The dawn of civilization

Great Debates
1

This though came to me while watching The Two Towers last night, during a battle scene including what looked very much like prehistoric mammoths. Somewhere in my long years of Tolkien geekhood, I read that the author imagined his epic as having taken place on Earth many thousands of years ago. Modern humans have been living on earth, some now say, for over 50,000 years. Yet it seems to have taken us about 40,000 of those years to develop settled ways of life, and a few thousand more to develop cities. In all protohistoric archaeology, there seems to be a limit of five, or possibly six, thousand years ago which will not be penetrated, and city life seems to have arisen at about the same time in all the earliest civilizations–about 5000 years ago. Look at the record of accepted launch dates around the world:

Sumer - About 3500 BCE.
Egypt - About 3200 BCE.
China - About 1500 BCE documented, but poss. to 2500BCE
Indus Valley - About 2500 BCE
South Amer. - About 2000 BCE acc. to finds from last couple of years.

So why have no remains of cities been found that are, say 9000 years old? If humans have been anatomically modern for so long, why were there no civilizations except for the past 10% or so of the history of Homo Sapiens. Any suggestions of earlier civilizations usually turn out to be crackpot nonsense.

I’m beginning to think that one of our commonly accepted notions must be wrong. Could we have been “modern” humans for far less time than we believe (I have to say here that I believe emphatically in evolution)? Or are there 10 000 and 15 000 old cities buried in the sand somewhere waiting to be discovered?

2

As you say, it takes millenia to develop “settlement” since this involves finding, choosing and breeding plant and animal species that are “worth” casting aside the hunter-gatherer lifestyle for. I would recommend “Guns, Germs & Steel” by Jared Diamond as an excellent primer on the dawn of civilisation.

3

Your choice of materials for building will impact what kind of traces are left behind.

Stone is best but you need a lot of skilled people cutting, and shaping it and enough organizational infrastructure to get people dragging it around.

Mud bricks are easier, durable and everyone can find mud and repair buildign as needed. Easier, less intiensive and more likely to wear away. That being said many mud brick building endured, but I’ll bet stone lasts longer.

4

The two points you raise (humanity evolves intelligence and human civilizations leave traces) are not the same. There probably were human cultures with spoken language and detailed social structures as far back as 9000 years ago, but they didn’t have the technology to leave lasting evidence. Large earthen structures like mounds erode away with time, as would anything made up of wood or grass. The first permanent artifacts (i.e. something we can definitely say was created by man) would be copper tools and other objects of refined metals, and the ability to create such objects didn’t come into existence until what we now call the “Neolithic Age”, circa 5700 BCE. Anything created by man prior to that would have faded away by now, with a few rare fosslized exceptions.

In Tolkein’s work, the characters run around with iron armor and swords, but the “Iron Age” didn’t start on Earth until well after 1000 BCE. Tolkein’s “Middle Earth” reflects no possible period in human history.

5

Jericho is at least 8000 years old.

6

I’ve always wondered how long our own culture would leave evidence of its existence in our absense. Suppose a virus wiped out humanity and left the buildings and cities intact. How long would it be detectable? If a new species evolved and started digging would they find our great cities in 10,000 years? 20? 50?How many years would it take NYC to fade away to the point you could never tell it was there?

I suspect there may be many great cultures and cities from the past that are forever forgotten due to the ravages of time.

DaLovin’ Dj

7

Reminds me of Ozymandias.

8

Possible, but unlikely.

9

IANA geologist or archaeologist, but I’d guess that it wouldn’t take long, fewer than a thousand years, for nature to reclaim a city. I don’t think most modern buildings are designed to last without periodic maintenance. However, we’ve already left traces that no earlier civilization has. Some of the stuff we’ve shot into orbit will still be up there for a long time, and I’d bet there will be places where you can say “There was an ancient fission waste disposal site here. Run!” :smiley:

10

**

Some people think that there is evidence that that Sphinx in Egypt is much older then commonly believed. They cite patterns of wear similiar to that caused by waves from lakes or rivers. These people shouldn’t be confused with those who think aliens or Atlantians built the Sphinx.

Back around 1995 a diver supposedly discovered ancient underwater structures off the coast of Okinawa. Type in “Okinawa Underwater Ruins” into a search engine and you’ll get all sorts of responses. If these are ruins they’d be pretty darn old.

I’m willing to entertain the possibility that some of these structers are older then we think they are. You have to sift through a lot of crap. People who believe that aliens visited Egypt or that Atlantian refugees were responsible for Incan/Mayan civilization.

Marc

11

I read an interesting article recently (I forget which science magazine - maybe Discover or SciAm) that discussed the challenges with creating nuclear waste disposal sites that are clealy labled. So we stick this stuff in a hole and it take 10,000 thousand years or more to become non-hazardous. A real problem is that language will undoubetedly change in that time. Disasters could strike and humans, or another species, could regroup and come back with no real knowledge of previous events. The dillema was how do you make a sign that says “This hole will kill you - stay out!” that will be understood even if English has been eliminated.

