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Old 17th November 2012, 02:47 AM   #1
HansMustermann
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Why the pseudo-religion about ancient aliens?

This is basically an offshoot of the "why did ancient aliens build stuff out of stone?" thread, but I figured my question is different enough to be worth stopping derailing that thread with it.

My question is more like WTH do people find so great about those aliens? I can see why someone would replace gods with love us and care about us, with aliens who love us and care about us, but actually what you get when looking at the details of what those aliens supposedly did, they are complete psychos.

So let's say some aliens did come down and play God to Egyptians, and Sumerians, and Mesoamericans, and taught them to build mighty buildings and writing and all. And it wasn't just a one-off thing either, but for hundreds of years many ships came and went and oversaw it all.

Yes, I know it's ridiculous, but let's assume it true for the purpose of this deconstruction exercise. Let's see what kind of aliens that gets us.

Well, for the Mesoamericans we'd need some aliens which played Gods that required cruel human sacrifices, and rites like draging a barbed rayskin spine through one's penis. Or skinning women alive. And built giant pyramids with altars on top, where such sacrifices would happen. Yeah, the flat bit and altar at the top are not later additions, but the whole reason to exist for those pyramids.

Even if somehow humans corrupted the message of those aliens, nevertheless, those aliens came and went, and saw all those horrible sacrifices. They saw herds of children being driven like cattle to be sacrificed to whichever alien astronaut set himself up as Tlaloc, and having their fingernails pulled out first because crying and tears are good omens for a god of rain. They saw herds of women being herded to be flayed alive and hung to bleed to death in the honour of whichever astronaut set herself up as Yaocihuatl. And so on.

And not only they didn't try to stop that barbarism, but actually built great big pyramids at the top of which such sacrifices should take place. And they went home and nobody had anything against it either.

Or in Sumer they saw some horrible endemic warfare, followers of one astronaut God against the followers of another astronaut God. And horrors like whole villages impaled because their capital city didn't surrender. Captured rebelling vassal rulers being flayed alive and having their skin nailed to the city gates as a warning. Etc. And those guys weren't exactly secretive about it either. They carved bass-reliefs around palaces and throne rooms and temples depicting such cruel genocides. So, you know, when the alien astronaut talked to the king or took a shore leave in the city worshipping them, it would be wall after wall decorated all around in such scenes that would make a modern man or woman lose his or her lunch.

And those ancient astronauts were OK with that too, you know? Not one of them thought to say, "Dude, lieutenant-commander Inanna is my daughter and closest friend. Trust me, I DON'T want her followers slaughtered. And if I had a problem with her, I could reprimand her myself."

In Mycenaean Greece, they could look at children being sacrificed to the bull god (we actually have a baby on an altar where volcanic ash from Thera froze that scene), and said bull god astronaut could probably think, "aye, it pleases me." And all the crew members on their ship wouldn't file a report saying, "OMG, the captain is nuts, he made a primitive alien civilization sacrifice their children to him," when they got home either.

I mean look at what modern people did when they encountered such atrocities. The Brits in India basically went, "You say that it is your custom to burn widows. Very well. We also have a custom: when men burn a woman alive, we tie a rope around their necks and we hang them. Build your funeral pyre; beside it, my carpenters will build a gallows. You may follow your custom. And then we will follow ours." (Charles James Napier.)

Whereas those ancient astronauts would have gone more like, "Sweet! Can we watch? In fact, wait, let us build you an elevated place so the whole town can get a good view." Not even as much a hypothetical, as they too actually had ancient gods condoning and rewarding widow-burning.

How the heck are such alien psychopaths worthy of, basically, worship by any other name?
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Old 17th November 2012, 02:58 AM   #2
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As far as I understand it, the New Agers mostly seem to believe that the brown people in those cultures couldn't have built these terrestrial structures, and that some "lost civilisation of white aliens" did, 10,500 years ago. So, they don't believe the lost civilisation were the doers of the evil deeds that happened as you rightly say.

Basically, they get morality, history, archaeology, and logic all wrong, for the sake of being "alternative".
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Old 17th November 2012, 03:36 AM   #3
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But nevertheless, building those structures happened within an interval spanning thousands of years, and at that an interval when such atrocities were committed in the name of the same astronaut gods. You can't really get around the fact that the pyramids were built by whoever set himself or herself as god there, WHILE people were being sacrificed to him or her.

In fact, let me illustrate the kind of alien society you'd need for such encouraging atrocities to be as systematic and continue over thousands of years all over the globe. It's not even some over-the-top taking the piss, or indeed even funny at all, but, shall we say, an honest artist's impression of such a society.

