Pseudo-History And The Hyborian Age

[Mercurius]

[MENTION=17239]David Howery[/MENTION], elements of Hancock's views have been "debunked" but that doesn't mean that all or even the majority of his work is invalidated. More often than not I've found that some specifics that he presents are proven erroneous but that doesn't negate the gist of what he is saying. His main point is that there is a substantial (and growing) body of evidence that there was some kind of antediluvian civilization(s). I tend to agree with this. What it actually was is debatable and I don't have a strong opinion about. At the very least, and this goes without saying, there is a lot we don't know (yet) about prehistory and our current view will evolve and change, even drastically, as we learn more.

But I am an admitted alternate/speculative history and archeology buff. I don't automatically believe anything that sounds cool or bucks the "orthodoxy," but I do find that the really good ideas--and innovations--often come from the "lunatic fringe," that academia is, by and large, bogged down in reinforcing its own self-generated theories and finding ways to either eject or rationalize anything that is anomalous to What We Know As True. This is why Atlantis-debunkers say that all Atlantis myths stem from Plato and Plato was just writing an allegory, but ignore the cross-cultural allusions to a pre-flood civilization and numerous Atlantis-esque references.

But in terms of speculative archeology and such, the problem is, as with anything, separating out the signal from the noise (because there are actually a lot of lunatics, or at least lunacy, in the fringe). I find that a large dose of agnosticism is healthy.

[MENTION=4157]rgard[/MENTION], yeah, Gobekli Tepe is pretty fascinating. I'm wondering what they'll uncover when the other 95% of the site is dug up.

 

[Sepulchrave II]

Ooh, this thread suddenly got very interesting.

Thank-you rgard, Mercurius and S'mon for turning me on to this.

 

[S'mon]

Civilisation seems to have started as soon as climate warmed at the end of the last ice age, although we don't really know what was going on beneath the now-flooded coastlines, and there was a setback for the re-chilling of the Younger Dryas. After that there was a long warm period when civilisation & agriculture became firmly established.

Before about 10,000 BC/12,000 years ago the Ice Age climate may have been too dry, cold, and erratic for civilisation to get a good start in the areas best suited for it, such as the Middle East & the Yellow River basin.

According to Wikipedia the Younger Dryas cold period (which came after about 2000 years of warm climate at the end of the last big Ice Age) ran from about 10,800 BC to 9,500 BC, 11,500 ya. There seems to be no evidence of agriculture, and little evidence of towns, before then. Small-scale civilisation seems to have become firmly established as soon as it ended. Sea level continued to rise quite fast for several thousand years subsequently, potentially flooding the earliest civilisations.

During the last Ice Ace, until about 12,500 BC, climate was both too cold and too dry and variable for a Howardian Hyborean Age to be plausible IMO. There may conceivably have been a brief flowering of culture in the very warm period ca 12,500-10,800 BC in coasts then flooded by the rising sea levels - the melting of the ice sheets also caused the Younger Dryas cold period. Strong evidence of agriculture and upland civilisation comes right after the Younger Dryas ended, and we now know for instance that civilisation in Egypt was well established for thousands of years before the unification ca 3,000 BC, at least back to 6,000 BC or so.

The most scientifically plausible era for a 'pre historic civilisation' game would seem to be ca 9,000-6,000 BC, the 'flood' was probably a more localised flood event in the Middle East; AIR there are several candidates. There's also the flooding that separated the British Isles from Europe, ca 6,000 BC AIR (haven't checked all dates). Much of this period was notably warmer & wetter than today; we are approaching the end of our current Interglacial and the ice will be back any millenia now!

Edit: I think the main change in recent thinking is this. It used to be thought that civilisation sprung up pretty much fully formed ca 5,000 years ago, 3,000 BC, notably in Egypt. We now know there was at least another 5,000 years or so of fairly substantial civilisation - townships, agriculture - before that, but at least some of the evidence must be underwater, what would have been the best land for the earliest civilisations is now under coastal seas, so that gives a GM a lot to play with.

 

[Mercurius]

I think you've got it right, S'mon--even the mainstream is seeing more of a build-up during the Neolithic.

As for the Flood, I think that has a multiplicity of meanings, both literal (an actual historical event) and allegorical or symbolic (multi-faceted meanings). But in terms of literal, I think that also has multiple applications: local floods that were part of a world-wide climate change related to the end of the Ice Age. It can also refer to landmasses or entire regions of land (e.g. Sundaland) that are now underwater. The future of archeology, especially as it pertains to prehistory, may really be underwater.

Finally, let us not forget that Ice Ages come in cycles; we focus on what happened after the last Ice Age, but it is also possible that civilizations existed prior. When you start looking at the Oronaeus Finaeus map (from the 16th century, which shows Antarctica with rivers and hills) and other anomalous artifacts, myths and documents, things start getting really interesting...

 

[David Howery]

But I am an admitted alternate/speculative history and archeology buff.

