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It up in Switzerland. There's a photo of it on Breaking news on Fox news on the internet.
What I am pondering is -- if we are digging up everything (sort of) ancient so that if other, even more ancient but sophisticated civilizations could have excavated the older stuff their civilizations were built on - ????
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While I was on vacation this last week, I picked up a book, At Home: A Short History of Private Life, by Bill Bryson. Excellent, informative book, with lots of information wholly new to me---I'll recommend it to everybody.
Early on, there's a discussion of some Stone Age houses found at a place on the Orkneyn Islands called Skara Brae. Remarkably sophisticated houses, too, by all accounts. Locking doors, plumbing, plenty of headroom, built-in stone dressers, water tanks.
I think our distant ancestors were more sophisticated than our more immediate ancestors gave them credit for.
Here's a link to the Fox News story arriki mentions:
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That's neat. Great story fodder too. What's on the other side of the 5000 year old door?! Demons? Aliens? Dinosaurs!?
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What I'm wondering is -- have past civilizations picked up and admired the stuff earlier than them so that the record of earlier civilizations is effectively erased?
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The fact that during the Victorian era "mummy unwrapping parties" were all the rage, I'm going to go with yes, most definitely did earlier civilizations destroy the archaeological record of those who came before them.
[This message has been edited by redux (edited October 20, 2010).]
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I have often wondered myself if some ancient culture had some form of computers and had their whole civilization's information stored electronically, and then their civilization collapsed and there wasn't electricity anymore, so all of their blogs and e-books just vanished. Oh, wait, that's why I built the time machine . . .
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@Pyre - that's more or less the premise of an awesome short story called Nightfall. It's Asimov + someone else I think, and the idea was in a world with 6 suns, every 2k years, they all set simultaneously, plunging the world into complete darkness and setting the society into chaos. It was made into a novel as well, but I hear from many that the short story (or novelette or whatever, I gather it was a long short story) was better than the novel. I read the novel and thought it got over-long and I didn't care for the resolution, but that might just be me. The premise, though, was FASCINATING. Great story prompt.
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Asimov wrote the original short story, "Nightfall," all by himself, and I think it was Robert Silverberg who "collaborated" to turn it into a novel.
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Asimov plus Silverberg...but I've heard of at least two novels that used the basic premise (a world with six suns experiencing night every couple of thousand years). Not certain of the titles or writers after all this time, but one was serialized in Analog well before the Asimov / Silverberg work. (Thought the Silverberg rewrite changed the point of Asimov's version, actually.)
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I don't want to go all "ancient astronaut" on this discussion, but...on the notion that our ancestors may be more advanced than we thought, here's another link:
quote: Asimov wrote the original short story, "Nightfall," all by himself, and I think it was Robert Silverberg who "collaborated" to turn it into a novel.
I also liked the short story even though I never quite finished it for some reason. I don't think I've seen the novel.
But quite a few years ago while checking out a video store I came across a movie made from "Nightfall" . I didn't have the time to rent it and I haven't seen it since---hmmm, wonder if the iTunes store has a copy.
quote: It up in Switzerland. There's a photo of it on Breaking news on Fox news on the internet. What I am pondering is -- if we are digging up everything (sort of) ancient so that if other, even more ancient but sophisticated civilizations could have excavated the older stuff their civilizations were built on - ????
Doing these posts a bit backwards but:
That door is something else, rather sophisticated. I read recently that they think people had bread earlier than thought.
I think I've read the Romans did some excavations and maybe a couple of other civilizations did also. They were curious I would assume or were looking for better weapons.
quote: I have often wondered myself if some ancient culture had some form of computers and had their whole civilization's information stored electronically, and then their civilization collapsed and there wasn't electricity anymore, so all of their blogs and e-books just vanished. Oh, wait, that's why I built the time machine . . .
That would be Atlantis, it's a little hard to find these days. The geography of the earth has changed some. Especially after that reactor went up, I knew they would have problems with that anti-matter but they were stubborn and had grown egotistical. Of course Mu wasn't much better. They found out the hard way that it isn't easy to combine a super laser with a plasma energy cannon. Sigh, they made good wine too but that years supply-ready to be put in smaller containers and shipped out-- went up in a fireball first. Their weapon fired have a dozen laser induced plasma beams before it went up taking it's nuke reactor with it.
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I remember reading or hearing someplace (but not in fiction) about a dinosaur print and a human or humanoid footprint preserved in the same bit of ancient soil-hardened-into-rock. Only one ever found though.
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There is the joke where in Spain, they found a bit of what looked like copper wire in a geologic layer it should not belong. They deduced that the people 5,000 years ago had telegraph lines.
In Germany, they found something in a geologic layer that sould not be there. Examining it, it had a strong reseblence to glass fiber. Dating the layer they concluded that people 10,000 years ago had fiber optic communications.
In Isreal, they dug down five thousand years of sediment and found nothing. They went down 10,000 years and found nothing. They dug down even deeper. They then reported that based on their excavations, people 35,0000 years ago had cell phone communications...
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The big thing is our mindset is such that anything before written history, was the stone age. We will give a nod to the late period before writing when we see advanced stuff but our general take is that before written history, they were picking fleas off each other and banging rocks against each other. We are then shocked when we find something not fitting that concept.
I liked to learn how things are done even if I never do it. The biggest thing I have learned, is that much available in our advanced society was well within the reach of mankind, even with the Neanderthol, if they just had the idea.
