3300 years ago the oldest pyramids were thousands of years old. Or do you mean in general and not tied to the article?

I'm more so discussing 10k+ years ago, with supporting evidence of sophistication thousands of years ago

Ye well they were probably not less intelligent than we are. And we can more or less only estimate their sofistication by their tools we find at burial sites etc.

Obviously complex societies could have existed on a social level.

> Ye well they were probably not less intelligent than we are

It's important to emphasise that they were definitely not less intelligent, nor did they have different behaviour. You can take a child from 50,000 years ago and they would perform the same as the average child today. The modern homo sapien sapien reached its point as early as 160,000 years ago.

The idea here is that we're expected to believe that modern humans -- like me and you -- sat idle for at least 80,000 to as much as 150,000 years before reaching a point in the last 10k years and suddenly forming civilizations (of which there are about six known, independent origin points around the globe). We lack evidence to the contrary -- sure -- but if we find evidence it will just be construed as a black swan event that would, in hindsight, be obvious.

Do you have any evidence for what you are saying? It sounds like the rabbit hole I went down after watching the recent Netflix series Ancient Apocalypse and discovering pretty much all of his assertions can be refuted by just reading the Wikipedia for each “ancient” site such as this.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gunung_Padang

This gives a very different picture of the site than the one in the episode.

Is that the Graham Hancock series?

I've seen him speak. (It was, IIRC, at a Fortean Times Unconvention, an event that -- in part -- intentionally gives nutcases a chance to speak publicly, for the audience's amusement.)

He is a 100% total fraud, a laughing stock among genuine historians and archaeologists.

https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Graham_Hancock

I am unconvinced whether he is a lunatic or intentionally a fraudster, but I am deeply concerned to learn he's on TV.

Yes he got a Netflix series haha.

For those unaware, OP is referring to a crackpot theory most recently advanced by the journalist Graham Hancock. The idea of sophisticated pre-ice age civilizations is universally regarded by the archaeologists and experts to be roughly on par with the "ancient aliens" hypothesis.

Crackpot theory? It's a straightforward inference from human behavioral modernity, and the fact that some places have always been resource-rich enough to allow for at least some effort to be spent on things other than brute survival. Those who suppose the contrary as a default are merely transporting our naïve, self-serving stereotypes about "savage" societies to the very far past.

There's two different ways to interpret the GP post. Using the term "civilization" instead of "sophisticated societies", the first is that civilization == the traditional childe definition. The academic timelines around that sort of stuff are well-established and people like graham Hancock do push ideas best described as crackpot about these sorts of societies existing before the LGM.

But there's also the redefinitional arguments that the Childe definition of civilization is wrong. That's the vein you're working in and where books like Dawn of Everything are arguing from. They're much more agreeable to modern archaeologists and most wouldn't disagree too strongly (if at all).

Wengrow has a good opinion piece on this dichotomy in [1].

[1] https://aeon.co/ideas/a-history-of-true-civilisation-is-not-...

AIUI, Childe proposed a number of criteria for civilization, all of them correlating one way or another with 'increasingly complex society'. Some of those we'll never know if the very ancient past had them (and I think even Graham Hancock would acknowledge this), the others are pretty much in line with the article you link to. So I'm not sure how much genuine disagreement is involved, as opposed to scholars holding on to untenable viewpoints and neglecting to put two and two together.

It's a bit fuzzier. The popular model prior to Childe was Lewis Morgan's three stage Savagery->Barbarism->Civilization model. When Childe published his famous paper [1] laying out the criteria, he acknowledged Morgan (though I'm not sure it's cited in the paper itself) and was intentionally providing standardized criteria to recognize the last stage. Childe himself preferred the terminology of "city" and later archaeologists adopted the phrase "state", but really these are all the same broad concept with slightly different connotations.

But aside from a few exceptions (people at USYD, Michael Smith), Childe's definitions are increasingly disagreeable to archaeologists. Most of the newer generations, myself included, find anti-evolutionist arguments significantly more persuasive and even those that don't aren't big fans of the original formulation of Childe's ideas.

[1] http://www.jstor.org/stable/40102108

So your point is that the disagreeable connotations and 'evolutionist' viewpoint is something Childe might have picked up from Morgan, and that what scholarship is finding out now is that complex societies might not necessarily have been all that state-like, or highly unequal/hierarchical?

