Are We Really the First Advanced Civilization?

What if the timeline of human civilization we've been taught is not just incomplete, but fundamentally wrong? Not by thousands of years but by billions of years.
We'll discuss the possibility that multiple civilizations have risen and collapsed on this planet long before us. Each one was perhaps very different from us. Some may have reached levels of technology and consciousness so far beyond ours that we wouldn't recognize their traces even if we were standing on them. And plate tectonics recycles the ocean floor every 200 million years, so we probably aren't.
We'll look at the work of Graham Hancock, Christopher Dunn, Randall Carlson, Charles Hapgood, and others. Also sites that don't fit the mainstream narrative like Göbekli Tepe, Puma Punku, Sacsayhuaman, the Nazca Lines, Baalbek, Yonaguni, Dwarka, the sunken formations off the coast of Cuba, and others.
We will go even deeper down the rabbit hole. If even one of these civilizations reached interstellar travel, they had billions of years head start on us. The most advanced intelligence in this part of the galaxy may not have come from somewhere else. It may have started here.

We are not experts. We don’t draw conclusions. We are just people willing to think together and expand what we know.

A few things to keep in mind before joining us:
Respect different views. You don't have to agree, but dismissing someone's perspective shuts the conversation down for everyone.
No harassment of any kind, in person, in the chat, or in messages. Anyone who makes another member feel unsafe will be removed from the group immediately.
Speak from your own experience. "I think" and "in my view" go a long way. Avoid speaking for others or declaring universal truths.
Keep an open mind. The best sessions happen when people arrive curious rather than certain.
What's shared in the room stays in the room. Personal stories or opinions expressed during the gathering are not for sharing outside the group.
No selling or recruiting. This is a space for ideas. Keep it that way.
Please arrive on time and if you RSVP, show up or cancel in advance. It helps with planning and respects everyone's time.
See you there.
Marco