5 Controversial Theories about Ancient Civilizations

Humanity's past has been speculated about in the name of propaganda, politics, and entertainment alike. Spend 20 minutes online diving into the topic and you're going to learn more than you ever wanted about alien lizard people, as well as engineered pyramids, aren't you? But that, oh boy, is just the tip of the iceberg. Welcome to the world of alternate archaeology, where research can range from a cautious step outside peer-reviewed studies to religious fever dreams and government cover-ups. So here are five currently debated theories that scientists are pretty exhausted by, but There's a growing contingent of armchair archaeologists that theorize there was once a technologically advanced, globe-spanning civilization that fell before recorded history. It's the roots of most online conspiracy theories surrounding ancient history. And thanks to recent popularity, it's also on the rise, because apparently we're not evolving to get smarter. Researchers interested in this theory place this lost civilization's collapse at around However, no one has discovered any material culture or DNA evidence of this missing population. Not a single pottery shard. Not a single bone fragment. Proponents of this theory believe that any proof of their existence was lost in a massive, continent-altering flood in the wake of a massive meteoric impact. Most archaeologists are understandably skeptical of such theories, and here's why. There is plenty of evidence that a climate-altering impact did occur approximately 12,850 years ago that caused the planet-wide cooling event known as the Younger Dryas Period. It is one of the most studied climate events in scientific history. It's also the likely explanation for the extinction of Ice Age megafauna and some Paleolithic humans. So a comet hitting the planet and causing cataclysmic climate change isn't being debated. The theory that it erased any and all evidence of a highly advanced civilization possibly associated with Atlantis is, understandably, where the controversy lies. This forgotten civilization supposedly predated Sumeria, the oldest civilization currently accepted by archaeologists, by, oh, just 6,000 years, placing it at the time of hunter-gatherer tribes making it, well, highly improbable. Which isn't to say there weren't advanced and capable hunter-gatherers at the time. Just not that advanced. As recently as the 1990s, structures such as Göbleki Tepe in Turkey have been discovered dating back 11,000 years ago. It's an amazing discovery, the oldest man-built structure unearthed. But so far, any proof that the builders of this prehistoric temple sailed the globe teaching the ancestors of the Egyptians and Aztecs to build pyramids, well, that eludes us. There's also no evidence that the evidence they existed was lost in a giant flood. We have much to uncover about a past that was lost due to global flooding. During the Younger Dryas, sea levels rose dramatically, and ice trapped in glaciers melted. Entire coastlines changed, islands sank, and the planet's climate changed drastically. We also have several cultures around the globe that share flood myths in their history. Tales such as the Epic of Gilgamesh and Noah's Ark speak to these world-altering floods. It's understandable why an ancient apocalypse by water is an easy story to sell. Most of us have heard some version of it when we were children. However, despite the claims of pseudo-archaeologists, there isn't any scientific evidence that this colossal flood ever happened. In truth, during the peak of sea-level rise, the most drastic risings maxed out at 3.8 centimeters, 1.5 inches in a single year, but generally averaged around 2 centimeters a year. And while any humans living near coastlines would certainly notice more and more of the shore slipping underwater over 30-50 years, it's nothing along the mass-catastrophic scale of a society wiping great flood. People adapted, migrating in many cases, and were able to continue with their regular lives, politics, work, and entertainment without fleeing from an epic flood hitting their ancient skyscraper with a giant tsunami, as some conspiracy theorists claim. So, there's a growing contingent of believers that many natural formations aren't actually natural at all, but instead, they're the melted remains of stone and concrete buildings destroyed in an ancient, cataclysmic heating event, possibly being covered up by the US government. Why not? Enter the picture, the Melted Buildings Theory. This theory purports that throughout human history, many indigenous peoples and ancient civilizations around the world would have been known to carve dwellings into rock walls and mountainsides. This is true. From the Hopi tribes of North America to underground cities in Turkey, past civilizations spanning thousands of years have created living spaces alongside naturally occurring cliffs, mountains, or carved into the bedrock itself. Where this theory becomes controversial is their belief that geological formations across the globe that we accept as naturally occurring are actually the ruins of structures built by the ancestors of pre-Mesopotamian cultures. These people believe that the Stone Age people managed not only to travel the globe 5,000 years before the invention of agriculture and writing, but somehow also constructed pyramids everywhere from Egypt to North America's national parks. Their evidence? Certain natural formations look like they might once have been buildings. For example, take the formation known as Gebel Dist, a conical shaped mountain in Egypt. It consists of layers of rock, worn and shaped by erosion over millions of years, and is absolutely loaded with fossils, which have been recorded in various layers of dated sedimentation. However, believers of the