The history of civilization as we know it will hardly take ten thousand years. During this time, humanity has come a long way: from primitive agriculture to space flights. At the same time, a person of the modern type appeared in Europe much earlier - forty thousand years ago. A hypothesis suggests itself: maybe there were some others before our civilization - those that disappeared as a result of decline or natural disaster?
ATLANTIS AND PALEOPHANTASTS
Probably, Plato was the first to tell about the powerful prehistoric civilization in the Timaeus dialogue, which he created more than two thousand years ago. The Atlantean civilization described by Plato flourished on a huge island in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, reached unprecedented heights, then entered the war with the Pre-Athenians (ancestors of the Greeks), but failed to end it with a victory, because one fine day 12 thousand years ago the Atlantean island sank to the bottom of the ocean, becoming a victim of some powerful tectonic cataclysm.
Plato's testimony is not the only one: other ancient authors also wrote about the vast land in the West. In 1882, the American politician, writer and occultist Ignatius Donnelly published the book Atlantis - Antediluvian World, in which, based on many legends and their later interpretations, he tried to reconstruct the life of prehistoric civilization. At the same time, he proceeded from the principle that the civilizational level of the Atlanteans was so superior to other peoples that they were perceived by the latter as gods. It was the Atlanteans who brought the light of high culture to Europe, Asia and South America after the death of their own island. It was the Atlanteans who became the progenitors of the Aryan Indo-European family of peoples.
Although Donnelly's work was based solely on speculative concepts, almost not supported by real facts and physical evidence, they were very popular. Anyone who undertook to write later about Atlantis, in one way or another, referred to it. The creators of esoteric theories did not ignore his works: for example, the founder of Theosophy, Helena Blavatsky, in her work "The Secret Doctrine", described the Atlantean race as magicians who had achieved fantastic power. In this form, the legend of Atlantis has survived to this day with the amendment that the mythical island is now placed not in the Atlantic Ocean, but anywhere: from Asia to Antarctica.
In addition to Atlantis, several more prehistoric states are mentioned: Hyperborea, Lemuria, Mu, Pasifida, Thule, Eldorado. The legends about them differ little from Donnelly's reconstruction and are just as poorly substantiated. Perhaps some inhabited territories really existed in areas where desolation now reigns: for example, it is believed that the climate of Greenland was once much milder and warmer, so there could well have been developed settlements, later crushed and hidden by a glacier. However, there is no evidence that the inhabitants of these lost territories were in any way superior to other peoples.
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ARTIFACTS AND HYPOTHESES
Modern paleophantologists proceed from two hypotheses. The first hypothesis is that humanity is much older than it is commonly believed, and its age is calculated not in tens of thousands, but in tens of millions of years, that is, people existed in the days of the last dinosaurs and created several advanced civilizations. The second hypothesis is that people were wild for millions of years, but one day aliens came and gave our ancestors a high culture.
As evidence, the legends of various peoples about flying creatures, superweapons and all kinds of miracles are again cited, as well as artifacts - objects that do not correspond to the era about which we have a more or less clear scientific understanding. While legends can be dismissed as a product of fiction or mis-translation, artifacts are more difficult.
Periodically, nails, bolts and even spark plugs are found in ancient layers. Any such find immediately generates a wave of speculation in the media, but in fact it turns out that these items accidentally ended up in the excavations of archaeologists. In addition, "field" researchers love to test the knowledge of competing colleagues for strength, tossing them unusual artifacts.
At one time, a lot of noise was made by black rounded andesite stones with white mesh patterns, found near the Peruvian town of Ica. They are notable for the fact that among the drawings you can find very strange images: scenes of hunting for extinct animals, the extinct animals themselves, organ transplant surgeries, maps with unknown continents, flying machines and even a rider on … a dinosaur! Ica stones appeared on the Peruvian black market in the 1960s, and were made famous by the local professor of medicine Javier Cabrera, who bought the first large batch of stones from antiquity hunters. For thirty years he collected these artifacts; its collection today is 11 thousand exhibits and is a tourist attraction. All in all, there are about 50 thousand stones in different collections. It is impossible to determine the age of the drawings, therefore, it is a priori considered that they belong to the "pre-Columbian" era. And many believe that they really testify to the existence of a civilization in ancient South America, which in its level almost corresponded to the modern one.
However, the question immediately arises: where are the other artifacts or structures that should have remained after this civilization? Why was all her activity limited to only a set of stones? The answer is simple: no special civilization existed there. Perhaps the first Ica stones, bought by Cabrera, were created by the artists of the "pre-Columbian" era, but later, when the demand for them sharply increased, fakes flooded the market, and the very fact of making fake drawings was never particularly hidden …
MEGALITS AND RUINS
Perhaps the strongest material evidence in favor of the supporters of paleo-fantastic hypotheses can serve as ancient megalithic structures, which are scattered all over the world. And if the origin of the Egyptian pyramids, Stonehenge or the idols of Easter Island fits easily into the history we know, then some of the megaliths are still waiting for archaeological binding to a specific era and a specific people.
Many of the discovered megaliths, in fact, turn out to be the result of the action of natural forces: such, for example, are often found in our Far North - travelers take them for artificial structures due to their poor knowledge of geology (and how many can boast that they know geology well?). Nevertheless, even in Europe, there are enough strange stone buildings that date back to the Bronze Age (that is, 3-2 thousand years BC). The most common are dolmens, which are a chamber or crypt of standing vertically hewn monoliths on which one or more large flat stones are resting, which make up the "roof". Many, though not all, of the dolmens contain human remains. Whether the burial was the main purpose of the construction, or people were sacrificed, is unknown.
In Asia, more ancient megaliths have been discovered: the age of some is estimated at 10-11 thousand years. And they, too, have retained the imprint of a ceremonial appointment. But the most ancient for today is the "Pyramid of the Sun", found inside a two-hundred-meter hill near the city of Visoko (Bosnia and Herzegovina): it is about 12 thousand years old.
No matter how hard the supporters of paleo-fantastic hypotheses try to prove the opposite, all megalithic structures were built using primitive technologies and were most likely intended for the administration of rather primitive rituals.
The main problem with these hypotheses is that for some reason their authors deny our ancestors imagination, which is always ahead of reality. But it is thanks to our rich imagination that we ourselves compose speculative images, for the sake of which we then create and destroy. I wonder what the archaeologists of the future will think of us if they dig up a science fiction library? Be that as it may, science today does not have indisputable evidence of the existence on Earth of highly developed prehistoric civilizations, superior or at least comparable in level of development to the civilizations of Ancient Egypt, Greece or Rome. This does not mean at all that there were none. But as long as their reliable traces are not found, we are forced to think so.
Anton Pervushin
