/sci/ - Science & Math

bump for discussion

>>>/x/

Anything's possible.
There would always be people believing in ancient astronauts too. That wouldn't end it.

Possible, but highly unlikely.

High technology requires a vast civilization (both in number of people, as in the entire infrastructure & logistical support to get scientific and technological progress going). There has been no trace of this (archaeological, ecological, or even DNA based) to support the claim that humanity ever reached more than a billion individuals synchronically before 1800 CE, or that any group ever developed industrial-era level technology at a sufficient scale).

Furthermore, as geological evidence points out, this is the first time in the history of our species (the holocene, began ca 12Ka ago) that the climate has been relatively stable enough (see picture) to allow agriculture. So the window of opportunity would have had to have been between then and ca 4ka ago (after which the available evidence is much, much higher, and still not indicating any advanced technological groups).

So with regards to homo sapiens sapiens: very unlikely that there were any precursor high-tech levels.

>>4786848
how is discussion of the possible implications of a historical artifact /x/ shit?
/x/ shit is GUYS I FIGURED IT OUT SLENDERMAN AND THE ANCIENT ALIENS DID THE PYRAMID 9/11 USING JEWPLANES

Dark ages were a European thing, they coincided with what's known as the Islamic Golden Age in the Middle East, during which technology and civilization progressed at impressive rates.

Taking into account that the Baghdad Battery was found in the Middle East actually lends a bit more validity to your ideas, but there is no archaelogical evidence to support your theory.

>>4786858
That's lame
what about, and i know this is far-fetched because of what you said about agriculture, but the possibility that there was once an advanced civilization on earth. say, homo habilis was smarter than we thought. or beyond that, fuck, there have been so many huge extinction events..
i'm really interested in ancient cultures and read a lot abut them, and the idea that they could have had technology beyond what we did fascinates me.

I've always thought http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antikythera_mechanism was completely amazing.

>>4786869
oh lawdy, this too, and ancient greek automata in general. always wondered if they were ever able to make a more sophisticated mechanical computer. anyone who knows things about stuff want to estimate how much space a turing-complete mechanical computer might occupy?

>>4786878
A difference engine would be far more in tune with the antikythera mechanism

everyone in this thread is thinking in terms of 'society' not an individual. in 200bc, science wasn't what it was now. that battery and anything used with it was probably the doing of a single man. who made vast technological leaps within his life span, but then died and without a good system for writing/printing/storing his data
bam gone

>>4786913
yes, but it's also a glorified abacus,

>>4786917
mmm, yeah...

Technology?
No
Knowledge of Science?
Yes.

>>4786917
more likely this battery (if it was a battery) was more of a "hey look, that's cool... so what's for dinner?" thing rather than an active discovery, along with magnets and amber

the scientific revolution/mentality has only occured once

>>4786917
And to expand on this a bit, the political structure of most previous societies didn't let people adequately exploit innovation. For example, the Roman's invented steam power but only used it to open temple doors or the Aztec's invented the wheel but only used them for children's toys.

the Baghdad battery was found alongside anodized jewelry. You can electrically anodize gold. That is most likely all it was used for and they didn't understand the full magnitude of what they had discovered.

>society went to shit around 800-1000ish and full dark ages by 1300
>One word. Cathedrals

>>4788682
I can top it.

Over the past 60,000 years we have had a few very big ice ages that ended, and covered the earths coastlines in a lot of water.

Most of our historical existence has been and still is on the coasts and the cultures that we have could have created are buried underneath 300 feet of water, silt and rock. ANYTHING can be there, scientific achievements, complex societies, scientific discoveries, and we don't even know how to look for it.

>>4788731
>*we could have created

I think that Baghdad batter was used like how they used it in Mythbusters. They just connected it to a metal object and said that it was God touching them or some shit like that. They had no idea what was going on, so they assumed it was God. If they actually knew what the fuck was going on, then they would have used the electricity to create primitive light bulbs and to power other things. If they actually used the electricity like OP says, then the technology would have spread throughout the world, and nobody would have simply "forgot" about it.

