, especially if buried (how else do you explain how we’ve unearthed ancient cities?). Worse, we build in geometric patterns. A bunch of weathered rock built on a grid or in concentric circles would get spotted eventually.

Also, metal ‘deposits’ that are found in a layer of sediment are suspicious on their own. Makes no geologic sense to be found there unless they were placed. We have a pretty good grasp on how metal winds up in certain places, and decayed metal around weathered concrete pops up pretty quickly.

As does concrete itself, for that matter. A bunch of concrete dust doesn’t look like regular sediment and doesn’t age or metamorphose the same, either. It would stand out to any modern geologist.

ETA: I suppose it’s possible for very, very low levels of technology. But any resembling the modern day is ridiculously unlikely. At the very least, ice core samples show no increase in the atmospheric products we associate with modern technology. Also, the easy metal deposits were sitting there not too long ago. The notion they are the decayed remnants of older civilizations doesn’t make geologic (or metallurgical) sense.

4

I’ve always wondered about this bit. Not so much regarding lost civilizations, but why didn’t humans do certain things earlier?

We have to assume that a homo sapiens of 300,000 years ago was just as intelligent and creative as we are today. That we can only trace back such fundamental building blocks of civilization as agriculture and animal husbandry to such a relatively recent date just astounds me.

Where would we be today if civilization had started 100 millennia ago instead of 10?

5

Consider that the continental ice sheets did not cover the entire globe - the world was not encased in ice during the last ice age. The polar ice caps were more extensive, but there was still plenty of land around the equator that was ice-free. Evidence for pre-ice-age civlizations would presumably have survived in that zone, but since there is no evidence found yet, we assume there were no pre-ice age civilizations.

Also, look at the situation where agriculture DID develop - the Fertile Crescent. It had the right combination of the right available plants, climate, and people (who had arrived post-ice-age). Humanknd existed on a hunter-gatherer lifestyle for all those hundreds of thousands of years prior (a way of life that is quickly going extinct).

6

Colin Renfrew calls this the ‘sapient paradox’.

see
http://antiquity.ac.uk/reviews/lewis-williams.html

7

Thanks for the answers so far–the many millenia of us doing absolutely nothing has always struck me as implausible. And then I look at certain members of my family and I can totally see it.

I have a theory that I’m not willing to put much effort into proving. The book “Wheat Belly” advances a connection to, or at least an exacerbation of, schizophrenia and wheat. Suppose cultivated grains “disturbed” homo sapiens enough so that they were just, well, incontent all the time. Not totally bananas, but abnormally irritable, dissatisfied, and just clever enough to work out solutions to current problems that inevitably lead to new, more aggravating ones that require even more innovation to resolve. But that’s just an idea, and I wouldn’t be willing to preach it. :slight_smile:

8

There is at least one good example of a human civilization being much more advanced than previously believed thousands of years of before that was believed possible until rather recently. Gobekli Tepe is an ancient temple in Turkey believed to be about 11,000 years old (6,000 years older than Stonehenge) yet it is gigantic and consists of elaborate artwork and construction techniques that were done by people that supposedly hadn’t even invented metal tools or pottery yet. It is also believed to have been intentionally buried for unknown reasons which is why it is in such relatively good shape after excavation.

Gobekli Tepe is a fascinating archaeological site and no one can fully explain it. The artwork in particular is really eye-opening because it shows not only a great deal of intricate artistic skill but also animals that only lived in that area before the last ice-age ended (look at the photo slideshow in the link above to see those). There are some great documentaries on the site as well and its authenticity is completely accepted as far I know even if it does deal a serious blow to theories about how human civilizations naturally progress.

9

Of course, that assumes the previous civilization used materials in the same way that we do.

What signs would a more-leisurely civilization based on, for example, plant-breeding and tree-shaping leave?

10

You might also be interested in those things known as Out of Place Artifacts. Those are things that are found where they shouldn’t be or date from a time when they shouldn’t have existed. There is a whole bunch of general kookery associated with them in general but at least one is believed to be real.

