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Atlantis was the first great superpower of humanity, ruling the ancient world long before Alexander the great or the Roman empire came into play. It was dominant on all continents, leading a technological civilization far more advanced than the 21st century. However, it fell prey to entity that existed beyond our mortal senses:

Narly, the Black Pharoah.

Through sciencey shennigans, it was discovered that Eldritch beings such as Narly existed in other dimensions. This led to three groups with different opinions on what to do about the matter. One wanted to worship them as gods, seeing them as the next stage in evolution. Another wanted to summon and enslave them to serve humanity. The last was conservative and wanted to destroy all trace of them on the mortal plane. This led to a three way civil war which ended with the sinking of Atlantis, as well as a great calamity in the form of a natural disaster that killed billions around the world.

Today this advanced civilization is a myth, as no evidence or trace that it existed remains. Humanity has had to rebuild itself after the calamity, and it has now only begun to reach the stage of where Atlantis was. But you would think that there would be some trace that a superpower like this existed in the ancient world, even after a worldwide natural disaster. As widespread and dominant as it was, there would have been scholars who had wrote about it's history, or some kind of tech would have been found. How could this ancient civilization simply vanish from human history and memory?

Incognito
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  • Can you provide some more details? How densely populated were the continents? What kind of disaster wiped them out? – Zxyrra Mar 16 '20 at 13:26
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    No, sorry, but a large technological civilization cannot be hidden. We would have found their iron and coal and copper etc. mines, at least as unexplicable discontinuities in the distribution of iron and coal and copper etc. deposits. We would have found the foundations of their roads. We would have found their coins -- do you have any idea of how many Roman or Greek coins are there? Coins are practically indestructible and there is no way to recover them all. We would have found the shards of their pottery; pottery is even more indestructible than coins. – AlexP Mar 16 '20 at 15:06
  • "only begun to reach the stage of where Atlantis was" - was Atlantis strictly limited to one continent, and no attempts to colonize other lands was made? – Alexander Mar 16 '20 at 18:07
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    Slightly different question, similar answers: How long can the human civilization traces be detectable? – user535733 Mar 16 '20 at 18:24
  • Hey I had a really good answer that I wanted to post, reopen the question! – Galaxy Mar 17 '20 at 01:00
  • AlexP thinks inside the box, but I think outside the box. My explanation for why a technologically advanced civilization on all continents leave no trace of itself, is very simple: secrets in plain sight. In face we have been walking among the remains of this civilization, all the while not knowing that it had been there. The Atlantean civilization build huge monumental architecture all over the world. As a result of the catastrophe, their cities were destroyed and ruined. Then survivors later took over the cities and rebuilt the best preserved buildings, and abandoned the rest. – Galaxy Mar 17 '20 at 01:03
  • In this manner monuments of Atlantean architecture contine to stand to this day. It's that depending on their location and state of disrepair, some of them are attributed to the ancient Greeks or Romans, and others to works of imitation. Compare Palmyra in Syria and the Palace of Fine Arts in San Francisco, and the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin. Clearly they are the same architecture style, so they had to have been constructed by the ancient Atlantean civilization. The people who later moved into the ancient Alantean cities attributed these buildings to themselves, after performing minor repairs. – Galaxy Mar 17 '20 at 01:10
  • @AlexP "We would have found their iron and coal and copper etc. mines" My explanation, maybe we already did, and just occupied these mines. Why build something new when you can use something which already exists. Why reinvent the wheel? Similarly modern roads could have just been paved over ancient roads. Modern civilization was build on top of ancient civilization. And nobody wonders why the classical architecture of some of the older buildings in town so starkly contrasts with modern glass skyscrapers. A difference in architecture suggests different civilizations build them. – Galaxy Mar 17 '20 at 01:15
  • Having the ancient Atlantean civilization leave no trace of itself is not the goal. The goal is to make it seem as if it left no trace of itself. This is done when people came to reinhabit the ancient sites, and by virtue of living there for many generations they forgot the origins of these sites, made up some histories for it, and called it a day. Something which is very familiar cannot be mysterious in the minds of people. They go by the old temple every day to work and don't know a thing about who built it, when, and under what circumstances. – Galaxy Mar 17 '20 at 01:20
  • Since the Atlantean civilization existed during the last Ice Age, much of their technology was built around using ice in its various phases (not just Ice 1). The ending of the ice age and the rapid rise in the Earth's temperature cause much of Atlantean high tech to simply melt or sublimate... – Thucydides Mar 17 '20 at 04:47
  • @Galaxy: No we didn't. It is not at all hard to see that our mines were not dug inside older mines. It is very easy to see that the Roman roads were not built on top of older roads, or that Rome was not built on top of an older city. And people who care about such things, and there are quite many of us, know very well who built the temples, when they built them, and under what circumstances. – AlexP Mar 17 '20 at 06:56
  • @AlexP But the inhabitants of the OP's world could as well build their civilization on top of another one and be completely oblivious. They would re-use existing infrastructure for their purposes, maybe not for the original intended purpose. – Galaxy Mar 17 '20 at 22:16
  • @Galaxy: You seem to be unaware that we can date stuff. We know from documentary evidence when Via Appia (that's a Roman highway in Italy) was built, who proposed it, why it was built, and so on. Physical evidence agrees with the documentary evidence. We know for sure that there was no previously existing highway underneath. We know for sure that there was no previously existing city under Rome. We know for sure that there was no large scale extraction of silver at Laurion before the classical period of the Greek civilization. This is how archaeology works. – AlexP Mar 17 '20 at 22:27