>>4788731
Wrong.
http://www.charts.noaa.gov/OnLineViewer/12326.shtml

Thats the coast outside New York Harbor. All those little numbers are depths that have been surveyed. Look closer and you'll find anomolies- obstructions, shipwrecks, other shit. Go a little further off shore and the depths drop off suddenly-in terms of thousands of feet. The continental shelf., which has never been exposed.
>But they weren't looking for anything but depths
Stfu faggot. Between oil exploration, underwater cable laying, scientific research, and fishing draggers, we would have found something. Some dragger would have brought up a flux capacitor with his flounder. Some drill rig would have hit a reinforced cement wall. Something. There's just a lot of sand and nothing out there. Your theory is retarded, and you're gay.

The baghdad battery isn't confirmed to be an actual battery man. The paper that put forth that explanation is 70 years old. They found acidic residue in it and assumed it was a battery. The core was insulated which would fuck up the ability to work as a battery. Most likely it was used to store scrolls that happened to rot away. There were other things almost identical to them that held scrolls except they didn't have an outer case.

The anykawhateverthefuck mechanism is just a moving astral calendar. There's a guy who completely dissected it and rebuilt it using similar but new materials. Basically just a mechanical clock. Cool? Yes. Evidence that they had mechanical computers? No.

I think they did find indoor plumbing and/or running water in Macedonia though. And I heard, but never confirmed, they found a lens that predates Galileo

Unlikely the ancients had higher technology, however some ancient stone masonry is phenomenal.

Archimedes & Heron of Alexandria somehow invented devices way beyond their time.

>people still think 'dark ages' stopped progress when in fact the middle ages was the launching platform for western civilisation
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

>>4788766
OOOOoooOOOoooooOOOooooOOO!

One report from one date from an examination of one area that DEFINITELY was covered in ice 60,000 years ago where no culture COULD have been built.

It's like you don't even care, you just want to be able to say "NO!" with anything you got.

You durped VERY hard that time, kiddo.

I remember reading about this in The Fingerprints Of the Gods. It was very convincing that something was off about the official theory behind history.

Several ancient societies had extremely precise architecture that is difficult to do today. Making something massive is possible. Making them more precisely and accurately built than standards today isn't.

Mayans, and Egyptians were both aware of Pi and other mathematical concepts and applied them in their building. They built to last and they built durable as fuck.

>>4788792
>Mfw The Library of Alexandria, along with every other institute of ancient knowledge, was destroyed or burned down by conquering assholes.

One word. Longitude.

It was discovered how to measure it a long time before you think.

Implications:Many.

Yes the white race descend from atlantis.

>>4788797
We are talking far before that Mr. Smartass.

>>4788829
see
>>4786826
>society went to shit around 800-1000ish and full dark ages by 1300
Mr. RetardedShitPants

>>4786867
>they coincided with what's known as the Islamic Golden Age in the Middle East

Uh there was no dark ages first of all, the "islamic golden age" is a pretty big stretch, they were mostly just discovering stuff from the greeks and romans and whatever, not inventing anything for themselves.

>>4788825
Stargate (tm) or the Mediterranean island?

Doesn't matter. Jew mad anyway.

>>4788799

I'm not the guy you're replying to.

But I'm not sure what you're saying. You realize that if they built something on ice, and it melted, and suck to the bottom of the ocean, and sat there for even 40,000 years, it would be really fucking hard to find at all.

That's assuming what little people were around enjoyed leaving the comforts of home to go chill on a big ass glacier because freezing to death was their idea of a good time.

You can't just say something happened because it could happen. You gotta base it on evidence. No evidence points to that, so it's a no-go. And of course by evidence I don't mean "Kind of makes sense to me, some guy who read about it on the internet." I mean actual artifacts and dates and found documents.

