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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, Interesting) by KritonK on Friday April 20 2018, @09:15AM (2 children)
Ours is the first industrial civilization, but only by a hair. The ancient Greeks were about to begin their industrial revolution, when the middle ages happened.
I once saw a documentary, demonstrating that the ancient Greeks had all the parts of the technology required to build a steam engine, describing each part, then combining them one by one, to build such a device. Had they built it, the industrial revolution would have happened almost 2000 years ago, and this site would have been called something like «εἰδήσεις σογιοφακῆς».
I can't find the documentary on line, but here's the trailer [youtube.com] for the series. The Rube Goldberg device shown at 0:07 is a proposed steam-powered version of the hydraulis [wikipedia.org], combining about half of the components required to build a steam engine.
(Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Friday April 20 2018, @06:10PM (1 child)
Ancient Egyptians invented the first steam engine. [techdigg.com]
Although, between the Nile for transportation and slaves for everything else it never occurred to them to use it as a labor-saving device.
(Score: 2) by KritonK on Sunday April 22 2018, @01:15PM
Um, this particular steam engine was invented by Hero of Alexandria [wikipedia.org], a Greek. Alexandria may have been situated in Egypt, but it was a Greek city, founded by a certain Greek called Alexander [wikipedia.org]; you may have heard of him.
If you check the trailer, that I mentioned, you can see that it is this particular steam-powered toy (not quite a steam engine) that powers the steam-powered hydraulis that they show, and could have been incorporated in a proper steam engine.