This has nothing to do with the recent Netflix show, which I have never seen

Ah yes, gatekeeping and name calling. The cornerstone of "established" science everywhere. There is no need to denigrate Graham Hancock's hypothesis as "crackpot" and it certainly isn't a proper theory. Science welcomes all ideas only to discard them with proof to the contrary. Unfortunately, much of archeology is inference not proven fact. The farther back we go the more inference and less fact we have. There is certainly a possibility that an advanced Pleistocene civilization existed and was destroyed by a cosmic impact. To dismiss these ideas as "crackpot" is one of the most unscientific claims I regularly encounter.

We know there are human built megalithic structures that are dated at the end of the Pleistocene. We know that the Pleistocene ended abruptly with all North American megafauna perishing and immense amounts of meltwater entering the oceans. We don't know if there were a bunch of distributed civilizations with similar technology levels or if there was a global civilization that shared knowledge before or after cataclysm. We also don't know what caused the end of the Pleistocene. This is the realm of hypothesis on all sides.

There’s certainly no harm in indulging in wild, unfounded recreational speculation, as long as one is clear that’s what’s happening. Usually that’s not what going on with people who allude darkly to “[unspecified] political motivations for controlling the narrative around evolution and the birth of civilization”

There is a very recent analysis of Hancock's "Ancient Apocalypse" series. Well worth watching: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=341Lv8JLLV4 by Stefan Milo. Case in point: Hancock presents _zero_ evidence.

It's worth noting that falsificationism really only applies to experimental sciences like physics and chemistry. The "historical sciences" like geology, paleontology, and archaeology don't work that way because of the arrow of time. I'd recommend Cleland's original [1] or most recent paper [2] on this topic.

The upside is that we can differentiate between the quality of various competing hypotheses in a reasoned way. That's how we can say that the traditional academic narratives are epistemologically better than e.g. Tolkien's Silmarillion.

[1] https://doi.org/10.1130/0091-7613(2001)029<0987:HSESAT>2.0.C...

[2] http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/41241902

Your second link is bad

Corrected.

Falsification has happened plenty of times in historical and archaeological research. You could posit that Mohenjo Daro and Ur had no contact right up until trade goods showed up.

In recent memory just about everyone was dead certain that monumental architecture happened only where there was agriculture. And, that once a people took up agriculture, they kept at it. And, that humans got to the Americas no more than 15,000 years ago.

That is not in fact how science works.

Science only welcomes new ideas when they offer a possible solution to a problem with the existing paradigms. For this type of theory, if you had data showing the earliest known societies were unusually advanced, or if you had artifacts that suggest more wide spread early societies, these would be facts wanting an explanation.

You can't just say something like "maybe all language was singing until 20,000 years ago" and claim it's scientific until proven false.

Occam's razor is also a thing. If you can explain the exact same facts with a theory that involves fewer or more general assumptions, that also counts.

You cant say the contrary either. Theres not enough evidence either way due to the sands of time.

I haven't seen the new documentary, but I read one of Hancock's books years ago. His book Underworld, which is about how evidence of ancient civilizations is underwater as the coastline has changed dramatically over the last few thousands of years. I think he draws way too many conclusions from way too little evidence, but that premise itself has always struck me as incredibly plausible. The issue is that a lot of the evidence is underwater now, and therefore hard to get to. But that doesn't really mean we shouldn't be looking for it though, right? Otherwise we're like the drunk looking for his keys under the street light because its easier, not because he dropped them there.

As for the academy, Thomas Kuhn wrote "The Structure of Scientific Revolutions", where he argues that most paradigm shifts happen in revolutionary leaps instead of incremental improvements. We've been pushing back the timelines of human expansion for a long time. It was impossible and just fables that Vikings were on North America, until it wasn't for example.

Hancock is very questionable in motives and methods (talks a lot about how he is suppressed rather than what he thinks is true)

But it’s true that narratives around past civilizations are controlled for political reasons

Eg in China the winners want to paint the picture that the way they govern is inevitable and mandated, when really there was a lot of diversity, experimentation, and violence

Including matriarchal societies!!

