Tag: lost civilizations

“Erased From History (2011)”

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Once upon a time there was a great civilization with numerous cities and probably inhabited by millions of people.

Today nothing is left but the hollow shells of buildings. No names, not a word of their language, nothing to tell us of their gods…

https://leeduigon.com/2018/12/

This was the Indus Valley Civilization, circa 2,000 B.C. The ruins are spectacular, suggesting an efficient, skillful nation. But we can’t read a single word of their language; we don’t even know what language it was. All those people–and we don’t know the name of a single one of them. Not one.

How thoroughly can we and our works disappear!

 

‘Out-of-Place Artifacts’ (Cool!)

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Mysterious iron pipes: go figure.

I’m tired, and there’s so much politics out there today, it’s making me dizzy. Maybe it’s getting to you, too. So here’s a break.

‘Out-of-Place Artifacts, “Ooparts” for short, have been puzzling scholars and scientists for years. Are they just quirks produced by nature–or do they push back human history by thousands or even millions of years? Were there advanced civilizations on the earth that have left only these little scraps behind?

https://www.zerohedge.com/political/17-out-place-artifacts-suggest-high-tech-civilizations-existed-thousands-or-millions

Some of these have been kicking around for years: light bulbs (so it seems) in ancient Egypt, batteries (so it seems) from ancient Babylonia, medieval maps showing Antarctica as ice-free–these have yet to be explained.

Others I’d never heard of till now: the “Great Wall of Texas,” what appears to be a rock structure, some 400,000 years old; broken pipes from China (where’s a plumber when you need one?), said to be 150,000 years old; an ancient nuclear reactor; and more, quite a bit more.

Are we sure we know what we think we know?

The Bible tells us there was civilization before the Flood. Maybe this stuff is all that’s left of it. I think we can view the supposed ages of these Ooparts as just guesswork. Maybe they aren’t man-made artifacts at all. Nobody seems to know quite what they are.

We are told it took mankind tens of thousands of years to begin civilization. We are not told why it took so long, or how it ever got started at all.

We do have a lot to learn.

 

‘Where Are the Thracians?’ (2018)

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How do nations disappear? There must be many ways by which they might achieve extinction. Certainly many nations have achieved it.

Where are the Thracians?

Once upon a time the Thracians were well-known, numerous, sometimes feared, sometimes admired, a nation to be reckoned with. And now there aren’t any.

You can’t just keep on trashing your civilization and still expect it to survive and prosper.

[And yes, I know I’m late today! I will try to catch up.]

Wrestling with the Past

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The Wrestler (sculpture) - Wikipedia

This ancient sculpture has been named “The Wrestler.” Scholars think it probably isn’t a wrestler, but it looks like a wrestler warming up for a match. It dates from 1,500 B.C. to 400 B.C.–which is to say they have no idea how old it is. All that can be said for sure is that it’s a piece of great art.

It comes from the Olmec civilization, on the east coast of Mexico–which was not its name, it was a name the Aztecs gave to people living in the country 2,000 years later, we only  use it now for convenience: we do not know what the “Olmecs” called themselves.

They had writing that we cannot read today. They had beautiful paintings which we cannot understand. They invented a rubber ball game that was played throughout Central America until modern times. We do not know a single word of their language, we don’t know the name of anyone who lived there, we have no historical record of what the Olmecs did, or achieved, or failed to do. The quality of their art insists on a high level of civilization. Their buildings were ambitious.

Obviously it was a great civilization. And yet we know nothing, nothing at all, about it. Probably it influenced later civilizations in the area. But in what ways, we don’t know.

The “Olmecs” are gone, leaving behind the works of their hands but nothing else.

A civilization dies, and is erased from history? Yes, it can happen. And yes, it has.

‘Scientific Ninnies’ (2017)

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Kowabunga! It’s the stairway to socialism!

Betcha didn’t know it’s capitalism that wrecks civilizations! If only they’d had the good sense to practice socialism–like Venezuela or North Korea–they wouldn’t have wound up like this.