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Other dimensions.

You start dealing with other dimensions, trying to enslave or summon or destroy their inhabitants, and stuff happens. You might lose some of your dimension into that one. That is what happened; the dimension bending war-ending weapon of mass destruction. In the other places most of Atlantis is more or less intact, its degenerate inhabitants still haunting its crumbling pyramids and toppled towers. It is just no longer in this dimension.

The Mediterranean is now considerably larger than it was in the day of Atlantis, the obliging Atlantic having filled the void where their island once was.,

Willk
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    I like this answer, except for the whole "dominant on all continents" parameter. If you reverse it, so that we are the ones that got ripped into another dimension I think it perfectly explains why there are myths but little to no solid evidence of this massive empire. – sippybear Mar 16 '20 at 22:39
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With a chisel and a mallet. Atlantis, as a proof of it's existence, was anihilated. Leaving traces of is existence. You wrote about them, there are legends, myths and so on.

What have been destroyed are hard evidences. During our human time on earth we wiped out memory of emperors (and empresses), historical events, achievments (try to make Damascus steel). Leaving only second hand descriptions about shapes.

Why no techology was found? What would be found ray gun with "made in Atlantis" stamp? Technology was adapted, cloned or imitated. What was, back then, clearly Atlantean became Greek, Romanian, Aztec technology. What couldn't be used have been destroyed or taken apart. Imagine a T-rex that have bean eaten to the bone and then bone used as weapon. REshaped, sharpened, changed.

Also, anyone who think "there should be some trace left" haven't seen what Talibans did to Afghanistan. Or what North Korea have done to it's citizens. Not even in 100 years.

SZCZERZO KŁY
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    No, a large technological civilization cannot be hidden. We would have found their iron and coal and copper etc. mines, at least. – AlexP Mar 16 '20 at 15:03
  • @AlexP And what part of my answer talk about them being "hidden"? Anihilation. If whole Sardinia get anihilated you don't get to find their mines as they are not there as the place they were located in is non-existing. – SZCZERZO KŁY Mar 16 '20 at 15:06
  • From the question: "it was dominant on all continents". And anyway, a large technological civilization cannot possibly be limited to a small-ish island, even an island as rich in natural resources as Britain. And we know for certain that there is no large-ish piece of continental crust missing. – AlexP Mar 16 '20 at 15:08
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    " What was, back then, clearly Atlantean became Greek, Romanian, Aztec" – SZCZERZO KŁY Mar 16 '20 at 15:11
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The "dominant on all continents" bit makes it really tough. On Earth, owing to sea level rise, it is widely suspected that many early North American communities on what was, in their own day, the Pacific coast are now lost several miles out to sea. But they weren't technologically advanced (their materials would have been largely organic or unprocessed mineral) and they weren't widespread even on one continent.

You've also got to explain not only why we can't find things they made, but why we aren't missing things they took. We know from our own pre-historic evidence and historic records that early humans found, and used, surface deposits of ores and coal that jumpstarted the various technological ages (iron, copper, bronze). Those are long-since gone, but knowing that they were there in 3000 BC tells us that no prior cycle of technological civilization seems to have preceded them--at least, none that went through the early stages of resource use that ours did.

You might postulate that the civilization reached such advancement that they deliberately effaced their planetary footprint. Demanufacturing and recycling of all artificial goods, global terraforming to cover up the traces, reliance on degradable organics for pretty much everything, and mining of minerals on neighbouring bodies to meet their own needs and even to re-seed the world with raw materials for the next cycle of civilization.

CCTO
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Several options:

  • Combination of Environmental and technologically advanced. They predicted environmental changes and made their entire civilization bio degradable up to the point that nothing is left.

  • The third party simply won the war and also destroyed all traces of the civilization until they died off themselves. This could be due to them no longer being able to reproduce due to the effects of the war (radiation/bio)or because they destroyed themselves in the hope that something new would not repeat their mistakes.

    the last was conservative and wanted to destroy all trace of them on the mortal plane.

  • The first group won and started to seek out their new gods through space/inter-dimensional travel
A.bakker
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