Captain-Lieutenant Quetzalcoatl:
Captain-Lieutenant Quetzalcoatl reporting for debriefing, Sir.
Rear-Admiral Akbar Zeb:
At ease, captain. I was going over your report and wanted to go through it with you. Starting from the beginning... setting up a standard pantheon?
Captain-Lieutenant Quetzalcoatl:
Standard procedure, according to article 249 of the Prime Directive, variant D.
Rear-Admiral Akbar Zeb:
Describe in your own words what that entailed.
Captain-Lieutenant Quetzalcoatl:
Well, sir, I set myself up as god of the sky, magic and afterlife, and demanded able men sacrificed to me, lest even the very sun ceases to rise. The science officer, Commander Tlaloc set himself up as rain god and demanded children sacrifices. Chief of security, lieutenant-commander Yaocihuatl set herself up as goddess of warrior women and demanded that women be "made warriors" in her honour by being flayed alive and having their skin worn by priests during ceremonies.
Rear-Admiral Akbar Zeb:
Any troubles or resistance?
Captain-Lieutenant Quetzalcoatl:
None, sir. One wise-guy protested that the sun was rising even before we got there -- there's always one, sir -- but we made them sacrifice him first, on threat of destroying their village otherwise. As usual, that kept the rest in line.
Rear-Admiral Akbar Zeb:
Moving on... Setting up checks and balances?
Captain-Lieutenant Quetzalcoatl:
Standard variant C, according to article 250 of the Prime directive. The king can override our high priest, but only if he gets a vision by dragging a barbed fish spine through his penis until he hallucinates. His vision must be corroborated by the queen who is to drag another barbed spine through a hole in her tongue. Just the usual, really.
Rear-Admiral Akbar Zeb:
Let's move on then... Did you build the sacrificial pyramids that go with version D of the pantheon?
Captain-Lieutenant Quetzalcoatl:
Not personally, sir. We applied the allowed variation as allowed by article 252, paragraph 20, section J.
Rear-Admiral Akbar Zeb:
If I remember what that means, you made them enslave a neighbouring tribe and use the slaves to build the pyramid?
Captain-Lieutenant Quetzalcoatl:
Yes, sir. The slaves were of course sacrificed afterwards to us, according to their age and gender.
Rear-Admiral Akbar Zeb:
I see... While that is indeed allowed, it must be based on one of the allowed reasons. Which reason do you invoke for applying article 252?
Captain-Lieutenant Quetzalcoatl:
That would be section H, sir.
Rear-Admiral Akbar Zeb:
"Just for lulz?"
Captain-Lieutenant Quetzalcoatl:
For great lulz, sir. We made it a whole day event for the crew to watch the hundreds of sacrifices. Especially flaying the women was a great hit with the crew and greatly improved morale.
Rear-Admiral Akbar Zeb:
Moving on... resources taken by the expedition?
Captain-Lieutenant Quetzalcoatl:
Hand carved idols, sir. We made them work overtime to make as many as they could.
Rear-Admiral Akbar Zeb:
I assume they were taken care of apropriately?
Captain-Lieutenant Quetzalcoatl:
Indeed they have, sir. According to article 190, paragraph 10, section B about alien cultural artefacts, they went straight down the incinerator chute.
Rear-Admiral Akbar Zeb:
There is just one more issue, captain. You went a whole two months over the assigned deadline. What was the reason?
Captain-Lieutenant Quetzalcoatl:
Well, sir, as detailed in my report, there was no local species of fish with a barbed enough spine to cause maximum destruction and pain. Commander Tlaloc had to splice the genes of several species to get a species of ray that was good enough for that ritual.
Rear-Admiral Akbar Zeb:
It seems to me, captain, that then you could have just implemented one of the other kinds of checks and balances, that don't require one. Still, your resourcefulness has been noted. Now, moving on... any final remarks or recommendations?
Captain-Lieutenant Quetzalcoatl:
Yes, sir. We have spotted several other tribes advanced enough to be of interest, yet too far to get their rites from the tribe we processed. For example there is a tribe on the other side of the world which seems obsessively protective of their children. I would strongly recommend they be given section K of the allowed pantheons, that is, the one where they have to burn their babies alive to their god. More expeditions are needed to process such tribes on a per-region basis.
Rear-Admiral Akbar Zeb:
Very well, I shall forward your recommendations to starfleet. Dismissed, captain.
Captain-Lieutenant Quetzalcoatl:
SIR!
Basically, really, you can't get something as systematic unless that's the standard psycho way to deal with primitive aliens.
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Old 17th November 2012, 06:47 AM   #4
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You have to look at occult practices and wonder about the origin of those too since they also involve sacrifice of one type or another, usually involving blood. Vampire legends may also be related to the history of sacrifice. The Maasai still drink the blood of cattle to survive although that tradition is decreasing as they gravitate away from the nomadic lifestyle.

If any of this is true, I lean more towards some ancient civilization being here prior to some catastrophic event like the onset of the ice age. If most of civilization was located on the shores as it is today then the subsequent drop and rise in sea level would have obliterated any evidence of a high tech society,even one that was only as advanced as the iron age.

So what do I think of sacrifice? Maybe it's based on some previous racial memory of medical practices or dietary practices that got lost in translation somewhere in the proceeding thousands of years after the theoretical collapse of a society. All just speculation on my part, but it makes better sense than some prehistoric alien invasion to me.
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Old 17th November 2012, 07:32 AM   #5
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Why people like the ancient aliens stuff?

1. Makes you feel special. You know something most people do not, including those egg-headed labrats, despite not having a formal academic degree. You are [f-word]ing good, eh?

2. Makes you feel special. You know your creation was due to something other than sheer chance, there's a higher purpose, a reason for your existence. You are [f-word]ing good, eh?

3. Makes you feel special. You know, those guys from the past were dummies. If you can't figure out how they built those things, someone or something better, more intelligent than you must have been involved. You are [f-word]ing good, eh?

4. Makes you feel special. Real life is boring and fantasy can build a nice cozy special place. After all, you are [f-word]ing good, eh?.

5. With current science's advances, all the tales about your origins provided by conventional religions became outdated. This created a hole that must be filled by some sort of modern magic compatible with (1), (2), (3) and (4).

Not happy with human sacrifice? Simple. The aliens never actually asked for it. It's human invention, a rite born out of despair after the aliens went back to the stars. Build the image you're comfortable with for your alien god and worship it.

Oh, Jodie, the start or the end of ice ages can't be blamed for erasing the signs of ancient advanced civilizations. Its a hidden archeology woo excuse; sorry to say that, don't get me wrong, no offense intended, but considering it as plausible requires a good dosis of ignorance about Earth sciences, archeology and the way civilizations work. Sorry for being blunt but there's no other way to say it. Ice ages start and end slowly. You would have plenty of time to move your cities away from the advancing glaciers at the start and away from the advancing seas at the end. Also, even bronze age- level civilizations would need resources which can not be found at the shorelines. They would need to have cities located inland, not to mention there are lots of nice places to live far from the seas. Oh, and since glaciers have covered just a bit of the suitable places for setting up cities... As soon as you start to think about it all, you'll see how silly it is. Its a nice romantic idea, can be used to create interesting movies, books and stories but thats as far as it can go.
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Old 17th November 2012, 07:50 AM   #6
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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
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Old 17th November 2012, 08:40 AM   #7
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Actually, here's an even simple explanation for cruel human sacrifices.

Before I start, regardless of what you may think they may have started as, they are continued long past the point where there is any memory of ancient medical procedures or anything.