Scientific Ninnies

Surely someone must have practiced socialism, somewhere, in history. And because socialism is not capitalism, that ancient socialist civilization should still be in business today–and by far the most properous country in the world.

Honk when you find it.

‘Laos’ Mysterious “Plain of Jars”‘ (2017)

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Back in the Sixties, when every day was war in Indochina, every now and then you’d hear something about a “Plain of Jars” in Laos. I always wondered “What’s that?”, but the nooze reports never bothered to explain it.

So it’s still a bit of a mystery today. Just like it’s a mystery where the deuce my link went. Ah, there it is.

https://wordpress.com/post/leeduigon.com/59629

The plain is covered with these great big stone jars, which tend to contain human bones and grave goods. Archaeologists guess they date from around 500 B.C. to 500 A.D., but that’s just a good guess. It’s hard to study a place full of unexploded ordnance waiting to go off and blow an archaeologist to kingdom come.

I wonder what’ll be left of our alleged civilization, fifteen hundred years from now. What will people say about us?

“Oh–them!”

‘Erased from History’ (2011)

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Public baths? Municipal swimming pool? We’ll never know.

The end of any year is a time for reflection. Historical reflection is allowed.

Imagine a real civilization with hundreds of cities, millions of people, international trade, fine architecture… about which we today know virtually nothing: a civilization so totally erased from history that not the name of even a single one of its people has come down to us.

https://leeduigon.com/2011/05/31/erased-from-history/

Think about it. The Indus Valley civilization. The names of its rulers and artists, its cities, its gods–all lost. We cannot read their writing. Surely the Sumerians, with whom they traded, should have written about them; but if they did, we haven’t found it. Not one voice, not even one, speaks to us for the Indus Valley people. One look at their buildings is enough to convince us of their greatness. But buildings don’t talk. Not when you can’t read the inscriptions.

Think about it.

Fantastic Archaeological Discovery in India

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Image result for images of maharashtra petroglyphs

Wow! Looks like we’ve got another lost civilization to puzzle us.

Indian archaeologists in Maharashtra State have uncovered thousands–repeat, thousands–of ancient rock carvings which they estimate date from around 10,000 B.C. (https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-45559300). Click the link for a lot of eye-popping photos.

In addition to stylized geometric designs, the carvings also depict a host of humans and animals, some of which are not found in the area nowadays. We have elephants, rhinos, assorted fish–and some of these are huge, they can only be properly seen from above. The absence of any agricultural-type pictures suggests to scientists that the people who carved them had no agriculture. Well, maybe.

We don’t know anything about the people who created all this artwork, some of which must have been highly labor-intensive, requiring a fair amount of organization. Who were they? How did they live? What was their culture like? And what happened to them?

Nobody knows.

Maharashtra is on India’s east coast, stretching many miles inland into central India. We can’t help wondering whether the people who carved the petroglyphs had anything to do with the later (circa 2,000 B.C.), highly urbanized Indus Valley civilization. No written inscriptions have been discovered here as yet.

Another tantalizing mystery belonging to a vanished world…

‘Another Vanished Civilization’ (2015)

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Image result for images of norte chico civilization

Here’s yet another ancient civilization that has so thoroughly passed into oblivion as to leave behind not one name of a single person who was part of it–the Norte Chico civilization on the coast of Peru. Older than the hills.

https://leeduigon.com/2015/03/31/another-vanished-civilization/

Okay, successor civilizations were still using the quipu record-keeping system invented by the Norte Chico people five or six thousand years earlier. But what did these people call themselves? Who were their kings, their gods, their heroes? Not a trace of them remains.

Think that could happen to our global humanist stupid civilization?

Oh, I do.

‘The Prehistoric Super Bowl’ (2014)

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I used to be a football fan, before they dumbed it down and then merged the two pro leagues into a corporate mining operation whose sole function is to extract money from the public.

But even that’s better than what the NFL has become in recent years.

Obviously we have to go much farther back in time to find an excuse for football.

The Prehistoric Super Bowl