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posted by mrpg on Thursday April 19 2018, @07:37PM   Printer-friendly
from the Wakanda dept.

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


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  • (Score: 2) by frojack on Friday April 20 2018, @01:56AM

    by frojack (1554) on Friday April 20 2018, @01:56AM (#669448) Journal

    never know what materials and architecture such a civilization *may* have used.

    Listen to yourself!!!!??

    We live on the same planet as these putative prior industrial civilizations.
    The used exactly what we have under our feet.

    If they were a colony of advanced bumblebees they still had only what is on hand on the planet.
    They had to eat. So worst case, they lived in the sea. But if they were industrial, you can bet they didn't
    build everything in sand castles.

    Same Planet. Same materials.

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