Now that's even skipping over the fact that no iron age civilization would have had the technology for open heart surgery, to inspire sacrificing people by cutting through their sternum and cutting their heart out. Or that sacrifices like being made to jump in a pit full of spears or such have no medical parallels. Or I'm drawing blanks about what medical procedure would involve burning someone alive in a wooden cage, like at least one Roman general was sacrificed to Tyr by the germanic invaders. Or exactly what medical procedure would involve burning a baby alive as sacrifice. Or exactly what kind of medical procedure would involve flaying a woman alive and a priest wearing her skin? Etc. But ok, let's skip over that.

The more important fact is that by the time we met for example the Aztecs, who turned human sacrifices into a whole assembly-line operation, they know of no such thing. Their legends point out at some priest doing that for the first time during a migration. Ok, the legends may be distorted, but at any rate they keep on doing it for no other reason than that the priests say so.

What is the explanation for THAT? Why do they continue?

My hypothesis or conjecture, is that just like the burning campaign by the Inquisition against the conversos who don't know their place, or how the witch-hunts destroyed any woman profession like midwife, it's just a terror campaign against the population. It's the easiest way to keep the population in line. As long as the priests are the ones who decide who gets the honour of being killed next, nobody has the guts to speak against the priests. Or the very few who do, see above, get sacrificed.

It's basically no different from the Romans using crucifixion to keep the slaves terrorized and in line, or the severe beatings and lynchings used in the American south to keep the slaves terrorized and in line.
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Old 17th November 2012, 09:31 AM   #8
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The question in the OP would apply equally well to those who want to believe in the God described in the Old Testament. I think there must be some common attraction to believing in a creature who is powerful and in control, even if the creature is cruel and arbitrary.

Ready for a harebrained hypothesis? I wonder if it has something to do with continuing to want a parent in adulthood. Children generally survive their vulnerable youth best if they follow what parents tell them and continue to love their parents despite occasional punishments that seem arbitrary and cruel. "Just leaving the cave after dark didn't deserve that bad a spanking" thinks the kid who doesn't know when man-eating animals hunt.

So I expect that we've evolved to want that kind of relationship when young. Otherwise, every child would be just as happy striking out on his own and discovering everything by trial and error. Obeying even what seems like a cruel, arbitrary parent will ensure better survival than blundering away on your own.

Some part of that sometimes doesn't get turned off in adulthood, so there's still more or less of an urge to be connected with a more-powerful, more-knowledgeable entity. But when one is an adult, other adults no longer fit the bill, so we need to make up gods or aliens. Even if they're cruel or incomprehensible, we at least have a relationship with an entity that's smarter and stronger than us, rather than just blundering around the universe on our own, and that's what we've evolved to believe is the important thing.
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Old 17th November 2012, 09:56 AM   #9
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1. Indeed the OT god is as big a mess, but I can imagine people simply going along with the status quo. For many the church is the center of their community, plus they have been raised with the idea that that crap is true, had it corked in with fear and guilt, etc. Letting go of that crap may not be a trivial step.

However for those who do that step, it kinda makes me wonder why choose a replacement every bit as atrocious.

2. That gods are surrogate parents is clear enough, I should say.

It still beats me though why people would choose psychopaths who are far more cruel and injust than, well, just about any parent who isn't a psycho too.

I mean, it's one thing to grow up with a brutal parent who beats up everyone in sight, and another thing to choose a surrogate who wants you to cut your brother's heart out and flay your sister alive. There's spanking, there's even brutal child abuse, and then there's being a homicidal pyscho. A lot of gods seem to be the third. And I don't see how having even the second, would drive one to seek a replacement that's the third.
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Old 17th November 2012, 10:03 AM   #10
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And don't forget humanity's tendency to seek out a scapegoat when there is no one obvious to blame. There is a deep spiritual belief in some kind of "life force" present in the human body.

The only way to appease a so called angry god is to feed it that life force that is equally invisible. Think of the christian communion ritual, the wafer signifies the body of Christ and the wine represents the blood of Christ, in Catholicism it truly becomes the body and blood of Christ through transubstantiation.

In those terms, and I don't know how else you could view it, the symbolism of ritualistic cannibalism brings us closer to Christ.........the sacrificial theme is still with us.
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Old 17th November 2012, 10:10 AM   #11
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Originally Posted by Jodie
If stone was not used for buildings then I would think very little would be left to excavate unless it was something suddenly cataclysmic,
You would be wrong. Take a modern skyscraper: it has all sorts of glass, metal, and other bits that would clearly indicate that something is going on. And if nothing else there's this great bloody hole in the ground where the foundation used to be, arranged in a manner that simply doesn't exist outside of human involvement. We've found all sorts of ancient buildings from that sort of evidence. Then there are the ancillary facilities--the farms, the mines, the factories/processing stations, etc. Even stone-aged peoples left processing stations (debatoge, limestone pit ovens, things like that); a city would require immensely greater numbers of all of that, which would make it far easier to detect.

To get rid of a city you have to scour the area down to at least the maximum depth of the deepest foundation. And there's really very little that can do that.

As far as sea level rising, submurged artifacts may in fact be better preserved than their terrestrial counter-parts. Water doesn't make iron rust--repeatedly dipping iron into water and exposing it to air makes it rust. Just putting it in water would do remarkably little. The issue would be more that the wildlife would cover the artifacts, making them a tad difficult to detect (but certainly not impossible; we do this all the time).
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Old 17th November 2012, 10:24 AM   #12
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Everyone knows magic doesn't exist, but sufficiently advanced technology? That might just work.
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Old 17th November 2012, 10:40 AM   #13
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Originally Posted by Dinwar View Post
You would be wrong. Take a modern skyscraper: it has all sorts of glass, metal, and other bits that would clearly indicate that something is going on. And if nothing else there's this great bloody hole in the ground where the foundation used to be, arranged in a manner that simply doesn't exist outside of human involvement. We've found all sorts of ancient buildings from that sort of evidence. Then there are the ancillary facilities--the farms, the mines, the factories/processing stations, etc. Even stone-aged peoples left processing stations (debatoge, limestone pit ovens, things like that); a city would require immensely greater numbers of all of that, which would make it far easier to detect.

