Rant: how advanced could a lost civilization be?

[roseembolism]

The question that was asked on a forum I read was:

How advanced could a hypothetical pre-Ice Age culture have been and not left any traces behind? How destructive was the advance of the glaciers and the ravages of time? Would, say, an Iron or Bronze Age society have been able to exist and slip through the cracks of time?

My answer is:



Though glaciers pretty much sweep clean areas they pass over, the problem with an advanced civilization remaining undetected, is the population required to maintain one. As a civilization becomes more advanced, the need for more and more specialists increases; you don't just need a blacksmith, you need the people to make the tools that make the tools to make the tools the factory uses. For another example, just consider the sheer number of medical specialties, and the specialized support staff needed. So, bearing that in mind, the minimum size needed to maintain a technological civilization at our level is evidently at least one million people.

Add to that fact that population combined with technology means extensive resource use. That is, worldwide exploration and resource use. So even if we didn't find the city ruins, it would quickly become obvious to anyone doing digging that something was going on worldwide, as in: disturbed geological layers from mines; evidence for large-scale agriculture; earthworks; mingling of species from distant continents (consider how potatoes and tomatoes came to Europe); creation of specialized animal and plant species; evidence left in ice cores of contaminants; evidence of radical changes in large areas of topography...and probably hundreds of other pieces of evidence.

The bottom line, is that maybe you could hide a smallish bronze age civilization, if it was in say, Antarctica, and if it was far more conservative than historical civilizations have been (i.e.: no attempts to actually leave or explore the world). Anything beyond that strains credibility.

So that's what I think. Any comments?

Comments

[devonapple.livejournal.com]

How dare you inadvertently discredit most of H.P. Lovecraft's mythos. ;)

[roseembolism.livejournal.com]

I did? really? SCORE!

[deirdremoon.livejournal.com]

I'm curious where you come up with the number that we need one million people to handle our level of tech? It sounds reasonable, I just want to know the source or thought process.

[roseembolism.livejournal.com]

It's been so long that I'm actually not sure at this point of the specific authors, though I know it was brought up in my Technology and society class. A quick Google search brought some mixed results, so I'll have to check again when I get home.

[seawasp]

One million?

I believe it's two orders of magnitude over that to maintain our current level of technology. Note that maintaining the technology also requires a certain market scale, or certain types of technology become prohibitively expensive to maintain or even attempt. I seem to recall Stirling posting some pretty comprehensive calculations on this for his "Island in the Sea of Time".

Yes, advanced civilizations leave traces. Which is why I had to use very special methods to wipe out the original Ancient Civilization in my own universe.

[roseembolism.livejournal.com]

That seems reasonable to me. In fact, I was pretty much deliberately lowballing the estimate.

That's why in my Under the Green Moon setting, one can't really go anywhere without tripping over remains of a past civilization. There's no such thing as a a pristine wilderness in my setting; even the oldest forests have grown up and over something.

[seawasp]

On Zarathan, the deep jungles are filled with all sorts of ruins. In some locations, you could dig down through city after ruined city for ten, fifteen layers.

[mithriltabby]

If the civilization was in an area that (a) got overrun by glaciers and was uncovered 10,000 years ago and (b) had its old mines rediscovered by the next Bronze Age / Iron Age culture to come long, the later humans could have wiped out traces of earlier human mining and cities. A higher-tech civilization than that would probably develop global travel and left traces all over the place, and I don’t see how anyone developing industrial technology could avoid leaving marks in the ice cores.

Of course, one can always handwave low-impact vril technology for your lost Atlantean/Hyperborean civilization... and if you go in for ancient astronauts creating a civilization using low-impact technology developed elsewhere, I expect civilization built on carbon nanotubes and biotech might leave very few traces indeed. But that’s all into deep Fortean territory.

[roseembolism.livejournal.com]

That's why I barely accept the possibility of a conservative Bronze-age culture in an isolated area like the Antarctic. They'd probably have to be land-bound for some reason as well. And the Antarctic has the advantage of covering possible mine trailings under miles of ice. And the climate shift could take care of intruder species.

And don't talk to me about Vril. I spent time earlier this week reading CSIOP files. I'm done hearing about silly people.

[seawasp]

Or you just have the Gods wipe out all traces. It's much easier that way.

[roseembolism.livejournal.com]

Sufficiently advanced deities are indistinguishable from KT events.