Were There Advanced Civilizations Before Us?

Were There Advanced Civilizations Before Us?

For some, the modern world is as advanced as we can possibly be, and there’s never been a comparable example of human development that’s ever reached our heights in the past. But, history tells us that the Earth has seen complex cultures before, which were often quite mysteriously wiped out. So, what if we, the global population as we know it today, are actually only a fraction of a footnote in an unknown Earthly history? This is Unveiled, and today we're answering the extraordinary question; Were There Advanced Civilizations Before Us? Clearly, we already know of various examples of "advanced civilizations" prior to ours, comparatively speaking. But, today, we’re not talking about the likes of Ancient Greece, Egypt, Mesopotamia or the Minoans - all of which gave massive contributions to the history of the world. Instead, our question requires us to think hypothetically, and to accept that before all of everything we know from even the most ancient histories, there was some sort of catastrophic (or even purposeful) event which wiped out everything on the planet, leaving almost no trace that anything had existed before it. The arguably natural assumption is that any civilization before ours would’ve developed similarly to ours. Picture a race of animals or humanoids with the same sort of modern amenities we currently enjoy. A society that somehow disappeared, it might've been even more technologically advanced than we are now. If it was, then what does that make us? We could also be destined for a similar sort of mysterious or disastrous end, as we also exist only to sow the seeds for another civilization to follow. It sure sounds ominous, but let's not panic about the end times just yet. Instead, we’ll dial it back to a basic question; what actually constitutes an "advanced civilization"? It’s definitely a subjective term, but broadly speaking it’s any group that forms and flourishes as one, based on the making of connections. Here, in our lives as we know them, successful past civilizations had developed various avenues of trade or social structure which grew and improved with knowledge of the outside world. Their inhabitants understood how their behavior affected neighboring peoples, and their shared goals generally amounted to social progress. Historians and scientists give theories behind apparent large-scale extinction events resulting in the disappearance of many famous advanced civilizations. The Ancestral Puebloan people in North America, for example, seemingly created elaborate buildings and cave carvings until cannibalism and in-fighting decimated their numbers. The Cahokia settlement from present day Missouri are thought to have suffered a similar fate in pre-Columbus times, when their population fell due to flooding and over-use of their natural resources. If there's one single disaster capable of totally wiping out an entire group, then it's an asteroid strike - and there's a (sometimes controversial) British author who believes that this could well have been the case. Graham Hancock's work often references ancient structures such as The Cahokia’s Woodhenge, England’s Stonehenge or the Easter Island Statues. But, Hancock goes further back to explain them, by building on the "Mother Culture’ theory. This is when the effects of an extinct culture continue to be felt long after that civilization is gone, leaving behind lessons which are followed by future societies - knowingly or not so. More specifically, Hancock has worked with another writer, Belgium's Robert Bauval, on the Orion Correlation Theory. This theory states that the layout of the Pyramids of Giza purposefully mirrors the stars in Orion's Belt. For Hancock, it supports the suggestion that there was a long lost "mother culture" before Ancient Egypt. In terms of Hancock’s theory, it means that the Egyptians were influenced by a greater (but to us unknown) power before them, from which they inherited the astronomical, mathematical and practical knowledge needed to build and align the Great Pyramids with the stars in the sky. There’s been a lot of pushback to Hancock's ideas, though, with astronomers from South Africa and Los Angeles arguing that there isn’t even an exact star-to-pyramid match in the first place. For those not on board, there’s also the idea that “the absence of X doesn’t mean that Y is true”. In other words, we can't assume that impressive structures such as the pyramids have mysterious origins, just because we believe that society at the time "couldn't possibly" have built them. Hancock’s isn't the only explanation offered for some sort of extinct civilization, though. There’s also the “Silurian Hypothesis”, proposed in 2018 by astrophysicist Adam Frank and NASA's Gavin Schmidt. Yes, the title is a direct reference to an advanced reptilian race from the BBC sci-fi series "Doctor Who”, but the purpose of Frank and Schmidt's paper wasn't so much to present a literal presentation of ancient Astro-Lizards, but rather to use the hypothesis to look into our own behavior as a species. If there were past civilizations, would we even be able to detect them? Would they have left recognizable marks on the Earth? These were the questions Frank and Scmidt set out to answer, but they wound up turning their focus to the people alive right now. The pair freely admit that pre-existing lizard people as a genuine idea is doubtful at best, highlighting that there are no fossilized remains, uncovered relics, or any environmental clues to offer up as physical proof. Even considering the incredible amount of still unrecovered fossils from the age of the dinosaurs, there simply aren't the required radiation levels in the earth's geological makeup to support the idea that anything (intelligent lizards, or otherwise) lived here before us. But, that doesn’t make the Silurian Hypothesis just a pointless thought exercise, because it’s a line of thinking that does have ramifications for how we live our lives today. Generations after us might one day view what we've left behind as proof that WE were the early, advanced civilization - in the grand scheme of history grouping everyone alive today as though from the same era as the Ancient Egyptians, for example. As it is, the majority of scientists generally agree that complex industrialization before humans just isn't plausible. For most, we really are the first to be living the way that we do. The universe is over thirteen billion years old, but complex life has only existed for about four hundred million of those years - and modern humans have only been significantly industrializing the planet for about three hundred years. Historical human impact can already be seen and traced in things like the soil and air, by scientists studying the development of the Anthropocene - the name given to the geological age of our influence on the planet. And, the carbon footprint we leave upon the earth could well be studied long after we're extinct. However, advocates for previous civilizations still ask; “But, what about before that?” Couldn’t another race of creatures simply have had their own Anthropocene, lived it until extinction, and allowed the earth to start over? It’s a thought not that far removed from our human fascination with the stars and space. Just as we continually question whether or not we’re alone in the universe, we can also wonder whether we’re really an evolutionary one-off in the history of the Earth. For some, the idea that there was something significant before us, and that we’re just one part of an ongoing cycle, is comforting - in the same way as imagining an alien world with intelligent life also is. The Fermi Paradox attempts to rationalize the probability of space travel and extra-terrestrials. At its core, the Paradox argues that, given the vastness of the universe, there must be multiple, earth-like planets capable of sustaining life. The ‘paradox’ part is that, if this is true, why haven't we been visited yet? Are these alien worlds as advanced as ours, but not yet advanced enough for space travel? Are they actually capable of reaching Earth, but choose not to? It’s a theory which relies on giant leaps of faith, but could the Fermi Paradox also be applied (to some extent) to the earth itself? For all the apparent proof that there wasn’t an unknown global civilization before ours, might it actually have been advanced enough to knowingly erase evidence of its geological footprint? And, if it’s clever enough for that, could it also be clever enough to have hopped off this planet to watch from afar as all of human life replays itself, unaware of what had gone before it? Probably not, but our own civilization still has time to examine how we are remembered, and how we want our legacy to be viewed by the historians of the future.