To get rid of a city you have to scour the area down to at least the maximum depth of the deepest foundation. And there's really very little that can do that.

As far as sea level rising, submurged artifacts may in fact be better preserved than their terrestrial counter-parts. Water doesn't make iron rust--repeatedly dipping iron into water and exposing it to air makes it rust. Just putting it in water would do remarkably little. The issue would be more that the wildlife would cover the artifacts, making them a tad difficult to detect (but certainly not impossible; we do this all the time).
It would depend on how far back you went in time looking for evidence. Water has oxygen and carbon dioxide in it that would facilitate the formation of rust on iron, I would think, if it's sea water I imagine the salt would increase the rate of decay. After 10,000 years, for example, I don't think anything iron would be left regardless of where it was.

If you are talking pre-iceage wouldn't the receding glaciers destroy any evidence of foundations or anything to do with a civilization for that matter? I would think it would carve up a whole new landscape.
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Old 17th November 2012, 10:56 AM   #14
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I think it's a combination of 3 factors:

1) not so smart people can feel that they are smarter than everyone else because they "know the truth" it's a similar mentality of almost any CT'er out there, who feels a bit socially awkward and/or lonely and unimportant, this makes them feel important and smart!

2) Aliens are mysterious and pretty cool with their fancy ships, cool uniforms and advanced technological know how! I mean, seriously, how cool are aliens?

3) some people don't seem to be able to separate the two concepts of "knowledge" and "intelligence". Ancient man was just as smart as we are know, he just didn't have as much knowledge. Some people seem to think that ancient man wasn't smart enough to devise clever ways of getting around problems because he was dumb ...or something like that. this is patently false.
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Old 17th November 2012, 11:22 AM   #15
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Originally Posted by Jodie
It would depend on how far back you went in time looking for evidence.
I've seen debotage from 15,000 years ago.

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Water has oxygen and carbon dioxide in it that would facilitate the formation of rust on iron, I would think, if it's sea water I imagine the salt would increase the rate of decay. After 10,000 years, for example, I don't think anything iron would be left regardless of where it was.
The degradation of metals in salt water is rather well-known. Finding high concentrations of iron-rich minerals (hemetite, geotite, etc), copper-rich minerals (azurite, malechite, etc), and other materials in areas where they should not be according to the geologic data would be a strong indication that something weird is going on. Add foundation exacations, which are extremely obvious (I've seen wells in cross-section, and can attest to the fact that they stick out like a lighthouse), and the conclusion becomes obvious.

Quote:
If you are talking pre-iceage wouldn't the receding glaciers destroy any evidence of foundations or anything to do with a civilization for that matter?
Glaciers don't work that way. They scour some portions of the area down pretty far, but they also fill some in. So it really depends on where the buildings were, and what the glaciers did in those areas. Glaciers are huge, complex systems, and it's far, far more complex than just "Glaciers go through, scrape everything off". You also have to deal with mines, which will be even deeper than foundations (if it's not grown, it's mined).

Also, if they scrape out the material it has to go somewhere--morains, till, outwashes, etc. It's not that hard to identify where the materials in those formations came from, and what they were previously.

This illustrates another reason why ancient aliens are popular: people simply don't understand geology, and don't know what we can know and what we can't about the past. No insult to Jodie; this stuff is HARD, far harder than people give it credit for. The problem is, it LOOKS easy--so people look for an easy explanation. When they can't find it, they make up stories, because figuring out the actual explanation frequently requires technology well beyond your average person on the street (mass spectrometers, for example).
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Old 17th November 2012, 11:52 AM   #16
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Just to add something a lot more trivial to the hard stuff Dinwar said, I hope people realize that most of the history of the human species has been before the last ice age. The majority those flint arrow heads and whatnot are from before the end of the last ice age. The glaciers didn't destroy those. As are a buttload of skeletons and skulls, some showing signs of healing after wounds, and some still having arrow heads embedded in them.

Yet we have none that show any advanced surgery done on them, nor any from before 1000 BC or so that have iron arrow heads in them.

I suppose one could conceive a civilization that was INCREDIBLY good at removing all such traces, including removing all arrows and whatnot after a battle... many of which they would have lost, and destroying all pieces of advanced pottery, and finding and destroying all skeletons, etc. But it's kind of a conspiracy theory, innit? Nobody in practice is THAT perfect at keeping a secret, especially when they have no reason to.

Also I think people overestimate what the ice age meant. It was NOT the Pixar version where everything is ice, as far as the eye can see. Actually, it's just a bit colder. This means you have arctic weather a bit south of where it is now, but down south you just get some snow.

Basically there is a reason why the last glaciation created fjords in Scandinavia, but not in Italy. There were solid ice sheets down to around 45 degrees north latitude, but south of that, there weren't. For reference, that's about the latitude of the southern end of Austria. A civilization around the Mediterranean (so it can then get drowned) or central America would NOT be covered in miles of ice. It would still get warm enough each spring for the snow to melt off.

And sure, the sea level did drop by some 110m (some 350 ft or so) during the ice age, but that is actually a rather narrow band of new shore. There is no sane reason to assume that a civilization would be concentrated only in that narrow band, and absolutely shun hunting inland.

Plus, that difference in water level existed only during the glaciation, and got that extreme only by the end of it. I.e., such a strange civilization concentrated only along the shore line would have to have existed only around 15,000-10,000 BCE. Something from BEFORE the ice age would still have the same water line as today. It'll only be under water if it was underwater in the first place.

I.e., if it's R'lyeh or something
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Old 17th November 2012, 12:14 PM   #17
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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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Old 17th November 2012, 12:25 PM   #18
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Well, to be fair there is one way in which a catastrophe could wipe out a civilization and all records: if it was an island nation, and the island exploded. Krakatoa-like event or something similar. That said, such a civilization would necessarily be fairly small; they'd only have the resources of that island, after all (otherwise we'd see evidence of them). And extremely small groups tend to not develop high technology by themselves.

