Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Could an industrial civilization have predated humans on Earth?

nautil.us

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

241–250 of 282 posts

Re: Could an industrial civilization have predated humans on Earth?

#241

Post by JumpCrisscross »

cubefox wrote: post #234
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> those surely fossilize (preserve over eons) much more rarely than many civilizational artifacts I don't think they would fossilise. It's a process specific to the porosity of organic tissue. They might be preserved, but the Cambridge paper explains why it’s unlikely they would last for a hundred millennia or more.

But surely it is much more unlikely that animal bones would last for a hundred millennia.

> surely it is much more unlikely that animal bones would last for a hundred millennia

Why? The Cambridge paper gives a scientist’s reasons for that not being the case being supposition.

Re: Could an industrial civilization have predated humans on Earth?

#242

Post by lumost »

andrewprock wrote: post #153
lumost wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pre-history is tough. Outside of written accounts and a few major cities cited in particular environments - there isn’t a lot of evidence about what humans were doing for 100k years before the Roman/Chinese empires formed. Even Egyptian history is pretty spotty. We know there were civilizations in North America such as the Mississippi River valley mound builders - but our knowledge tops out at “they existed”. It woul…

There is tons of archeological evidence dating back to the last ice age, roughly 10,000 years ago. Before that, there is ample evidence dating back to the middle paleolithic identifying cultural traditions including art, music, and ritual.

Ample is debatable. We have biased evidence from specific biomes and regions. We are restricted to artifacts that survived from this period - effectively tusks, rocks, and specific forms of art.

Re: Could an industrial civilization have predated humans on Earth?

#243

Post by Izkata »

fsloth wrote: post #190
colordrops wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Another argument goes that they transcending to technology and form beyond what we can comprehend, covered their tracks, and left us be because we aren't interesting or to avoid interfering in our development. Perhaps our perception through the 5 senses and an understanding of reality as a physical universe of spacetime is just a short phase between being an animal and being a multidimension being.

That’s basically a ”rapture” hypothesis. ”We can’t see them because of ancient technobabble sciencemagic lifted them to another realm”. In otherwords this is a supernatural, not natural hypothesis. In other words, that’s more of a religious rather than scientific hypothesis. It’s cool to have inspiration from where-ever, the whole point of religion and art is that they don’t need to be scientific. But one really shou…

A much less out-there version was in Star Trek, they built spaceships and left, bringing most/all of their civilization with them. That version was just treated as lost history, with whatever may have been left behind simply not having been found yet or having decayed over such a long time period.

Re: Could an industrial civilization have predated humans on Earth?

#244

Post by inglor_cz »

withinboredom wrote: post #208
cubefox wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> For example we've only found about one dinosaur fossil per 10,000 years of dinosaur history. The dinosaurs were around for a long time, from 65-250 million years ago. Dinosaurs presumably fossilize very badly compared to many artificial artifacts, like buildings made out of machined stone.

Man, I’ve been in castles that are less than a thousand years old that are barely recognizable. Machu pichu is a good one as well.

Castles that stay above ground, yes, but there likely would be some buried structures, too.

Pompeii looked remarkably fresh when dug out.

Re: Could an industrial civilization have predated humans on Earth?

#245

Post by inglor_cz »

EdwardDiego wrote: post #142
mrangle wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where are the tools that carved the high relief sculptures at Gobekli Tepe, around 12,000 years ago? Where are the high relief carvings that predate Gobekli Tepe, which served as the skill development toward it? For example. And we don't need to go nearly that far back to notice lack of ancient metal that had to exist, given what it accomplished. Metal disintegrates fast. Megalithic evidence, at minimum and across hi…

Serious question, do we know that metal tools were used for those carvings? From what I recall, until iron/steel was invented, it was pretty much abrasion as bronze was not hard enough to chisel nearly every stone.

Metal is too precious to be just abandoned. Metal is usually recycled, even in our civilization.

