7 ms·
No doubt there are many, many other varieties of humans which we'll never know about because we'll never find any bones. What chilling is that shows very clear
by rhelz 3y ago
No doubt there are many, many other varieties of humans which we'll never know about because we'll never find any bones.
What chilling is that shows very clearly that humans can go extinct. In fact, humans go extinct all the time: 50,000 years ago, we shared the earth with at least 5 different varieties of humans (Homo Neanterthalensis, Homo Denisova, Homo Naledi, Homo Florensiensis, and Homo Luzenenensis). Probably also some late surviving populations of Homo Erectus and Homo Rudolfensis. Almost certainly more we'll never know about.
Since the last ice age we've been dropping like flies. In fact, we're the only humans left. And what with climate change, accidental nuclear war, or the singularity looming, we are arguably in a more precarious position than we've ever been.
- huytersd 3y agoHumans have never had the numbers they’ve had right now. It would be very hard to eradicate 8 billion individual organisms.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- Simon_ORourke 3y agoWhat do you mean hard? I do this all the time with some bleach and a scrubbing brush.
- huytersd 3y agoGlobal scale bleach events are rare.
- AndrewKemendo 3y agoThis offered me a good laugh. Thank you.
- account-5 3y agoWe're trying our best though. EDIT: for those downvoting, I'd like to discuss why you don't agree. I mean, climate change, war, etc. What else can you call it?
- echelon 3y agoNo amount of climate change short of Venusian runaway heating will scour the earth of humans. If we launch all of our nukes, we might collapse civilization, but even that would likely leave humans around. We might get stuck in our gravity well for a long time, though. Whatever makes us go extinct will either be cosmic or something we haven't invented yet.
- account-5 3y agoI think the amount of climate change that kills off our food or the atmosphere we breath might do it.
- huytersd 3y agoAn appropriate virus would do it. Spread through the air, 5 year incubation rate, 90%+ mortality would do it.
- rhelz 3y ago// venusian runaway...// We cool our bodies by sweating, a process which ceases to work at about 95 degrees at 100% humidity, or 115 degrees at 50% humidity. Its been estimated that an average temperature of above 122 degrees F would kill off all mammalian life on the planet. Currently the earth is warming at about 1/3rd of a degree F per decade.
- echelon 3y agoSeeing how the summer mean daily maximum in my city is 95.8 deg F and the mean humidity averages 80%, I think we already cross your threshold frequently. It hasn't killed us yet. I would frequently go running in the afternoon during "heat stroke" days. I love that weather. Hot and humid summers are personally invigorating. I grew up with them. I'd like to see your sources. > Currently the earth is warming at about 1/3rd of a degree F per decade. Every decade our technological capability increases dramatically. We're already working on climate engineering. Nothing here will extinct us.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- polishdude20 3y agoWonder if there's a structure of ours that's akin to the pyramids. But like, something that would last millennia.
- blamazon 3y agoHoover dam? Svalbard seed vault?
- klyrs 3y agoOpen pit mines seem to be a pretty good candidates for this. They're pretty much the opposite of a structure, but I can't imagine them looking "natural" even thousands of years from now. I can imagine one or two getting overgrown, but ones in desert areas like Utah could last until the next deep ice age.
- polishdude20 3y agoYeah I guess you can look at ancient craters from meteors or volcanos to see how it would look.
- klyrs 3y agoCan we? I'm not under the impression that those were ever terraced[1] like open-pit mines. But come to think of it, terracing itself qualifies as a megastructure[2]. Where the Long Now clock is an offbeat art project, rice paddies are crucial for nutrition for a great many people and they've already been around for at least 2 millenia. As times get lean, I can imagine pilfering the Long Now clock for parts; but those rice paddies will only gain importance. [1] https://www.dreamstime.com/stock-photography-bingham-kennecott-copper-mine-image15375172 https://www.dreamstime.com/stock-photography-bingham-kenneco... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rice_Terraces_of_the_Philippine_Cordilleras https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rice_Terraces_of_the_Philippin...
- mikhailfranco 3y agoTerraced open pit mines and rice paddies require an enormous amount of maintenance. The terraces are not naturally stable. Rice paddies will quickly silt-up, then flood and collapse in heavy rain. Open pit mines will fill with water. The sides will collapse. In the desert, they will fill with dust. Deserts often have flash-floods following thunderstorms. They might remain recognizable as hollows, but not much more. The Bingham mine has had collapses in 2013 and 2021: https://blogs.agu.org/landslideblog/2021/06/04/2021-bingham-canyon/ https://blogs.agu.org/landslideblog/2021/06/04/2021-bingham-... https://blogs.agu.org/landslideblog/2013/04/30/analysing-the-bingham-canyon-mine-landslide-part-1-the-landslide-source-area/ https://blogs.agu.org/landslideblog/2013/04/30/analysing-the... https://blogs.agu.org/landslideblog/2013/05/06/analysing-the-bingham-canyon-mine-landslide-part-2-the-landslide-track/ https://blogs.agu.org/landslideblog/2013/05/06/analysing-the... There was a similar collapse recently at the Çöpler Mine in Turkey... https://eos.org/thelandslideblog/copler-mine-1 https://eos.org/thelandslideblog/copler-mine-1 https://eos.org/thelandslideblog/copler-mine-2 https://eos.org/thelandslideblog/copler-mine-2 https://eos.org/thelandslideblog/copler-mine-3 https://eos.org/thelandslideblog/copler-mine-3 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SUD0hQjueI0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SUD0hQjueI0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SCRTwnz3_oo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SCRTwnz3_oo
- fredsmith219 3y agoThe other species are gone because we eliminated or out competed them. Even with climate change we’re in no danger of extinction
- slashdev 3y agoThis. It would take something truly catastrophic to make humans extinct now that there are so many of us on every part of the globe. Climate change won't cut it, neither would total nuclear war. Even if you had something like an impact big enough to superheat the entire atmosphere, enough humans might survive inside buildings, basements, subways, etc to carry on. Modern civilization though is a lot more fragile. It's possible to blast us back to pre-industrial times and the easy to access resources are mostly gone. It's not clear that we could bootstrap a second industrial revolution easily.
