I have wondered how long advanced civilizations keep durable records for.
And if they did, would we recognize it.
I doubt it very much.
In 20 years almost all knowledge will be in the clouds
If civ is decimated for 1000 years what would future archeologists think? how about if it were 5000 years?
Data retention is hard
It seems odd that an “advanced” civilization would make a Gobekli Tepi and only draw pictures of animals on slabs of rock. Maybe it was done some time post-disaster when the “advanced” aspect had already been wiped out, and they buried it in case whatever it was happened again.
There’s a book named The Story of Adam and Eve in the CIA reading library, which claims the Earth’s axis of rotation shifted (I would speculate it was only temporarily if it happened) due to ice buildup at the poles thousands of years ago and that caused the oceans to wash over the continents. Supposedly only a few illiterate clans at high altitudes survived, therefore it was basically a hard reset for civilization.
And supposedly that wasn’t the first time.
The Altantis tale may plug into this as well.
Ancient aliens? Maybe, more like humans who were helped by extraterrestrials in the distant past,
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They would not need any ‘alien’ help, if their civilization had lasted tens of thousands of years, or if they had help from or built on a previous civilization. There are so many anomalous artifacts that are not natural which had to be made millions or even billions of years ago and are summarily dismissed as impossible or ignored, but never accounted for.
I think its the height of hubris to imagine that in 4.5 billion years, intelligent life only arose in the last 300,000 and did not become civilized until 10,000 years ago.