NetWatcher's Guide to Everything

I've been thinking lately, a very dangerous endeavor indeed, about several of my old theories from days gone by: ie. college. I had this crazy idea back then that perhaps the civilizations of the ancient world weren't quite as isolated as modern archaeologists think. Several things lead me to this conclusion: most prominently, the idea of dragons. There are oriental dragons, Celtic dragons, winged serpents of the central Americas, and various other dragons spattered across the tales of ancient history. Probably not all that spectacular, looked at from the perspective of today's world of instant global communication. But back when the most glamorous mode of transport was one's own legs, the fact that idea could spread globally is a bit impressive.

More impressive still is the idea that in all of the various cultures, the dragon/winged serpent represented almost a deity like control over creational chaos. Celtic legends tell of their part in the formation of the world, as do Oriental mythos. Even Native Americans acknowledge the winged serpent's role in celestial events. So the natural question is: how did these separate cultures, who supposedly had no contact with each other, come up with the same fanciful creature that has the same basic role cross-cultures?

As a mathematician, I can't believe it's just chance. And I can't think that modern archaeologists, looking at things thousands of years old, can't get the story right. No slight against them, it's just that their frame of reference is several centuries out of date for the things they're studying. It would be like an alien race coming to earth in the distant future and trying to figure out why records show that humans killed each other for little green slips of starched fiber with other dead human's faces on them. Some of their scientists would contend that in the late 20th century, a mythical ethereal system designed to send only two pieces of information, a '1' and a '0', existed that connected everyone in the civilization to everyone else. The rest of their scientists would say that no evidence of this obviously absurd "interworking network" exists though many fictional period pieces making reference to it survived through time, and they would be puzzled as to why humans apparently spent so much time sitting in front of a plastic box with a glass shield on it. Let's face it, if electricity ever fails, all of the information in the world can be sitting on computers, but there would be no way to access it.

So exactly why couldn't the civilizations of the past have had contact with each other just like they do today? What if the infrastructure that connected them just hasn't survived? We know there were many advanced ideas in the greatLibrary at Alexandria, which unfortunately were lost some 1600 years ago. Some 'new' geometric and mathematical formulas and proofs that are just being rediscovered now were thought to be held in thelibrary. What other information in that library has been lost that could shed light on this puzzle?

When looking at things, the interpreter's point of view will skew any reliable analysis.