Much of the 1700 American technologies was within reach. finding and digging iron, smelting the ore into metal, Then forging or casting metal into work pieces, then using that to make wagons, houses, guns, simple machinery, could have been done 100,000 years ago if they had the concepts and the need for that. They simply did not have the idea. 1900 machining and manufacturing was easily within reach of the 1700 America if they simply had the concept of how it was done. The same for our 2100 American technologies.
all comes from having "a clue"
In pre-historic times peoples had clues on how to solve problems. A door is really simple technology and can be made with stone tools. Wood or even better Bamboo, can provide a large portion of what we accept as civilization, without ever leaving a trace. If there is any surprise, it is that the reminants survived long enough to be found.
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Not exactly the same thing, but some of the Mesoamerican pyramids were enlarged or substantially changed by later civilizations. The one in Cholula, Mexico was "remodeled" three times. The original builders are unknown. Over time, it became covered with soil. Cortes built a Cathedral over it, thinking it was a natural hill overlooking the city.
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I haven't got a link to it---it was hard enough to find that entry on the Antikythera mechanism on Wikipedia---but there were these things found in either Egypt or Mesopotamia (I forget) that seemed to be Hellenic period electric batteries.
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arriki's story might be "Time's Arrow," by Arthur C. Clarke, where it's the preserved tracks of a dinosaur chasing down a jeep. Hope I got the name right. Haven't got it in front of me, but if you've got a copy of his Complete Short Stories, it'll be in there---and if you haven't got a copy, why haven't you?
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Avoid that movie of "Nightfall" like the plague; it was terrible, a low-budget rewrite.
quote:I remember reading or hearing someplace (but not in fiction) about a dinosaur print and a human or humanoid footprint preserved in the same bit of ancient soil-hardened-into-rock. Only one ever found though.
I believe this is found in a town called Glen Rose, just to the SW of Ft. Worth TX. The dino track covers over a wagon-wheel track.
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Many myths by "ancient" peoples represent their interpretation of artefacts left behind by even more "ancient" peoples - burial tumuli and standing stones in Europe are often ascribed to fairies or the Devil or giants.
The post-Alexandrian Graeco-Egyptians had all the necessary technological components to have been able to build a steam train. However it would have had to have been a work of artisans, not an industrial process.
The Romans had concrete, but the formula for its manufacture was held by one family and ultimately lost, not to be rediscovered for centuries.
I strongly recommend a book called "Ancient Inventions" by Peter James and Nick Thorpe (ISBN 1-85479-777-8), an absolutely invaluable resource for any fantasy writer. Also useful is "A History of Engineering in Classical and Medieval Times" by Donald Hill (ISBN 0-415-15291-7), and "What The Romans Did For Us" by Philip Wilkinson (ISBN 0-7522-1902=2).
I'm not touching the human-dinosaur footprint thing (and the "wagon wheel track" is a new one on me).
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Sometimes you gotta be leery of the stuff you see in print. I once saw an article in a tabloid newspaper, back in the 1970s, that amused me no end because it was the end segment of a story by Jack Finney, "I'm Scared," rewritten as a news story.
A lot of the "ancient astronaut" stuff is a lot of nonsense. The most improbable things were put out in its name. There was a subtle kind of condescending racism at work---surely our ancestors couldn't have built / designed this stuff because it's just too darned clever; they had to have help from the outside. I never bought it---just because we know more facts than they do doesn't mean they weren't as clever, or even more clever, than we are.
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Not sure where I saw/heard this information, but archeological digs are being re-examined by paleontologists because they are claiming that the original archeologists had no clue they were finding dinosaur bones in the homes of ancient civilizations. They claim they were used as home decor or alter pieces because the residents believed them to be from ancient beings like the Cyclops and Minotaur of legend, even the giants mentioned in the Bible.
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It's the same with the wheel. The initial assumption was it was invented 4th millenium BC in Sumeria, then they found a wheel from 5th millenium BC in Slovenia. I doubt the wheel was invented on my backyard, rather that the history of humanity and its inventions are much older than modern archaeology estimates.
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Consider -- our civilization has unearthed pretty much everything buried in the more habitable areas of this planet. We've carted stuff off in many cases and put fragile things on display in vulnerable surface buildings often far from their origins. Should something happen devastating OUR civilization and ten thousand or fifty thousand years elapsed before the "next" open-minded, scientific civilization arises what will "they" make of the buried finds they dig up? Egyptian mummies in New York and all?
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I remember reading something about how much from, er, "other locations," was found in Roman graves in Britain. There's always a good deal of trade and travel going on, no matter what time period you choose.
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Yes, but the Roman gravegoods were generally contemporary items, not historical ones.
The idea, however, that we have already "dug everything up" ais, I'm glad to say, far from the truth - major archaeological sites are still being discovered and uncovered, even in well-trodden areas like Egypt, let alone in places like China or South America.
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One of the problems with archaeology is that some of the most interesting sites are occupied. You could hardly expect the inhabitants of Rome or Damascus or London or Jerusalem or New York to vacate just to satisfy some archaeologist's ghoulish curiosity...they can poke around the edges, but they can't dive into the center...
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I was able to travel through Mexico's Yucatahn peninsula a few years ago, and we could see jungle covered hills every so often. We were told that they were very likely all some kind of ruin that the jungle had reclaimed, but there was no money in Mexico to pay to excavate them. Even the places where they have done excavations, like Chichen Itza, are only slightly excavated compared to how much else they know is there.
And the problem Robert Nowall mentioned also applies to Mexico City. There's a huge Mesoamerican ruin complex there.
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