Originally posted by Parihaka
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If there were civilizations along what was then the Mediterranean Lake, which was the destination for the Nile among other rivers in southern Europe, with the Danube emptying into the Black Lake, and other rivers emptying into the Baltic Lake, with these peoples building settlements out of wood and mudbrick - these would have been completely dissolved by the oceanic waters that flooded in. The stone tools would be worn like any other rock into smoother rock indistinguishable from naturally occurring pebbles and sand.
I'll place my trust in the evolutionary biologists, archaeologists, physicists, and their theories and discoveries. The Earth looked radically different before the last mass de-glaciation that preceded what we currently know of human civilization.
Most people in this world believe there is some God directing the course of human events, and that the Earth is fixed in nature for the most part and even only a few thousand years old. Perhaps over half of my countrymen truly believe this. There's nothing wrong with that - people need something to believe in and they didn't know any better for much of history, and somebody needed to provide laws and order to society. The appeal to a divine entity and that we are somehow unique, special snowflakes has historically worked in ages of mass illiteracy and subsistence survival.
I'll take the word of people who are by and far have vastly greater intellects and abilities of reasoning, and logic to guide me toward more correct conclusions, inferences, and theories, rather than accounts written down in an age of ignorance and mis-education. Even if, at this point, there are merely theories and inferences.
I would recommend reading the works of the eminent geographer, Harm de Blij.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harm_de_Blij
And this book, which I'm currently reading.
https://www.amazon.com/Why-Geography.../dp/0195315820
He's not a nutcase or a crank. He's one of those lone brilliant intellectuals without equal in an age where nutcaseism and crankism is again on the rise. Before he discusses the three challenges facing America - he lays out in one-third of the linked book much of what I've been discussing - the theories of Mediterranean, Baltic, and Baltic Lake rudimentary civilizations are my own, it is an inference. I believe these rudimentary civilizations existed before the current historical record begins, and also believe they also existed on the vast Indonesian peninsula that is now islands, and also along coastlines of much of the world that is now inundated a couple hundred miles inland since the last de-glaciation.
The geological record proves that these areas were supremely habitable. Physics proves that if there were rudimentary civilizations in these areas - that there would be hardly a trace of them left due to water based erosion and dissolution of organic building materials. Underwater archaeology is just becoming a reality - the field is in its infancy. As the decades progress, I believe much of what is taking an the conventional wisdom regarding the dawn of civilization will have to be pushed further and further back. Thus far, we only have evidence of civilization in areas that are high and dry. If civilization existed on lands that were since inundated before the last de-glaciation - whom we believe to be the originators of civilization may merely be the survivors of previous civilizations.
And no - I don't have any evidence. I'm not James Cameron with a stockpile of billion-dollar deep-sea submersibles ready to go at a moment's notice. Just as some people choose to believe in a God or multiple gods, and buy into the idea that the Earth's climate regions are fixed and that the Earth is 6000 years old, I will continue to believe what I believe. That the story of humanity and civilization stretches back further than what we currently know. I'll follow the lead of Neil deGrasse Tyson, Stephen Hawking, Harm de Blij, Carl Sagan, Jared Diamond and so on - they are like 20/20 hindsight prophets with better powers of foresight than men who lived 14 centuries, 20 centuries, or 30 centuries ago.
To each his own. I would say it is not proven - but it is a worthy endeavor to prove it in the future. Just as so many things we thought to be myths have been in fact proven - such as Troy, and the Stone Age settlements found in Syria that stretch back thousands of years further than we originally could have ever thought to have been the case. Troy was thought to be a religious myth until relatively recently in human history. As were the Minoans and countless other peoples whose existence was proven in the 20th century.
I'll cease discussing this particular sub-topic on this thread at this point.
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