The more advanced our technology the less obvious our record behind.

[BillBoard]

Got me thinking, the more advanced our technology the less we leave for future generations to find.

Once everything in our record becomes digital, no more clay tablets, wall paintings, hard painted signs.

It could have been that past civilizations were so advanced that all their traces have been wiped out as they became extremely advanced and none of their technological left overs were durable enough to last the vestiges of time.

[Buddha]

Another thing to think about is that if they were very advanced tech wise, would we even know wtf we were looking for/found?

[Ponce]

At the rate that we are going I can only hope that the present disappears for ever and only the past remains.......those who will control the world will make sure of that......after all, the winners are the ones that writes history.

[drafter]

I'm studying Runic letter forms right now and it's interesting that they mention that most of the writing of the day was done on wood, which of course rotted away leaving nothing left but the writing that happened to make it onto stone or bone carvings of which there is very little.

Also there are stories like the Library of Alexadria I think it was that had vast wealths of knowledge that all went up in smoke when savage hoards burned the place down.

Who knows what kind of knowledge that has been lost merely because mankind went thru a rough patch and writings were destroyed because of natural disaster or human stupidity, ie: religous purges, scorched earth policies of war, etc. Could be we had medical cures at one time, or the secret to magnetic levitation, or who knows what else.

If there's ever a crazy Solar flare or who knows what kind of electrical disruption, all our CDs, our saved PDFS, docs, etc., even down to the bits of wisdom expressed on forums like these, would all be lost to time never to be read or understood by anyone ever again. As good as if it had never existed in the first place.

A already lament the fact that a lot of my family pictures have been taken with a digital camera and if something ever happened, I would be without a lot of family photos that I just haven't had the time or money to print out on something more "time durable".

[bellevuebully]

If there were past advanced civilizations that were so clever, and we came from them, why are we so stupid?

What about their chimpanzee population? Smarter also, or about the same as now?

[drafter]

If there were past advanced civilizations that were so clever, and we came from them, why are we so stupid?

What about their chimpanzee population? Smarter also, or about the same as now?


Well just looking around I'd say Americans for the most part are a lot less intelligent than they were 100 years ago. Take something as simple as a car for instance. A model T required you to run thru a series of steps to start it, then once it was running you had to deal not only with a throttle, brake, clutch, and gear lever, but also timing advance, etc. Yes a model T is crude compared to todays computer controlled cars, but while just about anybody could drive a modern automatic transmission driven vehicle, I think you'd be hard pressed to find many people at WlMart that could be taught to go thru the necessary steps to succesfully start and drive a model T. While we may "appear" to be smarter as a race, we in fact have lost the ability to do simple things of a mechanical fashion. We've become mentally and physically lazy. We're losing the ability or desire to "figure things out" for ourselves.

I think we hit our "modern" zenith of the current "cycle" some time around 1965 and we've been on a downhill slide since then. I think the human race goes thru cycles of intelligence. For every rise of the human race, there is a fall, and then the cycle repeats. The continuous cycle of Golden Ages to Dark Ages.

I'm sure I misspelled a bunch of stuff, but I think everyone will get what I'm saying.

[Buddha]

If there were past advanced civilizations that were so clever, and we came from them, why are we so stupid?

What about their chimpanzee population? Smarter also, or about the same as now?


Well just looking around I'd say Americans for the most part are a lot less intelligent than they were 100 years ago. Take something as simple as a car for instance. A model T required you to run thru a series of steps to start it, then once it was running you had to deal not only with a throttle, brake, clutch, and gear lever, but also timing advance, etc. Yes a model T is crude compared to todays computer controlled cars, but while just about anybody could drive a modern automatic transmission driven vehicle, I think you'd be hard pressed to find many people at WlMart that could be taught to go thru the necessary steps to succesfully start and drive a model T. While we may "appear" to be smarter as a race, we in fact have lost the ability to do simple things of a mechanical fashion. We've become mentally and physically lazy. We're losing the ability or desire to "figure things out" for ourselves.

I think we hit our "modern" zenith of the current "cycle" some time around 1965 and we've been on a downhill slide since then. I think the human race goes thru cycles of intelligence. For every rise of the human race, there is a fall, and then the cycle repeats. The continuous cycle of Golden Ages to Dark Ages.

I'm sure I misspelled a bunch of stuff, but I think everyone will get what I'm saying.


What you say is true, we have been watered down as a society. Humanity goes through ebbs and flows like most anything else

[bellevuebully]

If there were past advanced civilizations that were so clever, and we came from them, why are we so stupid?

What about their chimpanzee population? Smarter also, or about the same as now?


Well just looking around I'd say Americans for the most part are a lot less intelligent than they were 100 years ago. Take something as simple as a car for instance. A model T required you to run thru a series of steps to start it, then once it was running you had to deal not only with a throttle, brake, clutch, and gear lever, but also timing advance, etc. Yes a model T is crude compared to todays computer controlled cars, but while just about anybody could drive a modern automatic transmission driven vehicle, I think you'd be hard pressed to find many people at WlMart that could be taught to go thru the necessary steps to succesfully start and drive a model T. While we may "appear" to be smarter as a race, we in fact have lost the ability to do simple things of a mechanical fashion. We've become mentally and physically lazy. We're losing the ability or desire to "figure things out" for ourselves.

