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Just for fun, a possibility is Antarctica. Cold is a straightforward problem to solve - make a fire, throw a fur or a blanket on you. Even the most primitive e

Just for fun, a possibility is Antarctica. Cold is a straightforward problem to solve - make a fire, throw a fur or a blanket on you. Even the most primitive emerging civilizations ca thrive in cold climates. Heat on the other hand is a lot more complex to solve. You need fully industrial civilization to have air conditioning, and we still don't have anything portable enough. Even today's solution to 40C+ is "drink a lot of water and stay inside". So if you want a large scale industrial civilization that got to Mars but didn't leave large traces, a possibility is that they evolved at a time when Antarctica was friendly (for them), and the rest of the world was above their threshold temperature. GPT was full of disclaimers, but suggested a typical heat wave in Late Cretaceous might exceed 50°C (122°F), while parts of Antarctica would be a very comfortable 20°C (68°F). One could easily imagine an intelligent species with poor thermal control that was very well adapted to Antarctica, but could never settle the rest of the world if once every 5-10 summers a heat wave would wipe them out. That was the time of Velociraptors btw, so not a bad stock to evolve intelligence from.

andsoitis 3y ago
> So if you want a large scale industrial civilization that got to Mars but didn't leave large traces, a possibility is that they evolved at a time when Antarctica was friendly (for them), and the rest of the world was above their threshold temperature. Are you arguing that the chances of a large-scale Antarctic industrial civilization that reached Mars is higher than one that reached South America, Southern Africa, or Australia?
- radu_floricica 3y ago
  "reached" vs "colonized". We ourselves reached the moon and will soon reach Mars, but we have no intention of leaving more than a couple of buildings in Antarctica, or deep in the oceans. So yeah, it's certainly possible they've sent a couple of dinosaurs on Mars, but didn't leave a lot of concrete buildings anywhere else.
- lacrimacida 3y ago
  In this hypotherical event they possibly spread there too before their complete demise. But I guess we’d have found their traces by now…
- seszett 3y ago
  We ourselves would likely try to colonise an exoplanet similar to Earth around a nearby star before we even think about settling on Mercury. I think they have a point on heat management, too much heat can easily make a place totally uninhabitable while cold can practically always be managed.
  - andsoitis 3y ago
    > We ourselves would likely try to colonise an exoplanet similar to Earth around a nearby star before we even think about settling on Mercury. The other continents on Earth are much more similar to Antarctica than Mars is to Antarctica. We set up a presence on Antarctica and we haven’t yet on any other celestial body. I juts don’t buy that there was an Antarctic industrial civilization that couldn’t find a way to also live on the other continents but somehow did on Mars but left zero evidence.
    - seszett 3y ago
      I think you're talking from a human point of view, but you know nothing of the similarity of Antarctica compared to the other continents for this hypothetical sentient species we're talking about. If they can't bear positive temperatures then all other continents are totally out of bounds for them, while Mars isn't. That's different from the reverse, in that even if we can't naturally live in negative temperatures we can easily enough wear warm clothes and heat up the spaces we live in. Same reason we find nearby Venus uninhabitable but faraway Europa seems almost colonisable. Of course there wasn't actually an Antarctic industrial civilisation, but that's not really the point. Also, any evidence would be found either under 2000 meters of ice or at the bottom of the Antarctic ocean, so we wouldn't know about it yet.
      - andsoitis 3y ago
        They can build craft to travel to Mars but not to another continent on Earth? That is an extraordinary claim!
        3y ago
Zardoz84 3y ago
You know that there were various civilisations in hot climates long before the industrial revolution: Aztecs, Maya, Egypt, Indus Valley, Mesopotamia, Mali Empire and many others in Africa, America, south Asia, etc...

andsoitis 3y ago

> So if you want a large scale industrial civilization that got to Mars but didn't leave large traces, a possibility is that they evolved at a time when Antarctica was friendly (for them), and the rest of the world was above their threshold temperature. Are you arguing that the chances of a large-scale Antarctic industrial civilization that reached Mars is higher than one that reached South America, Southern Africa, or Australia?

radu_floricica 3y ago
"reached" vs "colonized". We ourselves reached the moon and will soon reach Mars, but we have no intention of leaving more than a couple of buildings in Antarctica, or deep in the oceans. So yeah, it's certainly possible they've sent a couple of dinosaurs on Mars, but didn't leave a lot of concrete buildings anywhere else.
lacrimacida 3y ago
In this hypotherical event they possibly spread there too before their complete demise. But I guess we’d have found their traces by now…
seszett 3y ago
We ourselves would likely try to colonise an exoplanet similar to Earth around a nearby star before we even think about settling on Mercury. I think they have a point on heat management, too much heat can easily make a place totally uninhabitable while cold can practically always be managed.
- andsoitis 3y ago
  > We ourselves would likely try to colonise an exoplanet similar to Earth around a nearby star before we even think about settling on Mercury. The other continents on Earth are much more similar to Antarctica than Mars is to Antarctica. We set up a presence on Antarctica and we haven’t yet on any other celestial body. I juts don’t buy that there was an Antarctic industrial civilization that couldn’t find a way to also live on the other continents but somehow did on Mars but left zero evidence.
  - seszett 3y ago
    I think you're talking from a human point of view, but you know nothing of the similarity of Antarctica compared to the other continents for this hypothetical sentient species we're talking about. If they can't bear positive temperatures then all other continents are totally out of bounds for them, while Mars isn't. That's different from the reverse, in that even if we can't naturally live in negative temperatures we can easily enough wear warm clothes and heat up the spaces we live in. Same reason we find nearby Venus uninhabitable but faraway Europa seems almost colonisable. Of course there wasn't actually an Antarctic industrial civilisation, but that's not really the point. Also, any evidence would be found either under 2000 meters of ice or at the bottom of the Antarctic ocean, so we wouldn't know about it yet.
    - andsoitis 3y ago
      They can build craft to travel to Mars but not to another continent on Earth? That is an extraordinary claim!
      - 3y ago

Zardoz84 3y ago

You know that there were various civilisations in hot climates long before the industrial revolution: Aztecs, Maya, Egypt, Indus Valley, Mesopotamia, Mali Empire and many others in Africa, America, south Asia, etc...