I recommend reading Dawn of Everything by graeber and wengrow for peer reviewed info on past, ignored, alternative civilizations

It does have an axe to grind but it’s a welcome contrast and asks good questions

You don’t need to invoke hypothetical pre ice age societies for any of this

However the book does give a good perspective on how much of history we simply don’t know, which leaves room for speculators like Hancock

FWIW, I wasn't that impressed with "Dawn of Everything", I wish it had more data and less polemic. (I think the polemical argument would have been stronger if, paradoxically, it had been weaker.)

>I wish it had more data I mean that really seems to be the wish, and the problem, with a lot of historical and archaeological research.

Its bibliography is very, very large. You can root around in there for a lifetime. I doubt you would find anything to contradict him.

That's kind of my point: there's so much fascinating and important work going on right now that the book just sort of gestures at in the rush to make their political points. FWIW, I'm sympathetic to their arguments, but I'd like to see them more well-supported (than they were in that book, IMO.)

I will only note that the book is quite large, and that David Graeber has, tragically, left us.

FWIW, I want to make it clear that I'm not criticizing David Graeber. I'm not an anarchist myself, but I very much value and respect his work.

Also, when I used "their" above I meant David Graeber and the co-author of the book David Wengrow.

While I'm at it, I should mention that when I called GH a "kook" in the other thread, I also meant it in a "takes one to know one" kind of a way. To wit: I'm a kook (by many measures, not my own) too. E.g. I believe Bigfoot is real, that they are hominids, and that they may well be as intelligent as H. sapiens or more so. On alternate Tuesdays I believe the Earth is hollow, just to keep my brain in shape.

Cheers, and well met.

Yeah my recommendation isn't because I think it's a fair and balanced viewpoint, but that it provides a much-needed perspective. It shouldn't be the ONLY book you read about such issues. I also like Guns, Germs, and Steel, which the authors have criticized (mostly respectfully).

There are many things about human history that we simply don't know, and triangulating between experts with very different viewpoints is a good way to get closer to the truth, or at least make you think.

A key point is that human history is hundreds of thousands of years long, and for many periods of hundreds/thousands of years, we only have 1 or 2 artifacts. And the world is very big. Entire civilizations with complex social structures have come and gone with little trace, and many of them lasted longer than the United States or the modern governments of Russia or China. (Obviously 20th century growth rates make that comparison hard, but it's still worth thinking about)

Also, I would say that DoE is better at criticism than at making claims, or providing a concrete path toward more egalitarian societies. It's responding somewhat to "big history" books, so it's probably better to read those first.

I'm sympathetic to the arguments presented in the book, my complaint is that it's "preaching to the choir" too much. I think it would be a stronger book if it was less polemical.

I think it's fascinating and important that Native lifestyles were preferable to European/American lifestyles. That extended quote from Franklin raises some very salient questions, IMO.

You're completely right, but I also want to caution (you mention this too) readers that Graeber himself has a strong perspective. When evaluating historical narratives, it's essential to dig into sources closer to primary sources when possible. There's too much at stake for most modern states for there not to be controversy.

This sort of tension exists for foundational histories in many, many cultures. South Asia's existing religious tension motivates people to evaluate and reevaluate historical events trying to show one or another religiously-aligned power as good or bad. Western history probably has it the least because it's well-preserved, well-studied, and has many copies of primary sources lying around which allows lots of people to cast critical eyes upon an analysis.

It depends on what advanced means.

Humans appeared 160-250,000 years ago. We spread to Australia 45,000 years ago and to the Americas 15,000 years ago. We have evidence of agriculture in Turkey from about 9,000 years ago.

Given the ability to travel for and wide, it seems weird that humans wouldn’t have sophisticated societies. Evidence is no doubt wiped out by time and prime land was flooded as the ice age ended.

The global population was much lower in those days. I doubt there were large cities or magical technology. But I’m sure you had tribal societies with broad reach and social structures.

We have a bias to assume that people in the distant past were quaint or unable to handle basic concepts. We benefit from standing on the shoulders of giants, but our forebearers were just as smart as we are. We have better tools.

