The ancient people in the high-latitude Arctic had well-developed trade

Popular Achaeology ^ | 2/23/19 | Staff

[NativeSon]

There are extinction theories or some such that support the idea that more ancient societies existed and were wipped out, leaving small, isolated pockets of prior knowledge that eventually faded.

And to think of it, the odd (small) presence of haplo groups where they should not be found would support that.

[central_va]

So do the Amish live in the stone age?

[NativeSon]

They back to the Stone Age outcome would result from mass die off and complete destruction of technology.

They key point being, that the easily axcessible natural reasorces would not be available this time around.

The path of technological would not occur to even re-use the metal pieces/artifacts left behind. Raw materials, unallowed metal, minerals would require too much technology to find.

[marktwain]

How do you envision such a massive die off to occur?

[Openurmind]

How many of hose 1% will actually have someone listen long enough to teach them the skills? One generation later it is gone and lost... This is already happening right now...

[marktwain]

Technololgy is a massive advantage to those who use it.

The first tribe to start re-applying technology conquers all those that do not.

It is what happened in the conquest of the world by Western Civilization.

Ignoring technological advantages is a quick way to defeat and the dust bin of history.

[Openurmind]

They will be one of the few cultures to survive... and even then only in isolated pockets that will take a thousand years or more to spread the knowledge without air transportation. :)

[BTerclinger]

“the ancient people had communicated with representatives of other territories and had even exchanged various objects with them through some kind of the fairs.”

Snow Fairies.

[fieldmarshaldj]

*ping*

[LoneRangerMassachusetts]

Even if 99% of the population died off, the remaining 1% would have all the skills, knowledge and material to rebuild technological society.

Depends who is in the one percent left. If it's government workers, game over for mankind.

[NativeSon]

How do you envision such a massive die off to occur?

I consider the idea that our civilization could at some time in our future be reduced to a primitive state, never to progress, to be in the realm of sci-if.

Asteroid strike, biological warfare, unintentional results of messing around with our genes (e.g. using CRISPR), would/could allow for mass die offs, globally.

If infrastructure, information and tools remained available, I do believe that even a small population could relearn and progress, eventually developing into a technologically advanced civilization.

unless we alter our genome in way that damages our ability to learn/retards mental development

A "skynet" future would not be good for people and their things but I think that is not likely.

unless someone does it on purpose

Years ago, I came across a "prophecy", not sure how old it is/was but downfall is brought about by a group of people that create a "machination of corn".

I do not know how well it was translated from which was undoubtedly an oral language but "machination of corn" sounds like artificial life.

[SunkenCiv]

Thanks fieldmarshaldj.

[marktwain]

Asteroid strike, biological warfare, unintentional results of messing around with our genes (e.g. using CRISPR), would/could allow for mass die offs, globally.

I have thought about this.

I will add a couple of more:

The "grey goo" nanotech, supervolcano, Alien invasion, in order of likelyhood.

It becomes very, very hard to kill off even 99% of the human population. Trying to get to 99.99% is almost (but not quite) impossible. You have to nearly destroy the planet to do that.

99.99% still leaves 600,000 people on the planet.

[Does so]

Bottleneck of civilizations at Toba eruption:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toba_catastrophe_theory