- Cacti 3y agoeh. you underestimate global thermonuclear war.
- philipkglass 3y agoGlobal thermonuclear war would destroy technological civilization, but even now there are small groups of pastoralists and hunter-gatherers in remote regions who use only muscle power and do not need factory manufactured goods. Uncontacted tribes [1] would go on living much as usual if a nuclear war depopulated industrialized regions. There would be some increase in mortality among remote tribes as radioactive fallout from a large scale nuclear war drifted down globally, but that wouldn't be enough to cause human extinction. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncontacted_peoples https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncontacted_peoples
- jakderrida 3y ago> but even now there are small groups of pastoralists and hunter-gatherers in remote regions who use only muscle power and do not need factory manufactured goods. Good luck getting them to adopt your useless ass in the post-apocalypse.
- shrimp_emoji 3y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Competitive_exclusion_principle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Competitive_exclusion_principl...
- softg 3y ago>Since the last ice age we've been dropping like flies. In fact, we're the only humans left. I was under the impression that was our doing. All of these human varieties were outcompeted by homo sapiens who replaced them. Modern humans don't need to worry about another hominid taking their place because we're the last one standing.
- shakezula 3y agoWe’re so good at it we’re going to outcompete ourselves in fact
- rhelz 3y agoIt's one possible theory, and no doubt, at the very least, it was part of the reason they died. But that's not the only smoking gun. E.g. For at least 200k years, we can tell by fossils from the middle east that we made many attempts to spread to Europe, but were always pushed back. Fun fact: Neanderthals actually had substantially bigger brains that we do today (their average size was about 1400-1500ccs. Subtract the volume of a tennis ball from that and you'll get the average size of our brains today). Neanderthals were smart, tough, mofos. So what changed 50k years ago which finally let us succeed? Well, the climate was warming from the last ice age, and Neanderthals were very much cold-adapted hominids. Their short, stocky legs and heavy muscular arms were great at sneaking through the woods and stabbing a deer with a spear, but when the climate changed the woods disappeared, those short legs, hauling a very heavy upper-body musculature, were not so good at running the deer down on a plain. Honestly, we have no real definitive answer to why we are here and they aren't. Like anything else, probably it was a complicated process in which lots of factors--including dumb luck--played a role. For about 4 million years, the earth was very hospitable to all kinds of species of Homo--we find their bones, in a kaleidoscope of shapes and sizes, all over the old world. Since the last ice age, however, Homo has been having a really rough time of it. And we are the only humans left. If you were locked in a room with 10 people, and one by one they started to disappear, when you were the only one left, you might wonder whether it would happen to you too.....
- allendoerfer 3y ago
- hunglee2 3y agoit's possible to have a more positive take on this - those species did not go entirely extinct, as their genes continue live on within many of us - and thus we carry their legacy as much as we do for homo sapien. We might even speciate again one day, should genetic populations isolate again for a time
- lordnacho 3y agoThat's what I understood as well. In a way, they live on with us because they are part of the same species. We know that we have bred with Neanderthals. Why aren't they just considered a branch of humanity? It's normal for some designs to die out in favour of others. Slightly stocky humans with bigger brains. If you met one, I wonder what you'd think in comparison with, say, a person from another culture?
- hunglee2 3y agothis is actually an active argument for the reclassification of neanderthals either directly within homo sapiens, or for a new grouping to created to cover all of these hominids. We have to remember that all taxonomies are flawed, useful simplifications layered onto top of a much more complext biological continuum.
- rhelz 3y agoTrue, but if we go extinct, there is nobody left to preserve our genes.
- DinaCoder99 3y ago> What chilling is that shows very clearly that humans can go extinct. It's far more chilling to me that people ascribe value to genetic lines outside that ascribed by living, breathing people.
- permo-w 3y ago>Since the last ice age we've been dropping like flies. the last ice age was ~12,000 years ago. the latest evidence for any of these other branches of humans is 3x that many years ago. on the contrary, the human population has skyrocketed since the last ice age
- astrange 3y ago> Homo Denisova There is no "homo denisova". They're called Denisovans. Svante Pääbo refused to give them a Latin name or declare them a species because he thinks it's pretentious.