I did some research in the 1990s for use in sci fi scenarios about both the past and the future. Some of it regarded 'what ifs' about lost civilizations such as a possible Atlantis-like scenario in southeast asia, that got decimated in a biotech war, then drowned by rising seas at the end of the last Ice Age.
(Note that the use of biotech meant virtually all evidence of its usage would rot totally away; then the rising seas helped destroy any other evidence as well).
The Atlantis That Could Have Been
My other scenario dealt with a pseudo primate civilization that basically developed millions of years before humanity, in the vicinity of Antarctica and the Kerguelen mini continent (it was all much warmer then). A tight constraint on a certain vital plant in their diet which wouldn't grow elsewhere in the world, plus their own despotic government, kept them primarily within the environs of Kerguelen for a very long time; then the rulers decided to move lock stock and barrel into space, and leave behind most of their peasants/slaves to die in their homeland, as Kerguelen sank beneath the sea. The race still exists today in the outer solar system, mining asteroids and comets, and warily watching humanity advance tech-wise.
The main reasons they hadn't destroyed us the past century is because we remain clueless to their existence, and their rulers enjoy our entertainment media. Plus, they like stealing some of the breakthroughs we make in stuff like drugs and medical tech, that they haven't (as explained on my site, the ruling families keep a tight leash on tech development within their own nation, out of fear that it might make them lose control of their people; the only exceptions have been times like when they wanted to rush development of space technologies to make the leap into space).
I include many supporting references for my speculations.
Finally, in the sci fi book Anne Maddison’s Secret Admirer, evidence of both these civilizations are discovered by a woman private investigator on Earth, in 2017. :-)
Thanks for the kind words! The questions put to me there kind of inspired me.
The reasons I likely couldn't have written that most recent book without first getting that young woman friend, and that GF, are many. For instance, having been held off at arm's length by women my whole life, I'd always been on the outside, looking in, with no opportunity to learn things first hand from them, about what they're like, how they think, etc. Or how BF/GF relationships developed and worked at all. That really crimped my novel writing efforts, big time! Because for one thing, I feared not being able to write believably about things I'd never experienced myself.
Then I got my new female best friend. And she spoke to me more than any woman ever had before, and about a much wider variety of topics. Including a woman's perspective on the world, and sex, and men, etc. She taught me a tremendous amount, for which I will always be grateful. Then she even gave me fantastic starting premises for several books, which I seized upon, and wrote up forthwith (well, I haven't yet wrote ALL of them up; but I have a few!).
Interacting with her also taught me a little about relationships between men and women as friends; but of course, was limited in what I could learn about BF/GF relationships. For while we are close, and frank with one another, and can get into some pretty racy discussions at times, we don't do truly intimate stuff.
So for that, I needed a GF. Then I got one! Yay! :-)
And so learned much of the remaining bits I needed to know.
Having these two women in my life also seemed to help heal some of the hurt and regret I still felt over my original crush, from so long ago.
Don't get me wrong: my crush never did anything bad at all. Never did anything to encourage me, or to hurt me. In fact, I did the best I could to prevent her from ever knowing just how crazy I was over her. So she never had the chance (or need) to reject me. But I'm pretty sure if I had given her that chance, she would have tried to be as polite and gentle with it as possible. For she was a pretty decent person, from what I could gather at the time from afar. Almost certainly better than average in that respect.
However, even with the gains I'd made, I still felt a little haunted by the crush that set me on the path to FA status, for so many decades; and how I was never brave enough to at least approach her directly, and get soundly rejected. For maybe that would have been good for me. Who knows? I sometimes wonder what different path my life might have taken, if I could have been brave in that moment.
So, when an idea came to me to possibly wrap all that up in a fictional way, I embraced it.
The book is Anne Maddison’s Secret Admirer. It's a Kindle ebook. You can find it at:
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B06XTZT985
If you read it, I hope you like it! :-)
PS: I wrote this under a pseudonym. I have lots of them.