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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: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 19 2018, @08:57PM (2 children)
Human beings have unbounded capacity for ignoring an inconvenient reality.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/True-believer_syndrome [wikipedia.org]
Given that, we can expect any number of "unexplainable" archaeological finds to have no more effect on "scientific consensus", than the whole of paleontology and geology has on the belief system of young-earth creationists.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Out-of-place_artifact [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 2, Insightful) by khallow on Friday April 20 2018, @12:07AM
No, we don't "expect" that. You made an assertion and failed to back it up with evidence (which is a typical "ignoring an inconvenient reality" move). And what "unexplainable" archeology is there? Is this going to be yet another tall tale where slight cases of our ignorance of the past, such as the construction of the Göbekli Tepe [wikipedia.org] site, are going to be exaggerated into imaginary global civilizations which somehow never managed to do anything worthy of being called "global"?
You're too invested in your narrative. Come up with evidence first, then we'll have something to speak of.
(Score: 2) by frojack on Friday April 20 2018, @02:01AM
Except YOU of course, you figured out in the spacce of a minute and a half what the problem with human civilization was, and slapped it into a computer in a 7 line paragraph. Nobody in history has ever done that.
You must be VERY special. Your parents must have been brilliant.
Such hubris!
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.