I think it's hard to argue, based on evidence, that an ancient technological and global civilization existed.
My ruminations posit a civilization that would have looked very different from our 'advanced technological' one. Projecting an advanced civilization would look like ours is a kind of ethno-centricity.
I have one big reason to champion the ETH and it's the same reason I don't give too much thought to stories about hidden civilizations on Earth and so forth, I ask myself: Where are their mines? Where are/were their factories? Etc etc. They are not there.
Never heard of that one.
The way I fancy the scenario, it was a pretty far long time ago, and 'evidence' was destroyed over millennia, if not mostly in the ka-boom that wiped it out to begin with.
I know Michael Cremo and others say that stuff is found which doesn't fit the pattern. But after looking into it a bit more, I found that they are on shaky ground. Rule number 1 imo: If you find some strange artifact embedded in ancient rock, you don't pry it out and return with the object, you bring the lab to the object. So, to make a long story short, I'll be impressed the day they actually find something, and let it sit!
I had to look up Michael Cremo. LINK:
Michael Cremo - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Interesting. At some point I will read him, but in the write-up I am at once leery because he is claiming a 'cover-up'.
Geez Louise, as someone said.
Also, just to say, I would not preclude there being a couple - maybe many - global civilizations in the past. I mean, why not? Like looking at the cosmos and saying there has to be other life out there, I would look at earth's timeline and say there has to be more than just 'us' - meaning as in a global culture.
Some things are not known simply because no one has looked. For an example, for as long as I can remember - certainly when I was growing up and being taught Medieval history, the situation of the serf was viewed as pretty static. If one was a serf, one was born and raised and lived out one's (very brief) life on the self-same spot more or less. Saying someone was a serf was akin to slavery in the general view and in any history book one picked up. [I am referring to Medieval European serfdom, not the serfdom found in, say, Russia.] That changed dramatically with scholars deciding to go into the bookkeeping records - or what amounts to such - and meticulously analyzing transactions. Something as simple as that. What they discovered has completely changed our view of serfdom - from a fairly static and un-free station in life, to a position in which serfs were mobile in more than geographical ways. In general, our view now of Medieval life is that it was a very dynamic society, with movement here-to-fore disallowed as probable or even possible by the then prevailing bias.
In what I am saying - and I am not speaking from Mr Cremo's perspective because I have not read his book - is that a world civilization could have existed in the sense that there was travel on a world-wide basis - but that does not mean that it had to look like our 'technologically advanced' civilization. It could have looked very different.
In the Wiki article: "
Forbidden Archeology has been criticized for failing to test simpler hypotheses before proceeding to propose more complex ones (a violation of Occam's razor); and for cherry-picking outdated evidence." I would say the same of the Ancient Aliens idea - and I can't believe that I appear to be arguing
against such a cool idea.
Another thing: A global civilization would have to be technological. I don't think you can maintain global power if you don't have the means to communicate and travel long distances fairly efficiently and in short time. We don't find traces of such technology.
Who says? Why? I would argue that you are using a rhetorical tautology.
In any case, there are so many difficult questions that I don't think it's reasonable to imagine a human civilization comparable or more technologically advanced than ours.
If one can imagine one from outside the earth, it would seem a baby step to imagine one on the earth.
Besides which, I don't find the 'evidence' for an advanced civilization visiting us from elsewhere credible for the very randomness of their actions. Like it is said from one quarter - if there is a God, why does s/he/it allow suffering? If there are advanced aliens - what level in hell do they come from to allow the insanity on earth to continue without doing something a bit more 'advanced' than just flying around like teenagers on a weekend using the family saucer?
Also, there are genetic records which trace human migrations. These records don't show signs of a previous global civilization, instead they confirm all humans come from one place, and only later started spreading out across the globe. In fact, it's not that long ago, all things considered.
Complicated that one is. Recall the Black Death, the pandemic outbreak of the Bubonic plague in Europe, that wiped out one third of the population and initiated such a social break down that we need to add to that one third by a considerable amount. That one event significantly reduced the gene pool. Europe would not be unique.
LATER: Realized I stopped posting in mid-thought - my intention was to comment on the variables at play with genetic evidence. Sounded good at the time but I petered out there and no time to elaborate now.