Originally Posted by HansMustermann
Something from BEFORE the ice age would still have the same water line as today. It'll only be under water if it was underwater in the first place.
Sea level bounced around a bit, following the glacial/interglacial sequence. During glaciation there's lower seas, during interglacials the seas are higher. Anything built during MIS 12 would have been inundated during MIS 11 (MIS=marine isotope stage; evens are glacial periods, odds are interglacials, and the numbers count backwards from today). That said, you're right, we're talking about a fairly narrow--and intensely examined--band of sea here. Continental shelves tend to be extremely profitable, so a lot of people have done a lot of mapping. We've found a few buried cities, but nothing like an unexpectedly advanced civilization that was previously unknown (we've found evidence that known civilizations were a tad more advanced than we credit them for, but that's about it).
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Old 17th November 2012, 12:56 PM   #19
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Considering that MIS-11 is about 400,000 years ago and humans, even by the most generous estimates, are AT MOST 250,000 years old, that wasn't quite the timeline I had in mind there. It would surprise the pants out of me if anyone found a city from MIS-12 and flooded during MIS-11

When I meant from before the glaciation, I meant before the last one, of course. Something like maybe MIS-3 tops. Any earlier, like MIS-4 and you wouldn't have humans in Europe, much less America. (If the Aztecs are to learn human sacrifice from some hypothetical ultra-advanced civilization, it's gonna be in America.) In fact MIS-4 is about when humans migrated into the middle east, so, you know, there's still some way to go.

But basically, yeah, that's what I'm getting at: water lines are lower during glaciation, higher during intergalciation periods. Some city on the shore in roughly MIS-3 times will still be at least close to the shore nowadays, in most cases. Even going back and assuming some advanced civilization in MIS-4 or MIS-5 times, well, almost anything that was on the shore back then will still be on the shore right now. Well, in most cases.

A pre-glaciation city is only gonna be in deep water if it's R'lyeh

IMHO, and I could be wrong, and all that.
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Old 17th November 2012, 01:31 PM   #20
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Over the past 40 years new discoveries and new technologies have revealed an amazing amount of information about our distant past, and have in general pushed back estimations of when our ancestors first learnt various technologies and formed complex societies. Is it totally unreasonable to think there might be another Nevali Cori or Golbekli Tepi under some place as yet unexplored by modern archeology?
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Old 17th November 2012, 02:05 PM   #21
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Probably because many of the AncientAlien-believers really doesn't know the first thing about the old cultures they believe said AncientAliens have caused?
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Old 17th November 2012, 03:11 PM   #22
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Yeah, you're probably right. Hanlon's Razor, and all that...
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Old 17th November 2012, 03:13 PM   #23
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Originally Posted by bobwtfomg View Post
Over the past 40 years new discoveries and new technologies have revealed an amazing amount of information about our distant past, and have in general pushed back estimations of when our ancestors first learnt various technologies and formed complex societies. Is it totally unreasonable to think there might be another Nevali Cori or Golbekli Tepi under some place as yet unexplored by modern archeology?
There's a difference between that and some civilization knowing how to do open heart surgery, so the Aztecs get that idea from them.
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Old 17th November 2012, 03:48 PM   #24
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Originally Posted by Correa Neto View Post
"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.
I admit I am not as well read on archaeology as I should be BUT how do you explain the docks at Tiahuanaco and the slowly evaporating Lake Titicaca? There is debate as to whether the actual site is as young as some of the artifacts found there since some stones were found to be buried under 6 feet of soil in an area where soil erosion like that is a slow process Or is that just woo conjecture?

However, either way, I'm not attributing anything to aliens, I think our ancestors deserve more credit than that. Look at us, we managed to develop into what we are today in a matter of a few centuries. Why couldn't that repeat itself over and over again in the last 200,000 years. How do you know that everything that could be found has been found or properly interpreted if it was?
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Old 17th November 2012, 03:54 PM   #25
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Originally Posted by bobwtfomg View Post
Over the past 40 years new discoveries and new technologies have revealed an amazing amount of information about our distant past, and have in general pushed back estimations of when our ancestors first learnt various technologies and formed complex societies. Is it totally unreasonable to think there might be another Nevali Cori or Golbekli Tepi under some place as yet unexplored by modern archeology?
In paleontology and archaeology you have to address FADs and LADs--first appearance datums and last appearance datums (yes, I know the plural of datum is data; FAD=First Appearance Datum, and I'm pluralizing the whole thing). Essentially, the first time you see something in the record is some time after the first one appeared, and the last time is (usually) sometime before it goes extinct. So people were probably making Clovis points prior to our first find, simply because the odds of the first one surviving are vanishingly small. So it's perfectly reasonable to expect some amount of plasticity in our estimations of origins and extinctions.

That said, there are limits to what can be expected. This is also based on the probability of preservation. Rare things and squishy things are unlikely to get preserved, so the difference between the FAD and the actual origin is likely to be fairly big. Hard things and common things are much more likely to be preserved (not individually, necessarily, but if you have ten million of them even a 1 in 1,000,000 chance will preserve ten), so the difference between the FAD and the actual origin will be lesser. There are some weird things found far outside of their expected range, but they're relatively uncommon.
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Old 17th November 2012, 04:22 PM   #26
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Originally Posted by Jodie View Post
I admit I am not as well read on archaeology as I should be BUT how do you explain the docks at Tiahuanaco and the slowly evaporating Lake Titicaca? There is debate as to whether the actual site is as young as some of the artifacts found there since some stones were found to be buried under 6 feet of soil in an area where soil erosion like that is a slow process Or is that just woo conjecture?

However, either way, I'm not attributing anything to aliens, I think our ancestors deserve more credit than that. Look at us, we managed to develop into what we are today in a matter of a few centuries. Why couldn't that repeat itself over and over again in the last 200,000 years. How do you know that everything that could be found has been found or properly interpreted if it was?
Several reasons, chief of which being the communication problem. You can get to the next level by standing on the shoulders of giants before you. You have to have lots of people learning what was already invented before them, before get them inventing the next great thing. So you need not just a way to preserve what was discovered before, but also a way for it to circulate among a lot of other people. E.g., continent-wide trade routes.

