Discoveries of advanced pre-flood civiliztions

Oh my that is a "delicious" reference.

 

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Yes, my favorite twilight zone ( 1962), but the title was "To Serve Man"

 

Graham Hancock's latest book Before America perpetuates a lot of this 'lost civilisation' nonsense. A recent Smithsonian article exposes the racist scaffolding upon which Hancock built his pseudoarchaeological thesis.

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/hist...t-midwests-mysterious-mound-cities-180968246/

Shameful.

 

I remember when they first started to excavate the mounds in late 60's. We were on a trip to the Ozarks, and happened on their excavations. They were welcoming, but of course we could not be in the digs. (I was fascinated and disappointed that I could not go into the pit and help with the digging!) We spent a big chunk of the day there, pulling time from our 12 hour drive, so we spent the night in the area. Very cool, and it was the next night that the News featured this excavation find. As a kid, it was fun and amazing to first see them "discovering". For me it was very impressionable that we were witnessing the discovery of Native American High Culture. Really cool and made me proud at a young age, as I have a slice of Cherokee in my blood. Remember, at this time TV and Movies were focused on Cowboys and Indians. And, at that, all of those impressions were of the PLAINS Indians. Learning other Native Americans' cultures, especially discovering Cahokia as very impressionable.

 

As with Stonehenge, Khufu, Pelenque, Indus Valley, Chokia etc, etc, etc, lost cultures and civilisations is due to ? The Chinese has the longest continuous structured culture, or the Japanese, or Korea or Hindu or does it. Like ancient creatures they die out or just soldier on despite....say Dinosaurs to birds, Coelacanths slowly changed. All is change, some rapid, some fast, some slow some seemingly imperceptible- a bit like conjugated evolution. Unlike the modern Maya whose language and DNA maps to the ancient Mayan ritual sites, the North American inhabitants only made up stories cos they had no history oral or otherwise to account for the mounds, like the modern day "Druids"/ Welsh fantasists claim Stonehenge!
Wheels are no good unless the terrain suits it and the motive power animal is suitable. Bison and llamas are crap! In the right terrain dogs and Reindeer work. Water buffalo and elephants OK in their element but mass usage? Now think why horses and donkeys prevailed, cos they were suitable. Just a few random thoughts.

 

Have you read Jared Diamond's "Guns, Germs, and Steel"? Fascinating reading on why certain civilizations advanced? (Good Gawd, NO, it was NOT aliens.) Rather, very logical "evolutionary" changes and advances due to local resources, terrain, continental orientation to habitable zones, climate, animals and plants domestication, etc. Great read.

 

Thanks for the reference.

Just bought it on kindle!

 

No, I am not a scholar, so I consume information as a layman. He won a Pulitzer for this book, which enabled me to get some very readable information that I could easily consume. I have read other books that have pointed to his work. He does repeat a LOT, but he is constantly trying to tie his points together for the reader.

 

Again, as a non-scholar, I really enjoyed Charles Mann's "1491"


Really put a perspective on the destruction of civilizations and peoples of the Americas. One point that really stuck with me is that within 100 years of the European invasion of the Americas, virtually 95% of the population was wiped out... (disease, killing, etc.)

 

I read it a long time ago - good book.

 

Yes, a great book. You neglected to mention that he called all post hunter gatherer societies kleptocracies.........

Rob T

 

Actually, I have in other posts. Yup, taxes...legalized theft.

 

I highly recommend Diamond's book. Read it quite a while ago but still recall some of the information. Not enough, though, so I bought a used copy at a garage sale a few months ago and will be reading it again soon.

Steve

 

I have read it twice. That good.

 

I also read his book Collapse, which came out a few years later. Also a good read.

 

Have it, not read it yet.

 

Possibly the most fascinating/boring book I have ever read. Compelling yet very redundant on what he was saying.

 

He seemed to repeat significant points to tie them together. Still, an excellent book.

 

Yeah there was a bit of repetition. Collapse is about how, well, societies collapse sometimes from inertia and also their own activities on the environment. Deforestation of Easter Island (e.g, the inhabitants cut down the palm trees and eventually every other shrub and bush) Greenland and the Vikings as I recall, and so on.

 

I read this book on the collapse of our high civilization during the Bronze age. He explores how cosmopolitan the known world was, and the on-scale global world economy in the Mid-East and Eastern-Med. Interesting read.

Eric Cline "1177 BCE The Year Civilization Collapsed"