Well, if these civilizations only went as far as some stone-based construction or organized agriculture… okay. Has anything showing actual technology popped up unexpectedly from under the glaciers, like smelted bronze tools?
[QUOTE=MrDibble]
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.
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Oh…well, yeah, that’s crazy. I was talking about possible civilizations or maybe proto-civilizations in coastal regions when the ice was melting and seas were rising. Possibly with actual archeological evidence that still could be found in 20-30 meters of water in what was coastal dry land 8000-11000 years ago. It seems to me to be possible, and that this would be a great place to focus exploration on, especially in places like India or the Black Sea or coastal Europe where we know humans were at and COULD have had relatively advanced civilizations that would have been wiped out pretty rapidly as the seas rose. The Black Sea is especially intriguing since we know that there was a smaller fresh water lake there before an ice dam burst and flooded the entire region.
I wouldn’t expect anything like that. Nor anything under the ice. These would have been late stone age cultures. The folks who built Gobekli Tepe didn’t have bronze tools, but they showed a pretty advanced ability to work stone that was much more advanced than previously thought. My thought there, though, is that the only reason we have it to look at is that, for reasons unknown, the builders and users of the temple decided to bury it. I think if it had been left exposed it would have been destroyed for materials long ago. Cities or large towns that may have existed in coastal regions before the ice started to melt could potentially be there to be found as well for the same reason…they were drowned by 20-30 meters of sea and forgotten.
“Know, O prince, that between the years when the oceans drank Atlantis and the gleaming cities, and the rise of the sons of Aryas, there was an Age undreamed of, when shining kingdoms lay spread across the world like blue mantles beneath the stars. Hither came Conan, the Cimmerian, black-haired, sullen-eyed, sword in hand, a thief, a reaver, a slayer, with gigantic melancholies and gigantic mirth, to tread the jeweled thrones of the Earth under his sandaled feet.”
I would agree with you on that one. Especially since it happened around the time of the spread of agriculture. There is some speculation that it actually originated in the Black Sea basin, not the fertile crescent. The spread of agriculture might even be caused by people migrating from the basin, as it started to fill up.
That might be the case - if there wasn’t clear continuity from the Natufian to the PPNA with no sign of any significant cultural imports.
No.
And to be clear, none of the ‘stone-based constructions’ found under the water have been shown to be artificial in nature, at least none so far.
Yes, there were certainly cultures which occupied the lands which are now under the sea, such as Doggerland and the Black Sea basin; but there almost certainly were no civilisations. Why would these civilisations confine themselves to the seashore, and leave no trace inland?
Well, what I’d say is that based on Stonehenge, any large stone structures on land and in relatively ideal locations would have been raided for materials long ago. We have only found some of the more interesting aspects of Stonehenge because we knew where to look, basically. We are talking about 11k years ago…or 8k at the low end. Assuming the proto-civilizations were wiped out by rapidly rising seas their culture might have just collapsed.
Possibly this is all fantasy, but just because we haven’t found anything yet (not sure how hard we’ve actually searched…I know the Black Sea has only recently begun to be explored, and already finding intact ships from the Byzantine era down there) doesn’t mean this will remain the case. After all, when I was in college, professors in history told me confidently that we would never find a supposedly pre-civilization temple like Gobekli Tepe 11k years old, yet the date for when humans built monumental architecture keeps getting pushed back as new discoveries are made.
Byzantine ships might as well be from last Thursday compared to pre-ice age civilization.
That may have been true in the early days of archaeology in the UK, but it’s not true today. Geophysical surveys are finding large numbers of ancient sites all over Britain which are otherwise invisible, and none of them go back to 11kyBP.
True, but that’s not the point…the point is that we have only just discovered them, and this isn’t even at the lower depths that would entail searching for something that might be from the ice age/pre-ice dam flop period. By some estimates there should be 100’s of thousands of ships down there, and based on the condition of some that have been found they will still be there…yet we’ve thus far found a handful. THAT is the point.
But some of them go back to 8000 years or older, and new sites are found all the time. True, we aren’t talking about huge stone cities, but they have found settlements going back that far. But this is in Britain…not the Middle East or India, which have had much higher concentrations of human habitation for longer, as well as much higher level of civilizations that we know about.
I’m not very familiar with the Indus Valley cultures. I’ll say that upfront. Also apologies for my worse than usual typing. This keyboard is possessed.
I think that most archeologists and historians would agree (in so far as they ever agree, about anything, ever) that the designation of what is a “civilisation” is a fairly circular exercise. Most scholars would not hesitate to assign a great deal of cultural sophistication to what was going on in Gobekli Tepe, even if their tool kit didn’t necessarily included permanent settlements.