All that just wasn't in place for primitive tribes. They had neither the number of people doing research and scholarship, nor writing to put that information down for other people. So anything you can discover are rather simple stuff that you can do by yourself, and often accidentally. And because you don't have a market for just knowledge, any theoretical observations, anything that isn't a directly usable tool, will be forgotten by the time someone else could have used it.

Basically there's a reason technology picked up the pace in Europe after the printing press, you know?

The second is not as much a reason why it couldn't have happened, but a reason why we're sure it didn't actually happen. Inventions in this time spread slowly, and sometimes not so slowly among tribes. E.g., the bow and arrow spreads explosively. Within a very short time -- by species timeline scale -- it spreads all across Europe, Africa and Asia. The better stone tools in Neolithic spread at incredible speed too. Etc. Some of the stuff even starts being used by Neanderthals.

Where technology didn't spread, it was because there was a non-trivial problem to it being used somewhere else. E.g., the Romans and Greeks had ploughs for hundreds of years, but they didn't work on the northern European soil at all. So you see those barbarians up north oblivious of agriculture simply because they CAN'T copy the tools of the guys down south. But as soon as a plough is invented that works at all on the soil up north, lo and behold, the Germanic tribes copy it almost immediately.

The idea that some tribe could keep all the stuff leading to even advanced metal working a secret for thousands of years, while being surrounded by people who live in the same conditions, is a bit absurd. If someone had invented all that, you'd find copies from the neighbouring tribes.

Furthermore, ancient people were not nice people. Which is the whole reason to exist of this thread, after all. When someone had a technological advantage, they went and conquered their neighbours with it. For example the guys who first made iron swords pretty much razed and replaced whole civilizations which were still using bronze. Even if they may not want it at first, as soon as they overpopulate and start starving, guess what happens?

So you wouldn't have some quaint technologically advanced city by the seashore, but a great empire. And all the infrastructure that goes with it. The ruins from that empire would be everywhere, and their wares found over an even wider area via trade.
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Old 17th November 2012, 04:46 PM   #27
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Originally Posted by Jodie
There is debate as to whether the actual site is as young as some of the artifacts found there since some stones were found to be buried under 6 feet of soil in an area where soil erosion like that is a slow process
In the immortal words of Peanut: How do you know?

That's a serious question, by the way. The issue is, you're running head-first into the concepts central to Neocatastraphism. It basically works like this: low-amplitude, high frequency events dominate temoprally. They happen all the freaking time--sometimes quite literally (ie, they're constant processes). However, they tend to get overprinted by low-frequency, high-amplitude events. For example, tides in some areas deposit a certain amount of sediment each day. It's a small, constant amount in discrete layers. However, when you examine the geological record you notice that these layers are absent--what you see are tempestites, where storms re-work the sediment. Tides are low-amplitude, high-frequency; storms are high-amplitude, low-frequency. This is quite common in the geological record.

The specific application in this case is that we can't necessarily simply look at what's happening right now in these areas and say "This has always happened exactly the same way; therefore 6' of soil=X years". We'd need to examine the stratigraphy to determine exactly what processes were going on at the time of deposition. Depending on how you're using the term soil (there are many) they can be deposited in a surprisingly short amount of time. I know that the Modesto and Riverbank Formations in the San Joaquin Valley include some layers that are fairly thick and which were deposited remarkably quickly.

Even high-frequency events can make it impossible to analyze, however. Soils are frequently full of critters, and critters have burrowed for about 600 million years (depending on your interpretation of a few trace fossils). This churns up the sediment, until in some cases all you see is a homogenous block of sand. Really annoying, by the way--you can lose a few million years' worth of data very easily that way. A few thousand is easy. What that means is that it may in fact be impossible to know just how long it took to accumulate that sediment.

This is what I meant about this stuff seeming easy, but being incredibly hard. It sounds very, very easy to look at how thick the dirt is and figure out how old it is. The practical applications are incredibly complicated, however, and even experts often simply don't know. Soils are extremely complicated ecosystems, and paleosols have all those complications plus taphonomy and novel geochemical processes. This isn't something you can read a few articles online about and be knowledgeable in it. It's something that requires fairly intense study for years. I spent a semester in grad school studying ripple marks and I don't pretend to know all there is to know about those structures, and that's just ONE of the things someone doing this research will need to be able to interpret.

Quote:
Why couldn't that repeat itself over and over again in the last 200,000 years.
Provide evidence that it did, and we'll talk. Until then, there's no reason to think it did, by definition. We can speculate about why (and that's really all it is, mere speculation), but the fact remains it DIDN'T--unless someone can provide the evidence that it did.

Originally Posted by HansMustermann
For example the guys who first made iron swords pretty much razed and replaced whole civilizations which were still using bronze.
Actually, the first swords WERE bronze. Tangless bronze swords, to be exact. They didn't exactly sweep through other societies, though--spears and the like were more effective for a long time. Iron swords did put an end to most bronze-sword-using societies, however.

A better example would be chariots. When Egypt was invaded by some group (Hittites?), they were wiped out because the chariots cut down whole armies. Then the Egyptions learned how to use them, and wiped out their invaders with their own technology.
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Old 17th November 2012, 04:47 PM   #28
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Originally Posted by HansMustermann View Post
Several reasons, chief of which being the communication problem. You can get to the next level by standing on the shoulders of giants before you. You have to have lots of people learning what was already invented before them, before get them inventing the next great thing. So you need not just a way to preserve what was discovered before, but also a way for it to circulate among a lot of other people. E.g., continent-wide trade routes.

All that just wasn't in place for primitive tribes. They had neither the number of people doing research and scholarship, nor writing to put that information down for other people. So anything you can discover are rather simple stuff that you can do by yourself, and often accidentally. And because you don't have a market for just knowledge, any theoretical observations, anything that isn't a directly usable tool, will be forgotten by the time someone else could have used it.

