You seem to be confused with your
terms. When you say "Are we destined. . .", you seem to be forgetting the
fact that it isn't like there is a single
advanced civilization laying around, at least not in the
old world sense. I suppose it might be possible for, say, the
Japanese Civlization (what does that even mean?) to somehow be wiped out, but it wouldn't simply "disappear," since so many others would still be hanging around to watch and gape. If, on the other hand, you are referring to the modern
civilization of
mankind as a whole or all of the
advanced civilizations as a whole, then the nature of the question changes.
Barring some sort of really strange
biological disaster or self imposed
exile, I find it unlikely that advanced
mankind will vanish from the earth, thereby leaving rumors of an
advanced race. In the past,
geographical disaster was easy to blame for an
ancient civilization's disappearance, since they supposedly wouldn't have been able to
diversify.
Advanced mankind, however, now resides on a large chunk of the habitable globe, and therefore even a major-minor
geographical disaster, like, say,
Australia sinking beneath the waves due to some weird stuff going on wouldn't be able to wipe out
advanced mankind in the manner it supposedly wiped out
Atlantis. The way I figure, anything that could make
advanced mankind vanish would be pretty intense. . .like a
nuclear war or something, and that would be hard to miss.
Other aspects of your reasoning are flawed. Yes, the invention of
computers by themselves might be very easy to miss
archeologically. The invention of the stuffs leading up to them like,
nuclear power and mass producing factories, for example, would be hard to miss.
But let's forget all of that. What happened to
Atlantis,
Lemura, and some of the other
advanced civlizations of
legend? They couldn't have been that
advanced if they were localized to one medium sized island: for their
population to reside upon and off the fruits of a single medium size island, their numbers couldn't have been gigantic. Furthermore, their
thinking and
philosophy would have to have been vastly different from both
modern and most
civilizations in history, for they evidently didn't
colonize, branch out,
conquer, or even
vacation, from all appearances (however, this is not a point that makes me particularly discount anything, since it is certainly possible).
I, for one, tend to doubt
legend, since the
legends were written by people who literally didn't know what they were talking about. But, at any rate, tradition and examination suggests that, as an alternative to the island idea, the
Atlanteans,
Lemurians, or what-have-you resided in
Antartica in a time long past, during which the
weather was more pleasant. Even today, we wouldn't be able to take a look at what they left behind, since the entire place is vast in size and frozen solid. This hypothesis may not be entirely impossible. But it seems unlikely. Again, why would an
advanced civilization not explore or leave some more concrete indication of their presence beyond
rumor and
legend outside of their most local area? For the
legend to even develop, they would have had to have gotten out at some point; what did they do? Whisper teasings into
philosopher's ears and then run away back to their home? Furthermore, beyond getting really cold over a gradual period, what kind of disaster could have wiped them out? Once you move the hypothesis from a medium size island in the Atlantic and on to a gigantic landmass like
Antartica, you solve and gain some problems, since a
volcano or
flood couldn't be at exclusive fault anymore. Things don't add up. For the most part,
Plato has the earliest, best, and, in some ways, only account of
Atlantis. One man's writings aren't enough, and vague stories about
mystical and
mighty civlizations aren't enough.
With so little facts,
Atlantis/
Lemura/whatever is as unverified as, say,
Hades,
heaven, or
Valhalla. Why believe in
Atlantis and not one of those others?
Zoom Out
As I said, I don't see a likely way
advanced mankind could vanish without a trace from
Earth. But I could see a way, and I'm sure you could too, as to how
Earth or all of its contents could vanish from, say, the
solar system. If that happened, would it be so strange if
aliens from far off places in the years to be murmured stories and
legends to each other derived from vague hints from around about some kind of
mysterious,
ancient, long-gone
civilization on some vanished planet around
Sol?