[Oxymoron]

biggest problem with the ideas of large advanced civilizations existing before, say, 5,000 BCE is that there simply isn't any proof. If they were so advanced, why are there no remains of advanced metallurgy or scripture?

Well many cities of Sumer were found only with advancement and abundance of civilian satelite techonology. I am sure if given enough resources we would find many older cities buried in the desert,in Jungles or underwater. By the way watch the Show it thinks its on History or discovery called after Humans.

[Zagadka]

I find the initial adoption of agriculture in several places at about the same time a bit odd.

They weren't at the same time. The three primary locations are the Fertile Crescent, China, and the central Americas, in order of age.

[Thunderhawk]

The three primary locations are the Fertile Crescent, China, and the central Americas, in order of age.

Where they not all ~10,000 BC ?

(I loaned out my copy of Guns Germs and Steel, and I dont have other references on hand)


However, that isnt my point exactly.
However devestating the ice ages are, some areas will remain in nice and still ideal for growing. Furthermore, the shift would not be sudden, but warm up over decades/centuries. Was there simple agriculture elsewhere that spread with new waves of humans/animals to the fertile creasent/China/central America?

If so, where did it come from, who moved it, and what was society like in the area of origination.

This isnt a conspiracy theory, just my wondering about the foundation and background upon which agriculture took off in those 3 areas.


ex.
Grains were originally wild and those edible were eventually found through watching animals and through trial and error/illness/death. Where did these edible grains come from?

Where they native to the fertile cresent and just took off when the temperatures moved up, or where they native to elsewhere and moved in as temperatures went up. Foreign crops/animals often have no natural predators/inhibitors in new regions (assuming basic climate is met) and can thrive in those new regions. If this is the case with wild barley/wheat/etc - where did those wild wheat/barley/etc come from?

Where they completely wild and only after they were well estbalished in the cresent did humans discover they were edible, or was there a long established knowledge that these plants were edible and humans migrated with them when human/plant population was smaller?

[Zagadka]

Where they not all ~10,000 BC ?

No. Agriculture and animal domestication began in the Fertile Crescent somewhere between 8,000 - 6,000 BCE. China was around 4,000, and Native Americans around 0 - 1000 CE,

However devestating the ice ages are, some areas will remain in nice and still ideal for growing.

Not enough to sustain current levels of life, or at least comfort.

Was there simple agriculture elsewhere that spread with new waves of humans/animals to the fertile creasent/China/central America?

No. The Native Americans didn't develop agriculture for around 8-10 thousand years (when the Mayan etc thrived). POpulations spread without developing agriculture. OTOH, the various type of root-plants lke potatoes were carried over as people migrated.

If so, where did it come from, who moved it, and what was society like in the area of origination.

With agriculture, domestication, and urbanization, you free up tons of man-hours of energy to things like social structures, science, soldiers and warfare...

The fact is that some hunter-gatherer cultures lived right next to agricultural without adopting their techniques. Why? No fucking clue.

Grains were originally wild and those edible were eventually found through watching animals and through trial and error/illness/death. Where did these edible grains come from?

Same way all plants come from. From plant evolution, the plant is eaten, then the seeds deposited in the fertile mound o' poo. The theory goes that this was first noticed by people who noticed that plants were growing in their toilet-ditches and garbage heaps. Also, there was a level of genetic engineering. Not on pace with today, but through generations, after a few hundred years, farming communities bred the biggest, most valuable grains - like putting a prize bull our to stud. Corn developed from a similar plant that was the size of a pinky - over thousands of years, corn grew in size. Natural selection.

Where they completely wild and only after they were well estbalished in the cresent did humans discover they were edible, or was there a long established knowledge that these plants were edible and humans migrated with them when human/plant population was smaller?

Well, the gatherers obviously knew which plants to pick, like a hunter knows what animal to hunt (or not to). As Dr. Diamond says in GG&S, his experiences with New Guinea showed that, even as basically stone-age people, each one know very well what to eat, where to find it, how to harvest it, etc.

As far as migration... certainly, along trade routes. But like I said above, conquest was faster. Alsoa s Dr. Diamond says, it depends on how long the trade lines are and the climates - a north-south route is much less efficient trade path that stifled the movement of most domestication. Africa has the sleeping sickness, preventing domestication. Only really in Eurasia do you have a long west-east trade line along similar climates allowing for more rapid spread of methods and technology.

[ThirdRevolution]

The sudden influx of civilizations (which wasn't altogether sudden) happened about 5000BC, not 10000BC. The reason for the 'influx' was the invention of agriculture, plain and simple.

Not quite. The first agricultural cultures emerged around 10,000BC. The rise of what we call civilization coincided with the rise of the state as a political institution around 4000BC.

During the five thousand year period, the egalitarian tribal cultures of certain tribal cultures started laying down the hunter-gatherer life style for a communalist horticultural society.

The egalitarian social relationships of hunter-gatherer society were preserved even in the context of food production by plant crops. The cultures slowly evolved over the next several thousand years, slowly accumulating institutions that we we would consider part of civilizations. Shamans became priests with a defined religious theology. Certain hunters became professional warriors and defenders of the village.

Specialization of crafts occurred. But the communal agricultural system survived until after the rise of the primitive state. Soon, the military fraternities and the priestly corporation formed a coequal relationship. Thrust into the limelight by conflicts over resources, those who could fight became more important. As wars became longer and bloodier, soon the power of the warriors became permanent.