Göbekli Tepe dates to the Pre-Pottery Neolithic, between c. 9500 and 8000 BC, which would make it over 10k years old. It didn't get built overnight

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%B6bekli_Tepe

I am not some "ancient aliens" kook, but many comments above seem to overlook the fact that until relatively recently we thought that people 10k years ago, world wide, were fresh out of caves/hunter-gathers and some of the more brighter ones were starting to farm and do animal husbandry. Then, Göbekli Tepe is unearthed and it is obvious that, as you say, that shit did not happen one day with just some super talented hunter-gatherer having an artistic streak. I do not understand why academics think all people on Earth were always at the same technological level at the same time. Add to that that most things (wood, iron, basically anything other than hard rock) disappear pretty quickly in large timescales and it gets really murky to think about and archaeologists in particular seem to become outraged at anything that isn't currently in vogue.

Complex society -- legislatures, economics, the works, even writing -- could easily have occurred hundreds of times over the millennia, without building with stone and so leaving no trace after they collapsed or were wiped out by invaders. We know about a precious few that did build with stone, that could have been as socially sophisticated as you like, but left no trace of that.

We know extremely little about people in the Amazon basin, beyond that they had already domesticated orchard trees by 10,000 years ago, built over wide areas, and had no access to stone. They had ceramics, but did not favor bricks. They left us a few enigmatic inventions including curare and terra preta.

Assuming primitive social relations is very close to racism. Sophistication seems to need nothing more than population.

Population demographics are one of the things archaeologists are most interested in. There's lots of independent methodologies that we've developed to tell us when people were present and in what numbers. Many don't even rely on finding artifacts. Things like genetic work directly tell us effective population sizes at various points in human history (low), charcoal analysis tells us how many fires were burning, hearth counts (indicated by rock or soil discoloration) tell us how many people were cooking, pollen analysis tells us what the plant landscape looked like in areas, etc. There's even an incredible technique based on eDNA analysis that can directly measure how many people were in the area when a soil sample was deposited by measuring the DNA from their shed cells. I've only seen that one used for results back to 30-40kya, but it's still pretty cool.

As you might have guessed from how I've written this, all these different lines of evidence consistently point to low population densities and overall populations, especially before the main human expansion out of Africa.

Advanced ice age societies aren't impossible, but there would need to be some pretty strong evidence and a good explanation to account for all the data we have against them.

Those tests are run only in places we already knew people were.

Notably, none have been run on the million square miles of Sundaland and the continental shelf off China, now under water, where people lived for at least 70,000 years. We know they invented oceangoing navigation pretty early, because they got to Australia.

People did that another 100,000 years earlier and got to Crete.

The null hypothesis has to be that people in places with sufficient population have complex society, because that is baseline human behavior. You need good evidence of someplace they didn't, and an explanation why not.

The genetic work actually does include those people, namely those whose descendents have been sampled.

So any population wiped out by genocide, famine, or plague is unsampled. The Amazon basin hosted many millions of people for millennia until smallpox, diphtheria, and measles were delivered to them.

No? Even genocides leave descendants. Moreover, who was doing this hypothetical genocide that didn't have kids?

As I said before, it's not logically impossible that a highly populous society existed in the pleistocene. But the constraints it would have to fit grow increasingly contorted as the state of knowledge improves. At some point it starts to resemble a small colony of advanced alien settlers who landed one day and disappeared a short while later. That explanation might honestly be easier to account for than what some people propose, since they don't have to develop their tech from scratch here on Earth.

How strong a signal do you get from the Chatham Islanders, wiped out literally weeks after the Cook expedition told the Maoris about them?

1) the moriori still have living descendents today and

2) it's pretty clear from both this comment and the substantial edits above that this discussion isn't in good faith

Ignoring the gaslighting, how much do we know about the Chatham Islanders' pre-contact culture? And, how many of those descendants have non-Maori Y chromosomes? Any?

    I do not understand why academics think all people on Earth were always at the same technological level at the same time.

They don't. Archaeologists are well aware that terms like "Hunter-Gatherer" and "lithics" subsume huge amounts of diversity covering hundreds of thousands of years, but they've stuck around for legacy reasons. Quoting the intro from my old textbook (The Lifeways of Hunter-Gatherers: The Foraging Spectrum):

    [...] in the models developed in the twentieth century to describe hunter-gatherers, variation was something to be explained away to uncover the essential hunter-gatherer.

There are thousands upon thousands of recognized "industries" of distinct toolmaking traditions and that's only a minuscule proportion of what must have existed.

“2. There are political motivations for controlling the narrative around evolution and the birth of civilization”

Could elaborate on this?