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Old 17th November 2012, 12:14 PM   #17
Correa Neto
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Join Date: Aug 2003
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Originally Posted by Jodie View Post
An ice age would only be one factor to consider ( climatic change), usually societal collapse is based on multiple causes working together. The fact that there are plenty of deserted ancient civilizations located far away from the coastal areas is testament to that. However, if you have a global infrastructure that can no longer be supported for various reasons how long would an inland city be able to maintain the same standard of living and support it's population if dependent on outside resources? I wouldn't think it would be for very long. If stone was not used for buildings then I would think very little would be left to excavate unless it was something suddenly cataclysmic, like Pompeii, that would preserve the signs that buildings were once there. I have this on my "to read" list, maybe you've already read it:

http://www.amazon.com/Collapse-Compl.../dp/052138673X
"Complex" is the key word here. You can not build a complex society, even if its a single city, without a large support infrastructure. Mines, farms, roads... These resources are not clustered at a small area. Bits would survive, bits enough for us to at least suspect about their existence at a non-woo, non-fantasy level. Iron tools and ceramics, for example. Remember, we have found remains of bonfires as well as bone and flint tools which are quite older than the ice ages. As other posters wrote, you are underestimating the geologic and archeologic records. I've seen the marks of raindrops and insect tracks in sands wich are tens of millions years old; I've seen ripple marks which are 2.7billion years old, for example.

Note also that any catastrophic geologic event capable of obliterating such a civilization (major volcanic eruption, asteroid impact, megatsunami, you name it) would have its geological records already known (ash/tuff layers, tsunami-related deposits of various types). So, sorry. Ignorance of Earth sciences, archeology and about the ways complex societies work are what keep beliefs in advanced unknown civilizations floating. Hidden archeology woo feeds on this.
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