8 ms·

The fact that we found pressurized oil reservoirs ("gusher" oil wells) means that nothing had tapped these cheap and easy sources of energy before.

zorked 8y ago
Or we took it from the lizardmen who put it there for storage :)
seanmcdirmid 8y ago
Those could have arisen after the last civilization collapsed....beck it could even been are not of their collapse.
slfnflctd 8y ago
Possible counterpoints-- they were much smaller, their minds/values/pursuits were different from ours, they had access to easier & better energy sources for their needs, or they died out due to something unexpected before they got that far.
- cleansy 8y ago
  This reminded me of Dwarf Fortress. Digging greedily and deeply through the Z layers until..
codingdave 8y ago
Or that prior civilizations had enough forethought to not even start burning oil for energy.
golergka 8y ago
Or that may be they had some other sources, even cheaper and easier, that we don't know of anymore because they used them all.
kolinko 8y ago
Perhaps they tapped to the biggest ones, and developed better tech before they had to get to the smaller ones?
soneil 8y ago
Not just oil, we probably wouldn't have an an iron age without access to unmolested surface deposits. Iron, tin, copper. If there was a pre-human civilization, they couldn't have gone beyond the stone age, else they'd have consumed the resources our iron age depended on.
- cc439 8y ago
  The problem with that line of thinking is addresses in the article. The oldest large scale area of "ancient" crust on land is a mere 1.8 million years old (the Negev Desert). The entire surface of the earth is regenerated on a scale of tens of millions of years, any depletion of surface deposits which occured ~100 million years ago would have long since been hidden by the replenishment of new crust provided by plate tectonics.
  - soneil 8y ago
    I don't believe it covers that at all. I believe their definition of crust there is a lot more superficial than it sounds like. eg, the Chicxulub (Yucutan) crater is 66 million years ago, and clearly hasn't been recycled else we wouldn't be looking at it. We have dinosaur fossils dating ~230-240 million years, so the crust clearly hasn't been recycled that thoroughly. Indeed, the entire Pangea theory would be invisible to us if the continents didn't remain 300+ million years later. (I'm not saying we should have a fossil record of 'the others', as the article says, there's a survivor bias in fossils. Just that the fossils we do have wouldn't exist if the crust has been geologically renewed in the last few millions of years.) They're talking about surface markers like roads and buildings. To replace a previous civilization's trashheaps with geological mineral seams, you'd need to pre-date Pangea.
- BurningFrog 8y ago
  Unless they shipped the metals off planet, that's not really an argument. If anything, an iron using civilization would have made iron more concentrated and easier to find.
  - scottie_m 8y ago
justinclift 8y ago
Perhaps they're the result or remains of a previous civilisation? :)
aalleavitch 8y ago
As mentioned above, there's significant churn in the Earth's crust that would shift the location and distribution of resources over very long timescales. Also, we couldn't be sure that there wouldn't have been ecological or cultural reasons why they just never exploited fossil fuels. Especially if they were ocean-dwelling, it's possible that other methods of generating energy were just much more practical for them to develop first.
- api 8y ago
  They could have discovered fission much sooner.
a3n 8y ago
"nothing had tapped these cheap and easy sources of energy before" ... they were available to tap.

zorked 8y ago

Or we took it from the lizardmen who put it there for storage :)

seanmcdirmid 8y ago

Those could have arisen after the last civilization collapsed....beck it could even been are not of their collapse.

slfnflctd 8y ago

Possible counterpoints-- they were much smaller, their minds/values/pursuits were different from ours, they had access to easier & better energy sources for their needs, or they died out due to something unexpected before they got that far.

cleansy 8y ago
This reminded me of Dwarf Fortress. Digging greedily and deeply through the Z layers until..

codingdave 8y ago

Or that prior civilizations had enough forethought to not even start burning oil for energy.

golergka 8y ago

Or that may be they had some other sources, even cheaper and easier, that we don't know of anymore because they used them all.

kolinko 8y ago

Perhaps they tapped to the biggest ones, and developed better tech before they had to get to the smaller ones?

soneil 8y ago

Not just oil, we probably wouldn't have an an iron age without access to unmolested surface deposits. Iron, tin, copper. If there was a pre-human civilization, they couldn't have gone beyond the stone age, else they'd have consumed the resources our iron age depended on.

cc439 8y ago
The problem with that line of thinking is addresses in the article. The oldest large scale area of "ancient" crust on land is a mere 1.8 million years old (the Negev Desert). The entire surface of the earth is regenerated on a scale of tens of millions of years, any depletion of surface deposits which occured ~100 million years ago would have long since been hidden by the replenishment of new crust provided by plate tectonics.
- soneil 8y ago
  I don't believe it covers that at all. I believe their definition of crust there is a lot more superficial than it sounds like. eg, the Chicxulub (Yucutan) crater is 66 million years ago, and clearly hasn't been recycled else we wouldn't be looking at it. We have dinosaur fossils dating ~230-240 million years, so the crust clearly hasn't been recycled that thoroughly. Indeed, the entire Pangea theory would be invisible to us if the continents didn't remain 300+ million years later. (I'm not saying we should have a fossil record of 'the others', as the article says, there's a survivor bias in fossils. Just that the fossils we do have wouldn't exist if the crust has been geologically renewed in the last few millions of years.) They're talking about surface markers like roads and buildings. To replace a previous civilization's trashheaps with geological mineral seams, you'd need to pre-date Pangea.
BurningFrog 8y ago
Unless they shipped the metals off planet, that's not really an argument. If anything, an iron using civilization would have made iron more concentrated and easier to find.
- scottie_m 8y ago

justinclift 8y ago

Perhaps they're the result or remains of a previous civilisation? :)

aalleavitch 8y ago

As mentioned above, there's significant churn in the Earth's crust that would shift the location and distribution of resources over very long timescales. Also, we couldn't be sure that there wouldn't have been ecological or cultural reasons why they just never exploited fossil fuels. Especially if they were ocean-dwelling, it's possible that other methods of generating energy were just much more practical for them to develop first.

api 8y ago
They could have discovered fission much sooner.

a3n 8y ago

"nothing had tapped these cheap and easy sources of energy before" ... they were available to tap.