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Silurian Hypothesis

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Re: Silurian Hypothesis

#51

Post by bayesian_horse »

motohagiography wrote: post #50

The genius of this Silurian hypothesis and related ones is that they are theories of archeology where you start with an unfalsifiable premise, and then anything that fails to falsify it becomes evidence for the theory, hence "ancient astronaut theorists say 'yes'" I discovered that ancient aliens TV series just before the pandemic and have binged it as a kind of esoteric comedy, where every confirmation of the theory…

Not the same thing. This "silurian hypothesis" is not so much asking the question about the existence of a pre-human industrial civilization but rather to what degree we could rule it out.

It's a rather implausible proposition, after all, so it would take extraordinary evidence. And that evidence might not survive that long? But this doesn't make the proposition more likely.

Re: Silurian Hypothesis

#52

Post by bayesian_horse »

Without having read the paper, my first counterargument would be like this: Yes, fossilization is rare. But industrialization is a wildfire. A spezies undergoing this would multiply like crazy and there would soon be hundreds of millions of the same exact species around. That's just talking steam power. Going to space? Hard to believe they'd achieve that without reaching a billion or more. Assuming similar productivity of course.

Hundreds of millions, much less a few billions individuals of the same exact creatures living and dying would lead to a rather distorted fossil record, wouldn't it? Even if they used cremation, they should still be distorting the fossil record just from those bodies that "fall aside" somehow. Also because they'd need domestic animals and they'd kill off or supress other macrofauna. They would have to be giant squids to not leave behind MUCH of a fossil record, and then survive against the biggest and baddest dinosaurs...

Re: Silurian Hypothesis

#53

Post by spacecity1971 »

zw123456 wrote: post #21

I wrote a novel, I know, every asshole has. About this. My theory, that is, either ridiculous or correct, the Silurians are the ancestors of the dolphin. The dolphin, or OK, the Orca, have a larger cerebral cortex than humans. What if, they were on once land dwellers, could it be? There is some science behind that. And say, they burned a bunch of hydrocarbons and caused a global warming, melted all the ice and they h…

What if the more difficult to explain parts of the UAP phenomenon is our experience of the remnant of that previous civilization? It never went extinct, it just moved into space and the bottom of the oceans. We're ants, unaware of the civilization that surrounds us because it is to alien/advanced for us to comprehend.

Re: Silurian Hypothesis

#54

Post by shantara »

sampo wrote: post #34
dcminter wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you enjoy that kind of thing then you might like Terry Pratchett's early SF work "Strata" that riffs heavily on this idea (on a less parochial scale) while also enjoyably sending up Niven's Ringworld and a few other tomes.

There is also 2022 Netflix series "Ancient Apocalypse", presenting a theory that there was a civilization (not industrial, but like Romans or Egyptians) living on the coastal areas during last ice age, but their traces have disappeared now that sea level is 120 meters higher than during ice age. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancient_Apocalypse

In the same vein, I’ve heard historians theorize that Doggerland was the most comfortable area for human habitation in Northern Europe during its existence, with its lowlands, lakes and river systems perfectly matching the landscape of the other ancient civilization centers. The lands of the modern UK and Scandinavia were by comparison inhospitable highlands, where humans have moved after their ancestral lands were flooded.

See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doggerland and the episode of BBC In Our Time podcast on the subject.

Re: Silurian Hypothesis

#55

Post by j-bos »

spacecity1971 wrote: post #53
zw123456 wrote: post #21

I wrote a novel, I know, every asshole has. About this. My theory, that is, either ridiculous or correct, the Silurians are the ancestors of the dolphin. The dolphin, or OK, the Orca, have a larger cerebral cortex than humans. What if, they were on once land dwellers, could it be? There is some science behind that. And say, they burned a bunch of hydrocarbons and caused a global warming, melted all the ice and they h…

What if the more difficult to explain parts of the UAP phenomenon is our experience of the remnant of that previous civilization? It never went extinct, it just moved into space and the bottom of the oceans. We're ants, unaware of the civilization that surrounds us because it is to alien/advanced for us to comprehend.