Whatever metal objects from ancient civilizations we know, are either grave goods (swords of warriors etc.), or were found in shipwrecks etc., or were found in destroyed settlements, plus a few accidentally lost (fell into a well etc.). But most metal objects get recycled.

Re: Could an industrial civilization have predated humans on Earth?

#246

Post by inglor_cz »

mrangle wrote: post #117
thrashh wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s possible that they don’t have the same materials as us but they would have the same problems. Take plastic or metal. Their main draw is that they do not decompose or degrade. There are a billion problems that can be solved when you have a material that does not naturally degrade or decompose. So even if this civilization did not use plastic or metal, I find it hard to believe they didn’t come across a problem…

Absolutely metal and plastic decompose and break down, respectively.

Not all metal. Buried gold retrieved from ancient graves looks very "fresh".

Re: Could an industrial civilization have predated humans on Earth?

#247

Post by inglor_cz »

naasking wrote: post #25
BuyMyBitcoins wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I figure that any industrialized civilization would have left indirect evidence of itself by mucking up the fossil record with introduced species. We intentionally and unintentionally introduce plants and animals far outside their natural range. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Columbian_exchange You would see some species inexplicably take on a worldwide distribution, or see species suddenly turn up on far away landm…

How many introduced species are there as a percentage of all existing species? This seems like an important number to calculate the probability that we might have missed such an introduced species given the fossil record we have. It could also be that introduced species are less likely to be found in the fossil record for whatever reason. Then again, maybe we have found such a thing but haven't recognized it for what…

"are there as a percentage of all existing species"

Percentage of total biomass is more interesting. The more (and bigger) bodies, the higher the likelihood of being fossilized.

Re: Could an industrial civilization have predated humans on Earth?

#248

Post by inglor_cz »

greatfilter250 wrote: post #56
BuyMyBitcoins wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I figure that any industrialized civilization would have left indirect evidence of itself by mucking up the fossil record with introduced species. We intentionally and unintentionally introduce plants and animals far outside their natural range. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Columbian_exchange You would see some species inexplicably take on a worldwide distribution, or see species suddenly turn up on far away landm…

> worldwide distribution Why does an industrial civilization need to be global? Our industrial civilization appeared extremely quickly, perhaps in the past 300 years, but it happened to appear within a preexisting global trade and travel network. An industrial civilization which existed for a few hundred years, outside the context of such a network, might not ever see the need for one.

If the beings that created it were capable of living across the globe, and not limited, say, to the equatorial region, it is somewhat likely that such civilization would diffuse much like human industrial civilization did; older, less efficient societal structures would be unable to compete with it.

Re: Could an industrial civilization have predated humans on Earth?

#249

Post by inglor_cz »

john_max_1 wrote: post #140

One thing I always wonder is bury vs cremation. Hindus, 1/6th of the world population usually cremate their dead. The bodies are gone. And the bones are washed away into ganges. I would guess Hindus in USA or Europe would do the same. An archeological study of skeletons in 4000 AD would drastically undercount groups that cremate their dead. Or won't it?

Most cultures that cremate their dead won't throw the ashes into the Ganges (not even most Hindus, historically - the vast majority of Indians don't live within walking distance from the Ganges), but bury them in urns, which are often very recognizable in the archeologic record.

Re: Could an industrial civilization have predated humans on Earth?

#250

Post by Starwatcher2001 »

tarikjn wrote: post #45
AlotOfReading wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

As someone who works with manufacturing, I don’t think it’s silly. Precision is not just a function of time available, manpower and talent, but also tooling technology. Manufacturing a single replica with today’s technology is believed to be challenging — and has not been attempted yet — but hopefully someone will take the challenge soon. There are no serious claims that these can be made with known ancient technolog…

Amateur telescope makers can make glass mirrors accurate to 1/10 of the wavelength of light using very simple tools and processes.

https://www.bbastrodesigns.com/JoyOfMirrorMaking/Intro.html

Post reply on HN