Find a Norse recording of their trip to America and you might have something on a pre-Columbian settlement off the coast of Canada or North-Eastern US.

>>4788831

Algebra

Hey you

ALGEBRA

algebra

>>4788839
looted from the greeks or indians.

>>4788799
-The continental shelf is a relatively narrow feature.
-For the last century it has been heavily surveyed, fished, dove upon, seismically searched, interrogated by sonar, measured magnetically, so on and so forth
-Nothing of any substance suggesting an advanced society has been discovered.

What did I miss?

>>4788817
Yeah one the greatest tragedies. Unfortunately the romans were too eager to take over the Greek empire, applying only its rural, battle and medicinal advancements to the Roman empire.

>>4788841
I think you mean looted BY the Greeks and Indians.

>>4788847
from

>>4788846
It was the muslims who finally burnt it.

>>4788837
I'm saying that people build near water, like coastlines.

I'm saying that over the past 60,000 years, the water level went up.

I'm saying that a lot of the areas we would have built on 60,000 years ago are under 300 feet of water.

I'm saying it is bitch-ass hard to have an archeological dig under all that water, mud and rock.

I am saying that 60,000 years ago to 30,000 years ago is a hell of a lot of lost history, and a lot could be buried on ALL/ANY of the continental coasts that we will never know about.

>>4788799
Oh yeah. This is the Monterey Bay canyon. Due to its location right outside the Monterey Bay facilities, and it's geological peculiarities, it has become one of the most heavily surveyed areas in the entire ocean. There is a ton of data on this region. You can probably see that this would have been a considerably arable region when water levels were lower: flat plains, river in the middle, pretty nice. Guess how much evidence of an advanced civilization they've found here? Zero.
I'm done trying to disprove a negative, now.

>>4788844
>heavily surveyed,

Surveyed underneath 60,000 years mud and rock? Liar.

At best we drill through it.

>>4788856
>it's
your dead to me

>>4788865
>your

>>4788856
WOW! ONE BAY! AND THERE IS NO APPARENT EVIDENCE THERE! CAN YOU PROVE THAT THERE WERE ANY HUMANS WITHIN 1000 MILES OF THAT BAY 60,000 YEARS AGO?!

NO? THEN WHY DID YOU USE IT?!

>>4788856
Wait, I want to change my point. A canyon is a shitty place to try to live, and that is obviously a canyon.

To the two homos arguing over underwater coast lines:

Specious reasoning on both accounts. Just because humans settled on coast lines and the coast lines are under water doesn't mean that entire civilizations are under water. And just because no civilizations are found under water doesn't mean there aren't any. You both should use better arguments.

Humans settle in many places. Yet there are plenty of rivers and fertile lands that were never inhabited and still aren't by humans. And there are examples of under water cities, like off the coasts of Greece.

>>4788892
>Yet there are plenty of rivers and fertile lands that were never inhabited and still aren't by humans.
I'm not even in this thread, but what the fuck, give me one fucking example. (uninhabited doesn't include large pieces of land bought privately or by the government and not currently being used)

>>4788858
Fine. One more, then I'm out. Sedimentary deposits on the continental shelf are approximately 30cm/1000 years. That's 18 meters over 60,000 years. 60 feet. That's a good bit, not enough to cover pyramids, cathedrals, skyscrapers, however advanced you want to pretend these people were.
Anyway, read up on oil exploration. They use seismic and sonic surveys to penetrate miles of mud and rock to make out pockets of oil, identify the layers between it and the surface, and figure the best way to drill to it. If there was some city-shaped anomaly, or many city-shaped anomalies all over the world, they would be the best way to find it. And believe me, they look *everywhere* for oil.
Don't forget your argument seems to rest on these people living only on these shelves, and not bothering to leave evidence of themselves on the other 95% of our landmass that was exposed at the time.

Pic related, 7.5/10

>>4788897

Amazon.