It was an interesting article focusing on the artwork required to relate certain doom. They had some interesting designs people had come up with. A modern day radioactive sign wasn’t too scary they decided. Hmmm, let me do a google search . . .

Bingo!

I like the challenge, even if the topic is a little depressing. How do you communicate with people who speak a language you’ve never heard? SETI has some interesting ideas, mostly based in math and the periodic table. No easy task, but the kids over at the DOE are giving it their damndest anyway.

DaLovin’ Dj

12

Nope its considered the worlds oldest city 'cause it is dated at least 8000BCE Mind you I am a little bit wary of this since the city sells itself quite strongly as a tourist attraction using this as a theme, too much money in it methinks for things to be objective enough for my taste.

There are always up and coming candidates though, Damascus is thought in that age range, Hamoukar is not too far off, nor is Ephesus.

There are older settlements such as Cayono in Turkey where there is evidence of copper vessel making, it would depend on what you define as a city I guess, up to 5000 people may have lived there at one time, but not really solid enough to make it a true call.

Maybe the most interesting and speculative possibility is that somewhere on an ancient shoreline in the Black Sea, 110metres below the current surface there might be something far far older.
The flood of the Black Sea is reckoned to be around 7500years ago, and is thought to be a possible candidate for the story behind the Gilgamesh flood and the Noah flood.
Consider that cities around the Black sea have definately been dated around 7000BCE, makes you think eh?

Trying to go back much further than say 10k BCE might prove difficult as this was around the time of the last ice-age, in fact that last ice-age might even have been driving force behind continual settlement.

Something of interest for you,

http://www.ananova.com/news/story/sm_348777.html?menu=news.scienceanddiscovery.archaeology

http://www.ananova.com/news/story/sm_405766.html?menu=news.scienceanddiscovery.archaeology

So it would seem that there was farming in some places long before you imagined Javaman and other settlements that are even older.

One thing to bear in mind is that ‘civilisation’ might have started and failed more than once, our ‘upward’ progress could well not have been relentlessly in one direction only so you might well get some agricultural settlements that predate fishing/hunter type communities.

13

However, his connection (derived from his correspndence more than his works) is to the legend of Atlantis–which, as far as I have ever read, he recognized as legend. (Certainly, nothing in his work suggests that he expected to find the remains of Aman the Blessed or its inhabitants in North America.)

While this may be possible, I suspect that we have enough archaelogical evidence of the development of cultivars to preclude this as, in any way, likely.

We know the wild cereals and pulses and roots that gave rise to agriculture as we know it. We also have a fairly clear record that indicates that once agriculture established itself, the farmers were usually pretty swift in establishing domain (or, at least hegemony) over neighboring societies. While nothing prohibits a society from falling backward, had any society prior to 8000 B.C.E. actually made it to the point of civilzation, and then retreated, I would expect that their cereals, pulses, roots, etc. would have had some impact on the wild plants in the region. There are, indeed, “feral” plants (to borrow a word from the animal kingdom), but none of the founder crops in any civilization that I know of show signs of having a feral origin–or even a feral relative. I will not claim that it is physically impossible for there to have been pre-historic societies that were entirely lost, but the indications (to me) are that the possibilities are vanishingly small.

14

Before the neolithic period (i.e. before farming) the hunter-gatherer existance of people pretty much excluded the possibility of a settled existance. Farming requires a settled existance and in many cases (but by no means all) city building soon followed.

However, there are a few exceptions. Some settlements of great antiquity (from the mesolithic period) are known. Not substantial enough to be called cities, these settlements are generally fishing villages.

There are a very small number of larger mesolithic settlements based on the extraction and processing of obsidian and presumably sustained by trade. These settlements have sometimes been called cities although town might be more accurate. The size of these settlements must have been limited by the productivity of the hunter-gatherers that fed them.

As for what Tolkien was trying to do, I belive it is clear from some of his letters that what he had in mind was some sort of pre-mythology for Europe (more specifically for England). As such, he would not have considerd the stories to be any more true than the legend of Atlantis or the Nordic sagas. The technological state of the people of middle earth was not as important as consistency with later myths - for this reason it has to be the case that the elves leave middle earth leaving men, dwarfs and a few dragons (Smaug was not the last) to survive into the forth age.

15

This hasn’t been mentioned yet, but the last ice age only ended about ten thousand years ago. So it makes sense, then, that the earliest hints of agriculture and civilization would start cropping up (no pun intended) at about that time.

16

Diogenes

So vot am I? chopped liver?

17

Oops, sorry, casdave. That’s what I get for skimming the thread. :smack:
FWIW I think your post is very interesting and informative. I guess I just missed the bit at the end.