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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: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 20 2018, @03:28PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 20 2018, @03:28PM (#669672)

    How many dinosaurs ever lived? Probably billions. How many eggs did they lay? Many, many billions certainly. How many of those have we found? Very few.

    You *almost* got it here, but then missed it completely...
    We're talking about a possible *industrial* civilization. How many structures would they have built? How many screwdrivers would they have had? Screws? Arrowheads?
    How many of those have we found? Zero.
    Sure, anything can be destroyed by millions of years of erosion. But, not *everything*.