I think we hit our "modern" zenith of the current "cycle" some time around 1965 and we've been on a downhill slide since then. I think the human race goes thru cycles of intelligence. For every rise of the human race, there is a fall, and then the cycle repeats. The continuous cycle of Golden Ages to Dark Ages.

I'm sure I misspelled a bunch of stuff, but I think everyone will get what I'm saying.


What you say is true, we have been watered down as a society. Humanity goes through ebbs and flows like most anything else


Is this how "survival of the fittest", ie)evolution, works? Round and round, gaining nothing over the long haul? How did we get to this stage? Did we hit a wall?

Yes I am being a little provoking, but honestly, it's in the intersest of conversation. :)

[drafter]

Is this how "survival of the fittest", ie)evolution, works? Round and round, gaining nothing over the long haul? How did we get to this stage? Did we hit a wall?

Yes I am being a little provoking, but honestly, it's in the intersest of conversation. :)


I think in many cases "Mental/physical Evolution" gets trumped by "Social Evolution" and not in a positive way. Look at things like Affirmative Action. It's a system wholly set up to put people in places because of some percieved "cultural slight of the past" and not on their intelligence or ability to do a job. You could look at things like the Church supressing intelligent thought in the Dark ages if that thought was contrary to Religous teachings or the Churches authority. There are many examples of "survival of the fittest" being supressed by powers that would rather have us as a human race fail, than have them lose their grasp on power and wealth.
When the current "Powers that Be" fail, then we will be able to advance towards the next "Golden Age".

[Ponce]

But once again will fail for man never learns from the past.

[BillBoard]

If there were past advanced civilizations that were so clever, and we came from them, why are we so stupid?

What about their chimpanzee population? Smarter also, or about the same as now?


My point is that, those populations (if they ever existed) destroyed themselves, and we cannot find anything left behind since their traces were in digital form...

[Shami-Amourae]

Just had a crazy thought, but what if the current Illuminatti were simply survivors from this old civilization, but wanted to control everything so everything wouldn't collapse like it did the previous time?

If you guys are into games, check out the video game series Assassins Creed, it has a lot of this stuff in it.

Basic synopsis is that there is a machine that is built that allows you to relive the memories of your ancestors, which are locked deep in your DNA.


Watch full video, credits roll is only temporary
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Si4xzVdiTf4

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CfA1Da8R2pU

[freespirit]

i would recommend reading "Fingerprints of the Gods" by graham hancock. it covers this topic very well.

here's a link for the pdf of the book, if you dont want to go buy it....

http://www.thomasfarrell.com/downloads/Graham%20Hancock,%20FINGERPRINTS%20OF%20THE%20GODS .pdf

[bellevuebully]

I think in many cases "Mental/physical Evolution" gets trumped by "Social Evolution" and not in a positive way.

Do you see any evidence of this phenomena in any animal species? Their social structures seem constant.

[drafter]

I think in many cases "Mental/physical Evolution" gets trumped by "Social Evolution" and not in a positive way.

Do you see any evidence of this phenomena in any animal species? Their social structures seem constant.


I'm not willing to concede that we as humans are mere animals. I think we're something a bit more and always have been. As to you question, I can't think of any "animal" that intentionally supresses its own advancement. I guess humans are a special kind of stupid sometimes.

[Awoke]

Hoyle:

"If you stir up simple nonorganic molecules like water, ammonia, methane, carbon dioxide and hydrogen cyanide with almost any form of intense energy ... some of the molecules reassemble themselves into amino acids ... demonstrated ... by Stanley Miller and Harold Urey. The ... building blocks of proteins can therefore be produced by natural means. But this is far from proving that life could have evolved in this way. No one has shown that the correct arrangements of amino acids, like the orderings in enzymes, can be produced by this method. .... A junkyard contains all the bits and pieces of a Boeing 747, dismembered and in disarray. A whirlwind happens to blow through the yard. What is the chance that after its passage a fully assembled 747, ready to fly, will be found standing there? So small as to be negligible, even if a tornado were to blow through enough junkyards to fill the whole Universe."



(Hoyle, F., "The Intelligent Universe," Michael Joseph: London, 1983, pp.18-19).


Just sayin.

[solid]

True, digital technology may be gone...but we'll be remembered by all our mass consumption garbage left behind..

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Pacific_Garbage_Patch

[Awoke]

True, digital technology may be gone...but we'll be remembered by all our mass consumption garbage left behind..

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Pacific_Garbage_Patch


From that link:




The Great Pacific Garbage Patch, also described as the Pacific Trash Vortex, is a gyre of marine litter in the central North Pacific Ocean located roughly between 135° to 155°W and 35°N to 42°N.[1] The patch extends over an indeterminate area, with estimates ranging very widely depending on the degree of plastic concentration used to define the affected area. Although many media and advocacy reports have suggested the patch extends over an area larger than the continental U.S, recent research sponsored by the National Science Foundation suggests the affected area may be twice the size of Texas,[2][3] while a recent study concluded that the patch might be even smaller.[4]




I call bullshit on that. I think we would be able to see this patch on Google earth if it was seriously that big, no?

[solid]

I call Bullshit on that. I think we would be able to see this patch on Google earth if it was seriously that big, no?


I don't know, I've heard it's pretty damn big. I don't really trust Google.