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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: 2) by JoeMerchant on Thursday April 19 2018, @08:49PM (6 children)
If the Mayans died out and nobody replaced them, a couple of thousand years of jungle action would hide their civilization well, but not so well that it wouldn't be found eventually.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 19 2018, @08:58PM (1 child)
Imagine if all those precious metals we were mining out of the earth in atomic or oxidized states were in fact the remains of past civilizations. Perhaps even the easy to access metals from tens of thousands of years in the past were originally monuments to past civilizations, but not being sufficiently intelligent, educated, scientifically curious they were melted down and made into new precious items for the following civilizations.
Lots of possible ways that remnants of past civilizations were destroyed. Just think about how much of that has gone on thanks to redevelopment efforts in the modern world, and with less enlightened civilizations sometimes discovered artifacts would be intentionally destroyed because the record of their existence was considered a threat to the status quo.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday April 20 2018, @02:02AM
The problem is that we're a lot better at finding such artifacts than those primitive cultures would be.
(Score: 2) by TheRaven on Friday April 20 2018, @10:38AM (3 children)
sudo mod me up
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Friday April 20 2018, @01:04PM (2 children)
Isn't that basically what the whole field of anthropology is about?
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by TheRaven on Saturday April 21 2018, @12:09PM (1 child)
sudo mod me up
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Saturday April 21 2018, @02:26PM
Anthropology: We extrapolate a lot, full stop.
🌻🌻 [google.com]