I've been reading things on the interweb lately about Ooparts (Out of place artifacts - look it up) that have got me thinking seriously about the history of mankind. Seriously, look it up. It will blow your mind.

Things have been found that dispute the accepted norms about mankind's development; things, artifacts, and places that lend credence to the theory that man has been around far longer than science wants to acknowledge, things that tell us that man has been on Earth and has had civilizations that equaled or surpassed ours hundreds of millions of years ago, only to die out and have the system start all over from scratch (apparently).

It has also made me come to the decision that the whole of our particular civilization's technological advancement has all been based on war. Every major technical achievement we have come up with is based on ways to better kill "the enemy".

What if there was a race of men that didn't focus on war? What if mankind as we know it existed long ago, and what if they never had war as a focus of society?

Think of all the different ways technology could have gone if war was never a component.

Think of all the different tangents science could have gone if killing never came into the equation for man.

It's a very interesting thought, to say the least. What were they like?

 

What examples are there are civilizations more advanced than ours?

 

Like I said, start by looking up "ooparts". I've been reading various sites about the stuff, it gets pretty crazy when you start piecing it all together. The stuff people have been finding in coal mines miles under the surface is of particular interest. Whether or not they were more advanced than us is up for discussion.

Take our civilization - I read somewhere that if New York was abandoned completely today, all traces of it would be erased by natural forces within 5000 years. I don't know if that's true or not, but 5000 years isn't much in the grand scheme of things.

Should we die out, and traces of New York were discovered in the far-flung future, all that would be left was a stone and cement skeleton of what it is today. Could they prove that we were more advanced than they are, going off of nothing other than building foundations and bits of plastic and glass?

It's easy to be skeptical about it, but if you think about it for a minute, is it really that far-fetched?

 

After 10 minutes of research, I can't find a thing that makes it look like anything more than extreme speculation at best, and typical internet conspiracy at worst. The best examples I found all have fundamental flaws, completely disregarded by modern science.

Do you references to scholarly journals that back up some of these claims?

 

previous civilzations that died out because couldnt develop further due to aversion to war? what a bunch a sissies. harumph harumph harumph.

 

Digging deeper, I found some interesting criticism of most of the ooparts found in coal.

We're digging coal out of the ground just as fast as we ever have. And yet, most of these "ooparts" found in coal were found in the 1800's, a time when things were far easier to pass off as hoaxes. The more you advance to present day, the more difficult it is to find examples of these occurring.

 

That's the whole thing, science will not accept this as a viable option. They refuse to speculate that any of this stuff could be possible, and since they will not bend on what they believe, they won't even consider doing serious examinations on any of it.

I'll agree it would be easy to fake some of the coal mine stuff from the 1800s, but some of the other finds are more interesting. The petrified hammer that was broken out of solid rock was a good one. After they studied its metal content, they found that its makeup is not possible to duplicate with today's metal making techniques, and should not even exist.

Other interesting finds are the so - called "map of the creator", the pyramid type building found under a Japanese lake, and the recently found pipe system in a different lake somewhere in China. None of these things should exist by today's model of human history, yet there they are, sitting right there staring us in the face.

 

Most of it is hoax, but part of it is people insisting that those in the past were far less intelligent than now. I believe that in ancient times in S. America, there were basic "battery" type inventions used to shock the ground or plants for food gathering purposes. Most Oopa are BS though.

 

OH CRAP NOT THE GEOFRONT

 

While scientific theory can sometimes turn a blind eye on things that dont agree with current trends, that's a far cry from refusing any examination. And conveniently, when they do examine the evidence and find it wanting, the people bringing up the 'theory' say they're purposely doing it. As mentioned, most of these are very dubious. That and a lot of what they say was impossible with past techniques is simply bad research on their part.

The Greeks/Romans had working running hot water, concrete, and primitive calculating engines, but they were still fairly unadvanced compared to the modern day. Yet, people will try to pass these off similar other 'modern day techniques' as historical anomolies. That and they tend to forget how much you can do with brute force and simple machines.

 

While I don't know anything about the artifacts showing up in odd places, I have always wondered what history would have been like with less wars. From what I remember and understand, wasn't there a vast amount of knowledge lost due to the conquers burning the libraries of the losers. All that information destroyed.

 

^Library of Alexandria, dude. Though I'm not sure all the fires there were set on purpose.

 

There were also incredible amounts of information burned from the Pre-Columbian Civilizations (Incan, Aztec, Mayan, etc.) by the Conquistadores.

 

Hopefully, there lies a buried trove of all the ancient wisdom and info that has been destroyed, like the fabled secret library under or near the Sphinx.

It's probably all gone, unfortunately. Even if that "Sphinx library" exists, it has probably been flooded and destroyed by the Nile over the centuries.

 

Considering how much our technology advances BECAUSE of war, we'd likely not be as advanced as we are now.

Almost everything we use in modern life has its origins in war technology.

 

If they were as or more advanced when compared to us, wouldn't they have made time capsules that would have been preserved?  

 

Very interesting indeed. Thx for the think tank topic.

 

I was thinking the same thing, but where do we find them? Would they leave clues as to where they may be?

On the other hands, do we (as a civilization) plan for our own demise, and bury long-range time capsules for our descendants to find? Not that I know of.

 

I know not of these Oompah Loompas of which you speak, but I took a class in college called "War and Society" that talked about war's impact and importance to, you guessed it, society. The conclusion I came away with was that there really hasn't ever been a society that hasn't had war. A lot of anthropologists have tried to paint early civilizations as peaceful "noble savages", but then other anthropologists found fortified structures and body pits near by. It's common knowledge that if not for World War II, we might not have radar, computers, rockets, velcro, instant orange juice and hundreds of other handy inventions. It's tempting to see this as a validation of the Destro philosophy that war is mans' natural state, but maybe without war we could have spent all of out time figuring out how to feed and heal people, so we'd all be happy, healthy and live to be two hundred years old by now!

 

Technology is not just radar or electronics. Creating a fire by rubbing two sticks and farming is a technology too. I agree that technological improvements after the pre-civilizations time mostly depend on war. But war is not the main reason of it. Main reason is where the resource and money is being spent. Nearly all civilizations spend most of their money and recources on military. Thats why most of the technological devices have military roots. Also some technologies advencements made as civil projects, like mechanical clock, combustion engines and flight. After that militaristic "versions" crated. In conclusion technology does not depend on war or peace. It depends money and recources (both material and labor).