Chinese Writing Pushed Back 4,000 years

[Minimalist]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/6669569.stm

State media say researchers identified more than 2,000 pictorial symbols dating back 8,000 years, on cliff faces in the north-west of the country.

They say many of these symbols bear a strong resemblance to later forms of ancient Chinese characters.

Scholars had thought Chinese symbols came into use about 4,500 years ago.

[Forum Monk]

My skeptics radar is beeping.

[Rokcet Scientist]

A lot happened after the end of the last ice age: it marked the emergence of agriculture, city culture, metals, wars, trading, craftsmanship, writing, seafaring, etc. HSS' development got into high gear as a consequence of a very changed environment. A gear you may call 'civilisation'.

'Civilisation'. Agriculture, city culture, metals, wars, trading, craftsmanship, writing, seafaring, etc. A range of processes and dynamics that for some reason seems to have largely passed by the peoples of the Americas. The stone age lasted long there!

Why?

OK, I'll make that a new thread.

[Digit]

On the basis RS as the advancing ice erased any evidence of our ancestor's activities I would suggest that your statement probably is correct, but it is based on an assumption due to lack of evidence to the contrary.

[Rokcet Scientist]

On the basis RS as the advancing ice erased any evidence of our ancestor's activities I would suggest that your statement probably is correct, but it is based on an assumption due to lack of evidence to the contrary.

Digit, we're talking holocene here. The era following the last ice age. from about 9,500 yrs BC onwards. There were no great ice movements to erase the signs of civilisations if such were there.
If anything there were droughts. The middle of the Sahara dried out then.
OTOH, sea levels rose considerably. Flooding fertile habitable coastal plains globally. Like south Mesopotamia. The oldest part. Now submerged under the northern half of the Persian Gulf. Or the Doggers Plains, wide prairies now under the North Sea. The mediterranean basin filled up. As did the Lake Euxine basin. Subsequently known as the Black Sea. People left their flooding homelands, with everything they built there, for higher ground. So all sorts of things happened.
But ice wasn't one of them.

[Digit]

You missed my point RS. If the Sumerians had lived a few hundred miles further north and developed a society before the end of the last ice age the evidence of the existence would have been destroyed by the ice. That doesn't mean they would have had to have been around before the ice age because the inter glacials were sometimes warmer than now.
My point is there could, in theory, have been a complete group of civilisations totally destroyed by the ice and we'll never know!

[Rokcet Scientist]

If the Sumerians had lived a few hundred miles further north and developed a society before the end of the last ice age the evidence of the existence would have been destroyed by the ice.

The last ice age's max was 18,000 yrs BC. 8,000 yrs before the holocene. From 18,000 yrs BC onwards the ice steadily retracted (and collapsed around 9,500 BC). Civilisations – cities – could only have been erased by the ice if they were built aeons before 18,000 yrs BC. During the tens of thousands of years that it took the ice age to build up to it's max extent.
You think it is realistic to be looking for 20/30/40,000 year old civilisations (cities!) in North America when the first such emerged in Eurasia 'only' 5/6/7,000 yrs BC?

That doesn't mean they would have had to have been around before the ice age because the inter glacials were sometimes warmer than now.

The inter glacials – we are in one now – were/are warmer than now only thousands of miles south of the permanent ice cap. Exactly like today. Ice is, well, ice... = 0 degrees centigrade.
Afaik there are no great cities built sofar north, against the edge of the ice sheet, that the next climatological wobble could erase it. People don't build great cities there.
It was no different then.

My point is there could, in theory, have been a complete group of civilisations totally destroyed by the ice and we'll never know!

That theory would require those civilisations (cities!) to be 20/30/40,000 yrs old. That is 3 to 7 times older than the civilisations (cities!) in Eurasia.
How realistic is that assumption?

[Digit]

You have again missed my point, No I am not say ing that. If you check back I was attempting to point out that though I agreed you were most probably correct in what you said I pointed out that it was not a logical argument. You were saying that after the ice age civilisation moved into high gear, that implies a previous low gear, that development took place earlier, which seem logical.
The fact that the earlier efforts haven't been found is what keeps Atlantis alive, I suggested that any earlier efforts further north would have been lost. I did point out that the ice front was not stable during warming periods and millions of square miles of interest have been lost to us.
A settlement in a valley could have been lost by glacial advance long before the ice sheet reached its limit.
We don't know.
The fertile crescent was only really fertile when the ice was at its limit or beginning its retreat, under present climate conditions any body starting from scratch would logically start further north where it is less arid.
If the ice retreated a short distance for long enough then moved south again, as it did, then settlements only a little older than the fertile crescent ones have gone.
The FC developments represent a suitable site to start farming only when it was wetter than now so either 'civilisation' waited till the ice retreated or it started further north and was pushed south.
This is simply a set of logical thoughts not an attempt to suggest the existance of an Atlantean society predating Sumer et al.
In a nut shell the ice removed much of our early history.
How much?