What if they’re even older than 11.5ky? Neanderthals had larger brains and have been around for half a million years

Well that'd be quite unexpected and surprising, I'd say!

Larger brains don't mean a whole lot. Look at crows. If you do question they do have relatively big brains for their size... That's completely fair. Still, current research still hasn't proven if it's indeed causal, and not just correlated.

Someone told me that an ancient civilization got to nuclear power and destroyed the planet resetting civilization.

I guess with enough mind altering (diminishing) drugs anything is possible.

Idk why it’s always these wacko types who are into this kind of ancient history. It’s annoying.

> got to nuclear power and destroyed the planet resetting civilization

don't even know why they need to get that far. we already know the younger dryas was a time period of extreme climate swings and natural disasters with purely natural causes. a civilization existing before that time could have been advanced without needing to have achieved nuclear. plus its pretty trivial to prove that no prexisting civilization made it to the fossil fuel era. never-mind NUCLEAR age.

If that was true then we would still be living like in the 18th century. They would have pumped out all the easily accessible oil. It's not possible to access current oil fields with 19th century tech.

So yeah - if this civilization falls - the next one won't be able to have their own industrial revolution.

The Silurian hypothesis:

<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silurian_hypothesis>

(Largely debunked.)