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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 urza9814 on Thursday April 19 2018, @11:52PM
Yes, we have a few samples of these creatures that covered the globe. But it takes very specific conditions to create a fossil that survives this long. You think some ancient civilization went around building their structures in tar pits? Probably not...
And we don't know even what they would be building out of. Consider plastics, for example, which we tend to make out of petroleum. Would they have had petroleum? I'm not sure...the stuff we're using is mostly from the dinosaurs, so if they were living at that time, I highly doubt they would have had the same easy access to such fuels as we do today. Without fossil fuels and the cheap and dense energy they provide our current technological society could not exist. Our industrial revolution may not have happened. So assuming any previous technological society would build the same kinds of structures as we do today seems somewhat baseless. They might not have had enough energy for that.