Conquered lands were taken into direct ownership by military leaders, worked by slaves captured in successful military adventures. Soon, these latifundia swallowed up the communal agriculture of the tribe. Writing and primitive mathematics were devised to keep records of private ownership of land and chattel, completing the nexus of "advancements" we attribute to civilization.

I'd really recommend looking into this part of human history, since it really is fascinating and enlightening.[/quote]

[dugfromthearth]

There are several parts to this

When you think of cave men during the ice ages, people think of guys in furs laying on rocks. But Eskimo's were stone age and were very comfortable in watertight clothes, with igloos lined with furs and kept clean. The Aztecs were a stone age people as well.

So not having metal does not prevent people from living very comfortable lives from small bands to large civilizations.

The large civilizations require a constant source of a large amount of food - basically agriculture. So it is likely that civilizations appeared with agriculture - and evidence and logic suggests that they developed around irrigation agriculture where organizing work paid huge dividends.

But it is likely that pre-history there were plenty of tribes living comfortable lives with sewn clothes, needles, nicely constructed homes, etc. So the question is whether you consider the NW coastal indians to be civilized or not - based primarily on fishing they had a stable food supply.

[Doomhammer]

Hmmm. There have been rather devastating natural disasters that set the development of humanity by millenia. The ice-ages ought to have severely impeded the development of civilization, or at least the creation of agricultural societies. I think volcanic eruptions, like that of the super volcano "Lake Toba". The eruption of such large volcanoes can trigger mini ice-ages and mass extinctions. Mass extinctions means less people. Less people means less chance and fewer opportunities for developing a civilization and coming up with innovations. And yes, less people means more inbreeding.

I found thison wikipedia:

The Toba catastrophe theory holds that 70,000 to 75,000 years ago, a supervolcanic event at Lake Toba, on Sumatra (Indonesia), possibly the largest explosive volcanic eruption within the last twenty-five million years plunged the Earth, which was already in an ice-age, into an even colder spell. This resulted in the world's human population being reduced to 10,000 or even a mere 1,000 breeding pairs, creating a bottleneck in human evolution. The theory was proposed in 1998 by Stanley H. Ambrose[1] of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.[2][3][4]

I would say this eruption set back humanity by thousands of years.

[Thunderhawk]

Depends on what kind of people survived.

[Kon]

*cough*

Before agriculture there were sure tribes that were both nomadic and farmers; some groups like this still exist today, but there are not many.

Societies did evolve during this period in terms of the complexity of their stone tool industries and their capacity to hunt and fish. Things we couldn't even figure out how to do like weaving a net and catching fish were invented over a period of 1000 years.

Anyways this is not the only gap before an explosion in technology; the acheulean tool industry lasted for upwards of 10 thousand years if I recall correctly (please correct me if I am incorrect, regardless it is a really long period and none of you guys know anything about the noble science of archaeology)

[MB.]

nm

[Cookie Monster]

However unrealistic it might be, I like to fancy the thought that there might be the remains of a long lost civilisation under the ice of Antartica.

[Potemkin]

However unrealistic it might be, I like to fancy the thought that there might be the remains of a long lost civilisation under the ice of Antartica.

After countless millennia of being ground under the weight of ice two miles thick? I rather think not....

[Cookie Monster]

Potemky crushes dreams like ice of over two mile thickness.

Still the continental mass of Antartica could be very interesting for researchers.

[Potemkin]

Still the continental mass of Antartica could be very interesting for researchers.

Perhaps geologists, fossil-hunters, and possibly oil companies. I don't see who else would be interested in it, however.

[Suska]

If you can squeeze Christendom or Rome into 2 millenia there's no telling how many great cultures have thrived. If we start at the earliest possible moment for human society you've got about 200,000 years to play with (much much more if you think Homo Erectus is worth anything, about 2.5 million). I think from a perspective of the lore there is always the hint of the older-still. Also, I think that once you shed the notion of stone age people being ignorant knuckle-dragers you can recognize the possibility that - for whatever reason, comfort or morality - our ancestors might not have wanted to develop as we have. And it is very simple to demonstrate the reasoning capacity of our stoneage ancestors because wherever we've found flint knapping and other stonework, we've found stone dildos.

So, the question is really, how human is human? The following list starts with the first mention of primates. Bolded text consists of the entries beginning with a mention of hominid. Red text includes evidence of tool making, beginning with very simple hand held chopping rocks.

superorder: euarchontoglires (supraprimates) (100,000,000 years ago)
order: primates (75,000,000 years ago)
suborder: haplorrhini (tarsiers, monkeys, apes, "dry-nosed" primates) (40,000,000 years ago)
infraorder: simiiformes (simians, "higher" primates)
parvorder: catarrhini ("narrow nosed" primates) (30,000,000 years ago)
superfamily: hominoidea (apes) (25,000,000 years ago)
family: hominidae (great apes) (15,000,000 years ago)
subfamily: homininae (8,000,000 years ago)
tribe: hominini (5,800,000 years ago)
subtribe: hominina (3,000,000 years ago)
genus: homo (2,500,000 years ago)
species: homo sapiens (500,000 years ago)
sub-species: homo sapiens sapiens (200,000 years ago)

At which point we know at least, that this happened. Which you may wish to compare to this.