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rfmcdonaldI think that the emerging near-certainty that pre-contact Amazonia hosted a high civilization is awesome, both in the sense of the entire concept being a very cool idea (the culture may have systematically terraformed its land!) and in the sense that it was possible for such a large civilization to vanish almost entirely. If the depopulation of the Amazon rain forest could occur with hardly anyone noticing that it had happened for centuries, what else might lie outside of the current realm of human knowledge?
That's the subject of today's [FORUM] post. What sorts of surprising discoveries do you think that current--and future--generations of humans will discover about our species' past? Are there high civilizations--agricultural civilizations, say--unknown to us? (If so, i'd bet that they found their homes on the continental shelves of the world, feritle littoral land in the Ice Ages but drowned now.) Were there writing systems predating Sumeria's cuneiform innovations? What about surprises in the history of the Earth, or the Solar System? (Are we the first sophonts, really, or as suggested in The Science of Discworld are there innumerable curshed species with their own civilizations that never had the chance to take off, or did they?)
Discuss.
That's the subject of today's [FORUM] post. What sorts of surprising discoveries do you think that current--and future--generations of humans will discover about our species' past? Are there high civilizations--agricultural civilizations, say--unknown to us? (If so, i'd bet that they found their homes on the continental shelves of the world, feritle littoral land in the Ice Ages but drowned now.) Were there writing systems predating Sumeria's cuneiform innovations? What about surprises in the history of the Earth, or the Solar System? (Are we the first sophonts, really, or as suggested in The Science of Discworld are there innumerable curshed species with their own civilizations that never had the chance to take off, or did they?)
Discuss.
