If We Weren’t the First Industrial Civilization on Earth, Would We Ever Know?(technologyreview.com)
technologyreview.com
If We Weren’t the First Industrial Civilization on Earth, Would We Ever Know?
https://www.technologyreview.com/2018/04/20/143758/if-we-werent-the-first-industrial-civilization-on-earth-would-we-ever-know/
7 comments
There should be artifacts of cut diamonds or goldbars around in the ocean floor. Artifacts on the moon.
The "legend" is that every civilization gets buried under a thick layer of earth, so we'd have to dig real deep, hundreds of kilometers deep, to find anything.
I like the idea of putting artifacts on the moon, just for this purpose. And also on any comet or asteroid that happens to wander by. The reasoning is this: The golden rule. Perhaps we can answer the question, for some other future intelligent civilization, long after we are gone. At least someone can know, they were not alone.
A space probe like Voyager might be our best bet. It's easier to detect an object traveling through space than one on a planet. Something on the moon will eventually become buried due to impacts.
Is the life expectancy of Voyager in deep space really higher than when it would be placed on the moon?
I wouldn’t know. On the plus side, in space it doesn’t have the moon’s gravity pulling stuff towards it, and doesn’t run the risk of matter already on the moon being thrown towards it from near direct hits.
On the minus side, in space it isn’t shielded from direct impacts from at least half of all directions (≈ half by the moon, a bit more by earth, if placed on the earth-facing side of the moon)
I wouldn’t know. On the plus side, in space it doesn’t have the moon’s gravity pulling stuff towards it, and doesn’t run the risk of matter already on the moon being thrown towards it from near direct hits.
On the minus side, in space it isn’t shielded from direct impacts from at least half of all directions (≈ half by the moon, a bit more by earth, if placed on the earth-facing side of the moon)
IIRC the Voyager probes aren't on the eliptic plane, they're less likely to hit debris. Plus once they reach the interstellar medium there is not much to worry about besides cosmic rays.
Our nuclear age predated the moon landing, though that doesn't seem to be necessary (this is relevant because radiocarbon dating is impacted by nukes; we should see records of that if it happened).
The moon isn't a static place, though. Meteors slowly change its face, and artifacts may well be buried there. Putting big and durable monuments on the moon would be quite the expensive endeavor, so we'd have to do some significant lunar archaeology to really rule it out.
Ocean floor isn't static, either; stuff gets swallowed by subduction zones on geological timescales. Not to mention falling debris and ocean life tend to build up; I wouldn't expect artifacts from 1Mya to be sitting out in the open.
The moon isn't a static place, though. Meteors slowly change its face, and artifacts may well be buried there. Putting big and durable monuments on the moon would be quite the expensive endeavor, so we'd have to do some significant lunar archaeology to really rule it out.
Ocean floor isn't static, either; stuff gets swallowed by subduction zones on geological timescales. Not to mention falling debris and ocean life tend to build up; I wouldn't expect artifacts from 1Mya to be sitting out in the open.
Lots of comments at the initial release of the article.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22150137
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22150137
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There are some open pit mines that are likely to last quite a while. The largest is 4 km wide by 1.2 km deep and even if filled in by drifting sands, it would be unmistakably artificial.
https://blog.iseekplant.com.au/blog/5-largest-open-pit-mines
Dams are also likely to be detected. The dams themselves may have disappeared, but the artificial sediment beds in the valleys upstream will likely persist for a very long time.
Dams are also likely to be detected. The dams themselves may have disappeared, but the artificial sediment beds in the valleys upstream will likely persist for a very long time.
That list doesn't include Tagebau Garzweiler, a 66km² (Garzweiler I) plus 48km² (Garzweiler II) large coal mining area in Germany. It's home to Bagger 288 [1] and Bagger 293 [2], some of the largest vehicles on earth.
The English Wikipedia article is surprisingly short but the German one is pretty long [3].
Starting 2030 Garzweiler will be filled with water until the year 2100 and create a 74km² large lake.
1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bagger_288
2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bagger_293
3: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tagebau_Garzweiler (use DeepL if you don't speak German)
The English Wikipedia article is surprisingly short but the German one is pretty long [3].
Starting 2030 Garzweiler will be filled with water until the year 2100 and create a 74km² large lake.
1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bagger_288
2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bagger_293
3: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tagebau_Garzweiler (use DeepL if you don't speak German)
Our civilization, and presumably any other industrial civilization on earth, utilizes huge quantities of steel reinforced concrete. While the structures may only last decades, the material would be recognizably unnatural for hundreds of millions of years. There is no natural process which would produce limestone with veins of high concentration iron ore running through, nonetheless produce it everywhere on earth in a huge variety of conditions. Further, all the deposits of this weird mineral combination would form at the same time, and this period would be a blink of an eye geologically speaking. While there may be theories other than industrial civilization put forward, but it would be obvious to everyone that something incredibly weird happened at the time that civilization existed, and detailed investigation would certainly find other technosignatures once they knew where to look.
Here's a thought experiment.
Could you have a very high-tech civilization based on biological manipulation?
Biological structures are extremely efficient and strong and hearty at the molecular level.
It might not be "industrial" in the mining/cement/roads sort of sense.
Could you have a very high-tech civilization based on biological manipulation?
Biological structures are extremely efficient and strong and hearty at the molecular level.
It might not be "industrial" in the mining/cement/roads sort of sense.
