This is my attempt at doing research for a book I’m writing (ie. getting you lovely folks to do all the work for me ).

The fundamental story is that human civilisation is much older than the Ancient Sumerians. But that all evidence of this pre-history society has been lost due to cataclysmic natural events and the almost extinction of the human race. The obvious real life parallel would be the Toba Catastrophe around 70,000 years ago. So this is when my book will be set.

What I want to know is 70,000 years long enough for wind and sand to remove almost all evidence of large cities made of stone? Bearing in mind that much of the stones would be removed later to build other structures. Or would I need to make sure that they were submerged in water or made primarily of wood?

Cheers,

Mac.

mattwilson wrote:All continental plates subducted, liquified and resolidified

Oh hardy-har-har.

I'm talking about evidence that would remain realistically undiscovered with the techniques and technology that we currently have today.

Not including aerial surveys, which could easily spot lost cities.

I’m just wanting to make my story as realistic as possible. Think fantasy but with facts.

Set you civilization in "Hyperborea" and have the ice age roll to and fro over it for a few thousand years? That doesn't work for the random stone and metal artefacts but would I think erase cities and the like pretty effectively.

tnjrp wrote:Set you civilization in "Hyperborea" and have the ice age roll to and fro over it for a few thousand years? That doesn't work for the random stone and metal artefacts but would I think erase cities and the like pretty effectively.

It's interesting you mentioned that. Hyperborea (if it existed) as you said, was probably in the far north.

This is why I first conceived my story, I want to tie in myths and legends to real world historic facts. Such as Atlantis, the many Great Flood stories, and other Indo-European myths.

MacIver wrote:It's interesting you mentioned that. Hyperborea (if it existed) as you said, was probably in the far north.

Given that the ancient Greeks thought that sun never sets in Hyperborea, it might stand to reason this land was located somewhere near or above the Artic Circle. However, the ancient Hyperborean civilization (possibly extant in an interglacial period) is a well used concept (albeit not so well used as Atlantis for example) so you'll need to take care to make your book original enough in execution.

Indeed.

I've been working on it for years now. I have about 50,000 words so far. And I'm currently focusing on the characterisation, obviously the most important part of any novel no matter its subject. The hints at myths and legends in the modern world will be exactly that, hints. I want to leave much of it to my (hopefully one day) readers' own reasoning.

Someone with little or no knowledge of these things will probably not even realise what I’m doing. And that’s the way I want it.

Erasure of the human race, or an event that puts us back so far that time has a chance to erase even the Great Pyramid before we regroup.

MacIver wrote:Indeed.

I've been working on it for years now. I have about 50,000 words so far. And I'm currently focusing on the characterisation, obviously the most important part of any novel no matter its subject. The hints at myths and legends in the modern world will be exactly that, hints. I want to leave much of it to my (hopefully one day) readers' own reasoning.

Someone with little or no knowledge of these things will probably not even realise what I’m doing. And that’s the way I want it.

You'd a reasonably advanced civilisation - not to need buildings, as they could manipulate force fields to create the environment they wanted. Of course once the power was turned of there wasn't anything left.
Virtually, that is.

mattwilson wrote:

MacIver wrote:

mattwilson wrote:All continental plates subducted, liquified and resolidified

Oh hardy-har-har.

I'm talking about evidence that would remain realistically undiscovered with the techniques and technology that we currently have today.

Not including aerial surveys, which could easily spot lost cities.

I’m just wanting to make my story as realistic as possible. Think fantasy but with facts.

Sorry I wasn't being sarcastic, you said erase all evidence, not hide it.

No need to apologise. It was me not making myself clear enough. When I said 'erase' I was talking relatively from our current perspective.

What about some form of magetic radiation making an area of land invisible/impassable etc

Ironclad wrote:Erasure of the human race, or an event that puts us back so far that time has a chance to erase even the Great Pyramid before we regroup.

rainbow wrote:

MacIver wrote:Indeed.

I've been working on it for years now. I have about 50,000 words so far. And I'm currently focusing on the characterisation, obviously the most important part of any novel no matter its subject. The hints at myths and legends in the modern world will be exactly that, hints. I want to leave much of it to my (hopefully one day) readers' own reasoning.

Someone with little or no knowledge of these things will probably not even realise what I’m doing. And that’s the way I want it.

You'd a reasonably advanced civilisation - not to need buildings, as they could manipulate force fields to create the environment they wanted. Of course once the power was turned of there wasn't anything left.
Virtually, that is.

Er, I'm writing a historical novel here fellows. Just one that happens to be set in a theoretically possible pre-history. The technological level my society will be at will be that of the Bronze Age. Although their scientific understanding will in some cases be closer to Medieval Europe or China.

Time, nothing but time. According to the History Channel series Life After People, the forces of nature would eliminate (almost) all traces of a civilisation within a thousand years or so....



The series reveals how, without maintenance, the artefacts of civilisation are soon lost....
* The most massive metal structures would eventually give way to corrosion.
* On a macro level, plants and trees would cause the disintegration of foundations and the crumbling of concrete structures.
* On a micro level, fungi and bacteria would destroy paper, video tapes, celluloid films, computer discs, CDs, DVDs, etc.
* Bricks and mortar would eventually become indistinguishable from the natural clay and calcium carbonate deposits of surrounding soil.
* Artworks would be lost: sculptures would crumble, oil paintings would flake and peel as oxidation affects the linseed oil binder, frescoes would disintegrate. Even plastics (including acrylic paintings) would eventually deterioate.
* Items in dry climates would last considerably longer than those in damp climates, but even the pyramids and the Sphinx would eventually be buried by shifting sands.
* Items made of glass would probably be most durable (e.g. glass bricks, glass statuettes, bottles, etc.), but these would all be submerged by rising waters or buried by plants and/or shifting sands.

Actually, submerging your supposed civilisation in water isn't a good idea. Water tends to conserve stuff that would otherwise be long gone. (See shipwrecks, etc.) Unless it happens to sink into the deep sea, about which we don't really know a lot. That would be a weird island or continent, though, considering that it went from above sea-level to some 5-10 kilometres below sea-level in one go.

I guess your best bet is a meteor strike that pounded everything to dust and scattered the ashes, or - as tnjrp suggested - glaciers.
Depending on how far that civilisation stretched out geographically, obviously.

This isn't gonna work for you, but how about a nano-bot that works to increase entropy? Just takes big, highly organised, things apart and then goes to work on the not so big, not so organised until there is nothing left except nano-bots so they start taking each other apart until there is only one and it accidentally trips and dies.

Just spitballing here but how about placing it in antarctica? And just because it's stone or bronze age technology, who's to say they built with stone?

It's difficult to imagine such a civilisation living in isolation from the rest of the surrounding world, so that any 'advances' were confined to the locale. Though perhaps one could imagine a scenario whereby this civilisation was forced to live in isolation due to fear and anger on the part of 'outsiders', who considered such a civilation a threat to their own way of life. Organised fishing, farming, quarrying/mining, etc., would have impacted greatly on the local environment so that outsiders suffered as a consequence.

Then, one day, perhaps disease and famine took a major hold of the civilisation and it was weakened to such an extent that surrounding tribes were able to take advantage and annihilate the survivors. Fearful of such society ever emerging again, tribes systematically eradicated all evidence of said society from view, allowing the land to return to its natural state. At last, these ancient tribes were free to live again the life that this civilisation had threatened for hundreds of years. The end.