Just so we’re clear - we already know quite a lot about quite a number of pre-historic cultures. (The designation of pre-historic and historic is only a matter whether there are written histories of a people. Written by themselves, I mean.)
For example, Jericho is a site that’s every bit as old Gobekli Tepe.
That particular spot was popular with a group called the Natufians. Their culture was a semi-nomadic group of a distinctive archeological tools. We know about the Natufian, distinct from their ancestors, the Kebaran and their contemporaries, the Mushabian. These are all Mesolithic or epipaleolithic groups, right on the cusp of turning into the neolithic, which ran from about 5000 bce to 2500 bce (give or take).
The Natufian have some of the oldest evidence for cultivating rye, although they were predominently hunter -gatherers. They also have some of the oldest burials of people with dogs although dog domestication started much earlier). Their grave goods include material objects thta represent trade across the Levant. They seem to have had a shamanistic religion, judging by some of the artifacts found.
Initially they lived in semi-subterranean roundhouses, probably with thatched roofs. They created the first permanent structure at Jericho (not quite where the modern city is) around 9500 bce. It’s suggested that perhaps they moved into a more settled agricultural life because of the dry period following the ice age (the Younger Dryas Event). The first walls and towers went up at Jericho around 7000 bce.
All of this is fairly old news, archeologically speaking. Historians and archeologists would be delighted to learn about a lost culture but it wouldn’t really overthrow our understanding of human development. It would inevitably lead to endless academic arguments about where it all fits in, but there’s already loads of scholarship to support the idea that per-historic civilizations were numerous and quite sophisticated.
I think if archeologists and historians are resistant to the idea of a Lost Civilization, it’s because they’re aware of just how chockful of civilization the world was, back before the classical artifacts of civilization arrived.
Theoretically? Sure. But given what we know about the numerous pre-historic civilisations - it would be very unlikely that a lost civilisation exists that had left no contribution to the surrounding civilisations. The Mesolithic was a happening place.
If it was up to me, I’d give you all the funding and grad students you could want for this project.
But part of working systematically, in an archeological sense, is to work from the known to the unknown. Even if you know where the pre-ice age shoreline is, you’re better of starting with known sites and attempting to work backwards, rather than just picking a spot on the old shore and jumping in.
Links to terms for future reading:
Natufians
Jericho
Gobeki Tepli
The Epipaleolithic
The Mesolithic (good list of oworld-wide cultures)
The Neolithic (there’s a lot of overlap, here)
The Egyptian Early Dynastic Period - something I do know about. Egypt is not at all the same sort of early transitional civ like the Natufians or Gobeki Tepe. It’s a refinement after civilisation is well under way.
Mesopotamia (Sir Not-Appearing-in-this-post, but classically considered the earliest “civilisation”.)
Merneith…that’s for the good post and for taking the question seriously. 
[QUOTE=Merneith]
Theoretically? Sure. But given what we know about the numerous pre-historic civilisations - it would be very unlikely that a lost civilisation exists that had left no contribution to the surrounding civilisations. The Mesolithic was a happening place.
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Well, as you say later, it’s possible that earlier and now lost proto-civilizations DID contribute to later, follow on civilizations. It’s possible that, if they actually existed, the cities discovered off the coast of India and the proto-civilization that was evolving there directly impacted the later Harappa civilization. As for a possible Black Sea proto-civilization, well…that one might have been wiped out root and branch if the ice dam flood happened rapidly enough, depending on where it was located. Though, again, they might have impacted later follow on groups.
I just think it’s interesting that 11k years ago the sea levels were low enough that large swaths of land were exposed, and some of it is really prime habitation areas. When you look at some of the really old sites like Gobeki Tepli you wonder what else might be out there. After all, if our ancestors could build such a temple complex over such a time period starting 11,000 years ago, what else might they have built? Or what might another such group who lived where, today, there is 20-30 meters of ocean, what might they have built in the past?
Graham Hancock and his two books (“Fingerprints of the Gods”, and “Magicians of the Gods”) is my guilty pleasure. While he does seem to let his enthusiasm and imagination run loose, at least he doesn’t attribute mankind’s rise (or the building of architectural wonders like the Pyramids) to ancient aliens.
