Is Civilization much Older than we're led to Beleive?
05-28-2018, 01:25 PM
I think about this kind of thing a lot. Here is some of my thinking on ancient unknown civilizations:
-Any advance that is found in the archeological record always has one find that is earlier than all the rest. However, the real date when that phenomena occurred is always earlier than our earliest archeological record. This must be true.
-Any of these advances that occurred before they were found in the archeological record probably were invented numerous times in various places, but just didn't work out. They weren't effective enough, or that people got raided by nearby nomadic peoples, or the culture just failed (like the Mayans or the people at Mesa Verde in the SW United States)
-If you look at various key technologies, many of them are estimated to date back 20,000 years or more, including building construction, textiles, pottery, domestication of the dog, boats, and many other technologies. These combined to allow a fairly sophisticated standard of living going back a lot longer than you'd think.
It's said that until agriculture, people were all nomadic. However, I believe many fixed site communities must have existed. It's known that trading goes very far back. Sites with salt, or high quality obsidian or flint for stone tools, or good fishing were likely to have had villages. It seems inevitable that some of these villages must have flourished even 20,000 years ago. They may have only flourished a few 100 years, and then they declined, but there must have been fair number of these short term towns through the years across the old world from China to Europe. As many have noted, many of these would have been along coastal regions that are now under the oceans.
As for agriculture, I think it would have been obvious to the Paleolithic humans that seeds turn into plants, and that you could plant seeds to grow more of the good plants. However, this was before domesticated strains of these plants existed, and even though some towns may have existed at resource rich sites, most people still were nomadic. I imagine the combination of low-yield undomesticated plants and mostly nomadic populations meant that agriculture was impractical long after the basic concept was known.
However, where did the domesticated strains of grain, fruits, and vegetables come from? My guess is that some people attempted to grow wild plants in some times and places, but it wasn't successful enough to catch on. The people might have grown a crop for 100 years, but then they got soft and raiders came and killed them. Agriculture was probably known for 10,000 years before it succeeded, but people thought it was stupid and dangerous, because everybody who has ever tried it ended up getting destroyed. Eventually better and better strains of agricultural crops were developed from 1000's of years of local, small scale attempts, and "suddenly" the agricultural revolution occurred.
I imagine in the ancient world before the last small burst of glaciation in the Younger Dryas, there were chiefdoms scattered across the old world, with active trading between them. There must have been places making textiles, pottery, obsidian spears and knives, and high quality stone axes. They must have traded premium furs, and other specialty and luxury goods. This would have been small scale by modern standards, but I bet there were local populations that spoke the same language and had a central town with a big chief and a central ceremonial place, probably on a river or sea coast for trading. I think these kind of locally developed chiefdoms have been occurring for 20,000 years or more, but they never got big enough to leave a permanent archeological record, and never lasted more than a few 100 years, before they declined or were overrun. Most people still would have been nomadic, but a network of these permanent villages seems likely to have existed along trading routes in places with unusually plentiful resources.
Another thing I've noted is how close the New World peoples were technologically to the Old World. On the one hand, the Europeans were far more advanced than the New World peoples, and conquered them with almost absurd ease. On the other hand, the New World peoples had agriculture and large scale civilizations. They had writing. They were only a few hundred years into their own bronze age, so they were about 3000 years behind the old world. However, they were completely isolated. Even if Polynesians or some other ancient peoples came to the new world, these were tenuous contacts at best with the old world. The New World cultures developed these technologies in isolation from the Old World, with only a few 1000 years difference between them. That's not very long compared to the long span of human prehistory.
My theory on this is that when humans crossed the Bering Strait into the New World 12-15,000 years ago, they carried the cultural knowledge of humanity at that time. Therefore, humans in the Old World and New World were roughly equal technologically in 12,000 BC. Given their isolation and small initial numbers, it's no surprise that development was slower in the New World than in the Old World. However, I think the people coming to the New World already had the possibility of agriculture and larger scale permanent communities in their cultural traditions. They passed these traditions down as they spread across North and South America, and when their numbers had increased enough, they started practicing agriculture and building towns. Just as it was in the old world, there must have been a period of gradual small scale domestication of crop plants before the agriculture really took hold. Likewise, I think a lot of mythological themes were carried across the Bering strait at that time and were passed down through the generations.
All of this is only speculation, but I think it seems very likely, based on the three principles I listed at the top of my post. However, if you put this all together, you can imagine traveling the ancient world as a trader, who comes from a port town with a long tradition of trading. You can imagine traveling to other trading centers scattered days and weeks apart, and coming into town with your shipment of fine obsidian, polished beads, fine furs, and other trade goods, and in turn picking up a load of whatever goods are available in that town.
You can imagine having a troubadour of sorts in your ship's complement, who swaps stories and epic songs with the locals. When you arrive at the village you're trading at, they'd probably declare a festival, and have a big pow wow at their ceremonial site. You could probably score with one of the young village girls, drink some fermented drink, and have a grand old time (making sure your men are still prepared against a sudden ambush, of course).
You can imagine being the chief of a tribe that controls 2-3 high value resources that happen to be close together, and growing your small village into a bigger town, such that you can start to keep a harem, live in a big house, and have the first choice of all the best food and other goods. Your village would have the strongest men with the best obsidian tipped spears, so you could go raid nearby nomadic tribes, kill the men, take their women and their weapons, tools, boats, etc., and settle your own people to roam the new hunting grounds. Good times!
Things like this must have happened all over the ancient world for a period of 10,000 years or more before the agricultural revolution. Even when the agricultural revolution came, that Neolithic era reached great heights of development during a period that lasted another 4000 years or so, until the times we know about, with the Sumerians, Egyptians, etc. It must have been a nasty, brutish and short life for most people, but for some exceptional men, it must have been like living in a modern fantasy adventure.
I'm the tower of power, too sweet to be sour. I'm funky like a monkey. Sky's the limit and space is the place!
-Randy Savage