The Antikythera mechanism is a functioning analog computer from Greece in the 1st century BC. Researchers have reconstructed its mechanism and found out that it is an extremely complicated astronomical calculator. People didn’t build anything like it again for about 1900 years. The Greeks also invented a crude steam engine and probably could have made a better one that did real work if they had a pressing need for it. Ancient Roman technology was impressive many ways as well and head-scratchingly deficient in some areas that seem more obvious like better riding tackle for horses.

I know those examples aren’t pre-ice age but they do show how different technologies can spring up and then become lost again almost at random if their isn’t enough continuity to support it.

11

We’ve actually had a couple of debates on this subject in the past, especially about the show mentioned in the OP. Personally, I think that Life After Humans has some flaws in how they constantly claim all traces of civilization would be gone so quickly.

Well, leaving aside the fact that H.H. didn’t leave Africa until, IIRC, around 100k years, it sort of cuts into the time line. But I think the real answer was basically that the climate wasn’t stable long enough for humans to develop agriculture AND spread the development beyond perhaps an isolated community or village. That, to me, is the key. I wouldn’t be surprised if groups of humans DID develop rudimentary agriculture before we knew about it. Hell, they might have even existed proto-civilizations. There isn’t any evidence of that, but it’s not that hard to picture. But if those proto-civilizations died out or were wrecked by shifts in climate or other natural (or human wrought) disasters, we’d never know unless they built some sort of monumental stone architecture that could last…or, if by chance the structures were preserved like those in Pompeii. A global civilization such as what we have today, the odds are (IMHO) pretty good that something would be preserved. Maybe a city like New Orleans would be buried under mud, or a city in one of the deserts. But with human populations so low over the time period we are talking about, it would be tremendously lucky if anything at all was preserved and could be found today.

If there was a global civilization such as we have today that was suddenly wiped out, I have no doubts you’d find something…even car parts would be possible (or the impressions of car parts, similar to the impressions of foot prints we sometimes see from dinosaurs…or even very early humans and proto-human species). Even if you didn’t find that, however, what we WOULD see is the systematic exploitation…mines and such, and concentrations of minerals and alloys that don’t make any sense and wouldn’t occur naturally. We don’t see that though. Nothing remotely like that.

You have to go based on what has been found…and nothing like any sort of advanced (even ‘advanced’ like the early river valley civilizations) has ever been found. Like I said, I wouldn’t be surprised if one day some very early proto-civilization is found…perhaps even something like the early city states in Mesopotamia or India…it’s a possibility. But I think we ARE unique…and convergence of stable climate and growing human population came together to allow for the growth and expansion of human civilization. Not exactly a GQ answer though, but I don’t think one is really possible except the un-fun one that’s already been given. :slight_smile:

12

Was going to add, wrt the 100k time table thing, that IIRC around 60k years ago human population also contracted severely, and we almost went extinct as a species. Again, from memory, our population dropped to a few thousand, and it took a long time for us to start the long process of expanding out from Africa again and spreading out. Until you get a stable and wide spread human population, there is no real advantage to early humans in agriculture that couldn’t be met by basic hunting and gathering.

(sorry for the multiple posts, just composing this on my iPad while I wait for a flight)

13

No, only 200 000 years, if by human you mean anatomically-modern Homo sapiens

Again nope - we have only been behaviourally modern for 50 000 years in general (earlier in Southern Africa).

14

See above for why this isn’t universally considered the case.

15

Yes, but there is still no consensus as to whether the “behaviorally modern” folk were genetically different or just culturally different from their “non-behaviorally modern” ancestors who were, nonetheless. “physically modern”.

If the former, then we simply say they didn’t have the brainpower. If the latter, then it was just a matter of accumulating enough cultural knowledge, and we don’t really know why it took so long, and why it seemed to have happened at roughly the same time in different places around the world (especially new vs old world).

