QUOTE (surveyor @ Feb 1 2008, 12:05 AM)

I would like to hear what a sociologist has to say, many sociologists if possible. What would social scientists say the odds are that humans grouped together in societies during and after the last ice age. I think we all know the answer. It is our nature, our instinct and our desire to live together to protect and be protected.
Sociologists would direct you to any of over a thousand archaeological sites that indicate exactly what you say. From the steppes of Russia to the outback in Australia there are excavated sites that date to the end of the last Ice Age and well before.
QUOTE (surveyor @ Feb 1 2008, 12:05 AM)

A vast majority of the people breathing today take those breaths very close to a shoreline of some sort. Many of our greatest cities sprang from small coastal communities. Places where fresh water meets the sea are, and always have been, natural attractions. Why would it have been any different 50, 25, 10 or even 2 thousand years ago? We are land lovers but our easiest and most accessible source of nourishment grows in the water.
It wouldn't have been any different. The main thing to remember about the seashore is that the water there is not potable. That makes it somewhat easier to find dig sites near the ocean, there should be a river nearby.
Of course, that doesn't
have to be the case. Springs and other sources could have been used.
And like you said, there's can be easy access to food (fish) near the shore.
QUOTE (surveyor @ Feb 1 2008, 12:05 AM)

Sure there are exceptions to the rule. Inland cultures thrived. They built great monuments. They developed societies and left behind knowledge and writings for us to decipher. Few and maybe none did it without a water source. These cultures are basically the only ones we know of and all we have for scientists to base theory on.
No inland culture built great monuments and left behind writings and knowledge in the time frame you're referring to. The earliest writing ever found (dating to the mid 3000's BC) didn't come about until around 7,000 years after what was basically the end of the last Ice Age.
There are constructions that date to around 9,000 BC. Arguably this date could be construed to fall within the timeframe you're talking about. But these constructions were stone walls and stone huts at best (some are mudbrick, some are just temporary shelters), nothing too grandiose.
QUOTE (surveyor @ Feb 1 2008, 12:05 AM)

Does it seem possible that at a time of world-wide flooding and change in temperate zones around the world, societies would pick up and move to higher ground? If the changes in ocean/sea levels were in fact as fast and drastic as todays science says, wouldnt they have to leave their unwritten history (buildings or settlements ) to be engulfed and start a new history? A new record after a flood that cant be disproved.
Problem is, "science" has never said that "the changes in ocean/sea levels were ... fast and drastic"
It took
hundreds of years for even the fastest instance of sea level rise to occur. About a half a meter a year, as I recall. There were some pulses, when, for example, a glacial lake broke through. These sorts of things can cause large waves, but not any significant permanent sea level rise. They will cause a rise, but nothing as high as the initial splash they make. And like a tsunami, they are "splashiest" when they travel directly to the place they are inundating. I mean, if a gigantic glacial lake broke through (google the "younger dryas period") somewhere around Boston and poured into the Atlantic, the greatest effect as far as height of the wave would occur across the Atlantic in Europe and (to a lesser extent) Africa. While China would see an increase in sea level from such an event, it wouldn't be enough to even be very noticeable. In London, though, the place would be flooded under several meters of water, at least temporarily.
QUOTE (surveyor @ Feb 1 2008, 12:05 AM)

I find it ironic that so many past civilizations seem to have developed approximately at the same time on different continents and regions.
Why do you believe this? And even if it were true (it's not), why would it be ironic?
QUOTE (surveyor @ Feb 1 2008, 12:05 AM)

We dont really know how they started but we know where they are. 99% of them are upland and deserted. 100% of them start with no written records. I dont dare to guess how many actually leave a written record. Quite a few of the ones that do have a histrionic record mention a past flood.
I don't see the connection. You and I agree that fresh water is necessary. The most ancient cultures ever found are on or very near to river flood plains. Would you expect
no flood story? The end of the Ice Age resulted in flooding, yes, but the great majority of that flooding occurred so slowly that there can be very little doubt that it couldn't even be noticed by many people.
QUOTE (surveyor @ Feb 1 2008, 12:05 AM)

Today humans group together. We like to do it near the ocean and preferably near a river as well. Its not science. A part of our past is submerged and its probably the part we need to make sense out of all the other things we think we know.
If we could only explore the ancient coastlines.....
Underwater archaeology is expensive and extremely difficult to accomplish with any scientific rigor. Even so, it is ongoing as I mentioned in a previous post. You'll find archaeologists studying the Jomon Culture all up and down the coasts of Japan, China and Korea. That culture predates the end of the Ice Age and many of their "villages" (encampments or whatever) were submerged by Ice Age meltwater.
Not being an archaeologist myself, I can only think of one other example (though I'm certain that there are many, many more.) That would be Ballard and his underwater investigations of the Mediterreanean and Black Seas, and his more recent investigation of possible Ice Age sites offshore in the Gulf of Mexico.
Try googling him. If you look, I'm sure you'll find that your current feeling that this work is not being done is less true that you think.
Harte