I'm a big fan of alternate history (been a member of alternatehistory.com for over 9 years), and a history geek in general. And yeah, I'll agree with the general idea that prehistory isn't well known, and more was going on than is generally acknowledged. I'm just generally skeptical about Hancock's specific ideas about certain things (like the Sphinx). Again, though, I don't want to start a big historical debate about it all; this ain't the place for it...

 

[S'mon]

Finally, let us not forget that Ice Ages come in cycles; we focus on what happened after the last Ice Age, but it is also possible that civilizations existed prior. When you start looking at the Oronaeus Finaeus map (from the 16th century, which shows Antarctica with rivers and hills) and other anomalous artifacts, myths and documents, things start getting really interesting...

There were some warmer periods within the last Ice Age, before the Toba eruption ca 90,000 BC and connected to the colonisation waves out of Africa and across Eurasia; you could conceivably have a precursor civilisation before the last Glacial Maximum ca 20,000 years ago - there is no evidence, but evidence could have been eliminated by ice sheets which grind everything away, as well as by flooding when the ice retreated. I think flooded coastal civilisation is more plausible than a high-latitude 'Thule' civilisation swept away by the ice, but you could have either - or both. What you can't have is mid-latitude highland civilisation since we have pretty good evidence there wasn't any until about 10,000 BC.

As far as we know, Antarctica has been ice-locked for about 3 million years, long before modern humans evolved - even if homo erectus was the same species as homo sapiens, which is looking increasingly likely, that's about 2 million years max. The weight of genetic evidence I've seen recently points towards a fairly recent chimp-human split ca 4 million years ago, although the fossil evidence indicates the common ancestor may well have been much more gracile and humanlike than are modern chimps, possibly even bipedal.

It seems to have been Antarctica moving over the south pole and becoming icelocked that precipitated the current Ice Epoch, and the pressure of the recurrent Ice Ages that spurred human evolution - there is a good discussion in "[ame="http://www.amazon.co.uk/First-Chimpanzee-Origins-Penguin-Science/dp/0140294813/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1319267893&sr=1-1"]The First Chimpanzee[/ame]". So no modern humans in ice-free Antarctica.

 

[S'mon]

Anyway, I'll reiterate that I think trying to place human civilisation before the end of the last Ice Age is a bit of a red herring, when there is a good 7,000 years between the end of the Younger Dryas and the beginning of recorded history ca 3,000 BC - a time when we *know* there was agriculture, we *know* there was civilisation - small scale in the early uplands of Turkey, but it seems entirely plausible that more advanced civilisations flourished in the coastlands - we *know* there was a warm climate, and we *know* that there was large-scale flooding, with areas the size of large countries now under the sea. What more do you need for your pre-flood fantasy-history game?

 

[S'mon]

Here's what I got when I googled "6,000 BC":
6th millennium BC - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Plenty there to work with.

 

[Mercurius]

[MENTION=463]S'mon[/MENTION] - yeah, I agree that there is no need to look beyond the Neolithic for "lost civilizations"; my sense is that over the next couple decades our view of that period is going to radically shift, that we won't be saying "History begins at Sumer" anymore, but maybe something like "History begins at Gobekli Tepe" or "History begins in the Indus Valley."

I also don't see why a relatively advanced civilization couldn't have existed in the Ice Age, especially in the tropics. This would make sense for any kind of Atlantean/pre-flood civilizations: ice caps retreat/melt, water levels rise = flooding of coastal civilization.

 

[Gentlegamer]

I always found it curious that we've been anatomically human for 100,000 years, but we only figured out civilization in the past 6,000 to 8,000 years maybe a little further back with Jericho.

This place has historians totally baffled:

Göbekli Tepe - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Dating back 11,000 years, it was built by people we thought were non-agrarian hunters and gatherers. This goes against grain of traditional thought as to at what point in our societal development we are able to take on large building projects.

For a way to look at such things, try G. K. Chesterton's The Everlasting Man, particularly the chapter "The Antiquity of Civilization."

The modern man looking at the most ancient origins has been like a man watching for daybreak in a strange land; and expecting to see that dawn breaking behind bare uplands and solitary peaks. But that dawn is breaking behind the black bulk of great cities long builded and lost for us in the original night; colossal cities like the houses of giants, in which even the carved ornamental animals are taller than the palm-trees; in which the painted portraits can be twelve times the size of the man; with tombs like mountains of man set four-square and pointing to the stars; with winged and bearded bulls standing and staring enormous at the gates of temples; standing still eternally as if a stamp would shake the world. The dawn of history reveals a humanity already civilized. Perhaps it reveals a civilization already old. And among other more important things, it reveals the folly of most of the generalizations about the previous and unknown period when it was really young. The two first human societies of which we have any reliable and detailed record are Babylon and Egypt. It so happens that these two vast and splendid achievements of the genius of the ancients bear witness against two of the commonest and crudest assumptions of the culture of the moderns. If we want to get rid of half the nonsense about nomads and cave-men and the old man of the forest, we need only look steadily at the two solid and stupendous facts called Egypt and Babylon.​