Melted Buildings Theory refuse to accept that something that looks so much like a man-made structure could be the result of nature and time. To strengthen their argument, they compare it to structures like the failed Black Pyramid of King Amenhotep III, which was poorly constructed and its mud-brick foundation began collapsing due to Nile flooding shortly after it was built. Archaeologists have tried to explain that something looking like a building is not evidence that it once was a building, regardless of how many truly man-built structures may look like a pile of rocks now due to human error. But the melted building believers carry on, and point to formations in the American Southwest that resemble tombs and pyramids, especially at the base of the Grand Canyon. Now, you might be asking, what sort of ancient apocalypse wiped out entire advanced civilizations and melted their dwellings into mountains? And that's a good question. Believers purport that a planet-altering heating event decimated ancient cities through inconceivably powerful electrical storms. For example, the Grand Canyon wasn't formed by the Colorado River, but instead a massive lightning strike, because when photographed from above, the canyon resembles a Lichtenberg figure, the branching discharge patterns that lightning leave behind. Now, this is a big swing to make. But especially in a place like the Grand Canyon, where the geology of the landscape has been studied and peer-reviewed for centuries, but who cares about peer review? We know the history of sediment. We know the history of stratification. And while there are some amazing geological formations that do resemble pyramids and buildings at the base of the canyon, that doesn't mean the ancestors of the pharaohs invented world travel and built pyramids in Arizona. The Great Sphinx of Giza rests in the shadow of the pyramids. It's been a source of fascination and mystery since it was first carved back in 2500 BCE for the pharaoh Khafre, who ruled during the Fourth Dynasty Old Kingdom period. Most people are familiar with the monolith, but you might be less familiar with how it was built. Unlike the pyramids, which were famously constructed from the ground up, the Sphinx was carved from the ground down, right out of the bedrock. Its limestone body was uncovered from the sands, excavated and shaped, while the stone around it was quarried for the pyramid's construction. Some archaeologists believe that the Sphinx started out as a Yardang, which is a natural formation that happens when exposed bedrock is carved by wind and weather into forms that can resemble familiar shapes, such as the hull of a boat or a human face. The monolith's head was most likely carved above ground. That would explain why the head is so small in proportion to the rest of the body, as the sculpture was started before the original builders understood the extent of the limestone beneath it. For most of the Sphinx's known history, it was buried under the sand from the neck down, only to be uncovered when humans were feeling exceptionally industrious. There's a monument between the paws, placed back in 1400 BCE, explaining that in the first year of Pharaoh Thutmose IV's reign, the then-thousand-year-old Sphinx was dug from obscurity. This is why, back in the mid-1800s, when photography was first invented, the first pictures take of the Sphinx were only of the head. The rest was once again buried. It wasn't until fairly recently, 1925, that it was excavated to the point that geologists, with a more complete understanding of Earth's science, could start dating it. And this is where the controversy about the age of the Sphinx began. It was during the 1925 uncovering that scientists could study the weathering and damage done to the monument over the years. They noted that the erosion to the body was a natural consequence for a four-thousand-year-old statue, caused by occasional Nile flooding, wet sand, wind, and a long time. But recently, some alternative archaeologists feel that the entire timeline is wrong. That the Sphinx didn't exist 4,500 years ago, but actually predates the earliest known human civilizations by 5,000 years. These folks believe that the erosion of the Sphinx's body and its surrounding enclosure dates back to a period when Egypt was not the desert we know today, but instead a lush landscape, commonly flooded by heavy rains about 15,000-10,000 years ago. And for the monument to be damaged by that level of water erosion, it had to be constructed before the time of great floods, during the end of the last Ice Age. This theory persists online, because of the popularity of the Lost Advanced Civilization Theory, which will carry through several of these debated topics. Pseudo-scientists are trying to make a case, again, that before known history around 12,000 years ago, there was a globe-spanning advanced ancient civilization that disappeared forever in a catastrophic flood brought forth through meteor impact. And admittedly, this is a far sexier theory than 4,000 years of wet sand. Credible archaeologists, however, do not believe this pre-Ice Age Sphinx theory. They theorize that the damage to the Sphinx is related to water damage, but more likely from slow natural changes to the porous limestone from dew and sporadic rainfall, or perhaps layers of wet sand collecting around the buried beast for thousands of years. Others suggest the limestone is damage from Egypt's prehistoric past, but it happens to the bedrock before the Sphinx was ever built, and the reason the entire lower section was formed and shaped by bricks to create the legs, paws, and tail was to make up for the faults in the naturally crumbling and weak limestone from the jump. While it is impossible to tell the age of the construction of the Sphinx based on the geology of the