Oil was a good push for the development of our civilization, and should have been for any past technological civilization too. If we have oil today (in the amou

Oil was a good push for the development of our civilization, and should have been for any past technological civilization too. If we have oil today (in the amount we are getting it, at least) then the previous civilizations didn't reached our oil dependent civilization stage, or existed before the actual oil reserves formed. It doesn't imply that there wasn't any civilization before, but or it happened hundreds of millions of years ago, or never became as advanced or global as our actual one. Unless there could had been back then an abundant energy source different from oil but with similar efficiency, and it got globally depleted by that previous civilization.