If corona wipes out nearly all mankind, certainly developed/ civilised man, and all that survived because of their isolation were the tribes of Africa and the Amazon etc -------- how long do you think it would take for them to reach the place where we are now (bearing in mind the fact that some of the infrastructure is waiting for them) and to destroy the world and themselves a second time? (Obviously I'm already practising how to while away some time)
Are they actually behind us in an evolution sense? I bet none of the members of these tribes you mention are stockpiling leaves to wipe their backsides or hunting and gathering food to ridiculous amounts to stop other tribe members getting it. I very much doubt they take more than they need of anything and there are no shortages of meat, fruit, vegetables etc. Civilisation? I think they are more aware of the concept than half the population of the UK to be honest.
In my scenario I’m saying they don’t know of this virus , or anything of our world , even of our existence . And yes , you could say they are better at the idea of civilisation. for the good of all than we’ve become
Here's a thought. If our technologicaly orientated civilisation did go over on it's arse the only folk left to tell about us would be those tribes folk. And they do have stories of this happening. We generally call them myths and say there made up bollocks but I think there onto something as I actually think this did happen in the younger dryas period, which was 12,800 years ago. Basic idea is we got slammed by a massive exploding meteor which caused global devastation. Interesting thing is though, is that event was first recorded not by modern day science. It was recorded by Plato as being the date Atlantis was destroyed. There's plenty of academic papers around saying there was a meteor hit, some that argue against it as well mind but well worth a look into if you're bored and want something to read about. One of the major criticisms of the theory was the lack of a crater but an 18 mile wide crater has been found beneath the Greenland ice sheet that could well have been made then. https://www.sciencemag.org/news/201...ce-points-climate-altering-impact-time-humans A second even bigger potential crater site was found 100 odd miles further north an all. https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddar...ible-second-impact-crater-under-greenland-ice
Of course something happened. You only need to look at the Pyramids, Petra, polygonal walls and Stonehenge to know that ancient civilizations were far more developed than we give them credit for or even understand. We make an assumption that we are at the pinnacle of humanities development. People misconstrue the idea that evolution always makes us better - which is true but only in the context of making us better equipped to survive. It doesn't mean that we are more intelligent, have a greater understanding, or were more advanced as a race - it simply means that we've adapted to endure or current circumstances better.
There are plenty of examples of ancient technology being lost. Particularly good examples are the Antikythera mechanism and the Baghdad battery. The medieval Islamic world was far more advanced than Europe was at the time, their surgeons could perform corneal transplants and other procedures that 'western' medicine has only recently caught up with. Things like Atlantis probably are only myths though. Or, as is perhaps more likely, explanations for events told in a way that was comprehensible at the time that they were being recounted (in this case by the ancient Greeks) and have stayed with us in that form. A good example of this is the story of Adam and Eve and the Garden of Eden. A very convincing theory now suggests that this is an account of a process of climate change (for which there is archaeo-environmental evidence) and the subsequent move from a hunter-gatherer lifestyle to agricultural society at the start of the Neolithic in the Arabian Gulf.
I disagree about Atlantis not being real tbh. Personally think the Azores are the remnants of it and at 10,500 BC there was more of it above the surface and it basically got ripped in half. One of the issues this position faces is in the West we have a cultural understanding of history that says we were basically cave men for nearly all of our existence and it's only since 9,000ish BC we began on a path away from a hunter gather society. Now, the earliest homo sapien remains are about 300,000 years old and I find it hard to believe we didn't get past flint axes and twatting mammoths in that time. I also think Gobleki Tepi proves that isn't the case as there we find evidence of advanced stonework occuring before we've developed agriculture. And I think the reason why you get that is because the buliders of Gobleki Tepi were survivors of a great cataclysm and built a memorial. Well, more than one tbh. And then buried them on purpose so they couldn't be washed away the same way everything else had been. I'd also say that the Noah's ark story supports this idea, that some survivors passed through these events by taking sanctuary in the Ararat Mountains and when the rains stopped they came to the foothills of the mountains which just happens to be where Gobleki is, and set up camp there.
While Göbekli Tepe is an important site, it doesn't really change much about what we believe in terms of the chronology of the development of technology. Its size and complexity is unusual but the main thing that it shows us (and this is important but in no way shows that society was more technologically advanced than we previously thought or that there was any kind of cataclysm or collapse of some ancient wonder-society) is that pre-agricultural people could organise themselves in communal acts on a larger and more complex scale than we previously thought. It adds a link in the chain of our understanding of the development of complex settlements. The ability to work stone is not unusual at this stage- the complexity of some stone tools of this date is amazing. It's just a case of changing the scale. Unfortunately, there is nothing to archaeologically link this evidence to the story of the Ark. Noah's Ark, like many of these other stories is probably an allegory, metaphor, or exaggeration that has passed down to us in this inexact form.
