When we think of ancient civilizations, we  might picture Egypt as something of a starting  

point for all to follow. The Egyptians were so  successful and ingenious that it can seem like  

they kinda wrote the rulebook when it comes to  organizing humans into a functioning society.  

But is that really how it was? This is Unveiled, and today we’re  

answering the extraordinary question; was  there a civilization before Ancient Egypt?

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Ancient Egypt is not only one of the oldest  civilizations in the world, it’s also one of  

the most impressive. There are many - usually  smaller - organized groups across history,  

but ultimately Egyptian culture has  proven to be so rich and awe-inspiring  

that it’s created for itself an entirely  separate branch of academic study,  

That’s not to say that we know all they knew,  however. Many of the building techniques used  

in Ancient Egypt, for example, including for  the iconic pyramids, remain something of a  

mystery - as we found out in a previous video!  Although, there’s some argument that this mystery  

may have been intentional, as the Egyptians  seemingly left nothing by way of a clear  

record describing how they achieved many of their  most spectacular feats. Which means that today,  

thousands of years later, we’re still  scratching our heads over some of it.  

Ancient Egypt first developed as a  civilization around the year 3100 BCE,  

and it stood as one the world’s leading  examples of social cohesion for some  

thirty centuries after that. For more than three  thousand years. However, despite Egypt’s general  

image as an inspiration for all civilization,  it’s not usually held to be the first recorded,  

advanced society that humanity ever created.  Broadly, historians and anthropologists list  

a couple of key features required for a given  group to upgrade to the status of civilization.  

They need to be (to some degree) settled, they  need advanced social features (like a government,  

perhaps), and they need developing technology  of some kind - with a system of writing  

often held to be especially important. In short, then, there were other civilizations  

around at the same time and even before Ancient  Egypt. One was the Indus Valley Civilization,  

which formed in Asia, around 3300 BCE, a  couple hundred years before the rise of Egypt.  

And, while there can be some disagreement  over precisely when various civilizations  

established themselves, there’s research  to suggest that Indus Valley could be  

thousands of years older than even that… putting  it potentially even further back in time.  

It existed across a massive area stretching from  modern day Afghanistan, to Pakistan, and India,  

making it notably larger than most other ancient  empires, including Egypt’s. In its prime, Indus  

Valley had at least one thousand towns and cities,  which were home to more than five million people.  

It’s credited with developing, amongst other  things, early water and drainage systems, brick  

houses, an ever-crucial writing system, and a  standardization of weights and measures to ensure  

that society ran smoothly. As the Egyptians also  did with the Nile, the people of the Indus Valley  

owed much of their success to their strategy of  building along a major river, the Indus River.  

Even older than the Indus Valley, however,  is Mesopotamia - a sprawling civilization  

made up of multiple major groups,  including the Sumerians and Akkadians.  

Mesopotamia arose on fertile land in the Middle  East, across modern day countries including Iraq,  

Kuwait, Turkey, and Syria, sometime around 3500  BCE. As well as being potentially the oldest  

ever civilization, ancient Mesopotamia also  developed what’s generally thought of as the  

first ever writing system - by using clay blocks  for dedicated record keeping. In addition to its  

apparent invention of writing, Mesopotamia  is also credited with inventing the wheel,  

the first maps, and the first boats, as well as  the first ever means by which to measure time.  

The Indus Valley and Mesopotamia civilizations are  both thought to have emerged a few hundred years  

earlier than the ancient Egyptians, then, but  were there any confirmed groups before even them  

that we’ve yet to discover? We certainly know of  smaller groups that formed in earlier periods,  

such as the Jiahu settlement in China, which has  been tentatively dated back to the year 7000 BCE…  

although the numbers of people involved  there only reached into the hundreds,  

rather than the multi-millions as seen in Egypt. There are other structures and stories that more  

severely (or more famously) call the mainstream  narrative of human civilization into question,  

too. The legend of Atlantis is perhaps the most  well-known example of a tale of a bygone age.  

