How long would it realistically take for an ancient civilization

Depends on way to many factors and how it collapsed. It could be never forgotten because the peoples left where literate and left many detailed records or it could be forgotten fast because all that was left were retarded preliterate barbarians.

>>54722111

See the Native North-Americans. They used to be sedentary until a (European) plague wiped out their civilisation so utterly that their own ancestors became a myth to them.

>>54722213
How long would it take with medieval levels of education?

>>54722236
They were wiped out by plague before the Europeans got there. Then they were wiped out by European plagues. Then they were wiped out by Europeans and the European Evolved Form: Americans.
The Native North Americans got hit with a triple serving of apocalypse in a relatively short period.

>>54722244
>How long would it take with medieval levels of education?

Which point in the Middle Ages, and which part? Somewhere like the Byzantine Empire during the 900s would have everything written down extensively, while just across the Black Sea, with the Khazar horselords? Hardly anything.

>>54722111
During Anabasis, the greeks come to massive stone structures piled in Anatolia as they are retreating. They ask the locals what they are, and the locals don't know.

They're relics of Medean walled cities, and <500 years old at the time. YMMV.

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>>54722111
Only a few centuries, provided the next civilization doesn't come up right away.

There was a vast pyramid-building civilization that lived along the Mississippi river until the 1400s, but when whites arrived in the 1700s, they were completely lost and have only recently been rediscovered.

>>54722319
I'm not an expert on history but I am thinking specifically the education level that you would see in the remains of the western roman empire post collapse

>>54722275
Actually, there's evidence that the plagues that wiped out most of central and North America were actually native diseases that were made worse by widespread droughts and general societal strife post-conquest.

>>54722390
*something similar to not specifically

>>54722390
>but I am thinking specifically the education level that you would see in the remains of the western roman empire post collapse

Anon you seriously need to be a bit more specific, because the difference between parts of Western Europe during that era is staggering. The Empire of the Franks, aka Francia aka France, was quite literate and would have contained a fair bit of knowledge on both the Roman Empire and their own accomplishments.

Just across the Channel, you have the Heptarchy, a place where London is technically two cities (the new half and Roman half) because the cityfolk are terrified of the ghosts of whatever freakazoids built the Roman buildings. Cityfolk that comprise an ethnic group (Anglo-Saxons) that utterly massacred, displaced and otherwise replaced the native Briton population.

>>54722394
Really? Source? Genuinely interested

>>54722449
The shittier end of western Europe then, sorry for not being that specific, if you need a specific country Spain I guess? I've heard somewhere that it didn't do so well after the fall of the western Roman empire

>>54722475
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2730237/

Small pox and the like definitely killed their fair share, but the disease that killed the bulk of the people just doesn't match up to any Western introduced disease in terms of symptoms.

>>54722519
>but the disease that killed the bulk of the people just doesn't match up to any Western introduced disease in terms of symptoms.

Do we know anything about this disease?

>>54722111
One generation.
More if the civilization had neighbors who kept records and didn't collapse themselves.

>>54722111
Depends on a lot of factors, including the prominence of the Ancients at their height, the totality of their fall, their methods of knowledge transmission, and what exactly you mean by "Forgotten"

As >>54722236 points out North America "lost" civilizations in fairly short order, but they were something of a worst-case scenario: Repeated brutal apocalypses, limited if any monumental construction, and no written language to foster long-term information survival. South America swallowed civilizations whole, such as the Olmecs -- naturally we still find their monuments and reconstruct some of their history with archaeological searching, but if a civilization had been ABSOLUTLEY forgotten, well, we wouldn't know about them. We do know a little more about the South American civs because a number of them wrote down stuff in permanent ways, giving us more archaeological evidence.

In the event of a brutal, total collapse it wouldn't take long for a civilization to melt from"Historical fact" into "semi-accurate Mythical explanation for those ruins over there". Destroying all cultural memory would be harder, requiring some isolation and a few more generations without writing, or a few more centuries with written accounts so those could get lost or destroyed. Honestly if writing is commonplace "Only known/understood by scholars" is more likely than "Forgotten"

I'd personally estimate that a fairly significant empire could vanish from common memory, to have their artifacts and ruins rediscovered by explorers who basically have to put everything together from nothing, inside 250 years with no to limited written accounts and their major sites in forsaken or inhospitable locations. Depending on just how many people died under their domain rather than escaping when the political control went kaput, there may be myths and they might have some accurate kernels to them.

>>54722547
From the article.

>Francisco Hernandez, the Proto-Medico of New Spain, former personal physician of King Phillip II and one of the most qualified physicians of the day, witnessed the symptoms of the 1576 cocoliztli infections. Hernandez described the gruesome cocoliztli symptoms with clinical accuracy (4,5). The symptoms included high fever, severe headache, vertigo, black tongue, dark urine, dysentery, severe abdominal and thoracic pain, large nodules behind the ears that often invaded the neck and face, acute neurologic disorders, and profuse bleeding from the nose, eyes, and mouth with death frequently occurring in 3 to 4 days.

>>54722627
Wow, that shit just has everything, doesn't it.

>>54722627
>Large nodules
Eww

>>54722656
Well, it's mostly just symptoms of parts of your body being filled with blood that should not be filled with blood.

>>54722111
I would say that it depends on:

-The amount of written records they left.

-If the current people know how to read them.

-The amount of resilient architecture they lef behind.

-If someone resettled their lands. No use having huge pyramids hidden in the jungle.

The civ that fulfills all those won't, like greeks.

The one that doesn't fulfill any of them can take as much as a couple generations, like the hidden cities of the Amazonian Jungle.

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>>54723370
Reminder that the greeks collapsed so hard they forgot how to write and had to re-learn it from the phoenicians.

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>>54723937
Sea Peoples represent!

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>>54724184
>sea peoples were long considered the cause of the bronze age collapse
>turns out they were the victims of it
>you thought the sea peoples destroyed your civilization
>but you were the sea peoples all along

>>54722111
Depends on two factors I can think of: how many people survived and how much fame did it achieve before they fell.

As long as there are people around who remember the stories and can be bothered to tell them, the longer the civilization will be remembered. Literacy and written records also go a long way in preserving this set up.

For example, the Roman empire was more or less a superpower in their time, and once they ceased to be a major part of the political landscape, it and the surrounding regions were still persistently inhabited, and they also kept excellent records.

Contrasted to the numerous local powers that the Romans conquered, you couldn't really name those nations unless you were a historian who specialized in that area.

The one possible exception is Judea, or ancient Israel. All because Judea was the originating point of an incredibly successful religion that eventually overtook Rome, but that's another story...

>>54722213

It also depends on what they wrote -on-. Sumerians wrote on clay tablets that they fired and were reasonably durable. Egyptians wrote on papyrus which was not, so we honestly don't know how much literature and information was lost.

>>54722213
>>54724396

Then we get stuff like the graffiti found in Pompeii.

Like others mentioned, it really depends on the level of literacy.
As an example : we know for certain that the Shang dynasty in ancient China (~1600 B.C - 1000 B.C) was a thing because of the amount of stuff they wrote in turtle's shells. Inversely, because of the lack of written sources, there is no ultimate guaranty that the dynasty right before that, the Xia (~2000 B.C. - 1600 B.C.), was entirely there (for reasons that would take too long to explain).
Another example would be the ancient Japanese which left pretty much nothing in term of written sources prior to the first emperor. The only thing we have are Chinese texts that dates from back then (or centuries after) and these aren't 100% reliable.

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>>54723937
I was referring to ancient greeks, not mycenaeans.

>You collapsed so hard your descendants think you're a bunch of cyclops.