But a technology so high that it leaves no trace of pollution has to develop out of something. Any ancient technological civilisation would have had to first develop basic metalworking in its own prehistory. We can see the traces of pollution from Iron Age (~1200BCE) ironworking, but no trace of any previous Iron Age (let alone any previous Industrial Revolution or fossil-fuel period) preceding this supposed brilliant super-clean high-tech civilisation. And there are still no traces of mines, cities, roads, railways, power and communications networks, etc. The idea of ancient human super-civilisations is dead in the water: they did not exist.Greyth wrote:Industrial pollution is a sign of technology development such as ours but even now research into biological processing is beginning to yield results that hopefully and ultimately will make industrial pollution obsolete. So a possible signs of high technology are large works lacking signs of pollution? To call our level of achievement high tech is a misnoma except by comparison to earlier civilisations. Even there there are some oddities that should give pause for thought. For instance Sumerians were able to describe the colours of Neptune and Uranus but are not credited with use of lens.
The Sumerian theories I haven't heard of but a quick google check shows some presence on a few (frankly crank) websites, and nothing on anything with any credibility. If the Sumerians could see Uranus and Neptune, then why did they not have (say) a heliocentric model of the solar system, or know that Jupiter has four large moons or that Saturn has rings? We can state quite categorically that the Sumerians – who were kicking about with their bronze, their pottery and their mud bricks some 4000 years ago – were not a high-tech civilisation. Skilful, yes; intelligent, absolutely. But possessing technology capable of accurately determining not only the colour but the composition of the outer planets, while simultaneously missing Jupiter's moons and Saturn's rings, which Galileo managed to see with a basic telescope? No. And the idea that they had been given this isolated nugget of abstruse knowledge (but not, say, knowledge about ironworking, or antibiotics) by some passing astronomy geek from a hidden super-civilisation runs into the same old problem about the lack of any evidence for any prehistoric technologies we don't already know about.
That's evidence of stone-age/early metalworking civilisations from the last few thousand years. This is not evidence of anything other than human skill and ingenuity. It's amazing what people can do. These are not the products of high technology, but of highly skilled craftsmen.Greyth wrote:Is there any evidence? Yes, thousands of tons of masonry in accessible places. Puma Punka may be cast but for the foundations and lower levels at Machu Picchu there is, as far as I'm aware, no convincing explanation or plausible theory.
http://recyclingtheworld.us/wordpress/w ... tambo2.jpg [burp] So, to say there is no evidence is fallacious. Precisely of what it is evidence of I am far less sure.
Edit: some engineering perspective on the foundations of Machu Picchu:
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/ancient/wr ... ering.html
What is supposed to be "unconvincing" or "implausible" about Machu Picchu's foundations? It's not like there's any ferroconcrete in there, or high-grade steel support rods driven into the bedrock ... just lots and lots of very hard work done by intelligent, skilful people using basic tools and materials.
They did see something, although their observations are necessarily limited because they were only using their eyes to make sense of something, and language to describe something, which they had never previously experienced. It's not quantifiable data. Operating in places and under circumstances which exceeded previous experience, they saw something odd. That's about all we can say. Later research has turned up other odd stuff that we didn't know about before, e.g. high-atmosphere electromagnetic phenomena. These, and perhaps other phenomena yet to be discovered, may be responsible for the odd reports. It's vastly more likely than super-high-tech craft from an ancient (but undiscovered, coy, and traceless) civilisation.Greyth wrote:The same bipedal descendants of primates that manned fighters and bombers 60 years ago have mapped the solar system, theorised faster than light (a neuron fizzles - anyone remember FTL's sundog?) travel and sent craft to neighbouring celestial bodies. I can give credence to their observations, to do otherwise is, I feel, an injustice.