Where Did Earth Get Its Oceans? Maybe It Made Them Itself
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Where Did Earth Get Its Oceans? Maybe It Made Them Itself
1–10 of 70 posts
Re: Where Did Earth Get Its Oceans? Maybe It Made Them Itself
#2My Impacts project depicts a scene from the prolonged bombardment, a time when Earth was cratered by asteroids and comets:
Re: Where Did Earth Get Its Oceans? Maybe It Made Them Itself
#3Life began in the Ocean, but why did civilization begin on land? Is it because of fire? But I wonder if a different kind of civilization could have emerged
Re: Where Did Earth Get Its Oceans? Maybe It Made Them Itself
#4Wow what an awesome art piece by Ada Zejun Shen that they commissioned(?) for this article!
Re: Where Did Earth Get Its Oceans? Maybe It Made Them Itself
#5Life began in the Ocean, but why did civilization begin on land? Is it because of fire? But I wonder if a different kind of civilization could have emerged
That's one theory, yes. Cooking food (with fire) makes more calories available, meaning less hunting required to support more individuals, and/or freeing up more time and calories for thinking. This allowed us to evolve bigger and more complex brains.
While it's not a given that fire is a hard prerequisite for an industrial civilization, it certainly accelerated our technological development. Fact of the matter is, we know of exactly one civilization, which is not enough to draw any conclusions. There's no real reason we know of that aquatic species cannot evolve into a technological civilization, we just haven't seen it happen. Fact is we don't really know how an intelligent technological species evolves. We only have guesses from our own history.
Re: Where Did Earth Get Its Oceans? Maybe It Made Them Itself
#6Life began in the Ocean, but why did civilization begin on land? Is it because of fire? But I wonder if a different kind of civilization could have emerged
That's one theory, yes. Cooking food (with fire) makes more calories available, meaning less hunting required to support more individuals, and/or freeing up more time and calories for thinking. This allowed us to evolve bigger and more complex brains. While it's not a given that fire is a hard prerequisite for an industrial civilization, it certainly accelerated our technological development. Fact of the matter is, w…
And a sample size of one.
Re: Where Did Earth Get Its Oceans? Maybe It Made Them Itself
#7Life began in the Ocean, but why did civilization begin on land? Is it because of fire? But I wonder if a different kind of civilization could have emerged
Interesting to think what could be if cephalopods raised their young instead of leaving them to completely fend for themselves. It would start intergenerational knowledge transfer, i.e. culture. Maybe selection pressure then trends towards group cooperation instead of going it solo.
I still think there would be huge barriers to "civilization" as I think you mean? (Do any of the apes have "civilization"?).
Re: Where Did Earth Get Its Oceans? Maybe It Made Them Itself
#8Wow what an awesome art piece by Ada Zejun Shen that they commissioned(?) for this article!
I thought it was ai generated lol
Re: Where Did Earth Get Its Oceans? Maybe It Made Them Itself
#9Life began in the Ocean, but why did civilization begin on land? Is it because of fire? But I wonder if a different kind of civilization could have emerged
Brains are resource hungry, especially oxygen hungry. Earth's air is orders of magnitude richer in oxygen molecules than its water. This likely made it easier for intelligence to develop on land. It's worth noting that the smartest aquatic animals are air breathing mammals that spent much of their evolutionary history on land before returning to water.
Re: Where Did Earth Get Its Oceans? Maybe It Made Them Itself
#10Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's one theory, yes. Cooking food (with fire) makes more calories available, meaning less hunting required to support more individuals, and/or freeing up more time and calories for thinking. This allowed us to evolve bigger and more complex brains. While it's not a given that fire is a hard prerequisite for an industrial civilization, it certainly accelerated our technological development. Fact of the matter is, w…
And a sample size of one.
That's what I said, yes.