[gleeaikin]

I really believe that various catastrophes over the millenia have destroyed many more advanced groups, and set us back thousands of years each time. Can’t wait to see what happens when archeologists finally get serious about exploring undersea shorelines and river mouths. Meanwhile there is Graham Hancock’s site/forum.

Regarding remaining scraps, the other day I saw rat foot prints enshrined in fresh concrete. I immediately thought of a science fiction story in which scientists in a future advanced rat population discover this chunk of concrete in a buried/destroyed city, and are shocked to think that rats were once small, naked unimportant critters that were running around in this vanished civilization.

[Dr. Sivana]

I really believe that various catastrophes over the millenia have destroyed many more advanced groups, and set us back thousands of years each time.

That makes a lot more sense than the Erich von Daniken theory that advanced spacemen made all of that inexplicable stuff.

[SunkenCiv]

Another /bingo. :') Given that the generally taught figure of 7000 years for settled agriculture (and it is known to be at least twice that old) fits into the 20K figure almost threefold, there's plenty of room just in that span. For the 50K figure often given by the racial-superiority advocates (the Replacement model advocates), 7K fits seven times, and with the 14K actual figure, 3.5 times. For the span since the beginning of known modern humans (Homo sapiens neanderthalensis) it's over twelve times that long.

In her Plato Prehistorian: 10,000 to 5000 B.C. Myth, Religion, Archaeology, Mary Settegast reproduces a table which shows four runic character sets; a is Upper Paleolithic (found among the cave paintings), b is Indus Valley script, c is Greek (western branch), and d is the Scandinavian runic alphabet.