Basically there's a reason technology picked up the pace in Europe after the printing press, you know?

The second is not as much a reason why it couldn't have happened, but a reason why we're sure it didn't actually happen. Inventions in this time spread slowly, and sometimes not so slowly among tribes. E.g., the bow and arrow spreads explosively. Within a very short time -- by species timeline scale -- it spreads all across Europe, Africa and Asia. The better stone tools in Neolithic spread at incredible speed too. Etc. Some of the stuff even starts being used by Neanderthals.

Where technology didn't spread, it was because there was a non-trivial problem to it being used somewhere else. E.g., the Romans and Greeks had ploughs for hundreds of years, but they didn't work on the northern European soil at all. So you see those barbarians up north oblivious of agriculture simply because they CAN'T copy the tools of the guys down south. But as soon as a plough is invented that works at all on the soil up north, lo and behold, the Germanic tribes copy it almost immediately.

The idea that some tribe could keep all the stuff leading to even advanced metal working a secret for thousands of years, while being surrounded by people who live in the same conditions, is a bit absurd. If someone had invented all that, you'd find copies from the neighbouring tribes.

Furthermore, ancient people were not nice people. Which is the whole reason to exist of this thread, after all. When someone had a technological advantage, they went and conquered their neighbours with it. For example the guys who first made iron swords pretty much razed and replaced whole civilizations which were still using bronze. Even if they may not want it at first, as soon as they overpopulate and start starving, guess what happens?

So you wouldn't have some quaint technologically advanced city by the seashore, but a great empire. And all the infrastructure that goes with it. The ruins from that empire would be everywhere, and their wares found over an even wider area via trade.
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Old 17th November 2012, 05:42 PM   #29
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Originally Posted by Dinwar View Post
Actually, the first swords WERE bronze. Tangless bronze swords, to be exact. They didn't exactly sweep through other societies, though--spears and the like were more effective for a long time. Iron swords did put an end to most bronze-sword-using societies, however.
Considering that all I was saying is really your last sentence there, I'm kinda scratching my head about the stuff starting with "Actually".

I'm pretty sure that by the normal way English is parsed "the guys who first made iron swords" is not naturally read as saying that the first swords ever were made of iron. Same as if I were to say "Claude de Jouffroy built the first working steam boat", I'm sure nobody would parse that as meaning that there were no boats before steam

Originally Posted by Dinwar View Post
A better example would be chariots. When Egypt was invaded by some group (Hittites?), they were wiped out because the chariots cut down whole armies. Then the Egyptions learned how to use them, and wiped out their invaders with their own technology.
You mean the Hyksos? Well, the problem weren't just chariots, but the fact that the Egyptian army was thoroughly obsolete. As in, more than a millennium obsolete. Though, yes, chariots did probably play the biggest role.

Still, ok, it probably does make a better example than mine of how new and superior technology was used for conquest.
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Old 17th November 2012, 06:16 PM   #30
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Originally Posted by Dinwar View Post
In the immortal words of Peanut: How do you know?
I don't know but it's a very arid environment and has been for many years since before 800 BC when it's assumed that this city was built. Without rain, how would the soil move at a rapid rate to cover some of the stones up to a 6 foot depth?
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Old 17th November 2012, 06:19 PM   #31
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I'm sure the terror aspect was part of it for the Aztecs, especially as far as intimidating the holy living #&^$ out of all the other groups in the area.. but don't forget they're one of the groups that also just really, really, went all-out with the self-sacrificing god theme. All the bloodiness wasn't even satisfying a blood debt so much as it was a gesture of respect and thanks to the gods that sacrificed themselves, and a way to be godly. I don't think every single person who was about to get sacrificed was feelin' pretty jazzed about it or anything, but people can get really attached to ideas like that. Compare women who'd throw themselves on funeral pyres in India when it was just the Done Thing.

ETA: Course the dynamic changed a bit towards the end when things weren't going so well and they got into doing stuff like symbolic conflicts just to get more sacrifices lined up.

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Old 17th November 2012, 07:40 PM   #32
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Actually, no, while people can be crazy enough to jump on a pyre, they can't STAY there for an hour or two until they get burnt to death. They actually experimented with that millimetre wave ray that, for all practically purposes, gives you an approximate sensation almost up there with being burned alive. People just can't stay there. It's a primal instinct to get the heck out of its way.

I can imagine that maybe one or two people out there have the willpower to just stay and burn, but even then not more than one or two. Have you seen recordings those rare nutcases that douse themselves in gasoline and set themselves on fire to make a point? Yeah, they invariably start to run around and flail. It's a primal reflex to try to make the horrible pain stop.

That every woman -- including some little girls, judging by the palm prints on sati stones -- can just stay on a fire for an hour or two... no. Just no. No frikken way.

And sure enough, by some descriptions we have:

A) there was immense pressure on those women, and if they didn't go with it, they could lose caste for them and their children. Meaning pretty much they could just be murdered afterwards anyway.

B) most didn't seem to go with it, and just got beaten up, drugged and thrown on the fire, and, crucially,

C) the whole thing generally involved some men with long pieces of wood to pin her down, and oil or oil-rich seeds to throw in the fire.

Especially C makes it plain old murder. Even IF someone actually just wanted to jump in a fire, but then changed her mind -- as 99% would, sooner or later, usually sooner -- preventing her from leaving the fire and throwing fuel on the fire is plain old murder.

I can imagine that some woman or another would take a handful of sleeping pills in grief, but not choose to jump in a fire. And again, you can't actually STAY in the fire unless drugged unconscious and/or pinned down.

So let's drop the romanticized ideas that some women actually sat in a fire and burned because they wanted to. It is horrible murder, plain and simple.

And if I were some kind of supervillain ruler of the Earth with such power... every single person at those few recent funerals where supposedly some widow just, you know, unexpectedly jumped in the fire and stay there, I'd hang them all. Down to the last one. Because they're all accomplices to horrible murder.
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Old 17th November 2012, 08:31 PM   #33
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Considering that all I was saying is really your last sentence there, I'm kinda scratching my head about the stuff starting with "Actually".
I re-read your post, and I was wrong. I thought you'd said that swords were first made of iron, and I was pointing out that they were first made out of bronze. You didn't say that, however, so my statement is irrelevant.

