"We think we're the first advanced earthlings -- but how ...." Topic

….do we really know?.

"Imagine if, many millions of years ago, dinosaurs drove cars through cities of mile-high buildings. A preposterous idea, right? Over the course of tens of millions of years, however, all of the direct evidence of a civilization -- its artifacts and remains -- gets ground to dust. How do we really know, then, that there weren't previous industrial civilizations on Earth that rose and fell long before human beings appeared?…."

Main page
link

Amicalement
Armand

An interesting article on civilization and paleontology quickly morphs into… a discussion of global warming. Sigh.

On the one hand, this is an eerie truth. Vast metropolises and all they contained could have been ground to unrecognizable crumbs by plate tectonics if nothing else.

On the other hand, we've got fossils of nothing that had anything close to the brain capacity and manipulative dexterity to have built much, so there's probably nothing there. Even if the advanced civilization cremated (or whatever) all its dead, we'd see their precursors.

*Unless* they were few in number and had no precursors, i.e. they came from somewhere else. Time to re-read Shadow Out Of Time!

The other unless is Antarctica. I almost feel like not paying attention to Paleontology and Paleobotany because everything will have to be re-written when we dig up all the fossils that are under that snow and ice. Paleontology feels like predicting the outcome of the election with less than 1% of the vote counted. I know that's an exaggeration, but that's how it feels.

On the other hand, we've got fossils of nothing that had anything close to the brain capacity and manipulative dexterity to have built much,…..

This.

This is the same nonsense as Atlantian civilizations, etc, with just a longer time scale. No advanced civilisations pop out of nowhere without any antecedents. There are no fossils of dinosaurs that would be capable of building a fire pit, let alone mile high skyscrapers.

Speaking of which, it would be folly to expect a 100 million mile high building to survive. Or even it's component parts. But the building materials of such an advanced structure should be discoverable. Even if the alloys broke down into their subsequent titanium, aluminium, steel elements I suspect the distribution of these compounds would raise flags for today's geologists.

What fuels would these civilised dinosaurs have used? The same non-reliable ones we do today?

We would also have a good radioactive foot print of this ur-civilization. If they could build mile high buildings, then they could split the atom. Where is their waste material?

This is a thought experiment, so that the professor's students do the same sort of thinking as done on this thread. And the environmental concerns are not out of place here. We have ample evidence of previous civilizations that collapsed due to these oversights.

This is just an episode of Star Trek Voyager.

(smile)

Amicalement
Armand

Andrew: "quickly morphs into… a discussion of global warming. Sigh."

Are you surprised? :)

Dan