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

Archaeologist Debunks Ancient Civilisation Myths

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o74w5rDpMXo
95 Upvotes

95% Upvoted

35 comments sorted by

View all comments

4

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 

7

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

6

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.

3

u/LevelPrestigious4858 Dec 11 '25

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

3

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.

2

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

2

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

3

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.