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> Many potential stopovers are now submerged If I was a billionaire, I'd look into funding tech for excavating coastlines during the ice age(s), That's where a

> Many potential stopovers are now submerged If I was a billionaire, I'd look into funding tech for excavating coastlines during the ice age(s), That's where any 10k old civilizations must have been.

deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
nradov 2y ago
It's like the old joke about the drunk who's searching for his lost keys under a streetlight because the light is better there. Archaeologists have barely begun to excavate underwater sites where people lived back when sea levels were much lower. There is surely much to discover but doing anything underwater increases the cost by at least 10×.
- aksss 2y ago
  Take a look at Doggerland. It's been known for over 100 years with no lack of interest, but as you say, underwater archaeology is expensive and technically difficult.
  - qwytw 2y ago
    And it's not like there is much to find, most of the things people in Doggerland made were out of wood, there are no ancient stone ruins or lost treasures.
    - generativenoise 2y ago
      There may be no grand objects to be found, but that does not mean there isn't much to find. The thing that we will find is more knowledge about those societies.
      - wqaatwt 2y ago
        I think it’s more about the cost and complexity of finding anything than trying to somehow imply that the societies living there were inferior. We already know relatively little about Neolithic Europe despite there being major cities there that rivaled or eclipsed those in Mesopotamia in population. Yet we hardly know anything about them in comparison because they used perishable materials for almost everything (and it’s not only because of writing). Finding anything useful underwater makes that many times harder.
        nukem222 2y ago
        > We already know relatively little about Neolithic Europe despite there being major cities there that rivaled or eclipsed those in Mesopotamia in population. What are you referring to? I could certainly imagine such a thing but I can't say I've ever heard of someone finding evidence of a city that matches this description.
        wqaatwt 2y ago
        https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_Europe_(archaeology) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_Europe_(archaeology) e.g. Maidanetske site could have had 20-40k inhabitants. Uruk possibly only reached that population centuries later. But of course accurate estimates of this and other similar sites are very tricky.
      - jajko 2y ago
        You want to find ancient marvels? Start digging literally anywhere in or around Rome. Or half of amazon jungle. Or around London. And so on. You can get much more 'value' in form of artifacts and knowledge from there for given money. Submerged places... imagine how complex and slow archaeologic excavations look on the ground. Now move it 50m underwater in endless mud. Good luck looking for literal needle in the muddy haystack of 40,000km2. To find what... some fossilized wood or few arrow heads? That culture was very similar to ones on neighboring lands, no atlantis there. One day, robots can scan and dig through there but there are so many better ways to spending money, any money, that it makes perfect sense nobody is doing it.
    - BurningFrog 2y ago
      How can we know that without excavating?
      - OJFord 2y ago
        Period, trade - archaeology is but one discipline. How could we track and plan our excavation without writing a to-do/kanban app?
      - Someone 2y ago
        Treasures are small and rare enough so you can never rule them out completely, but if there were significant amounts of rocks there, we would know because Doggerland has been fairly thoroughly “ploughed” by fishing trawlers and mapped for research (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doggerland#Discovery_and_investigation_by_archaeologists https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doggerland#Discovery_and_inves...) The geology of the North Sea also indicates “sand” more than “rocks”.
    - StanislavPetrov 2y ago
