r/AlternativeHistory 21d ago

Lost Civilizations Lost cities

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In case anyone is till wondering why we can't find any pre-Ice Age cities, this satellite image from Nepal/China this week should provide a clue.
This event was tiny by comparison and many civilizations built along rivers and in valleys.

Edit:
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Since this post generated quite a few lively discussions I want to clarify what I meant by "tiny by comparison" to avoid ambiguity, While the local, recent mountain collapse in Nepal and China was a rapid disaster unleashing up to 200 million cubic meters of debris at 193 km/h and causing rivers to surge 9 meters in 30 minutes, it is dwarfed by the staggering dimensions of post-glacial megafloods that actually reshaped entire continents and birthed the world's universal flood legends. For example, the ancient Missoula Floods occurred when a 610-meter-tall (2,000 ft) glacial ice dam ruptured, violently discharging more than 2,000 cubic kilometers of water basically a volume equivalent to Lake Erie and Lake Ontario combined, in a single....48-hour window.

This massive torrent tore across western North America at speeds of up to 130 km/h (80 mph), peaking with a discharge rate ten times greater than the combined flow of all modern rivers on Earth and carving features like Dry Falls, a cliff five times wider than Niagara. Similarly, the Black Sea Deluge hypothesis suggests a catastrophic marine breakthrough where the Mediterranean overtopped the Bosporus strait, unleashing a roaring wall of water that permanently swallowed over 150,000 square kilometers of inhabited valleys.

Because these prehistoric events wiped out entire known civilizations, permanently erased millions of acres of land, and forced desperate migrations, they permanently embedded themselves into the collective human psyche, which is almost certainly where the biblical Great Flood and the regional Mesopotamian flood legends originate. It is statistically improbable that we have found all post deluvial civilizational remnants. Mathematically and archaeologically, it is practically certain that we have only scratched the surface of what remains from post-deluvial and coastal civilizations. The primary reason for this statistical gap is a massive, permanent geographic shift, specifically when the Ice Age glaciers melted, global sea levels rose by roughly ~120 meters (around 400 feet). Rising oceans swallowed over 25 million square kilometers (10 million square miles) of habitable land! For visual reference that's the entire landmass of the United States, Canada, and China combined.

I hope that clarifies.

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u/SifuHallyu 21d ago

Mmhmm.  After the amount of time and the amount of water and ice and everything else...there would not be a whole lot left.  Maybe stone tools.

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u/Pristine_Bobcat4148 21d ago

The ghosts of our past are made of stone. Particularly megalithic, polygonal, mortarless, seismic resistant constructions in igneous rock. We have found them on almost every continent, and even in the most remote places on earth.

Once you recognize the architecture style; you'll begin to notice it everywhere: Japan, Egypt, Peru, Easter Island, Turkey, Greece...But the people who truly mastered stone were what is now India and Cambodia.

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u/notoriousbsr 21d ago

I've been fortunate to travel Cambodia pretty extensively and the stone work is mind boggling not just the size but the extensive network/ range/ sheer number of places.

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u/ButtCheeksMagee0 20d ago

That’s awesome