Originally Posted by Jodie
Without rain, how would the soil move at a rapid rate to cover some of the stones up to a 6 foot depth?
Any number of ways. Wind blows things pretty far, and can blow rocks of remarkable size. Debris flows can travel much, much further than people think. Flash floods can as well (believe it or not, most arid-environment sedimentation is driven by water). Without knowing some more details about the environment I can't say, but I CAN say with certainty that arid environments can have extremely rapid transport of extremely large amounts of sediment. There are a number of formations in the Antelope Valley where this is precisely how they were formed.
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Old 17th November 2012, 08:42 PM   #34
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Well it is prone to earthquakes, there is always that.
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Old 17th November 2012, 08:48 PM   #35
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Originally Posted by HansMustermann View Post
Actually, no, while people can be crazy enough to jump on a pyre, they can't STAY there for an hour or two until they get burnt to death.
(...)
So let's drop the romanticized ideas that some women actually sat in a fire and burned because they wanted to. It is horrible murder, plain and simple.
Whoa geez I wasn't trying to promote any romanticized ideas. I was only trying to come up with an example where SOME percentage of people meeting awful fate X were in favor of it ideologically and that was the first thing that came to mind. I would imagine even the most gung-ho for sacrifice Aztec would not be so excited about it once the flaying part was going on.

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Old 17th November 2012, 09:12 PM   #36
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Tiwanaku was in a marshy area subject to periodical inundation, and seems to have had canals for transport. It seems to me like if something falls in a canal, and past a point it's no longer maintained, it can get easily buried in whatever the water and the wind blow into it.

The agricultural land was also on raised platforms, to control the flooding. I.e., there was a lot of soil which had been dug up and placed higher than normal. Again, it seems to me like no miracle that a lot of stuff would be blown or washed off the high places, and end up in the low places, i.e., the canals. Gravity tends to do that.
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Old 18th November 2012, 06:25 AM   #37
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Originally Posted by Lithrael View Post
Whoa geez I wasn't trying to promote any romanticized ideas. I was only trying to come up with an example where SOME percentage of people meeting awful fate X were in favor of it ideologically and that was the first thing that came to mind. I would imagine even the most gung-ho for sacrifice Aztec would not be so excited about it once the flaying part was going on.
Well, maybe I overreacted a little, but sati is one of the things that make me see red. If I were to make up a religion, it would have a special circle of hell for the berks who perpetrated that horror.

And honestly, I don't think many women were actually looking forward to ending their life screaming in agony on top of a pile of burning wood. Even if you were depressed enough to plan a suicide, you wouldn't choose the most horrible way to die, and it would have to be your choice, not basically mandatory. Because for the upper class women marriage was a delayed death sentence, and pretty much guaranteed to happen. (Judging by the testimony of the Greeks, it seems to have been more widespread, but by the time the Brits got there, the lower classes had already said a big "piss off" to it.) It's one thing to commit suicide because you want it, and it's another thing to have a death sentence looming over your head for all your life.

And sure enough, what we learn from the Greeks is that the Indians did it to deter women from poisoning their husbands. (And I'd add, probably to solve any inheritance problems in one fell swoop too.) It wouldn't work as a deterrent if women were looking forward to it. It's only a deterrent if it's something you'd very much rather avoid.

Plus, about ideological reasons, people tend to favour ideologies that are in their favour, or which they think they can game. E.g., you might have Jews working for the Nazis (and there were a lot in WW2), if they think they're going to get special status for it, or at least delay the inevitable for long enough. You don't see many people looking forward to being themselves subjected to a horrible injustice.

Basically, you'd probably find enough people being all for YOUR being killed, or people going with it so THEY don't get killed, but you won't find many being all for THEIR being killed horribly. E.g., you'll find plenty thinking they should nuke Iran, but none saying, "please someone nuke ME."

For sati there was no such way to rationalize against it. Being all for it and cooperating with it, helped some Jews avoid the Holocaust, but it won't mean Jack Schitt for a woman supposed to be burned alive on her husband's pyre. You can't go "maybe they'll leave me be if I'm their useful idiot", because they won't.
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Old 18th November 2012, 08:09 AM   #38
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Clearly it was a bad example then. OK, how about instead I say, compare it to that rare group of monks that try to mummify themselves to death.
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Old 18th November 2012, 01:42 PM   #39
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Originally Posted by Dinwar View Post
Well, to be fair there is one way in which a catastrophe could wipe out a civilization and all records: if it was an island nation, and the island exploded. Krakatoa-like event or something similar. That said, such a civilization would necessarily be fairly small; they'd only have the resources of that island, after all (otherwise we'd see evidence of them). And extremely small groups tend to not develop high technology by themselves.
Maybe. But we found Akrotiri, despite Santorini's KABOOM having been larger than Krakatau's...

The problem with civilizations restricted to islands is that they are doomed to rely on sparse resources. Geology will impose severe limitations to the types of mineral resources avaliable. If its a Hawaii-like island, or even Iceland, for example, they will be forever restricted to basalt and obsidian. No copper, no iron, no tin. I guess an island chain like Japan would be the minimum nedded to have enough diversity of mineral resources.

Jodie, sedimentation rates are very variable. Another thing you must take in to account is that deserts do receive rains and flash floods as well as temporary streams are important when it comes down to shape desert landscapes. Add to this salar-type lakes and you'll see there's absolutely no problem with thick accumulations of sediments happening relatively fast. Do not forget also climate variations. They happened in the past, will happen again and are actually happening. Again, whatever was your source regarding Tiwanaku, its lacking knowledge.

At last but not least, remember- the "you can't know everything" is flawed. Its the god-in-the-gaps.
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Old 18th November 2012, 06:21 PM   #40
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It was the tour guide at the site that talked about the debate over the actual dates of construction and mentioned the buried stones as evidence that it was older.
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