I figured this was a better sub-forum for this than "Science". And there's no punch line - I'm not going to Bubba-ify it with a conclusion, .... "So, Aliens!!"
I was reading something, I think in the Smithsonian magazine, about a researcher who's devoted several years of his life to studying the nearly-legendary settlements in The Great Dismal Swamp. Fascinating stuff, but maybe for another thread? What caught my eye was that in several seasons, they say that the actual artifacts to come out of the "digs" would probably fit in a cigar box. Most of the materials used there were "of the swamp" and thus organic and have long since decomposed back into the swamp. In that kind of climate it certainly wouldn't take long.
My thoughts meandered to other such environments. We had similar traditional tales about the creoles inhabiting the bayous in Louisiana. A mixture of escaped slaves or indentured servants, various other lawbreakers and down-home crazies who just wanted to be in the worst imaginable environment they could find.
But those are areas that were inhabited within the last three or four centuries and thus some form of verbal history and even written records apply. In southeast Asia the Khmer were kind enough to build from stone. Although some major temple complexes, canal networks and small cities were swallowed by the landscape, they're at least still there and are being uncovered.
The "speculative" question from this - and that could tend to go all woo-ish - is whether there are any histories that could be attributed to this phenomenon (which is a process, but let's call it a phenom). Legendary civilizations from "history" and myth, like Atlantis. Do we just assume, because the legends were written by folks with access to stone, that the civilizations(sic) in those antediluvian legends have been swallowed by the sea and will or may still be found, or might they have been advanced island societies, like some in Indonesia, but with no stone and all traces have simply been "recycled".
Will science ever have an answer to this? Sort of a combined carbon-dating and DNA profile of the muck? (Stuff of sci-fi, I'm sure.) I just reckon that with the fairly proved diaspora of h. sapiens sapiens, the odds would seem to be that such cultures/societies existed. Never built with stone because they didn't have enough of it or because they couldn't be arsed to do so because they had so many organic materials available.
I was reading something, I think in the Smithsonian magazine, about a researcher who's devoted several years of his life to studying the nearly-legendary settlements in The Great Dismal Swamp. Fascinating stuff, but maybe for another thread? What caught my eye was that in several seasons, they say that the actual artifacts to come out of the "digs" would probably fit in a cigar box. Most of the materials used there were "of the swamp" and thus organic and have long since decomposed back into the swamp. In that kind of climate it certainly wouldn't take long.
My thoughts meandered to other such environments. We had similar traditional tales about the creoles inhabiting the bayous in Louisiana. A mixture of escaped slaves or indentured servants, various other lawbreakers and down-home crazies who just wanted to be in the worst imaginable environment they could find.
But those are areas that were inhabited within the last three or four centuries and thus some form of verbal history and even written records apply. In southeast Asia the Khmer were kind enough to build from stone. Although some major temple complexes, canal networks and small cities were swallowed by the landscape, they're at least still there and are being uncovered.
The "speculative" question from this - and that could tend to go all woo-ish - is whether there are any histories that could be attributed to this phenomenon (which is a process, but let's call it a phenom). Legendary civilizations from "history" and myth, like Atlantis. Do we just assume, because the legends were written by folks with access to stone, that the civilizations(sic) in those antediluvian legends have been swallowed by the sea and will or may still be found, or might they have been advanced island societies, like some in Indonesia, but with no stone and all traces have simply been "recycled".
Will science ever have an answer to this? Sort of a combined carbon-dating and DNA profile of the muck? (Stuff of sci-fi, I'm sure.) I just reckon that with the fairly proved diaspora of h. sapiens sapiens, the odds would seem to be that such cultures/societies existed. Never built with stone because they didn't have enough of it or because they couldn't be arsed to do so because they had so many organic materials available.
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