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Comment by RikNieu | Hacker News Reader

What interests me is the possibility of human civilizations between the Eemian and last glacial maximum.

Any evidence of civilization from that period would either be hella deep under the sea or obliterated by glacial expansion and retreat.

Homo sapiens have been here 300k years. I find it ridiculous to assume we only started living in cities about 5-7000 years ago. Conveniently the period immediately after the last rapid glacial retreat...

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Homo sapiens started emigrating out of Africa 50k years ago. There is a small incertitude on their emigration pattern (one wave or several), but it doesn't matter here. If they had cities in Africa, it is very surprising we found no trace of it, given the numerous archaeological expeditions everywhere in Africa. There was no glaciation or sea change to destroy the evidences.

So according to your hypothesis, civilizations would have emerged from hominids other than the homo sapiens, contrary to what we know about them. And their cities would all be in the North of Europe, where the later glaciation could hide some archaeological proofs. And we could not detect anything, though an Ice age doesn't destroy anything.

I believe there is no fact to sustain that hypothesis, and many facts against it.

Don't forget that sea levels have risen some 120 meters since the end of the last ice age. Given that civilizations tend to form close to the ocean, most archeological evidence from tens of millennia ago, if such existed, would be under water.

http://theconversation.com/ancient-aboriginal-stories-preser...

> Homo sapiens started emigrating out of Africa 50k years ago.

Well new evidence suggests that humans colonised Aus around 65k years ago. There is also some evidence of human activity in the Americas thats far older, although the evidence is scant at the moment.

> There was no glaciation or sea change to destroy the evidences.

No sea level change? With the last glacial maximum the sea level was about 120m lower than now, wasn't it? Is it not reasonable to assume coast settlements or cities would now be submerged? There was continental-sized areas of land lost during that sea level rise. The amount of land lost in Asia alone is staggering.

> I believe there is no fact to sustain that hypothesis, and many facts against it.

Perhaps, but new evidence keeps on being discovered and lets not forget that lots of facts may simply be submerged under hundreds of meters of seawater.

Its fun to keep an open mind.

> If they had cities in Africa, it is very surprising we found no trace of it, given the numerous archaeological expeditions everywhere in Africa. > I believe there is no fact to sustain that hypothesis, and many facts against it.

At least these archaeologists beg to differ:

https://youtu.be/CBMretoTFJg?t=315

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yEtDLBGGQeQ

Even in Egypt stuff are still being (last pyramid discovered in 2008, a tomb buried under the sand last december).

The Sahara is approximately the size of the US and India combined, and we know it was still green during the Early Dynastic Period of Egypt. Lot of place for humans to settle, now all covered in sand.

There is some consistent evidence for the current timelines for human civilisation - although it's all sketchy.

- complexity and type of tools & technology dug up - change in pollen due to agriculture - change in genetics of domesticated animals

None of these (as far as I know) point to cities or civilisations that didn't have cities (if such a thing is conceivable, which it could be) way further back than the current records show.

do you think large cities can exist without a record system ? or maybe we just have no traces of these records ?

There’s no evidence I’m aware of for large cities from that long ago, but as you said there were certainly people! I would love to have a time machine and see what the languages and cultures were like from back then. Considering how much English has changed in the last thousand years, it’s mind boggling to think of how many cultures and languages could have come and gone in 300,000 years.

Maybe a past civilization created a simulation we are living in.

What do you mean by past?

If we look like the Sims to them, the current player may find it funny that we refer to their Game Devs as being part of a past civilization, which could make them wonder if they're part of a sim...

The player downloaded the sim to a Universe Console, watched the big bang, eventually became bored and has moved on.

Assuming there's no "[Select] to skip cutscene", which reminds me of a Star Trek:Voyager episode (Blink of an eye https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0708856/)

if we are part of the sim, they are too

Maybe that's still ahead of us and there never will be sufficient data available for a meaningful answer.

Or, we're indeed in a simulation which is aimed to preserve the image of species that evolved beyond physical form eons ago.

or maybe such an ancient city could be preserved under the polar ice caps, perhaps with ancient humans and their technology. and revealed by deep geothermal heat creating cavities under the ice, if only the cavities were explored.

Well it will be The Ice People from René Barjavel

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Ice_People_(Barjavel_novel...

Edit: if you are ever interested in reading it, the Wikipedia plot part reveals the whole story, end included

Thank you, for this.

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