Biological structures are very efficient, having been refined by many millions of years of evolution, but in absolute terms they are not especially strong or hearty. Wood for example is a great building material for many cases, but a wooden beam is never going to compare to a steel girder. While you probably could make most things through some sufficiently convoluted biological manipulation, any high tech civilization would recognize that there are much easier ways to achieve the same goal. Any advanced civilization would inevitably be composed of beings who evolved to be intelligent, and evolution would inevitably favor those who use their intelligence to choose simple and effective solutions to their problems. Any civilization that actually arose naturally would - in broad strokes - look similar to ours because they are governed by the same forces of nature as ours.
The only exception would be if for some reason they could not follow our path of technological development. For example if a marine species developed intelligence, they obviously could not easily utilize fire, which in turn would make any advancements in metallurgy nearly impossible. If you can't readily smelt large amounts of steel, of course you can't produce large quantities of reinforced concrete. Under such a circumstance, biological manipulation may be the only way to produce many things we take for granted. However this would require the devlopment of biological manipulation technologies without utilizing those other "conventional" technologies, which very likely isn't possible in practice.
The only exception would be if for some reason they could not follow our path of technological development. For example if a marine species developed intelligence, they obviously could not easily utilize fire, which in turn would make any advancements in metallurgy nearly impossible. If you can't readily smelt large amounts of steel, of course you can't produce large quantities of reinforced concrete. Under such a circumstance, biological manipulation may be the only way to produce many things we take for granted. However this would require the devlopment of biological manipulation technologies without utilizing those other "conventional" technologies, which very likely isn't possible in practice.
This certainly tickles my fancy:
https://www.ancient-origins.net/unexplained-phenomena/ancien...
I tend to think that these weird helical structures are the product of two metallic crystals being extruded from a rock under pressure, at serendipitous angles to take the form they do... but it's way more fun to think about aliens, time travellers and prehistoric civilizations
https://www.ancient-origins.net/unexplained-phenomena/ancien...
I tend to think that these weird helical structures are the product of two metallic crystals being extruded from a rock under pressure, at serendipitous angles to take the form they do... but it's way more fun to think about aliens, time travellers and prehistoric civilizations
Ambient radiation has its origins in previous nuclear warfare, and all societies that have spawned since have had the proper tolerance.
Maybe.
Maybe.
Is it possible to come up with an unprovable/undisprovable scenario of a past civilization many years ago? Yes: they lived >55 millions years ago so artifacts are gone due to a full tectonic convection cycle causing all the artifacts to get melted. They also could have developed organic technology, and used it to erase the non-organic waste of their past.
I love the idea, it's amazing to think about. And it might be true.
However, we can't prove it, we can't disprove it, and it has no bearing on our current state. In the absence of evidence I've got to try to apply Occam's Razor, so the simplest of competing theories should be selected as the one to go with until/unless evidence shows otherwise. Which means we should consider humans the first advanced civilization on Earth until other evidence is found.
I love the idea, it's amazing to think about. And it might be true.
However, we can't prove it, we can't disprove it, and it has no bearing on our current state. In the absence of evidence I've got to try to apply Occam's Razor, so the simplest of competing theories should be selected as the one to go with until/unless evidence shows otherwise. Which means we should consider humans the first advanced civilization on Earth until other evidence is found.
Size matters! I think one of the key factors here is that a civilization that produces our level (or greater) of advanced technology has to be really big, in terms of numbers of individuals... an ancient city state of 100,000 - 1,000,000 people isn't going to develop quantum mechanics. You need a lot of people doing science to be able to figure all of this stuff out. And when a civilization gets this big, like ours, it does leave permanent marks, like some of the other comments here have correctly pointed out.
Not people. Dinosaurs, intelligent crocodiles, industrialised trilobites, whatever it might be. So many millions of years ago that there may be no such thing as permanent marks.
You possibly could be thinking about an Atlantis type of scenario, the idea that relatively advanced prehistoric human civilisations could have risen say 100,000 years ago and fallen without a trace (especially if they literally fell into the sea). Which does have some level of possibility, but indeed there isn't much chance they could have developed advanced sciences.
The thing is, though it seems far wackier, it's interesting to think that there literally could have been populations of millions of intelligent lizards (or whatever) for hundreds of thousands of years, and for the fossil record not to reflect it. It would be amazing if one day a cliff collapsed and we found an intact fossilised dinosaur airliner or whatever, but this article is about whether less direct evidence of such a civilisation, if it ever existed, would persist.
You possibly could be thinking about an Atlantis type of scenario, the idea that relatively advanced prehistoric human civilisations could have risen say 100,000 years ago and fallen without a trace (especially if they literally fell into the sea). Which does have some level of possibility, but indeed there isn't much chance they could have developed advanced sciences.
The thing is, though it seems far wackier, it's interesting to think that there literally could have been populations of millions of intelligent lizards (or whatever) for hundreds of thousands of years, and for the fossil record not to reflect it. It would be amazing if one day a cliff collapsed and we found an intact fossilised dinosaur airliner or whatever, but this article is about whether less direct evidence of such a civilisation, if it ever existed, would persist.
The realistic Atlantis scenario is not sinking, but being engulfed as the water level rises. 20,000 years ago, sea level was hundreds of feet lower. If any industry was confined to coastal lowlands, it is all deep under the sea, now, and under tens or hundreds of feet of mud, besides.
Off India, there are mile after mile of large buildings under 60 feet of water. They were last above water ~7000 years ago.
There are many, many thousands of square miles of recent land between Indonesia islands, more between Australia and New Guinea, and between Britain and northern Europe. The Black Sea was mostly dry remarkably recently.
Off India, there are mile after mile of large buildings under 60 feet of water. They were last above water ~7000 years ago.
There are many, many thousands of square miles of recent land between Indonesia islands, more between Australia and New Guinea, and between Britain and northern Europe. The Black Sea was mostly dry remarkably recently.