Missing chapter of human history

[unseen1]

This thing is bugging me for a very long time .Its about our history,our develop path.What history books tells us is that we had like million years of nothingness,couldn't write even a single book about events that took place in those million or two years,then all of a sudden agriculture,permanent settlements,inventions,domestication of animals,metals and list goes on.
I like to think I can imagine how this process has gone through but there are couple of things bothering me.

First is,why we waited two million years for all those things to happen,as our brain capacity didn't change in that time?

And second one is that I cant shake of the filling that we are missing some very advanced civilisation that pre-dates Sumerian,Egyptians,Chinese civilisations in human history time-line.I think that that lost society gave knowledge to all early civilisations.
Some call that Atlantis,I don't prefer it because it takes out all seriousness of discussion.
Anyway all that came to me in a history class when teacher couldn't explain some things or just said that,that's the way it was it and it couldnt be anyway different.
But then scientist started to challenge age of pyramids,age of Sphinx and for me they have proven that they are much older then 4500 years.It doesnt help when Zahi Hawass is getting all annoyed when confronted with this questions and never once I heard him give any real argument against it apart from those that helped determine age of pyramids in the first place.New hypothesis is based on sphinx water erosion,alignment with lion constellation some 10 000 years ago which collides with the time when Egypt had some regular rain.Also all three big pyramids are in alignment with Orion constellation but alignment if you turn sky back at about 10 000 years ago.And all Zahi has to say is to this is that...well nothing really,there isnt any written document about how they were build but indeed its written who build it.Doesn't that seems a lill bit suspicious.Egyptian wrote everything down but they failed to write down one of their greatest achievements? Not to mention "air shafts" inside of structure it self...
Then we move to another part of the world,lake Titicaca,the Kalasasaya monument.It is suppose to show equinox but it doesn't,it isnt correct.But strangely If you rewind time back some 10 000 years ago it strangely shows correctly.And official age isnt 10 000 years its a lot younger then that.
There is a lot more of those incontinences but they are raising a fair questions which traditionalist historians refuse it by default,which to be honest worries me because all knowledge is based on questioning.I know that acknowledgeable theory must go through heavy scrutiny but It can be wrong so it is right to question everything.
What I think it happened is there was a major civilisation melt down.Something happened war,hunger,disease you name it and only few got away.With their know-how they quickly become rulers of less developed(if they weren't all ready) and eventually they melt with native population and knowledge faded away(I think majority of knowledge was accessible to only chosen one for authority purposes).

Whatever happened I think that we have very big hole in our history.Im not saying those were Martians nor that they had diesel engines but they had very superior mathematical ,geographical and many other skills that much surpassed ancient world.

[agapooka]

Some say that aliens came to earth and brought "civilisation".

I'd be the last to say that it's true, but probably the first willing to consider it as a possibility. It's hard for me NOT to consider possibilities.

Personally, this possibility would allow me to tell people that I'm an alien and that they should just bow down to me instead of remaining frustrated by the fact that they can't understand me.

Actually, if you look at some of the myths of the first civilisations, they mention Nephilim (Hebrew name) and Annunaki (Sumerian name). They refer to the same concept of beings that came from "the heavens" and mated with humans.

If anything, it would make a great movie.

Agapooka

[Juliette]

Paleohistory, if I am not mistaken.

The thing is, that without -more- substantial physical evidence of something, anything could have been a reality.
Was the human brain 'sufficiently' evolved at that point? If it was.. then we might have built ourselves a space-faring civilization, spread across the stars, left Earth to rot, built ourselves some machines who then became our foes, after an extremely exhaustive war with them, we repopulated Earth, lost our technology and erased -almost- all evidence of our past.. only to arrive at the starting point of general history.

Possible.

Or we evolved, ascended, de-evolved, and landed back where we started, as wandering buffoons with few recognizable social patterns.

Possible.

Or we actually spent a million years hunting and gathering, developing our brains and social senses, until the time where one of our ancestors had the un-common sense to watch the seed of plants as it fell to the ground and grew again, only to replicate that process in a more controlled environment -enter river bank- and feed a larger family. As quantities increased, so came the need to write things down. Perhaps he could have borrowed a calculator from a neighbouring timelines, but since it is generally accepted that no two timelines can exist in the same place.. ah well.


From the absurd, or the entirely unknown, anything can be theorized. It's an incredibly bountiful plot device.

[agapooka]

Exactly, at this point, we can just think in terms of possibilities and there are way too many of them.

[Solus]

killing cats in boxes like Schrodinger(sp?)....

?

sorry. couldn't help myself.
(yes, i know its mangled btw.)

~soul

[Ashu]

2 reasons:

They didn't know how to write
War

[Juliette]

2 reasons:

They didn't know how to write
War

There are an infinite number of other possible reasons, not each of them requiring reality to exist.