16

Africa’s a reasonably big place with plenty of arable land. It’s a good point that we haven’t found advanced machinery, metals and artifacts of super ancient origin, but really that stuff would be fairly deeply buried under, oh, 50,000 years of dust and detritus. We’ve done a lot of digging and poking around in Europe, North America & Asia where such things wouldn’t be found because we weren’t there. How deeply have we tilled & examined Africa? (I really don’t know much about Africa apart from some ancient West African civs that accompany our current place in time). Another thing that blows my mind–it took us 200,000 years to find the Sinai exit? Surely there was some time in history during which you wouldn’t get to Egypt/Sinai and say, “Nope, ain’t no getting across that…”

Maybe I’m looking at this all wrong. I’m assuming that, since we today are curious about what’s under & over the next hill, we were always that way. But looking back, it’s usually the oddball who does the exploring, inventing, and moving out to establish the next village. Maybe we’re more naturally sedentary and incurious as a species than I imagine?

17

Africa, being the “cradle of mankind” has been the subject of intense archeological research for almost a century. I don’t think we’ve missed some ancient civilization for lack of looking.

18

In some places, pretty well. It is, after all, where we find the remains of our ancestor species, A. afarensis and such.

And geologically, it still doesn’t make sense. Even if we haven’t completely tilled the continent, we have found a good many of the natural mineral deposits, with no signs they’ve been disturbed.

I guess we can posit the existence of an advanced plant-technology based civilization, but unless we human beings have changed more drastically psychologically and mentally than seems possible, it seems unlikely and more science fiction than plausible.

And we were. You’re conflating individual exploration with mass settlement.

How long did it take any humans to even spread over all the earth? Nobody lived on Hawaii until somewhere around 500AD. It’s certain many people died aimlessly wandering about the Pacific until every major island chain was settled.

Even with guns, horses, the wheel, and ocean going vessels, how long did it take modern Europeans to spread throughout North America? Individual Europeans certainly explored deeply, but it was only after decades or centuries of initial exploration that permanent settlement occurred.

It’s easy for Joe Bob Explorer to wander the world. It’s much harder and time-consuming for entire families, clans, and villages to decide to up and move stakes to some unknown place, especially if they have a steady food supply and aren’t guaranteed food or water in a new place.

19

Not really - vast swathes of Central, West and North Africa have never had that kind of attention paid to it, mostly being under jungle and desert. Only the Rift Valley and some sites in Southern Africa have received anything remotely approaching the kind of study that’s been put into Iron Age European or Near east Bronze Age archaeology. There’s a lot still to find.

Also, there’s a lack of local funding for African archaeology, so it’s whatever grabs the outside donors. Currently, that seems to be hominid and early human studies, not early civilizations.

Look at how often the people in those “race realist” threads on these boards don’t know/refuse to believe that some African civilizations independently developed agriculture and iron and steel working.

I’m not saying I personally think there’s some lost civilization, just that we haven’t looked everywhere in Africa.

20

What surprises me is that it took that long - tens of thousands of years from OOA (out of Africa) to agricultural civilization, about 10,000BC. Yet when the American Indians travelled to the new world, they not only began raising crops. It’s something you would think was lost if the SIberian nomads ever even had itover dozens of generations spreading out from Kamchatka to Alaska and south in an icy hunting-only enironment. Then they did it long enough to develop corn, and turned that into a rock-construction civilization in two disparate regions that had very little contact with each other.

Assuming we believe the most logical and plausibel time-line, it took about 10,000 yeas or less (4,000 years ago?) to get to agricultural.

The inference I get is that mental development was probably still happening until 10,000BC.?

The aborigines of Australia presumably arrived there about 45,000BC and yet they did nothing, in terms of agriculture. This I have read was due to poor selection of “starter plants” to grow crops from, to develop into productive staple crops. I assume they well undertood the process of bury-seed-get-plant-eat-plant?

One item (IIRC, Jared Diamond’s Guns, Germs and Steel?) mentions that the fortituous mutation of wheat in the Mesopotamia area - unlike other grains, it would loose its seeds so it could be harvested in bulk with threshing. Perhaps the “aha” moment was finding that instead of stripping stalks tediously one at a time, suddenly they found this different grass where a big handfull could be shaken into a bowl in a to collect ten times the food in a tenth the time. Was this the change that made agriculture suddenly more productive, and so more attractive than hunter-gather work?