IIRC, according to modern estimates, anatomically modern homo-sapiens have been around 200,000 years. It tickles my fancy to suspect that there is a lot of “history” lost to us. (Conan and the Age of Hyborea, indeed. )
Here is another large, and fairly old, megalithic site: Gunung Padang - Wikipedia
Well, after MrDibble brought him up (hadn’t heard of him before) I did a search on YouTube and found this video (it’s really long and poor quality…looks like it was copied from a TV show or something) which actually has the northern site I was talking about in it. Based on what MrDibble was saying, though, that doesn’t seem to be a good thing, as according to him Hancock is a bit of a woo guy. But figured I’d link to it for you if you are interested…I watched it and it’s interesting, though it does have a bit of a wide eyed feeling to it. I’m also curious if the claims are true why further exploration hasn’t happened. In the northern site, they are saying that using dredging they have uncovered a number of humans made artifacts that have been dated to 8000+ years old. That alone seems like it would justify a further expedition, which makes it a bit fishy that one hasn’t happened as far as I can find out.
I haven’t watched the part 2 of this series or whatever it is since it goes into Yonaguni Monument which I’m pretty sure has been definitively shown to be a natural formation, though honestly, I haven’t looked into it in years (there was actually a debate on this, possibly started by me though I can’t recall, years ago).
I can’t answer for MrDibble, and I am unsure exactly what he classifies as “woo”. (That is: some, or all, of Hancock’s claims?)
As far as “why hasn’t these things been looked in to further?”, Hancock tries to explain a little bit of that in his books, and there are multiple possible reasons:
- Funding is hard to get for projects that don’t fit the currently accepted views of the experts in a particular field, whether it is medicine, archeology, physics, or whatever. Money is finite, and the people who decide what projects get supported want to spend it on the projects that have the best chance for tangible results.
This may have a secondary effect of rewarding theories and people who think along “acceptable” lines, and discourages those who “think outside the box”.
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Nationalism & politics can rear it’s ugly head. For various reasons, national governments won’t support the study of stuff that they aren’t interested in, even if funds are available, (remember when the Taliban, while in control in Afghanistan, destroyed ancient buddist statues?), and don’t give permission for digs on sites purely for the “sake of science”.
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Professional pride. Speculative, sure. But it’s possible, since scientists are people too, that they may not like to help anyone prove these accepted histories wrong, thus possibly making (possibly decades of) their hard work appear to be somehow “lessened” or “misguided and off target” in some way.
Hancock expresses a (layman’s ?) frustration with archeologists and historians who refuse to consider the possibility of yet undiscovered civilizations, based on (what appears to him) any or all of the above reasons, and gives anecdotes in his books of his dealings with the various different personalities, philosophies, and circumstances he encounters around the globe.
I would like to say that it’s only fair to point out that he is still apparently still given access to many sites (some of which are active digs), and a few hours of the time of these very people who frustrate him. I consider him a lucky man, that he gets to indulge in his (I assume expensive) passion and interest in ancient history.
The coasts have always been the best place to live. Hunter gatherers find it an easy place to find food. It’s a good place for trade, boats being faster and more capacious than the beast or burden which hadn’t even been domesticated in the ice age.
So I’m sure most sites of human habitation at that time will now be underwater. Cultures are known from that time, from Doggerland and so on.
Probably not civilisations, though. Stone buildings, possibly. Agriculture, maybe in the very early stages in some very limited areas. Possibly also very early pottery, working of gold or copper, a remote possibility. Almost certainly connections to some longrange trade networks by land and/or sea. Does that make a civilisation? Probably no cities. No states. No kings.
But I think OP might be more interested in diffusionism. The idea that civilisations didn’t develop in isolation but in connection with each other, or in the more extreme versions that all civilisations derive from a common ancestor, frequently Atlantis or aliens but sometimes a more down-to-earth civilisation lost in the Ice Age. Many of the less extreme diffusionists - Thor Heyerdahl, Barry Fell &c. - are really rather interesting. Thought provoking, and meritorious even if wrong.
Hancock is wrong about almost everything he says.
Yes, the questions he raises are worth considering- but they have been considered in depth by the very archaeologists he despises. What he doesn’t seem to realise (although I’m sure that privately he knows very well) is that archaeologists do not form some kind of international clique, trying to repress knowledge of ancient civilisations. Rather, they are all continually striving to prove each other wrong. Archaeologists love nothing better than a good old paradigm shift. This has been provided by Göbekli Tepe, Nevalı Çori and Çatalhöyük, and there may be sites of comparable worth on the sunken seashore.
But the megalithic underwater sites beloved of the ‘Ancient Lost Civilization’ crowd are all natural features, unfortunately.
When* I *look at Göbekli Tepe, I note that it’s 200km from the *current *coast and the on-site evidence seems to indicate a thoroughly terrestrial HG culture - local land animals feature on both the menu and the symbology, so I don’t see any coastal influence at all.