Antediluvian Civilizations...Yes or No???

Antediluvian pertains to the time between creation and the beginnings of known history, you could also say prehistoric civilizations. Of course the definition of known history varies by the knower. The average person whose exposure to history is limited to high school or college is less knowledgable than a history teacher or professor, who probably knows less than an archeologist, or other specialist. But most, if not all people, average or professional will state absolutely that civilization started in the mideast, probably Babylon, Mesopotamia, or Egypt somewhere around 3500-4000 BC, or about 5-6000 years ago. 

Personally I've always believed that there were many much older civilizations equal to, or greater than, any we know today, including our own, going as far back from us as hundreds of thousands of years, to as near to us as ten or fifteen thousand years. Most people I've told that, asked, after they stopped laughing or calling me an idiot, or both, where is the proof.  My answer today is watch the program, After the People, on the histoy channel. It shows that within a few hundred years pretty much everything we know today is gone or well on its way, and the world is ready for the next experiment.

It only makes sense when you think about it, the concept that one week we're hunter gatherers, the next week we're farmers and atisans, growing wheat and making jugs and jewelry, building chariots and writing laws, living in towns and cities, building fantastic monuments and pyramids, a couple weeks later we're building atom bombs, then flying to the moon is every bit as fantastic.  It's becoming more accepted every day that unknown antidiluvian civilizations existed. Existed before the end of the last ice age. Is existing 15, 20, 50,000 years ago that much more of a stretch?

In fact it's been proposed that the rise of sea levels about 10000 years ago was the flood of Noah and was what destroyed the most recent early civilization.  Perhaps it was Atlantis as has been suggested by several authors?   Bringing to mind a question, in the bible it says it rained 40 days and nights, and springs in the earth opened and water poured out making the water rise above the mountain tops, and as the water level started to drop after forty days, the Ark came to rest on the top of Mt Arrat. The question is simply, did enough ice melt at the end of the last ice age and quickly enough, to cause the water levels to rise above the mountain tops in just a few days? What I've read suggests just a couple hundred feet over months or years, which might be a problem, but survivable by most people I'd think. A long way from Noah's flood as decribed in Genesis.

We, as a civilization, from the estimated beginning to now, have existed only five or six thousand years, maybe a little more or less. First as a mostly rural, mostly uneducated, mostly agrarian society, (building with wood and stone, wind or oar powered wooden ships, horse, mule or oxen drawn wooden vehicles), for thousands and thousands of years,  then as an advanced civilization, (industrial, big steel buildings, steel ships, bicycles and automobiles, the ability to kill each other at ever greater distances), for about 150 years or so, finally as a truely  advanced, (at least in our own opinion), civilization (computer, atom bombs), for just about the last fifty or sixty years.

What I find facinating is that people today, if you take away the advancements, the electronics, the laptops, ipods, etc., are little or no different, barely more educated,  no more, perhaps less, civilized, than people who lived 50, 100, 1000, or 5000 yearrs ago.

If you watch the time machine we have available, ie old movies, and newsreels, in the past most people got out and interacted with each other, knew each other. Then came the radio, then tv, and now even those are becoming out of style and passe' as people stay home alone with their computers, online, leading virtual lives.

Regarding the people of these long ago times compared to us modern, superior people. In my opinion, we, the modern human, are inferior mutations of a superior and stronger humanity that lived so many thousands of centuries ago. Whether the mutation happened in the lab of God, or an Alien, or just slowly over centuries as we "developed," I haven't a clue. 

Is it possible that civilizations existed 50 thosand years ago? Who knows? I've read that before it burned the Library at Alexandria had thousands of scrolls and books, (for lack of a better term), that went back into history thousands of years. Exactly how many thousands I don't know.  But, human beings, in one form or another, may have been around as long as 2-3 million years, or more, depending on who you talk to, we, homo-sapiens about a half million years.That's a lot of time. Hundreds, perhaps thousands of civilizations could have existed in all that time.

Again, in the Bible it tells of the civilization that existed and was destroyed by Noah's flood, the people had become degenerate and were destroyed for that reason. Well Noah, his sons and their wives survived, and it seems likely that they would also have been degenerate also to some degree,  after all they lived among the ones destroyed. If you believe the Bible, we the modern humans would've had to come from Noah through his sons. Are they the only survivors?

The Bible says yes, but, I've always thought that the people that we call cave men, were in fact survivors from some massive world wide destruction. Perhaps it was also the flood, who knows. Mutated, losing intelligence, psychic abilities, strength, size, longer lives, skills and knowledge, again who knows? Perhaps the modern predilection to killing, murder, and war, the greed, and overwhelming need for sex is part of the mutation?

It seems a safe bet, that if Noah could save himself then others could and probably did, there probably were other boats around.  Once the water subsided, it's safe to assume homes, business's, farms, factories, animal (except those in the Ark), crops, vehicles, pretty much everything would be destroyed. Just like a modern flood, on a larger scale. The survivors would try to go on with their lives, but, like us if we lost all electricity, meaning all our modern advancements, they'd be thrown right back to a more primitive state.  In our case it would be the 1800/early 1900's, in theirs who knows?  I imagine as what was left disappeared, each new generation would remember less and less of what had been, until after dozens or hundreds of generations, what had once been common knowlege would be just legend and old mens stories. No longer sophisticated and civilized, they became cave people, hunter gatherers surviving  by doing whatever. Or, perhaps that never happened, instead the survivors realized their technology, whatever it was, was gone, forever,  moved into caves temporarily, got together what was left, and started farming, raising animals, etc. Or perhaps the technology survived but gradually power started to fade and they eventually had to use more primitive methods, until as generations passed that was all they knew.

The possibilites are endless, so here's where I leave off for now. Comments anyone???

Lee Murray