XPost: talk.politics.misc, alt.archeology, alt.science
XPost: alt.fan.rush-limbaugh
From:
rotflol2@hotmail.com
["Followup-To:" header set to talk.politics.misc.]
On 2025-04-11, Siri Cruz <
chine.bleu@yahoo.com> wrote:
On 10/4/25 22:55, c186282 wrote:
Some TV idiots like to claim 'aliens' or 'god-like beings'
were responsible. Kinda doubt it. The old structures are
damned good, but not 'alien civ' sophisticated. Hey, humans
are CLEVER - don't necessarily NEED 'aliens'.
HOW some of these things were built, STILL a big mystery
however ... it'd be super-difficult even with modern
methods/machines.
Maybe the oldest thing anyone wants to ADMIT to are
the Gobekli Tepe 'temples' ... WAY better than
Stonehenge. 10-12000 years old. Was NOT so long ago
Humans require 2000 to 3000 calories a day. Before agriculture
that food to be gatherred/hunted (no significant food storage)
each day. Because everything had to be carried from camp to camp,
the technology was inefficient.
This meant after a big kill the family could loll around a few
days telling stories and crafting more artistic arrowheads. Then
on to the next camp getting hungrier and hungrier until the next
big kill.
Our ancestors had long distance trade, fine arts, rocking hot
music nobody can hear today, but they had trouble getting enough
calories in one place for a sustained time to survive as well
spend calories carving and moving big chunks of rock. We were
thinking deep thoughts about how the universe worked. Sometimes
the effort was deemed worthwhile.
The surprising thing about Gobekli Tepe is not the intellect,
artistry, and skill. Humans be smart. The surprise is the degree
of social engineering that fed it.
There is an argument about the age of the Sphinx. The argument of archaeologists against the geologists is at the time of proposed
construction there is no evidence of an economy that could
sustain the work. Then Gobekli showed up. It is too far from the
Nile to prove anything, but it did show hunter gatherrers could
organise and feed large communal projects.
I think part of our modern day assumption, that humans back then were
not as sophisticated as they actually were, was due to us looking for
evidence for civilisation where we thought we would find it. Like
looking for your keys under the street lamp, not because that is where
they last where, because that is where the light was best. Sea levels
have changed, but it was always easier to excavate on land, where we
found previous artefacts and evidence.
Not much survives of the past, and our understanding is based on what we
have been able to uncover, which I think is a fraction of what existed.
Take for example the antikythera mechanism. There must have been more
than one, or at least, there must have been precursors, a technological
arc that leads to that. We just haven't found it.
But then, look today. You'll see iPhones and sleek Apple laptops. Its
very, very difficult to stumble across older computers now. How many Millennial's have seen a 1980s microcomputer? Probably only in a
museum. These were ubiquitous, and now you can go years without seeing
one. If they disappear within a couple of decades, surely decades of civilisation, and centuries after that would have erased so, so much.
Only stone remains. We see stone and assume that's all there was.
Books is another. Public libraries in the suburbs have few old books.
Methods of social organisation, if not written down AND uncovered, would
also be lost.
I think our view of history is therefore way off, because we've
constructed our view based on what survived, which perhaps, isn't enough
to go on after all.
--- SoupGate-DOS v1.05
* Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)