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LINK Was There a Civilization On Earth Before Humans? - The Atlantic.

Interesting article about how we would find traces of non-human civilizations that may have existed based on sediments and chemical analysis

jperlow 7 Apr 14
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10 comments

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1

I think its probably not that simple. I think there have probably been lots of ages of sophisticated beings who have developed civilisations which have probably been wiped out. Its likely they failed to record their history because they believed they would last forever, we all do. Bottle necks in evolution would suggest that there has been a return to less developed technologies which reused and rebuilt over time. It would make sense to me

On earth? Not likely

@jperlow why

It's certainly possible, humans and human civilization appeared in the blink of an eye geologically speaking. There just hasn't any evidence found for it yet.

@Druvius but bits of incredibly sophisticated technologies have been discovered. Why not even older ones. This idea of linear development and evolution just seems to be too simplistic for me

@Amisja Well, yes, the Antikythera mechanism proved that there is lost human knowledge. The question is were there any prehuman beings that developed technology and civilization. Maybe, it can't be ruled out, there just isn't evidence for them.

3

I don't think any evidence, facts or data has ever been found to support this.

It isn’t so much to support such a theory, but it shows what would be needed to determine if there had ever been intelligent life on say, mars, or any other planet.

Not yet, and seems unlikely it will. But an interesting exercise and speculation about what sort of geological evidence we could expect to find if such did ever exist.

1

It might depend on howyou define "civilization". Are bee, ant or termite colonies a civilization? I think by soem definitions they could be considered so. However, they woudl leave little, if anything for archeologists to discover.

@fathercat Yeah, I agree. Just because we are capable of rational thought, does not mean that people choose to think rationally.

1

So it can be summed up as: "Well, maybe, but probably not, but thinking about it can be useful." There! I just saved all of you from having to read the article. 😉

2

An interesting exercise. Despite the claims of the title, the article itself states:

(The authors) don’t believe the Earth once hosted a 50-million-year-old Paleocene civilization. But by asking if we could “see” truly ancient industrial civilizations, we were forced to ask about the generic kinds of impacts any civilization might have on a planet.

But isn't it fun to think of Silurians in our past?

2

[sciencedaily.com]
neanderthals maybe?
and snytiger6 gives food for thought re: how to define civilization
also, the world was a pretty inhospitable place for a long time...

0

If there were we would have to seriously redefine and reorganize or concepts of the history of this planet..even if there were civilizations before us, I don't think humans are ready and/orable to recognize it yet. We can't take our eyes off our cell phones long enough to 'see' something like that.

0

Nope..

0

That is an interesting article that makes a substantive case, at least in my opinion anyway. Thank you for sharing this.

0

Well, primates came along some millions of years ago, evolving into humans. So, yes.

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