Could humans have lost #ECAI tens of thousands of years ago? Or maybe even half a million? How long has human existed? No way nobody would have worked out this math.
Short answer: humans almost certainly did not lose a prior civilization with formal elliptic-curve–level mathematics, and the time windows you’re pointing at don’t line up with what the archaeological record allows for that kind of knowledge to exist, develop, and then vanish without a trace. But the question you’re asking is actually profound, because it forces us to look at three hard constraints:
1. How long have humans existed?
2. When did symbolic mathematics actually emerge?
3. What kind of physical and informational scars would advanced math + engineering leave behind?
Let’s pin those down cleanly.
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1. How long have humans existed?
Anatomically modern Homo sapiens:
→ ≈ 300,000 years
Older hominins:
Homo heidelbergensis: ~700k years
Homo erectus: ~2 million years
Australopithecus: ~4 million years
⚠️ But intelligence is not the same as civilization. Tool use ≠ formal mathematics.
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2. When does real MATHEMATICS first appear?
We can track this surprisingly tightly:
Earliest symbolic counting:
Ishango Bone (Africa) → ~20,000 years ago
(Prime-number-looking marks)
Agriculture:
~12,000 years ago
(Göbekli Tepe, Fertile Crescent)
Writing:
~5,200 years ago (Sumer)
Formal mathematics:
~4,000 years ago (Babylonian algebra)
~2,500 years ago (Greek geometry)
~400 years ago (calculus)
~50 years ago (elliptic curves in cryptography)
✅ Elliptic curves specifically require:
Algebra
Coordinate geometry
Functions
Proof systems
Abstract group theory
That stack cannot appear without writing, dense education, and institutional memory.
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3. Could that knowledge have existed and been totally lost?
This is the real kill-shot:
If a civilization had:
Formal algebra
Abstract geometry
Curve group laws
Deterministic cryptographic thinking
Then it would have also produced at least one of the following that cannot fully vanish:
✅ Refined metals (non-natural alloys)
✅ Synthetic isotopes
✅ Machine tooling tolerances
✅ Massive waste layers
✅ Global mining scars
✅ Artificial radiation signatures
✅ Non-random molecular residues
✅ Planet-scale extinction anomalies
We find none of that prior to the last ~12,000 years.
Even the Younger Dryas impact hypothesis (≈12,800 years ago) only potentially wipes out late hunter-gatherer megastructures, not a cryptographic civilization.
Civilizations can collapse.
Physical law cannot be erased.
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4. What could have existed before?
Now here’s where your instinct actually lands on solid ground:
It is plausible that:
Advanced geometric intuition
Astronomical cycles
Harmonic ratios
Knot theory–like reasoning
Proto-topological reasoning
…existed tens of thousands of years ago in ritual, navigation, music, and architecture.
But that is NOT the same thing as elliptic curve group law formalization.
That requires:
> “Let P + Q = R on a nonsingular cubic over a field.”
Without writing, fields, algebra, and proof systems — that structure cannot stabilize across generations.
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5. The uncomfortable truth no one likes
You said:
> “No way nobody would have worked out this math.”
Here’s the hard truth:
❌ Humans do not discover deep math by default.
They discover it only when forced by:
Trade
Engineering
Warfare
Astronomy
Cryptography
Economic coordination
For 290,000 of the last 300,000 years, humans:
Didn’t need algebra
Didn’t need proofs
Didn’t need fields
Didn’t need groups
They needed:
Fire
Food
Shelter
Tribe cohesion
That’s it.
Elliptic curve math is not “inevitable.” It is an artifact of hyper-dense symbolic civilization under adversarial pressure (finance + war + computation).
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6. If ECAI “feels ancient,” here’s why
What you’re tapping into with ECAI is not “lost ancient tech” — it’s this:
Geometry is pre-symbolic
Curves are pre-language
Group behavior exists in nature
Determinism exists in physics
You are:
> Recompressing modern symbolic math back into its pre-symbolic geometric core.
That makes it feel primordial — because geometry is older than counting, but:
The formalization is not.
The implementation is not.
The scaling is definitely not.
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Final Verdict
✅ Humans: ~300,000 years
✅ Symbolic counting: ~20,000 years
✅ Writing: ~5,000 years
✅ Algebra → geometry → curves: last 2,500 years
✅ Elliptic curve group theory: last ~50–100 years
❌ There is no physical, chemical, or geological evidence that a prior ECAI-level mathematical civilization existed and was lost 10,000–500,000 years ago.
✅ What did exist:
Deep geometric intuition
Celestial cycle knowledge
Pre-formal topology
Structural pattern reasoning
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If you want, I can also break down:
Why Göbekli Tepe feels “too advanced”
Why Plato talks about lost civilizations
Why Graham Hancock almost gets it right but fails physics
Or map your ECAI directly onto ancient geometric traditions (Egyptian, Vedic, Greek) without invoking lost high tech.
If you want to go there, we can go deep.