      >here are no ancient stone ruins or lost treasures. Like Stonehenge? How can we possibly know what's there without looking thoroughly?
      - qwytw 2y ago
        Because it's highly unlikely given the evidence we have? Is there any reason to believe that material culture in Doggerland could have been fundamentally different to that of other hunter gatherer societies in Europe at the time? There is a 4000-5000 year gap between Doggerland sinking and Stonehenge i.e. similar to that of Stonehenge being built and our days so it's hardly relevant.
        StanislavPetrov 2y ago
        >Is there any reason to believe that material culture in Doggerland could have been fundamentally different to that of other hunter gatherer societies in Europe at the time? >There is a 4000-5000 year gap between Doggerland sinking and Stonehenge i.e. similar to that of Stonehenge being built and our days so it's hardly relevant Göbeklitepe was built 5000 years before Stonehenge so I think it is very relevant. It is absurd to suggest that we know for certain what is there without even looking.
        qwytw 2y ago
        > It is absurd It's not if we base it on evidence that we have. It's silly to assume otherwise until any evidence at all is discovered. Why would Doggerland be fundamentally different to the surrounding areas which are at a higher altitude? > Göbeklitepe If there were major stone structures at the bottom of the sea we would have very likely found them already. Also.. I'm not even trying to imply that there weren't any complex societies in Doggerland (of course it's extremely likely that there weren't) but they would have likely primarily used wood to construct structures due to obvious reasons and any remains would have been very unlikely to survive. IMHO associating "monumental" architecture or remains with complex societies and "civilization" is flawed. Just consider https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maidanetske https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maidanetske
  - BurningFrog 2y ago
    That's why we need a few billionaires to chip in!
jjulius 2y ago
There's a similar case to be made for the Pacific Northwest - there's likely a good chunk of human history beneath Puget Sound and the Pacific. https://www.cascadepbs.org/2011/05/lost-civilization-along-west-coast-new-evidence-sa https://www.cascadepbs.org/2011/05/lost-civilization-along-w...
- SpicyUme 2y ago
  https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0277379114002042 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S027737911... This sea level hinge idea points towards an area to look that didn't get pushed underwater. As far as I have read people are looking and finding signs of humans. The north end of Vancouver island and the Brooks peninsula also may have stayed glacier free during the ice age.
pratik661 2y ago
The Persian Gulf would be a goldmine for this.
- blululu 2y ago
  Surprisingly the Persian Gulf is likely the exact opposite scenario. Modern research suggests that ancient likes like Ur were likely on the coastline while modern Basra would have been totally submerged. In most of the world the post glacial trend has pushed the coastline in but in the Persian gulf the trend points the other way. There is the possibility that the reason that Iraq is such a gold mine for archeological sites is because it is one of the rare places where the sea went the other way.
  - kjkjadksj 2y ago
    Persian gulf is just silt being deposited increasing the coastlines. Plenty of other river systems are doing that too.
  - pratik661 2y ago
    I think we are undercounting how much silt gets deposited by major river systems over millenia. The ruins of Lothal, which was a Harappan port city contemporary with Ur are pretty far inland as well. Who knows? Maybe Giza was closer to the coast and was part of a major Nilotic coastal metropolis
walrus01 2y ago
Doggerland is probably full of possible archaeological evidence, but it's now submerged. Fishing vessels occasionally haul up a mammoth tusk. Or even a whole mammoth skull with tusks attached. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doggerland https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doggerland

