The font in this thread is a little different because I’m copying it from a word document where I did all the preparation for the thread, in-case you were wondering (in an effort to reduce typos etc.) :)

Everyone loves a good conspiracy theory, and I have knowledge of a large number of them to share and discuss with you. Today we're looking at civilisations from thousands of years ago, and their surprising level of technology. Could this be a simple case of us misunderstanding the level of mathematical/scientific knowledge that these people had, or could it be something much more interesting?

The Facts

-          1901: Divers found an ancient shipwreck in the Ionian Sea. The vessel had sunk around 200-100BC, and it was a treasure trove.

o   Bronze and marble statues littered the sea floor. By 1902, sailors were still exploring the area. And that’s when they found the ruins of a computer.

§  The device they found, called the Antikytheran Mechanism was a computer used to make astronomical calculations, astrological forecasts, and to keep track of the date.

§  This computer was already about a hundred years old when the ship wrecked.

-          According to mainstream history, mechanical devices of this complexity did not exist until the late medieval period, but this computer was built between 100 and 150 BCE.

-          It is undeniable proof that at least a few people were more advanced than previously supposed; and according to fringe historians, this is just the beginning.

The Theories

-          This isn’t the first time scientists have discovered an artefact that changes our traditional assumptions.

-          In roughly 1938, the director of the National Museum of Iraq found several five-inch jars capable of producing small amounts of electricity (effectively batteries).  

o   Today they’re known as the Baghdad batteries. And experts still disagree about when these things were built.

-          Myth busters reproduced the jars, and confirmed that the devices were able to generate an electric charge. Like the Antikythera Mechanism, the Baghdad batteries seem out of step with our view of time

o   Sceptics argue that just because these devices produce a charge, it doesn’t mean they were built to do so.

-          While the Baghdad batteries and the Antikythera Mechanism are two of the most popular examples, history is filled with unusual discoveries. People have claimed to find spark plugs in solid rock, metallic tubes surrounded by 65 million-year-old chalk deposits, and iron implements that predate the dawn of man.

o   Mainstream experts claim these discoveries are all mundane and easily explained through an examination of the geological processes involved.

-          But what do the conspiracy theorists think?

o   Some believe that these machines are evidence of time travel, and that the only way an iron nail could end up in Mesozoic rock is if someone managed to move backward through time.

o   Others take these devices as proof of ancient interaction with extra-terrestrial beings, and claim that aliens are ultimately responsible for these machines.

o   A third group of conspiracy theorists believes that these devices were accidentally revealed to the public – remnants of an ancient civilization that has been omitted from the history books (often claimed to be Atlantis) 

I’m thinking of doing another thread specifically on whether extraterrestrials visited Earth at a point long in the past, because this thread covers a slightly different angle, but feel free to discuss that in here too. What do you think of the Antikythera Mechanism? Were humans much more developed than we thought, or is something else going on here? Was Atlantis real (going to cover that in a future thread too)?

If a glorified astrolabe is advanced technology, then yes.

Lately i have been thinking that we humans have been beyond where we are today technology wise and those civilisations killed eachother in a nuclear war or some other weapon that we dont have yet in a global war and the human race started all over again.

Didn´t explain that good enough but i hope you get what i mean.

If there was something shady about those things, we'd probably have found much more advanced stuff.

I love conspiracies, aliens, paranormal things etc. We should make a whole new thread about it.

I think the important thing to keep in mind is that technology does not advance on a linear, inevitable march. Ancient cultures could have discovered stuff we only learned about a few decades ago but still don't know the wheel.

That being said, I'm certain the law of diminishing returns makes sure no 20th century technology is going to ever be found among ancient civilizations. You simply need too much research, too much money and momentum for some breakthroughs.

Unless, of course, there is some field of physics or biology that we somehow overlooked until now. Does those pyramids really harvest the energy of torsion fields? But that's very unlikely.

Please stop watching that show. Please.

I love threads like these make more!!

I agree that the history of our civilization & Earth is shady to say the least. Pretending we know everything is wrong, there are many unsolved mysteries.

I would like to imagine that Atlantis was a sprawling Empire at one time destroyed by aliens...it's probably not true though there would have to be more evidence. But who knows what's buried all over the planet.

TBH if our civilization was suddenly wiped out and no human was left alive there would be no trace of our presence on the earth within 10,000 years. It would look as if we were never here.

If human had an advanced civilization 150,000 years ago and blew ourselves back technology wise we would never know. The earth would have broken down everything they had built

The Atlantis citizens where so advanced they were about to discover the mysteries behind the CELL.

But seriously: where some ancient civilizations more advanced than we think? Most probably, because we tend to think prehistorical people where dumbasses, when really they were as intelligent as you and me. As a species we somehow managed to expand all over the world very early on, including some very remote places, and that means they must have had advance means of navigation, but yet even experts seem to dismiss the idea for some reason. Of course there'd be no proof of some 50,000 year old wooden ship and compass.

Does that mean they were more technologically advanced than us or that they had some supercool electronic or magical objects? No. The number of people was small and resources few, nowadays we have centuries of exponential technological advancement on a global scale behind us, and a megacorporation culture that means R&D numbers (manpower, resources, previous work...) that would be simply impossible for ancient cultures to reproduce.