Lost Ice Age Civilizations...possible?

Great Debates
1

More a speculation thread than a GQ question, but I’ve been watching some shows about supposedly lost civilizations that ended when the ice age ended and melt waters caused large and dramatic sea level rise across the world. The show focuses on India, mainly, and supposedly large cities in areas that were last above the wave 8000-11,000 years ago…far before the Indus Valley civilization. The most intriguing things I saw were some structures in the south of India between Sri Lanka and the mainland in what today is straight but 10,000 years ago was on dry land and a site on the north west coast of India in 30-40 meters of water which, again, was last on dry land around the same time. AFAIK, neither site has actually been excavated or even really surveyed archeologically using ROVs (not sure why, though the show mentioned political instability in the regions), but they were talking about some artifacts that had been dredged up at the northern site with some carbon dating in the 7500 BC range. (I did some Google searching but there doesn’t seem to be much on any of this…I did find this one Wiki article on the northern site, but it’s pretty sketchy and looks to me as if 2004 was the last time anything was done there. There are also a few articles from Indian media mainly…no one else seems to be taking it very seriously, at least from a quick search that I could tell).

At any rate, I think sites like Gobekli Tepe indicate that our pre-civilization ancestors were more capable than previously speculated, and could, in fact, have had a civilization or civilizations before the ones we know of today. And those coastal regions that were on dry land before the large scale glacial melt flooded them would have been ideal for those civilizations. Places like the Black Sea or the Red Sea that, today, are underwater would have equally been ideal. Science is all about proof, however, and while I’ve seen some stuff that is tantalizing, I haven’t seen much that’s definitive.

That said, however, and for debate, isn’t this where we should be looking, and if sufficient evidence is found, would this cause the current historical model to be shifted upward for the formation of the first cities and civilization? There seems to be, and with good reason, a lot of resistance by the main stream archeological types to entertaining this sort of speculation, but there seems to already be a shake up in thinking since Gobekli Tepe was found and excavated. After all, IF those cities underwater in India turn out to be real, that would pre-date the Indus Valley civilization or the Old Kingdom in Egypt by thousands of years…and that seems to me would force a change in the current paradigm wrt history and pre-history. What do you all think? Could there have been an ice age civilization that was lost after the last glacial period when sea levels rose dramatically? If so, should we be searching for it in a systematic fashion? We know where the seas rose and where the land was, and we can project where such civilizations could or should be, if they exist, after all. If evidence was found, do you see this shifting the mainstream towards earlier civilization…and what would have to be found and how long would it take for such a shift to happen?

2

Adam’s bridge?

3

No, though that’s pretty cool as well. No, this was what they were describing as a temple site with multiple structures and a complex. It was in about 20 meters of water, supposedly last on land 7000+ years ago. I couldn’t find anything on it and the show didn’t really go into much detail, though they did dive the site and it LOOKED like man made structures. Again, though, they hinted that there was some political turmoil that was preventing them from a real archeological survey and in fact the show was only allowed limited access.

ETA: Might be this site, but not sure.

4

And we wonder why a Congressman asked a NASA scientist about lost civilizations on Mars. :rolleyes:

5

Huh? Are you saying that they are the same levels of probability? :dubious: What does one have to do with the other?

6

Dogger Bank off England was known to be inhabited.

From the Wikipedia entry;

The prehistoric existence of what is now known as Doggerland was established in the late 19th century. H. G. Wells referred to the concept in his short story A Story of the Stone Age of 1897, set in “a time when one might have walked dryshod from France (as we call it now) to England, and when a broad and sluggish Thames flowed through its marshes to meet its father Rhine, flowing through a wide and level country that is under water in these latter days, and which we know by the name of the North Sea…Fifty thousand years ago it was, fifty thousand years if the reckoning of geologists is correct”, though most of the action seems to occur in what is now Surrey and Kent, but stretching out to Doggerland.[12]

The remains of plants brought to the surface from Dogger Bank were studied in 1913 by paleobiologist Clement Reid, and the remains of animals and worked flints from the Neolithic period had also been found.[13] In his book The Antiquity of Man of 1915, anatomist Sir Arthur Keith discussed the archaeological potential of the area.[13] In 1931, the trawler Colinda hauled up a lump of peat whilst fishing near the Ower Bank, 40 kilometres (25 mi) east of Norfolk. The peat was found to contain a barbed antler point, possibly used as a harpoon or fish spear, 220 millimetres (8.5 in) long, which dated from between 4,000 and 10,000 BC when the area was tundra.[2][7]

