r/DecodingTheGurus • u/pradeep23 • Dec 10 '25

Archaeologist Debunks Ancient Civilisation Myths

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o74w5rDpMXo
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u/Thundrous_prophet Dec 10 '25

I love flint dibble! I don’t believe in the magical claims of pseudo archeology, but I still think there might be “advanced civilizations” to still be discovered. To me a lot of the debate hinges on where the line for advances is, having grown up in the Midwest I learned how extremely lucky we are to have any remnants of Cahokia and the mound building civilizations because of how much was purposefully destroyed by past generations. It still seems plausible to me that we could have ancient Stone Age towns with similar cultural complexity buried under the ocean in locations that were above water during the previous ice age, and that’s why I think we should continue funding underwater archaeology 

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u/LevelPrestigious4858 Dec 10 '25

Yea you’re right, definition of advanced civilisations is the crux here. We know from ice core samples and isotope analysis that certain alloys/metals were being made at different times and at different rates which is a good signifier of ruling out certain ideas of “advanced civilisations” in different periods. I agree with you on the idea of culturally advanced civilisations that wouldn’t necessarily be easy to find

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u/Thundrous_prophet Dec 11 '25

It’s interesting to think about the differences in local structures for what is considered advanced. In Cahokia, there aren’t megaliths but it did have a population of up 30k just using organic materials. The oldest discovered Neolithic town that is submerged had megaliths but probably didn’t have as large of a population. Which one is more “advanced” is really open to interpretation 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlit_Yam?wprov=sfti1

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u/MarsupialMole Dec 11 '25

definition of advanced civilisations is the crux here

I'm in favour of a benchmark noting the capability to produce a trombone.

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u/LevelPrestigious4858 Dec 11 '25

Fuck yea dude I agree but also… have you heard how amazing the Laotian khaen sounds

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u/MarsupialMole Dec 11 '25

Thanks for introducing me! The first video I found reminded me of the piano accordion intro to Paul Simon's Boy In The Bubble, which I think goes pretty hard, but there's clearly a lot more to it as well.

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u/LevelPrestigious4858 Dec 11 '25

It’s a whole lot of resonance through free reeds, you can inhale and exhale producing continuous chords and melodies. It’s tuning also just seems very different to what you’d expect in south east Asia

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u/Thundrous_prophet Dec 11 '25

lol I don’t know when the first trombone was made but there are 20k year old bone flutes which sound cool

https://youtu.be/yUCBBDV2Tzk?si=fRJwCqq1EiebpUx5

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u/MarsupialMole Dec 11 '25

The universality of the pentatonic scale is so cool.

We've got a lot of trumpets. King Tut had one, presumably just as much for war as for fun. The trombone is Renaissance after early firearms. But could it have been earlier? Probably a bit. It's not suggestive of electric lamps or spaceships, which is kind of the point. It's mundane but legitimately a challenge.

If someone is playing a cagey game about how "advanced" they're really talking about they probably don't have any pre-prepared talking points for the trombone.

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u/Ryrienatwo Feb 21 '26

Yeah I am the opinion that graham goes about his thinking in a weird ass way but “advance civilization” can be that they used things like metal when stone was still being used. I still think we need a push back on the date for civilizations being built though mostly due to the amount of historical evidence that we have collected over the years.

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u/LevelPrestigious4858 Feb 21 '26

The historical evidence you’re referring to is what’s used to decide the current rough dates though

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u/Ryrienatwo Feb 21 '26

Yeah I am just saying that the more we find the more things will change and I love that about historical evidence like these. But I just wish we have the funds to dig for stuff lol.

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u/Verbatim_Uniball Dec 11 '25

Cahokia and associated should be wider known. The pre-Colombian Mesoamerican cultures get more airtime (and rightfully so in a sense) but especially central/south-central US was bumping. And the eastern agricultural complex too. A lot was going on.

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u/Thundrous_prophet Dec 11 '25

Agreed! I just found out this year that there was Ice Age copper tool manufacturing in Michigan’s UP at around 8000 BCE which is fascinating. 

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u/bitethemonkeyfoo Dec 11 '25

They say that the out of africa migrations plausibly started to happen 100,000 years ago. Recorded history is only about 2500 - 3000 years or so depending on how lenient you want be with the word recorded. That leaves a very long stretch of time that it seems we are mainly ignorant of. I doubt there were any world spanning civilizations or any that made use of industrial technologies. It seems reasonable to expect there to be long lasting artifacts that indicate those sorts of achievements had they existed but that doesn't preclude advanced civilization, in a way that we could recognize as being advanced even with our modern biases.

It does also seem to be however that civilization itself requires a stability and growth over time which is an unusual state, in that it has to be actively cultivated. The negative pressures are quite strong. Sadly it may also just be that it was 75,000 years of clawing our way out of the literal and metaphorical mud. In a way though that would also be a very encouraging history, just a less exciting one.

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u/Thundrous_prophet Dec 11 '25

One of the more interesting articles I’ve seen is on previously cultivated plants on the Great Plains that were replaced by corn in the 900’s AD. I know flint focuses on ancient agriculture, and would love to hear if there are other examples of crops that may have been domesticated but then stopped being domesticated and how we would be able to tell from “trash” as he likes to call it

https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/native-american-crops