When I was a teen, there seemed to be a lot of pop-sci books on the racks at our local variety store pushing various notions about “highly advanced” but lost civilizations, often attributing things like UFO sightings to these imagined prehistoric groups and tying various conspiracy theories back to them. At Astral Codex Ten, Scott Alexander argues against today’s fans of such unlikely scenarios:
You can separate these kinds of claims into three categories:
- Civilizations about as advanced as the people who built Stonehenge
- Civilizations about as advanced as Pharaonic Egypt
- Civilizations about as advanced as 1700s Great Britain
The debate is confused by people doing a bad job clarifying which of these categories they’re proposing, or not being aware that the other categories exist.
2 and 3 aren’t straw men. Robert Schoch says the Sphinx was built in 9700 BC, which I think qualifies as 2. Graham Hancock suggests “ancient sea kings” drew the Piri Reis map which seems to depict Antarctica; anyone who can explore Antarctica must be at least close to 1700s-British level.
I think there’s weak evidence against level 1 civilizations, and strong evidence against level 2 or 3 civilizations.
Argument 1: Where Are The Sites?
Supporters of ice age civilizations argue that sea level rose 120 meters as the Ice Age glaciers melted, flooding low-lying coasts and destroying any evidence of coastal civilizations.
Areas likely above water during the Ice Age are in orange-brown (source)
What would happen to the ancient civilizations we know about if sea level rose an additional 120m? We would lose Babylon, Rome, and most of Egypt. But:
- The Acropolis of Athens is 150m above sea level, and would be preserved for future archaeologists. Sparta (200m) and Thebes (250m) would also be fine.
- The Hittite capital of Hattusa is almost 1,000m above sea level and would be totally unaffected.
- The two biggest cities in Assyria, Ashur and Nineveh, would both make it.
- Zhengzhou, the capital of the Shang in ancient Chinese, would survive.
- Mohenjo-Daro would sink, but Harappa would be fine.
- Basically nobody in Elam/Medea/Persia would even notice.
- The top 80m of the Great Pyramid would rise above the waterline, forming a little island. The part of the Pyramid above the water would still be taller than the entire Leaning Tower of Pisa. It would be pretty hard to miss!
So a 120m sea level rise wouldn’t be enough to wipe out evidence of our crop of ancient civilizations, and shouldn’t be enough to wipe out evidence of a previous crop, unless they had a very different geographic distribution than ours.