[Ashu]

2 reasons:

They didn't know how to write
War

There are an infinite number of other possible reasons, not each of them requiring reality to exist.

No but perhaps these are most realistic...

[Juliette]

2 reasons:

They didn't know how to write
War

There are an infinite number of other possible reasons, not each of them requiring reality to exist.

No but perhaps these are most realistic...

Perhaps.. perhaps not. That's the trick, you can't say anything is more realistic as the other, because for all you know, it might be a trick played on your mind anyway.

(Sorry for that juvenile interjection.)

[Ashu]

2 reasons:

They didn't know how to write
War

There are an infinite number of other possible reasons, not each of them requiring reality to exist.

No but perhaps these are most realistic...

Perhaps.. perhaps not. That's the trick, you can't say anything is more realistic as the other, because for all you know, it might be a trick played on your mind anyway.

(Sorry for that juvenile interjection.)

Like pulling a hat out of a rabbit or an opinion argumented by historians?

[Hitchkok]

This thing is bugging me for a very long time .Its about our history,our develop path.What history books tells us is that we had like million years of nothingness,couldn't write even a single book about events that took place in those million or two years,then all of a sudden agriculture,permanent settlements,inventions,domestication of animals,metals and list goes on.
I like to think I can imagine how this process has gone through but there are couple of things bothering me.

First is,why we waited two million years for all those things to happen,as our brain capacity didn't change in that time?

2 possible reasons i see now, none has anything to do with brain capacity:
a) some major breakthrough. and you don't have to go that far. think of the industrial revolution. up until about the 1800's people lived in pretty much biblical contidions. horse and cart as transport, swords and bows as weapon, domestic agriculture and the like. thrn came the steam engine and indusrialization (guttenburg's press-printing helped (mostly by spreading literacy), but as it was invented in the 1500's it evidently was unavle to revolotionize the world by itself.) and in a houndred years time we have cars, planes, factories, and of course, a better way to kill each other. (sorry ashu, as wars were waged constntly through history (and was actually driving development further), i don't think that was the reason. not to mention the twentieth century was by far the bloodiest in human history (although i believe the twenty first is going to give it a ride for its money...).
what was the breakthrough back then? i'll say agriculture. once you don't have to go forraging and hunting, you can build a settelment, domesticate animalls and so on (amazing whaat you can learn from playing "age of empires", isn't it?). most importantly, now less labor is needed to collect the same amounts of food, so mortality rate drops, education became possible, and mankind went marching on
b) well, this is more of a subtle logic than an history argument: history is by definition written chronicles (and i believe that's what ashu meant). first historian? Herodotus of Halicarnassus, who wrote the first history book (convienently named "History") about the greek-persian war at 5 BC (anyone saw "300"? that war). anything prior to that isn't history, it's archeology.
and here is the subtle logic: since history was invented only after agriculture (which dates back to easily 8,00 BC), it's first recording are of a fairly developed society, while giving the appearance of a void beforhand.

other than that:

Or we actually spent a million years hunting and gathering, developing our brains and social senses, until the time where one of our ancestors had the un-common sense to watch the seed of plants as it fell to the ground and grew again, only to replicate that process in a more controlled environment -enter river bank- and feed a larger family. As quantities increased, so came the need to write things down..

that sums it up quite nicely

[semper]

I believe there is an earlier topic on this subject.

[Dmonix]

I personally feel war is the most probable reason for "holes" in our history and you don't really have to go too far back to see evidence of that.

The Spanish explorers traveled to South America and those regions and came across the Mayans and the Aztec, both advanced civilizations. The Mayans themselves had their own calender that predicted dates until today even.

Where is the evidence of their cultures? Where's the paperwork and writings of their engineers, priests and leaders?

Another example would probably be medieval times, the fall of Rome and Greece, flushing toilets in their societies? Why didn't those things carry through? Working bath houses and all?

Legend holds that the Byzantium empire invented "Greek fire" to defend their ports, a fire that burns on water, and is fed by water. Weapons like that would still be used in modern warfare so what happened to the recipe?

"History is written by those who win"

But the people who have the brains don't have the muscle as well.

Or we evolved, ascended, de-evolved, and landed back where we started, as wandering buffoons with few recognizable social patterns.

[Brdavs]

I suppose it just takes longer to set up proper foundations... To make the change from nomad huntergatherers to settled agriculture, to develope techniques that ensured food surplus, to develope writing to preserve knowledge etc. etc.

Its a romantic notion that some ancient kingdomes or whatever came before... but the simmilarities are probably inevitable when you look at it... given earht or clay bricks the only way to build tall is to stack stuff up in a pyramid fashion. And people will inevitably wonder about stars and celestial phenomenons in absence of broadband internet to keep them preocupied.

[Byrnes]

This was a great read.