Ancient Cultures & the “Civilization” cycle
During my early educational process, I had assumed that civilization was developed through a logical process of incremental steps from the earliest cave dwelling humanoids on to the present day which was the pinnacle. In recent years my view has changed. I now suspect that there have been numerous cycles that involved the movement toward civilized and more advanced groups of humanity only for that attempt to eventually devolve for reasons that have eluded us, or perhaps not. Did not the Greek city states & Rome have advanced architecture, engineering and enlightened forms of governance? When compared to the “Dark Ages” it appears than European civilization devolved.
Other examples of this can be seen in the Mayan and other civilizations of Mexico and Central & South America.
This above is more than circumstantial evidence which brings me to my hypothesis (one that is shared by an increasing number). We know little other than what has been recorded and much of that was documented after the fact. When tend to not believe verbal history, even though much of what was recorded in the oldest books was a recounting of verbal stories. It seems that merely writing it down provides credibility?
What I propose is that there likely have been ancient civilizations with some amazing technologies, but that knowledge has been lost. Conventional wisdom provides that the Step pyramid was the oldest and that the Giza pyramids were later improved versions. Also, that pyramids were built as tombs for various pharaohs. I suspect that the Giza pyramids were much older and the Step pyramid was an attempt to replicate that architecture at a much later date. Also, there is no direct evidence that the purpose of a pyramid was as a burial chamber as no body or even a sarcophagus has ever been found in any pyramid. The notion that the crude box found in the Great Pyramid was intended to be a sarcophagus is laughable.
The notion that the amazing stone work at both Cusco and Machu Picchu was accomplished by the Incas seems incredible to me. Their culture was in power for a very short time (less than 100 years), they apparently could not envision using a wheel in any capacity and yet they had mastered the technology of moving a 360- ton boulder over ten miles and up a 45-degree slope for a ½ mile. Then they positioned it to fit between two other large boulders in such a way that it fit so precisely that not even a razor blade can penetrate the joints (and no mortar was used). They then positioned another level of boulders on top, some weighing over 100 tons, so that they had the same precision of fit. There are several thousand stones in the 50 – 150 ton category at the site! They went from an agrarian society to one with this technological capability in less than 100 years! Does this make any sense at all?
More on this topic in next week’s post