The Silurian Hypothesis (2020) • Hacker News Board

Re: The Silurian Hypothesis (2020)

#91

Post by jknoepfler » Sat, Jul 25, 2026, 9:14 PM UTC

senshan wrote: post #49

graemep wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think there is no evidence for it, but I think the point of the Silurain hypothesis (which the article does not convey well) is that if there were such civilisations we would not know as its unlikely we would find any evidence.

So it not a falsifiable statement from the onset? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falsifiability

It is falsifiable, in the sense that we have ample evidence of the many forms of life that have existed on earth... including fossil evidence, genetic evidence, preserved tissue samples and a long litany of other pieces of data broadly consilient with our understanding the biological timeline.

On the other hand, we have zero evidence of Silurians or whatever.

Those two observations are inconsistent and require explanation.

Sure, one can hedge and qualify and excuse or whatever, and on pain of irrationality we have to allow that it's possible we're missing evidence of one of a bajillion possible competing hypotheses about intelligent life... but the theory most consistent with the evidence we have is that there wasn't any.

That's falsifiable enough for me?

The criterion of falsifiability pushed by positivists is kind of crappy anyway, it doesn't speak well to how we build models of the world while doing actual empirical work (and is itself non-falsifiable), but in practical terms idk, I don't see much to recommend the Silurian Hypothesis over the null hypothesis, so to speak.

Re: The Silurian Hypothesis (2020)

#92

Post by mda » Sat, Jul 25, 2026, 9:16 PM UTC

hliyan wrote: post #17

I don't think we have to go that far back. Plate tectonics, submersion and weathering does a good enough job of wiping the slate clean off the surface of the Earth, that any evidence of earlier hominids developing pre-industrial, coastal civilizations say, a million years ago, would be now under the crust. What we consider civilization is about 5000 years old, so it's not inconceivable that the cycle might have occur…

Are you sure? what about fossils and other remains? So far there is zero evidence that there was an advanced or non advanced civilization. Unfortunately this nonsense is the bread and butter ot pseudo archeologists.

Re: The Silurian Hypothesis (2020)

#93

Post by krapp » Sat, Jul 25, 2026, 9:20 PM UTC

amazingamazing wrote: post #22

nkrisc wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We’ll never know of the existence of most species that ever existed. Fossilization is rare.

right, so how can one easily say this hypothesis is false? "advanced civilization" seems to be strangely characterized. would something a few steps above beavers be advanced enough?

When people speculate about "advanced" ancient civilizations they usually mean said civilizations had technology at least as advanced as our own if not more so like nuclear weapons, antigravity, modern manufacturing and engineering, etc. A hypothesis that millions of years ago humans or some progenitor could build rough shelters out of sticks isn't particularly interesting.

Re: The Silurian Hypothesis (2020)

#94

Post by Diogenesian » Sat, Jul 25, 2026, 9:22 PM UTC

jerf wrote: post #88

Diogenesian wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The exception that proves the rule is a nuclear reactor from Gabon that dates to 1.7bn years ago... and which was clearly natural, a uranium-rich cave got flooded and went supercritical: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oklo Of course we haven't discovered everything. But it seems very likely that if there were a civilization's worth of slag from 500m years ago, we would have discovered it. A more interesting question i…

People get way too excited about the word "reactor". They hear "reactor" and think "oh, a natural formation of uranium was evaporating water into steam and generating electricity". They don't consciously examine that, of course, but it's clear a lot of people are letting that in unexamined. What really happened is that some uranium got concentrated, and then it did was uranium does. Similarly, if you want to make a v…

The first part of your comment seems to be replying to a pure strawman, and missing the point of my argument. My point was even small natural reactors leave very obvious evidence, so it seems like a city's worth of metallurgy could be detected 200m years later, probably by a surprised geologist in the 1800s. The fact that we haven't seen anything is conclusive evidence that modern humans were the first metallurgists.

  Yes, that's why I'm careful to qualify it with "technological", which is by implication the whole thing we do with metals and minerals and oil and all that stuff.

"And minerals" is doing a lot of work, and it is just wrong to exclude plant/animal domestication from technology. Likewise earthworks, irrigation, trading networks and currency, etc. You're being very dismissive and closed-minded about what technology is. ("lived like hippies")

In particular, there don't seem to have been any dinosaurs that had anything like primate hands, so they would have never built real tools or weapons, or manipulated fires. That doesn't close off the possibility of an "advanced civilization" unless you mean "uses tools as fancy as ours." We don't actually know what 200,000 years of natural domestication would look like.

Re: The Silurian Hypothesis (2020)

#95

Post by T-A » Sat, Jul 25, 2026, 9:23 PM UTC

throw310822 wrote: post #55

T-A wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>We also produce an absolutely staggering amount of artifacts of all kinds, from plastic straws to giant tunnels and artificial caves. Plastic will be gone in ~1000 years, https://www.activesustainability.com/environment/waste-plane... tunnels and artificial caves in a few million years at most as they are compressed by the weight of the rocks above them ("tunnel squeezing").

