Like most people here, I suspect, I am a huge fan of Graham's work. I have been for decades. I remember being blown away by "Lords of Poverty" which I read on my way to first posting as a journalist in Africa, and which shaped ever after my view of what I came to think of as "the development game".
So I speak as a friend! And as someone who is convinced by the broad lines of the Ancient Apocalypse hypothesis, that advanced civilisation(s) existed before the Ice Age, and by far the most likely events which wiped them out is some version of the Younger Dryas Impact event.
In fact it is because recognition of the broad hypothesis is (finally) gaining ground that arguably it is time to start to try and pay more attention to the gaps. Graham himself, as I understand it, is quite happy to admit that his theories are necessarily full of speculation. Indeed, one of the reasons his line of reasoning is far more convincing than conventional archaeology is because he seeks to develop idea which account for *all* the fast emerging evidence, even if that means "filling in the gaps" so to speak, rather than refusing to recognise it in any meaningful way, or dismissing it as "anomalies", as conventional archaeology would have it.
The particular gap I would like to propose addressing, and asking what knowledge is out there about, is: the record keeping and documentation processing of these ancient civilisations.
This is a complex topic, and it is important not to fall into simplications, or a defensive crouch of some kind.
There is no reason to suppose that “civilization” follows a uniform path in this, or indeed any other way. We don’t need to be dogmatic, therefore, about a stated level of civilization – such as that which built Gobekle Teppe – having a given level of written records or documentation.
At the same time, the evidence of civilisations we do have evidence for suggests that while the relationship between the stage of civilization and the state of documentation may not be uniform, there is a broad correlation. The Romans, Mayans, Chinese, Egyptians all did have extensive documentation systems, and indeed it would be difficult to imagine the levels of their administrative systems without them.
I would also take issue with Graham when he says that if there were the equivalent of a Younger Dryas event today all information, records etc we have accumulated would disappear. The information and the means of retrieval itself probably would – though don’t forget thousands of man-made objects in orbit, all with circuitry and software code, many of which could remain largely unaffected by convulsions at ground level. But even at ground level, in fact information systems might be destroyed in the sense that no information could be retrieved from them again. But the evidence that complex information gathering and curation processes had been in play probably would make it into the fossil record, somewhere, somehow.
Experience with simulation and modelling, which in the modern age takes place through computers but does not need to, also suggests there are natural limits to feats of engineering which can be achieved without written documentation systems, and the need for recorded calculations. The megalithic projects already discovered alone might be on the edge of that, if not beyond it. I speak with a modicum of experience here as someone who builds (financial) models professionally, and who has studied a little the history of algorithmic thinking. You can certainly get farther than the modern mind might imagine without complex written documentation – this seems likely, for example, in the case of Gothic cathedrals. But there probably are limits, and we should now start to discuss whether the ancient civilisations likely reached those limits or not – whether we think they did have intricate documentation systems or not.
I would be very happy to explore this question further with anyone interested.
All the Best
Johnny West
So I speak as a friend! And as someone who is convinced by the broad lines of the Ancient Apocalypse hypothesis, that advanced civilisation(s) existed before the Ice Age, and by far the most likely events which wiped them out is some version of the Younger Dryas Impact event.
In fact it is because recognition of the broad hypothesis is (finally) gaining ground that arguably it is time to start to try and pay more attention to the gaps. Graham himself, as I understand it, is quite happy to admit that his theories are necessarily full of speculation. Indeed, one of the reasons his line of reasoning is far more convincing than conventional archaeology is because he seeks to develop idea which account for *all* the fast emerging evidence, even if that means "filling in the gaps" so to speak, rather than refusing to recognise it in any meaningful way, or dismissing it as "anomalies", as conventional archaeology would have it.
The particular gap I would like to propose addressing, and asking what knowledge is out there about, is: the record keeping and documentation processing of these ancient civilisations.
This is a complex topic, and it is important not to fall into simplications, or a defensive crouch of some kind.
There is no reason to suppose that “civilization” follows a uniform path in this, or indeed any other way. We don’t need to be dogmatic, therefore, about a stated level of civilization – such as that which built Gobekle Teppe – having a given level of written records or documentation.
At the same time, the evidence of civilisations we do have evidence for suggests that while the relationship between the stage of civilization and the state of documentation may not be uniform, there is a broad correlation. The Romans, Mayans, Chinese, Egyptians all did have extensive documentation systems, and indeed it would be difficult to imagine the levels of their administrative systems without them.
I would also take issue with Graham when he says that if there were the equivalent of a Younger Dryas event today all information, records etc we have accumulated would disappear. The information and the means of retrieval itself probably would – though don’t forget thousands of man-made objects in orbit, all with circuitry and software code, many of which could remain largely unaffected by convulsions at ground level. But even at ground level, in fact information systems might be destroyed in the sense that no information could be retrieved from them again. But the evidence that complex information gathering and curation processes had been in play probably would make it into the fossil record, somewhere, somehow.
Experience with simulation and modelling, which in the modern age takes place through computers but does not need to, also suggests there are natural limits to feats of engineering which can be achieved without written documentation systems, and the need for recorded calculations. The megalithic projects already discovered alone might be on the edge of that, if not beyond it. I speak with a modicum of experience here as someone who builds (financial) models professionally, and who has studied a little the history of algorithmic thinking. You can certainly get farther than the modern mind might imagine without complex written documentation – this seems likely, for example, in the case of Gothic cathedrals. But there probably are limits, and we should now start to discuss whether the ancient civilisations likely reached those limits or not – whether we think they did have intricate documentation systems or not.
I would be very happy to explore this question further with anyone interested.
All the Best
Johnny West