Could an industrial civilization have predated humans on Earth?

Post by dizkodo » Sat, Jul 15, 2023, 8:05 AM UTC

machina_ex_deus wrote: post #99

Eisenstein wrote: post #85

I can think of one plausible way that this happened: the simulation theory. Seeing as there are only a few logical options: * We stop being able to advance computing power * We somehow make it impossible or undesirable to create a realistic simulation * We destroy ourselves * We advance to the point where can and do create realistic simulations Then there is a very good chance that we are in fact, living in a simulat…

And then you remember that there are 10^23 particles in a single gram, which is in orders of magnitude of all CPUs on earth. We're as close in orders of magnitude to the size galaxy 10^20 as we are to the nucleus 10^-18. Or put it another way, there is the same amount of units of proton radius in 10 meters as there are 10 meters in the entire Galaxy. Another way to look at it, is that the most plausible assumption ab…

Post by jl6 » Sat, Jul 15, 2023, 8:07 AM UTC

dr_dshiv wrote: post #181

jl6 wrote: post #179

All the possibilities seem extremely unlikely, but I’ll add one more just for fun: We currently equate “advanced civilization” with “large scale”. But what if there was a small-scale advanced civilization? Small enough to evade detection using the crude geological tools at our disposal. Imagine a species that was both intelligent (like humans) and immortal (like jellyfish). With unbounded lifespans, they could do wor…

No benefit of scale or consumer society; without that, seems hard to get to chip fabs? But maybe writing and some machines?

Post by umlautae » Sat, Jul 15, 2023, 8:10 AM UTC

WalterBright wrote: post #82

tarikjn wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not pre-human but challenging the understood modern human timeline of industrialisation — We have not found the tools, but we may have found the products; in the form of stone-based vases that archeologists attribute to the Early Egyptian Period but are believed to be from much earlier, and would have required tools that have not been discovered yet. The channel UnchartedX make a compelling argument about this hypoth…

I recall TV shows saying that the Egyptian pyramids could not have been constructed with Egyptian technology, so it must have been space aliens. The same for the closely fitting stones in Inca buildings. It doesn't take advanced technology to do either of those things. My favorite one was pi is there in the relationship between the pyramid base length and its height, and the Egyptians had no notion of pi. Again, spac…

Post by yesco » Sat, Jul 15, 2023, 8:14 AM UTC

AlotOfReading wrote: post #35

tarikjn wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not pre-human but challenging the understood modern human timeline of industrialisation — We have not found the tools, but we may have found the products; in the form of stone-based vases that archeologists attribute to the Early Egyptian Period but are believed to be from much earlier, and would have required tools that have not been discovered yet. The channel UnchartedX make a compelling argument about this hypoth…

What a silly video. The argument he's making is called a unilinear teleology. History is not an arrow-line march from less advanced to more advanced, and it's incredibly common for the apparent workmanship of artifacts to "regress" as styles and intentions change over time. Just look at all the people who complain about modern art because "classical takes more skill". Also, there's essentially nothing you can't do wi…

Post by fsloth » Sat, Jul 15, 2023, 8:15 AM UTC

sigg3 wrote: post #163

AlotOfReading wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They were not. The primary stonework technique was almost certainly pecking [1], where you take a small "hammer" and whack it against the stone, pulverizing a bit at a time. This leaves a characteristic surface you can observe on the pillars today. However, the Gobekli Tepe builders were a bit smarter than just carving everything from scratch. They made use of the exposed limestone layers to quarry materials that wer…

People who shout about ancient aliens and hidden technology always completely ignore that the people in the past had access to the most advanced machinery available: humans. Add time to that, so that your project can have a scope of generations, passing down knowledge gained from a lifetime of doing this particular thing, the results become unsurprising even. Amazing, inspiring and ingenious but also unsurprising.