How long to dissolve carved stone sculptures (in sizes ranging from 1cm to 100m?) And how long does it take to dissolve skin? Footprints? Because we have those from hundreds of millions of years ago.

> How long to dissolve carved stone sculptures (in sizes ranging from 1cm to 100m?)

A quick search on "rock weathering depth per century" suggests a "typical range" of 0.05 mm to 6 mm, depending on rock type and environmental factors. At 0.05 mm, a stone object with radius 0.5 cm would crumble in 10000 years. With radius 50 m, it would take 100 million years.

I would expect them to be unrecognizable long before that though.

> And how long does it take to dissolve skin? Footprints? Because we have those from hundreds of millions of years ago.

What do those findings tell you about the cognitive abilities and social organization of the creatures who left them behind?

Re: The Silurian Hypothesis (2020)

#96

Post by andrewflnr » Sat, Jul 25, 2026, 9:44 PM UTC

jerf wrote: post #89

akoboldfrying wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> People get stuck on the idea that the only way to determine there was intelligent life earlier is to find a super complicated artifact which obviously can't survive Why is it obvious that none of them can survive? Ordinary bones can become rocks (fossils) that are preserved. If mining of iron ore is visible, things would have been made out of iron -- wouldn't a large structure made out of iron leave some trace? Or…

I'm not to stuck on the complete, 100% impossibility of things to be found. But one counterargument that can be made is that fossilization requires very specific circumstances, and the legacy of the dinosaurs is from millions of years of opportunities. A blip of a 500 year civilization might not leave much behind. No, I wouldn't expect a big pile of iron to leave anything interesting behind. It would rust, and rust h…

I think concrete is one of the biggest signs of humanity that will be detectable in millions of years. It's very durable and we make a lot of it in big concentrations, like the foundations of buildings in a big city. It's not an especially advanced technology either, compared to say titanium or plastic. The Romans already had it.

Re: The Silurian Hypothesis (2020)

#97

Post by gregdaniels421 » Sat, Jul 25, 2026, 9:45 PM UTC

sgt101 wrote: post #75

graemep wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If whole populations were wiped out and the world was repopulated by a small remnant would that not account for it? Or if an extinct human species had an advanced civilisation?

My thoughts: Civilisation implies large scale agriculture. Large scale agriculture implies specific pollen signatures. We don't see any of these signatures in the pollen records dredged up from lakes and seas. There was no previous civilisation in the last 1.4m years (this is the depth of the pollen records we have I think).

The proper Silurian period had no pollen, so that wouldn't make any sense.

Re: The Silurian Hypothesis (2020)

#98

Post by cwmoore » Sat, Jul 25, 2026, 9:51 PM UTC

AlotOfReading wrote: post #64

graemep wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If whole populations were wiped out and the world was repopulated by a small remnant would that not account for it? Or if an extinct human species had an advanced civilisation?

The founder effect differs between small populations filtered from a large population vs a smaller parent population. I want to point out that the silurian hypothesis is specifically about civilizations removed from us by geologic time. Advanced human precursor civilizations are much more effectively ruled out by the current evidence. Basically, a hypothetical precursor society either has to look very different from…

“Basically, a hypothetical precursor society . . . has to materialize out of nowhere like alien colonists, or they didn't exist.”

Proof aliens exist—thermodynamics, no materialization out of nowhere.

There are layers ;)

Re: The Silurian Hypothesis (2020)

#99

Post by SilentM68 » Sat, Jul 25, 2026, 9:51 PM UTC

I really enjoyed this article. It was a very pleasant read. The author should write a book and or movie script. The original Doctor Who Silurian episodes were fun to watch. Makes sense to connect dinosaurs or the remnants of Silurian civilization to dragons and deities. Star Trek Strange New Worlds S04E01 deals with the dinosaurs and Mars @ 65 million years ago. The story is rather intriguing and fun to watch as well. Invincible S04E04 deals with the various ages that planet Earth has gone through and has a different take on the meaning of Hell and Satan and why they exist. Last episode of the Season 4 is rather interesting, as well as it relates to the possible next phase or not, of human evolution.

Re: The Silurian Hypothesis (2020)

#100

Post by ptx » Sat, Jul 25, 2026, 10:10 PM UTC

rdiddly wrote: post #33

Interesting topic, but (to immediately veer off of it) I really wish he would find another word and stop misusing "conspiracy." The word has already been through hell.

That was my first reaction as well. The author seems very confused about it.

He starts off defining it as something that is unknown or secret, and more specifically, he goes on to say, a secret "kept by a nefarious elite". I suppose secrets are usually associated with conspiracies, but a secret is not a conspiracy and conspirators don't have to be an elite.

And then he says that in this case, it's the Earth itself that's conspiring alone. This contradicts all the dictionaries I consulted, which define it to involve multiple parties, which makes sense considering the etymology.