>>4788869
Because it is the best support of my argument I can think of/access on my phone at 230am. Keep it up, though, and I might bend to your superior argument of
"NUH UHHH!!!"

Didn't you know that technology is cyclical?

The ancients had knowledge and wisdom far beyond ours.

>>4788920
Yeah, but then they ascended and now can't be bothered to help us 'lowers'. Assholes.

>>4788915
You listed ONE canyon(I remind you, canyons actually suck to live in.) as evidence, AND YOU BLAME -ME-?!

>>4788902
Until people can actually examine the sonar/graphs/whatever for anomalies, they remain unexamined.

>>4788932

fuck that, why dont we just force ascended and go beat the crap out of them? all we need to do is get our brain activity up to 90% and meditate.

>>4788979
>>4788979
*force ascension

>>4788979
>force ascend

With your education? Good luck. The last person that said "we are beings made of light" was beaten to death to get "teh gay" out of him.

>>4788979
I prefer entering a deep state of Kel-Noreem.

>>4788999
Kel-Noreeming is for losers and lesbians.

>>4789010

>>4788999
>>4789010

>>4786826
It has happened, mainly because some technological advancements were for specific uses. The battery you mentioned was used mainly from jewellers, it could theoretically be used for research on electrical phenomena but it never did, wasn't those peoples interest, or if they understood the achievement the technology sometimes could reach a dead end, and die or survive in inferior forms and uses.That's what happened with the Antikythera mechanism that was manufactured in Rhodos island.Same but inferior mechanisms were used by the Byzantines in 6th century.The hospitals were first fully developed as modern ones in the Byzantium (check Miller),there wasn't a continuity.Even Archytas from Tarantas is mentioned in ancient Greek and Roman literature for his flying machine πετομηχανή which resembled a dove and could fly up to 200m in distance.

>>4786826
This flying machine never left any marks,it died in it's investor's time fir reasons we don't know as one of the many technological dead ends of the human history.In 5th thousand bc people in China were using tools with diamond fragmented tips to cut metals,this technology too met a dead end.The Incas were using the hexadecimal metric system, they never knew the use of the wheel.Many civilizations made technological discoveries that were quickly lost due to various historical reasons.Archaeology will keep discovering such advances in the future.It's something that happens in our time too.Remember Babbage and Ada in the Victorian era.There are more examples.Mainly the social needs the cost and the conditions are what drive to a technological advancement make it thrive or kill it.The necessity for the journey to the moon was political , the need for the drive to the asteroid belt will be the profit from mining,perhaps the major motive for space colonization with be the need of survival on a dying earth.I'm certain that in unpopular languages or scientific fields today exist works and papers that could solve the energy crisis,lead to a unified theory in physics, a way to interstellar travel and almost certainly the cure of cancer.For various reasons they didn't come to fruition.The historians of the future will mark these and eventually explain their delay.Even the prehistoric era might have seen this phenomenon.Advanced archaeological techniques in the future will surely give the leads.I'm not referring to intentional withdraw of technological advances.If a major civilization with advances equal of our present time existed I can assure you that we would already have its relics and its echoes in myths and traditions, which never happened.Don't bother with those shitty ancient aliens jokes.Modern science has the means to acknowledge if an advanced species or culture has intervened in our history and this never happened.

>>4788856

i realise this example isn't even close to 60,000 years old evidence but what about the black sea deluge theory, supposedly something has been found from the bottom

While on the subject of pseudoscience, I heard some guy claim that the sphinx bears signs of corrosion from flowing water, and that the basin in which the sphinx was said appeared designed to accomodate such. Indicating, apparently, the age of the sphinx to be far older than what's commonly accepted, back to an age where water still flowed on the Giza Plateau. As I recall the claim went 9000 BC.

>>4788856
>look at canyon
>brain interprets it as sticking out
>squint
>squint
>squint harder
>still won't interpret it as a depression
Fucking brain, l2depth perception, jeez. The light is from the top-right, habeeb it already!