Spoilers for Robin Cook's Abduction. Fun read.

Re: Silurian Hypothesis

#56

Post by pffft8888 »

dghf wrote: post #22
pffft8888 wrote: post #13

They just found stone tools from 3M years ago in Kenya, so I assume they can also find fosilized artifacts from that long ago. But the Wikipedia article says that's not likely. The claim that it is unlikely seems to be inconsistent with the evidence.

Doesn't the hypothesis concern the possibility of civilisations a lot older than three million years, though?

The dinosaur fossils are at least from 65M years ago! If there is evidence, we'd see it in the fossilized records. The 3M figure was for stone tools, which was unexpected, but still they showed up. Any evidence of the existence of an advanced civilization tens or hundreds of millions of years ago that coincides with the dinosaurs would show up in the fossil records.

Re: Silurian Hypothesis

#57

Post by kerpotgh »

JoeDaDude wrote: post #25
simonh wrote: post #16

It’s true that only very few individuals would be fossilised and fewer if they found. Nevertheless we do generally find multiple fossils of the same or closely related species. We also find fossils of multiple stages in the evolution of many species. So it seems unlikely to me that we would find zero fossils of a species advanced enough to colonise the entire planet, as we have, nor any of their ancestral species. It…

In my will, I'm going to ask that I be buried in soft mud in a river delta, or some similar place likely to become sedimentary rock in the far future. But I also want to be buried with some relic that proves I was a member of a technically literate civilization. I surmise something like a wooden abacus. The wooden abacus would fossilize along with my remains. I hope my fossil, and the fossilized object I carry, will…

[dead]

Re: Silurian Hypothesis

#58

Post by 8bitsrule »

Anyone interested in this topic might enjoy reading Forbidden Archeology by Michael A. Cremo. There are a lot of anomalies out there, and this catalog documents them well (so much so that there's an abridged version that leaves out the documentation).

Re: Silurian Hypothesis

#59

Post by simonh »

aetherson wrote: post #38
simonh wrote: post #16

It’s true that only very few individuals would be fossilised and fewer if they found. Nevertheless we do generally find multiple fossils of the same or closely related species. We also find fossils of multiple stages in the evolution of many species. So it seems unlikely to me that we would find zero fossils of a species advanced enough to colonise the entire planet, as we have, nor any of their ancestral species. It…

So this article: https://www.science.org/content/article/most-species-disappe... says that of modern threatened-but-not-extinct mammal species, we have recorded fossils for 9% of them. For non-threatened extant mammal species, we have recorded fossils for 20% of them. Assuming that's correct, it doesn't seem crazy to imagine that we might not have fossils for a species or it's say 5 ancestors species that existed let…

Considering an extant species is like picking an arbitrary point in the existence of a past species, and excluding all fossils formed after that point. On average that half the fossils. As for threatened species, just a guess, but I’d expect most of those to be likely have relatively small populations to start with and live in constrained habitats, all factors that would tend to mean they would leave a lot fewer fossils on average anyway.

A advanced technological species would need to exist in huge numbers to support a developed economy. Id expect them to colonise widely. Also I’d expect artefacts to exceed individuals by probably a handful of orders of magnitude.

Re: Silurian Hypothesis

#60

Post by dghf »

pffft8888 wrote: post #56
dghf wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Doesn't the hypothesis concern the possibility of civilisations a lot older than three million years, though?

The dinosaur fossils are at least from 65M years ago! If there is evidence, we'd see it in the fossilized records. The 3M figure was for stone tools, which was unexpected, but still they showed up. Any evidence of the existence of an advanced civilization tens or hundreds of millions of years ago that coincides with the dinosaurs would show up in the fossil records.

I’m not an expert, nor even a well-informed layman, but my understanding is they argue that fossilisation is extremely rare, rare enough for a civilisation that may have only lasted a few hundred years to slip through unnoticed.

See, for example, https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-00984-2 — only 32 adult T. rex have been found [as of the date of the article], even though the species existed for two million years or so.

Are they overstating things?

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