All you've done is give me an orthodox timeline explanation for the most recent period of environmental stability. I understand that narrative and I think as far as it goes for how humans go from small numbers to big numbers and organise themselves is pretty much bang on. I disagree with the starting premise that all that went on before 9,000ish BC is flint axes and twatting mammoths. Especially when the planet was going through massive environmental changes at a point in history that Plato dated. One thing any and every civilisation needs is a stable environment. When that environment becomes destabilised, that civilisation is threatened. If the destabilisation involves a comet leaving an 18 mile crater in Greenland and remnants of itself across 4 continents, a large part of an ice sheet a mile thick and covering North America being vaporised, causing tidal waves 600 foot high travelling at 60 miles an hour causing richter scale 10 earthquakes and grinding the bedrock away, that civiisation is probably going to find itself overwhelmed. However, even though the period we know as the younger dryass had huge climate changes that wrought devastation across the planet, it was preceded by a period of environmental stability that lasted from roughly 110,000 BC to 10,000 BC. I just think that if we have managed to go from mammoth hunters to moon walkers in roughly 10,000 years of environmental stability then humans in the past easily developed some form of technology if they had 100,000 years of environmental stability. Personally, I think my narrative of Gobleki Tepi being a memorial provides a good reason for it's construction and also for it's burial. I think the fact it is located in the foothills of the mountains where survivors of a great flood are told to have landed are relevant as I think it was these survivors that built it. That's why they knew the skills of quarrying and sculpture, as well as some engineering principles to get curved blocks to stand balanced, because they carried those skills with them. I'd also say that's why it continued for centuries; the first lot would be really close to the day of destruction so would be ****ting it about going any lower in the land and would quite happily stay a bit higher. As generations pass, the actuality dilutes into story, then myth, then into what the **** are we building all these stone circles for on some windswept foothills when the good land of the fertile crescent waits beneath us.
The thing about the orthodox explanation is that's what the actual physical evidence supports. We can and will revise our understanding of things as new evidence is identified. Until we have that evidence, the current accepted explanations are the most accurate. Humans in the period that you're talking about did develop technology and we know a lot about it. There are deep, intensive studies of Palaeolithic stone tools and their development through the various traditions of stone tool production from this period all the way through the mesolithic, neolithic, and into the Bronze Age. We know lots about pottery technologies of the prehistoric period, and all about the development of metallurgy. These were huge technological leaps and as the human population has expanded, those technological leaps have increased in rapidity. There will be technologies that we don't know about from the past but to expect complex technologies comparable to today is beyond the realms of reality. The civilisation of Atlantis was a work of fiction by Plato. It was only in the Renaissance that people started to believe that it was a real place.
A load of old blocks, that weigh individually up to 25 tonnes, that were mined 180 miles away and then transported, and have then been alligned accurately for astronomical use - all of this done some 5000 years ago.
To be fair, despite their isolation ... ... they've managed to create one of the world's biggest home shopping websites.
Have you seen the Ness of Brodgar and the other Neolithic sites in Orkney? They demonstrate the complexity of Neolithic society. They didn't have strange advanced technologies, they were just very good at utilising what was available to them.
The physical evidence is a collection of stone circles that were built and deliberately buried at a period in time right at the end of massive environmental change, sort of extinction level change for a fair few species. They don't tell a narrative on their own, the narrative you describe is an interpretation, nothing more nor less. So is mine. It all depends on which interpretation makes sense to explain the building and the reasons for building and burying it and to how hunter gathers developed the skills in such a short space of time to actually achieve it. I'd also like to know what the stimulis was to create a huge behavioural change as it isn't normal, at least to me, to invest huge amounts of resources in doing this as a hunter gatherer society. Was it to appease the gods to get more deer turning up? At least I have an explanation that satisfies those questions to myself and one that I think makes more sense. As for Plato making Atlantis up; let's put to bed a few myths about this (see what I did there). He didn't invent Atlantis. He quite clearly states that Solon was told the story by a Priest while travelling in Egypt. It was the priest who says Atlantis sank beneath the waves. He also gave some other descriptions, one being that the sea around the island was impassable for hundreds of years due to the mud. This happens when magma hits water due to all the pumice and crap that gets spewed out, see Krakatoa for an example. He also said that all that was left was its backbone, sticking out the water. That's pretty much what we have today a few islands poking up. So not only do we get a date for this happening, which matches evidence from geology, we get an accurate description of what the sea would actually be like after being exposed to magma. Two accurate pieces of information, no interpretation needed. And I never said that the past technologies were comparable to todays, what I said was they were capable of developing some kind of technology over a period of 100,000ish years of environmental stability. I have no idea why that idea is 'beyond the realms of reality'? Is it really beyond the realms of reality why humans back then couldn't have technology of any decent level, say of crossing oceans level technology? Did no-one in South America not find something washed up on a beach one day that had been carried from Africa and think what is that and where did it come from. Did no-one in Africa have the same experience? Could none of them work out how to build a boat and couldn't any one work out ocean currents and build bigger and better boats? I find it hard to get my head wrapped round the idea that humans didn't work out ways to manipulate and improve their environment over a period of 100,000 years in the same manner we have done over the last 10,000 years tbh.
It was meant to be a play on words mate (blocks instead of bollocks). I dont know the history of Stonehenge to be honest but still appreciate that it just wasn't funny.
