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i think you would be more likely to detect a prior advanced human civilization from 100k+ years ago rather than some other species from 100m+. and we don't have

i think you would be more likely to detect a prior advanced human civilization from 100k+ years ago rather than some other species from 100m+. and we don't have any of those either. a planetary apex species capable of industry would have funerary rituals to prevent anything from learning a taste for their bodies. their dead would be well protected from harm if they weren't already somehow destroyed, and this would probably prevent any form of fossilization to be found later. even assuming you can't find their biological remains, you might expect to find metals they had used, perhaps within a similar context that we find fossilized remains already. an unnatural combination of metals under some soil. i've seen one conspiracy-like youtube video of this[1]. i haven't seen any other sources and i doubt this is real. even if it sounds cool conceptually, the video gets a little over the top in craziness, especially for something that has basically zero sources but would be widely known if it were true. based on my limited understanding of these chemicals, things like gold, platinum, titanium, would likely be left over in a relatively non-degraded state. and if legitimate traces could be contemplated, for any tests based on organic elements i would expect a kind of signal compression or expansion to happen in the soil over time due to pressure, diffusion, and potentially something like moisture. 1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K5S6xnsyva0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K5S6xnsyva0

thfuran 3y ago
>a planetary apex species capable of industry would have funerary rituals to prevent anything from learning a taste for their bodies. their dead would be well protected from harm if they weren't already somehow destroyed, and this would probably prevent any form of fossilization to be found later. That seems to be making a lot of assumptions. Why couldn't tossing bodies into a tar pit be a funerary rite?
- stainablesteel 3y ago
  a tar pit as in the ones formed from petroleum, as in when crude oil rises to the earth's surface? as in the crude oil made from all the extinct dinosaurs from hundreds of millions of years ago? its a nice idea, but its technically putting the cart before the horse as those pits wouldn't have been around due to them being formed from decaying organic matter from that time. if you're trying to say those could have been locations where those rituals might have taken place, i suppose its fair enough to ask that, to test it you could check the locations and crude grade of all currently known oil locations, and if you manage to find similar grades on land as you find in the middle of the sea, especially in locations that were never land to begin with or weren't land during those time periods, then that would disprove the idea because they wouldn't have made tar pits in the ocean. there probably other ways to test this idea but this is what i have off the top of my head.
  - thfuran 3y ago
    >as in the crude oil made from all the extinct dinosaurs from hundreds of millions of years ago? Oil is not primarily made of dinosaurs but rather of plankton and algae. >its a nice idea, but its technically putting the cart before the horse as those pits wouldn't have been around due to them being formed from decaying organic matter from that time. You're talking about 100 million years ago as if that's a tremendously long gap but glossing over a span of about 400 million years as if it were a single instant. At any rate a tar pit was just an example of an environment that is conducive to fossil formation.
  - 9dev 3y ago
    You’re picking out what was obviously an example of a burial rite that involves permanently destroying remains. And I agree, it’s quite anthropomorphic to assume another intelligent species would place as much emotional value on graves as humans do. There’s really no reason for it other than some historical/superstitious customs. If you think about how strange and hard to comprehend even fungi or octopuses are, I don’t think we can make any assumptions about the culture of a non-human intelligence. Going as far as claiming they would bodies their deceased is borderline ridiculous.
LargoLasskhyfv 3y ago
That's so biased. They could practice burning, tossing them into the seas, composting, or even alcalic hydrolysis to be hyperecoligical and environmentally friendly.

thfuran 3y ago

>a planetary apex species capable of industry would have funerary rituals to prevent anything from learning a taste for their bodies. their dead would be well protected from harm if they weren't already somehow destroyed, and this would probably prevent any form of fossilization to be found later. That seems to be making a lot of assumptions. Why couldn't tossing bodies into a tar pit be a funerary rite?

stainablesteel 3y ago
a tar pit as in the ones formed from petroleum, as in when crude oil rises to the earth's surface? as in the crude oil made from all the extinct dinosaurs from hundreds of millions of years ago? its a nice idea, but its technically putting the cart before the horse as those pits wouldn't have been around due to them being formed from decaying organic matter from that time. if you're trying to say those could have been locations where those rituals might have taken place, i suppose its fair enough to ask that, to test it you could check the locations and crude grade of all currently known oil locations, and if you manage to find similar grades on land as you find in the middle of the sea, especially in locations that were never land to begin with or weren't land during those time periods, then that would disprove the idea because they wouldn't have made tar pits in the ocean. there probably other ways to test this idea but this is what i have off the top of my head.
- thfuran 3y ago
  >as in the crude oil made from all the extinct dinosaurs from hundreds of millions of years ago? Oil is not primarily made of dinosaurs but rather of plankton and algae. >its a nice idea, but its technically putting the cart before the horse as those pits wouldn't have been around due to them being formed from decaying organic matter from that time. You're talking about 100 million years ago as if that's a tremendously long gap but glossing over a span of about 400 million years as if it were a single instant. At any rate a tar pit was just an example of an environment that is conducive to fossil formation.
- 9dev 3y ago
  You’re picking out what was obviously an example of a burial rite that involves permanently destroying remains. And I agree, it’s quite anthropomorphic to assume another intelligent species would place as much emotional value on graves as humans do. There’s really no reason for it other than some historical/superstitious customs. If you think about how strange and hard to comprehend even fungi or octopuses are, I don’t think we can make any assumptions about the culture of a non-human intelligence. Going as far as claiming they would bodies their deceased is borderline ridiculous.

LargoLasskhyfv 3y ago

That's so biased. They could practice burning, tossing them into the seas, composting, or even alcalic hydrolysis to be hyperecoligical and environmentally friendly.