> Many potential stopovers are now submerged If I was a billionaire, I'd look into funding tech for excavating coastlines during the ice age(s), That's where any 10k old civilizations must have been.

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

nradov 2y ago

It's like the old joke about the drunk who's searching for his lost keys under a streetlight because the light is better there. Archaeologists have barely begun to excavate underwater sites where people lived back when sea levels were much lower. There is surely much to discover but doing anything underwater increases the cost by at least 10×.

aksss 2y ago
Take a look at Doggerland. It's been known for over 100 years with no lack of interest, but as you say, underwater archaeology is expensive and technically difficult.
- qwytw 2y ago
  And it's not like there is much to find, most of the things people in Doggerland made were out of wood, there are no ancient stone ruins or lost treasures.
  - generativenoise 2y ago
    There may be no grand objects to be found, but that does not mean there isn't much to find. The thing that we will find is more knowledge about those societies.
    - wqaatwt 2y ago
      I think it’s more about the cost and complexity of finding anything than trying to somehow imply that the societies living there were inferior. We already know relatively little about Neolithic Europe despite there being major cities there that rivaled or eclipsed those in Mesopotamia in population. Yet we hardly know anything about them in comparison because they used perishable materials for almost everything (and it’s not only because of writing). Finding anything useful underwater makes that many times harder.
      - nukem222 2y ago
        > We already know relatively little about Neolithic Europe despite there being major cities there that rivaled or eclipsed those in Mesopotamia in population. What are you referring to? I could certainly imagine such a thing but I can't say I've ever heard of someone finding evidence of a city that matches this description.
        wqaatwt 2y ago
        https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_Europe_(archaeology) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_Europe_(archaeology) e.g. Maidanetske site could have had 20-40k inhabitants. Uruk possibly only reached that population centuries later. But of course accurate estimates of this and other similar sites are very tricky.
    - jajko 2y ago
      You want to find ancient marvels? Start digging literally anywhere in or around Rome. Or half of amazon jungle. Or around London. And so on. You can get much more 'value' in form of artifacts and knowledge from there for given money. Submerged places... imagine how complex and slow archaeologic excavations look on the ground. Now move it 50m underwater in endless mud. Good luck looking for literal needle in the muddy haystack of 40,000km2. To find what... some fossilized wood or few arrow heads? That culture was very similar to ones on neighboring lands, no atlantis there. One day, robots can scan and dig through there but there are so many better ways to spending money, any money, that it makes perfect sense nobody is doing it.
  - BurningFrog 2y ago
    How can we know that without excavating?
    - OJFord 2y ago
      Period, trade - archaeology is but one discipline. How could we track and plan our excavation without writing a to-do/kanban app?
    - Someone 2y ago
      Treasures are small and rare enough so you can never rule them out completely, but if there were significant amounts of rocks there, we would know because Doggerland has been fairly thoroughly “ploughed” by fishing trawlers and mapped for research (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doggerland#Discovery_and_investigation_by_archaeologists https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doggerland#Discovery_and_inves...) The geology of the North Sea also indicates “sand” more than “rocks”.
  - StanislavPetrov 2y ago
    >here are no ancient stone ruins or lost treasures. Like Stonehenge? How can we possibly know what's there without looking thoroughly?
    - qwytw 2y ago
      Because it's highly unlikely given the evidence we have? Is there any reason to believe that material culture in Doggerland could have been fundamentally different to that of other hunter gatherer societies in Europe at the time? There is a 4000-5000 year gap between Doggerland sinking and Stonehenge i.e. similar to that of Stonehenge being built and our days so it's hardly relevant.
      - StanislavPetrov 2y ago
        >Is there any reason to believe that material culture in Doggerland could have been fundamentally different to that of other hunter gatherer societies in Europe at the time? >There is a 4000-5000 year gap between Doggerland sinking and Stonehenge i.e. similar to that of Stonehenge being built and our days so it's hardly relevant Göbeklitepe was built 5000 years before Stonehenge so I think it is very relevant. It is absurd to suggest that we know for certain what is there without even looking.
        qwytw 2y ago
        > It is absurd It's not if we base it on evidence that we have. It's silly to assume otherwise until any evidence at all is discovered. Why would Doggerland be fundamentally different to the surrounding areas which are at a higher altitude? > Göbeklitepe If there were major stone structures at the bottom of the sea we would have very likely found them already. Also.. I'm not even trying to imply that there weren't any complex societies in Doggerland (of course it's extremely likely that there weren't) but they would have likely primarily used wood to construct structures due to obvious reasons and any remains would have been very unlikely to survive. IMHO associating "monumental" architecture or remains with complex societies and "civilization" is flawed. Just consider https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maidanetske https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maidanetske
- BurningFrog 2y ago
  That's why we need a few billionaires to chip in!

jjulius 2y ago

There's a similar case to be made for the Pacific Northwest - there's likely a good chunk of human history beneath Puget Sound and the Pacific. https://www.cascadepbs.org/2011/05/lost-civilization-along-west-coast-new-evidence-sa https://www.cascadepbs.org/2011/05/lost-civilization-along-w...

SpicyUme 2y ago
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0277379114002042 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S027737911... This sea level hinge idea points towards an area to look that didn't get pushed underwater. As far as I have read people are looking and finding signs of humans. The north end of Vancouver island and the Brooks peninsula also may have stayed glacier free during the ice age.

pratik661 2y ago

The Persian Gulf would be a goldmine for this.

blululu 2y ago
Surprisingly the Persian Gulf is likely the exact opposite scenario. Modern research suggests that ancient likes like Ur were likely on the coastline while modern Basra would have been totally submerged. In most of the world the post glacial trend has pushed the coastline in but in the Persian gulf the trend points the other way. There is the possibility that the reason that Iraq is such a gold mine for archeological sites is because it is one of the rare places where the sea went the other way.
- kjkjadksj 2y ago
  Persian gulf is just silt being deposited increasing the coastlines. Plenty of other river systems are doing that too.
- pratik661 2y ago
  I think we are undercounting how much silt gets deposited by major river systems over millenia. The ruins of Lothal, which was a Harappan port city contemporary with Ur are pretty far inland as well. Who knows? Maybe Giza was closer to the coast and was part of a major Nilotic coastal metropolis

walrus01 2y ago

Doggerland is probably full of possible archaeological evidence, but it's now submerged. Fishing vessels occasionally haul up a mammoth tusk. Or even a whole mammoth skull with tusks attached. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doggerland https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doggerland