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Can We Be Sure We're the First Industrial Civilization on Earth?
In a new paper, Gavin Schmidt of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies and Adam Frank from the University of Rochester ask a provocative question [open, DOI: 10.1017/S1473550418000095] [DX]: Could there have been an industrial civilization on Earth millions of years ago? And if so, what evidence of it would we be able to find today?
The authors first considered what signs of industrial civilization would be expected to survive in the geological record. In our own time, these include plastics, synthetic pollutants, increased metal concentrations, and evidence of large-scale energy use, such as carbon-based fossil fuels. Taken together, they mark what some scientists call the Anthropocene era, in which humans are having a significant and measurable impact on our planet.
The authors conclude, however, that it would be very difficult after tens of millions of years to distinguish these industrial byproducts from the natural background. Even plastic, which was previously thought to be quite resistant, can be degraded by enzymes relatively quickly. Only radiation from nuclear power plants—or from a nuclear war—would be discernible in the geological rock record after such a long time.
Anonymous Coward says "I told you so!" and starts babbling about megaliths.
Related: Homo Sapiens Began Advanced Toolmaking, Pigment Use, and Trade Earlier Than Previously Thought
(Score: 3, Insightful) by JoeMerchant on Thursday April 19 2018, @08:21PM (5 children)
Humbug! [memegenerator.net]
Did this civilization have no ego? Did they create nothing as durable as a dinosaur bone? Sure, lots of things would vanish, but unless the civilization was vanishingly small, someone, somewhere in the thousands of chemical capable, power using, industrial denziens would have carved something out of granite, probably hundreds or even thousands of somethings (think: Rapa Nui).
The continents move, rise and fall, and in millions of years lots of things will disappear, but not everything. Even geneticists should be able to point to markers in present day DNA to the effects of an industrial civilization millions of years ago.
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(Score: 2) by jimtheowl on Thursday April 19 2018, @10:22PM (4 children)
".. the current area of urbanization is 'less than' 1% of the Earth's surface (Schneider et al., 2009), and exposed sections and drilling sites for pre-Quaternary surfaces are orders of magnitude less as fractions of the original surface. Note that even for early human technology, complex objects are very rarely found. For instance, the Antikythera Mechanism (ca. 205 BCE) is a unique object until the Renaissance."
"Even geneticists should be able to point to markers in present day DNA to the effects of an industrial civilization millions of years ago."
I believe that you are making an erroneous assumption. What would an industrial civilization DNA marker look like, and what is there to say that we have successfully ruled them out?
(Score: 2, Informative) by khallow on Friday April 20 2018, @12:21AM
The actual land area used for human activities is far greater than that. You have about a third devoted to agriculture and pasture land. You have somewhere around 5% used for the road system.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Friday April 20 2018, @03:45AM (2 children)
Again, utterly deceptive twaddlespeak, says I.
Creation of artifacts and monuments is not limited to urban areas. Rushmore's big strokes may erode in a few million years, but the smaller evidence of stone working will linger longer, and some tourist's piece of stone imported from somewhere weird left on the ground will be another strong clue that "creatures that moved long distances, carried things, and carved stone" were there.
The distribution of asphalt and concrete of the modern road system will still leave signs across the developed world for millions of years - not as clear as Roman roads are today, but an 18" thick vein of asphalt on a uniform crushed rock base stretching in two tracks 40' wide for hundreds of miles? That's a bit more clue than Slartibadfast's Fjords.
Based on modern experience? Domestication of both animals and plants. Vast explosions of monocultures and a major extinction event. Sudden death to dangerous predators, megafauna and easy prey.
"Civilization" didn't really go industrial until after we had more or less conquered the globe anyway. The industrial revolution just sealed the deal. Could a species "go industrial" without first conquering the globe? Sure, anything is possible - but is it probable? Once h. sapiens had steam power, we quickly spread to every scrap of habitable land on the planet. The Mayans knew about the wheel but didn't use it much beyond toys... is a civilization truly industrial if they know how to harness chemical and electrical power, but fail to put it into mass use?
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(Score: 2) by jimtheowl on Saturday April 21 2018, @07:25PM (1 child)
I do not think the implication was that it is.
"Rushmore's big strokes may erode in a few million years"
Not only that, but like the head of the Sphinx, it is not even an indication of an Industrial civilization.
"distribution of asphalt and concrete of the modern road system will still leave signs across the developed world for millions of years"
Beside the fact that asphalt is expensive and typically recovered and re-mixed before it is applied again, I'm pretty sure that a 3 kilometer think grinding ice sheet would take care of that in a few thousand years, if it doesn't end up at the bottom of the ocean. Romans roads do not serve the point you are trying to illustrate as they are only a couple or few thousand years old. I suppose you have never observed how vegetation can take over and break down an unmaintained asphalt road over a few decades.
"Domestication of both animals and plants. Vast explosions of monocultures and a major extinction event. Sudden death to dangerous predators, megafauna and easy prey."
These are not really DNA markers, and a past civilized society wouldn't necessarily behave like some behave today.
Mayans... a discussion about how the steam Engine and how it was invented to pump water out of coal mines in England would be more on topic, but the real point was whether is is possible that an industrial civilization could have existed before without us having yet found proof of it.
Likely not, I think, but if there were, it wouldn't be as easy to find out as most people educating themselves watching television seem to think. Nevertheless, you obviously are satisfied with your conclusions.
Fine with me, and all the best.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Sunday April 22 2018, @12:09AM
The Mount Rushmore dig 6 million years from now will reveal something quite different from the Sphinx. The Sphinx was a hand labor of a large number of people, Mount Rushmore had a tiny labor force using technology to amplify their efforts. The giant pile of chiseled scree, which will probably survive burial underwater still showing signs of itself, shows the kinds of tools and methods used to carve - not to mention the network of roads around it which will also leave some long lasting traces in the soil layers.
If it's not in a continental subduction zone, it will be carrying the post-industrial marks of humanity for a long long time.
Yes, but, like the Mayan pyramids, the vegetation will erode, disrupt and slightly displace a road, but it won't digest it, particularly the thick bed under the asphalt. Glacier scrub could be a pretty effective surface wipe, but the bottom of the ocean is a preservation zone, depositing layer upon layer of protective silt preserving the structure of what's underneath.
I would hope not, but what civilized society hasn't domesticated animals?
And you yours, also. All the best as well.
Television and movies actually went on a kick about what the earth would look like after mankind dies off, around the time of that Will Smith epidemic movie. They got into all the various things that erode, and don't. They didn't get into geologic time, but of the fairly numerous things that last tens of thousands of years, some of those (not all) will be ending up in places not scrubbed by glaciers, subducted into the mantle, obliterated by asteroid strike, etc.
My basic conclusion is this: if something (that we recognize) as industrial society both existed and covered the globe (which I would consider more or less inevitable for an industrial society that we recognize as such), then, by now, we would have noticed. It wouldn't be Tomb Raider caches of Antikythera mechanisms, it would be patterns in the sediments, anomalies in the layers, a global strata of mixed up weirdness. For God's sake, they're confirming layers from impact events and small-ish volcanoes millions of years ago by their similarity around the world, if a civilization even only ran for 100 years before flaming out, that's a pretty heavy layer around the globe compared to the Arizona Crater fallout.
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