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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 wonkey_monkey on Thursday April 19 2018, @10:28PM (1 child)
We've found dinosaur and other fossils going back many more millions of years than 10. If there was another industrial society, how have we missed either that population or their ancestors in the fossil record?
systemd is Roko's Basilisk
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Monday April 23 2018, @07:01PM
It's easy. We humans have only been around about 2 million years, and we've only been industrial for a few hundred. The planet is at least 4 billion years old; our industrial period is a tiny drop in the bucket. The fossil record is extremely incomplete; we only got lucky and have gotten some glimpses into the past with fossils, but they're basically snapshots in time, where some lifeforms were captured by an unusual event (volcano, tar pits, tree sap, etc.) and their remains turned to rock instead of being decomposed as they normally are. The fossil record is nowhere near complete, and it spans hundreds of millions of years. If another species had enough intelligence to build some kind of pre-industrial society that lasted for a millenium, we'd probably miss it (I'm talking about a society like our medieval European society: no concrete, but stone houses/castles for a few rich people, some metalworking) as the ruins would be covered up by geological processes over eons. An actual industrial society (concrete & steel buildings, roads, etc.) that lasted for a few centuries too could easily be hidden after being buried for millions of years.
It's probably not likely (as there are a lot of places where the geological record is quite obvious), but it is possible, esp. if their society wasn't that extensive and didn't cover the entire planet like ours does, and also it's more possible the farther back in time you go.