Interest was reinvigorated in the 1990s by Professor Bryony Coles, who named the area “Doggerland” (“after the great banks in the southern North Sea”[7]) and produced speculative maps of the area.[7][14] Although she recognised that the current relief of the southern North Sea seabed is not a sound guide to the topography of Doggerland,[14] this topography has more recently begun to be reconstructed more authoritatively using seismic survey data obtained from oil exploration.[15][16][17]

A skull fragment of a Neanderthal, dated at over 40,000 years old, was recovered from material dredged from the Middeldiep, some 16 kilometres (10 mi) off the coast of Zeeland, and exhibited in Leiden in 2009.[18] In March 2010 it was reported that recognition of the potential archaeological importance of the area could affect the future development of offshore wind farms.[19]

In July 2012, the results of a fifteen-year study of Doggerland by the universities of St Andrews, Dundee, and Aberdeen, including artefacts survey results, were displayed at the Royal Society in London.[20] Richard Bates of St Andrews University said:[20]

We have speculated for years on the lost land’s existence from bones dredged by fishermen all over the North Sea, but it’s only since working with oil companies in the last few years that we have been able to re-create what this lost land looked like… We have now been able to model its flora and fauna, build up a picture of the ancient people that lived there and begin to understand some of the dramatic events that subsequently changed the land, including the sea rising and a devastating tsunami.

In September 2015, archaeologists at the University of Bradford announced their project to chart Doggerland in 3D, and to study DNA from deep sea core samples.[21][22]

7

Can you tell us which channels you’ve been watching these shows on? Was it PBS or THC, or DSC? A link would be nice, too.

Chimera: I’m not sure what you are getting at. Is there any indication that Doggerland was “inhabited” in a way that was different from the way sites not currently underwater were inhabited?

8

Well, I don’t really want it to be about the show or even the sites I named, I just want it to be about the question. That said, it was a TedX Talk that started and I followed some links.

9

It really depends on what you call a “civilization”.

Gobekli Tepe proves that a temple complex, maybe even with a town surrounding it it possible. But some kind of long-term intensive food source would be needed to sustain it, something better than hunter-gathering generally. Agriculture wasn’t available much to fill the role.

I think it also needs to be a local thing, although something interrupted by climate instability at the end of the ice age is possible.

10

So, a Graham Hancock revival, eh? I guess 90s retro is still in…

11

India’s North West coast? What North West coast?

North West of India, is…Pakistan, and last I checked I am not writing this from the Ocean floor, no matter how heavy the monsoon gets.

12

I’m assuming the north west coast of India would refer the the northernmost part of India’s western coast; essentially Gujarat.

13

Yeah unfortunately that silly little twerp seems to be having a bit of a second wind these days. I blame Joe Rogan, who frequently hosts him on his podcast.

14

According to Barry Cunliffe in Europe Between the Oceans, Great Britain didn’t become an island until 6500 BC, and Dogger Island was still about as large as Denmark in 5000 BC.

(I don’t know if Cunliffe is considered an authority on such matters, but wanted to plug his book — a good readable summary of prehistoric Europe. :))

15

You mean the Raan of Kutch, divided between India and Pakistan… its mostly salt flats and marshlands.

I would place little credence on theroies like that. Indian scientific community has an unfortuinate strain of Hinduvata streaming through it*, and “discovering” a hitehrto unkown advanced ancient Hindu civilisation is a big thing in such circles.

*Not all or most. But some very prominient members have articulated such beliefs.

16

Are you talking about the cite I used above? That was just a random Google hit that seemed to be for the site I was watching. I did see that whoever Graham Hancock is he also has a video on this on YouTube but it’s really poor quality. Who is he and what’s his deal? Is he a woo guy or CTer?

17

It was actually out in the Gulf of Khambhat which is in North West India. Not sure what that was confusing, or why you thought that North West India would be Pakistan. But, as I said, it’s not really about the specific claims, more a general question about the possibility of an ice age civilization or civilizations lost when the glaciers started to melt and sea levels rose dramatically.

18

Northwest of India is Pakistan. I guess you could call it a nit pick, but any ocean on the west of India is central west or south.

19

It’s a nit pick…pretty obviously Pakistan isn’t in India (anymore), and if one is talking the west coast of a country there is going to be a south and a north relative to that coast. This bay I mentioned is pretty obvious in the north coastal region of the west coast of India. But, fine…central India then.

20

No, I’m talking about the idea of lost Ice Age civilisations

He’s a guy who thinks the Pyramids & the Sphinx at Giza, the Gate of the Sun at Tiahuanaco, and a lot of other artefacts worldwide are the product of, or influenced by, a lost advanced civilisation subsequently covered by ice.

So yeah, a woo guy.