re: Ancient civilizations. Y or N?

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Let’s say we nuke the world and present civilization to the ground, which now isn’t out o the realm of possibility. Who has the best chance to survive, the strongest who are capable of finding ways to survive or the smartest who are more fragile. We’d likely lose most great minds.

Chances are the surviving humans will basically start from scratch and will take possibly centuries to even scratch the surface of where we are today.

It’s not far fetched to believe that more advanced civilizations existed and met an end many thousands of years ago and it has taken this long to come this far.


It’s just a thought, but maybe we aren’t nearly as advanced as we think we are…..

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An event like that would have mass extinction effects and be detectable. You'd also see remnants of technology (how long would it take for a tank or jet to break down and dissappear?).

The simplest answer is that knowledge of how to do certain things was simply lost. Take smiting for example. I'm writing a book and wanted to be highly realistic with medieval armors and weapons. Modern smith's can only theorize how certain types of armor are made and can't perfectly replicate certain pieces of metal or leather armor. That knowledge slowly became forgotten once gunpowder dominated warfare.

So we can build supersonic jets but not the same type of leather armor that was made a few hundred years ago?

Knowledge on how ancient civilization did things can be lost, and you don't need to assume a highly advanced civilization to explain things we can't fully explain.