Originally Posted by
Endus
I mean, it depends on how the question's phrased. Like, the human species has been around for at least 200,000 years. Human civilization only sums up the last 10,000 or so. Even the earliest traces of domestication only take us back about 15,000 years of that 200k.
Sure, the burst of domestication appears to coincide with the start of the most recent interglacial period; newly warming temperatures (at way slower than modern rates; don't make this about climate change) brought a burst of new species into new regions and prompted humanity to seemingly stretch its limbs and expand. This happened uniquely in multiple regions, somewhat simultaneously, and without any demonstration of interconnection, which is what makes the climate a strong causative impetus (also that it wasn't the same species, which you'd expect if it were due to trade connections).
Now, if you look at the level of tech we had at the start of that, it wasn't that different from where we were at 200,000 years ago; we're talking a range from the middle paleolithic into the upper paleolithic.
Now, looking at the glacial cycle, there was an earlier interglacial period, about 125k years ago. If a more-advanced culture had emerged then (and this coincides roughly with the dispersal of Homo Sapiens from Africa, as far as we can tell), and their technology was based on anything relatively delicate or prone to long-term decay; fine stoneworking, leather/wood, even working surface iron deposits (iron would've rusted away to nothing millenia ago), then it's at least possible that such a culture emerged, expanded, and then collapsed, and was subsequently obliterated by the ravages of time and the crushing glacier sheets of the last glacial period, which would've scoured any construction off the map. We only find stone age art in the most protected spaces, like relatively dry caves or sheltered rock faces, and if this culture didn't do that, nothing would've survived.
There's no concrete trace of it, and I wouldn't argue they developed anything beyond possibly crude iron implements, but that such a culture could have existed, I'd say, is plausible. I wouldn't argue they did exist until we found some evidence, but the idea that they might have shouldn't be discarded out of hand.
Same kind of deal with Bigfoot and Yeti. We know there was at least one hominid that fit that description; gigantopithecus. As far as we know, it lived in Southeast Asia exclusively. If there were some previously-unknown cousin that survived to fairly recent times (by which I mean, recently enough to have been observed and recorded into mythology, thousands of years ago), that'd explain a lot. Remember; there were wooly mammoth still running around some 10,000 years ago. Gigantopithecus itself was around as recently as 100k years ago. In THAT sense, it's not THAT crazy. Not "aliens kidnapped my grandma" crazy, like some of that stuff.
All that said, there's a HUGE difference between "hey, that COULD be true, let's test that idea and look for evidence" and "it's TOTALLY true and even though there's no evidence I can produce, you should all believe me!" which is what this poll was getting into.