landscape, the theory that the Sphinx is over 10,000 years old remains very, very fringe. So, let's take an entertaining pivot. As recently as 2021, fossilized human footprints were discovered in White Sands National Park in New Mexico. These remnants of early humans have been dated back 22,000 years. This was an amazing discovery for historians and scientists of all disciplines, and proof that humans were strolling around North America long before we previously thought. And that is how science works. A discovery is made, research is conducted, it's peer-reviewed, and a consensus forms when enough evidence supports it. However, if you want to prove that the planet is just slightly older than the building of the Great Pyramids, you're going to need to support a different theory. And this is when Young Earth creationists enter the picture. These are the people that believe the Earth is roughly 10,000 to 6,000 years old in accordance with the Bible. This is a pretty controversial hill to die on, but Young Earth creationism isn't the theory being covered in this chapter. Nope. We're going to cover human fossils that were found in a rock dated to the Triassic period. The alleged fossil was originally reported in the New York Sunday American on October 8, 1922. Alfred Knapp discovered a fossil in Fisher Canyon, Nevada, of which is believed to be a human shoe print. In his own words, it is a layer from the heel of a shoe which had been pulled up from the balance of the heel by suction, the rock being in a plastic state at the time. Assuming the pattern he found in the rock was a shoe because it mildly resembled one was a hell of a theory, considering the limestone in the canyon was dated back to the Triassic period, which is 225 million years ago. Indeed, the fossil imprint was at least 15 million years old. And instead of accepting it was impossible that human beings existed at that time, he instead theorized that the rocks themselves weren't that old, and therefore human beings have always been on the planet since the sixth day of creation, as is recorded in Genesis. The Fisher Canyon prints of Knapp's wasn't the only example of an Uparta, out-of-place artifact that served as a hotbed of alternative archaeology theories. Since its discovery, there have been other examples of fossilized human prints alongside the time of dinosaurs, such as the tracks found near the Paluxy River in Texas, where many real dinosaur tracks have been discovered and studied. However, a few of the tracks seemed to be in the shape of human footprints, which got creationists excited, as it was more evidence that man and dinosaurs lived at the same time. The human prints turned out to be smaller dinosaur prints, in which the toe forms didn't imprint or fossilize completely in perfect outline, easily proved by the fact that the average man, despite not existing at the same time as these fossils, didn't have the weight to leave the same depth of an impression as the sauropods amongst them. So there is a term used by academics called the historian's fallacy. It's a reasoning fallacy, and it's committed when someone judges the past according to present standards. It's a bias we all have, and recently it's become the cornerstone of many arguments surrounding alternative archaeology, usually boiling down to this. If we can't conceptualize how something was achieved without modern technology, it must have been achieved using it. For example, some people believe the artwork inside the temple dedicated to Hathor at the Dendera Temple Complex in Egypt must have used electronic lights to carve and paint inside the dark hallways. This assumption is based on lack of soot stains from torches on the upper walls and ceiling and four wall reliefs. The reliefs in question loosely resemble a gigantic monofilament lightbulb. These reliefs and the lack of soot stains lead some people to jump to the conclusion that Egyptians used electricity. And this is where the Dendera lightbulb enters the picture. The Dendera lightbulb, while comically resembling a giant monofilament lightbulb of the early 20th century, is actually a depiction of the ancient Egyptian creation myth in which the god Atum, in the form of a snake, emerges from a lotus bud. We know this because that's what the inscription beside it says it is. In reality, there is zero evidence of ancient electricity used in the temple's construction. Archaeologists know for the majority of buildings razed at the time that workers installed the roof last, meaning that they had the wherewithal to use daylight to their advantage while decorating the temple during the non-rainy season, and they capped it off when the internal work was completed. If detailed work was done after the roof was installed, it was done by olive oil lamp, which doesn't leave soot stains. When it comes to ancient construction practices, the simplest answer is usually the right one. Despite a lack of evidence, ancient lost technology theories do persist. Everything from the construction of the pyramids to how slabs of granite were cut and polished for sarcophagi. It must all be the work of a lost advanced civilization with access to power tools, or if not power tools like the ones we're familiar with today, an equally successful alternative that was lost to time. In reality, ancient people were entirely capable of moving inconceivably heavy stones for monoliths thanks to the thing called physics, and they understood how to saw through granite with less than ideal cutting tools, such as saws and drills, that still got the job done within a .005mm of surface accuracy. People of the past were clever and capable, and they didn't need ancient Atlanteans or aliens to help with their progress any more than us modern humans did when men landed on the moon whose parents went to work on horseback.