If it were true, then the Atlanteans will’ve  existed sometime around ten to twelve thousand  

years ago - around the year 10,000 BCE.  But, of course, the Atlantis story is  

still widely held to be more allegory than  a true record of past events. And, in fact,  

some explanations for the story’s origins  trace it back to a myth told in Egypt, which  

eventually found its way to the ears of the Greek  philosopher and chief Atlantis purveyor, Plato.  

In terms of physical evidence for  a later civilization, however,  

the mysterious megalith site, Göbekli Tepe, lays  down perhaps the strongest challenge to Egypt  

and Mesopotamia regarding age. Göbekli Tepe is a  massive archeological site in modern day Turkey,  

and it’s home to the oldest known stone megaliths  in existence, thought to date back as far as the  

year 9500 BCE. We’re now thousands of years before  even the beginnings of Ancient Egypt, then. The  

megaliths feature carved images, too, seeming to  show things like clothed people, animals roaming  

the land, and perhaps even religious practices  of the time. Researchers are still debating  

whether Göbekli Tepe can yet be classified  as evidence of anotherwhole civilization,  

though. So much about it remains unknown, and only  a small percentage of the site has been excavated.  

Stone tools have been found, and possible  workshops close to the megaliths,  

but this could still have been just one small  and isolated community, rather than one part  

of a wider civilization. If Göbekli Tepe is ever  confirmed to have been part of something bigger,  

though, that something could emerge as  the new “oldest civilization in history”.  

We haven’t yet mentioned the far more  unconventional theories, out there, however.  

One such theory - or one such thought experiment,  at least - comes from space scientists Gavin  

Schmidt and Adam Frank. They created the  Silurian Hypothesis in an effort to stoke the  

debate on whether other, non-human civilizations  could’ve developed on Earth before ours did.  

The general thinking is that if the Earth is  around 4.5 billion years old, which it is,  

and human civilizations of any kind have only been  around for just a few thousand years of that time…  

well, in the grand scheme of things,  we’ve barely made an imprint.  

The Silurian Hypothesis non-committedly asks us,  then, to imagine a civilization that might’ve  

hypothetically lived not thousands of years  ago, but hundreds of millions of years ago.  

In all likelihood, we would never be able to  uncover any evidence of such a group today, in the  

here and now… with Earth’s tectonic and geological  activity burying and recycling it over time.  

The Silurian Hypothesis leads us to wonder, then;  how can we be sure about a past that might’ve been  

lost to us? It’s a line of thought that’s also  inspired ideas like the infamous Younger Dryas  

Impact Hypothesis, which proposes that a comet  struck Earth some 12,800 years ago - supposedly  

wiping out an advanced civilization at the time,  and serving as something of a reset button for  

life on Earth. The theory isn’t widely supported  by conventional scientists or historians, though.  

What’s clear is that our picture of the past,  while it’s thought of as reasonably reliable,  

is subject to change. History can’t be  rewritten, of course, but our understanding  

of it can be reshaped. And so, it could yet be  that we’re missing something truly substantial.  

Consider our current understanding of the  dinosaurs. It’s improving all the time,  

but it remains patchy at best. And that’s  despite the fact that the dinosaurs - these  

giant creatures - roamed the Earth only sixty-six  million years ago (a blink of an eye compared to  

the full age of our planet). They were also on  Earth for some 165 million years before they died  

(which is far, far longer than humans have been  here for, so far). But we’re still so limited on  

what we can learn, even about the dinosaurs. Dissecting the route we’ve taken toward  

contemporary society and civilisation is, then, an  extremely tricky task. Perhaps it’s no wonder that  

so many eye-catching theories have been thrown  into the mix. But, even if we stay within the  

realms of just the most widely supported science,  history, and archeology, we know that Ancient  

Egypt was never out on its own. Certainly, it’s  one of the oldest civilizations we know about,  

and a forerunner for so much of human  progress, but there were others alongside it,  

and most likely before it. And, research pending,  there could yet be even older groups, too.

What do you think? Is there anything we missed?  Let us know in the comments, check out these other  

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