4 ms·

Articles like this always make me wonder, if there was another intelligent species in Deep Time, if they never engaged in wide-spread reshaping of the planet (h

Articles like this always make me wonder, if there was another intelligent species in Deep Time, if they never engaged in wide-spread reshaping of the planet (huge population, large-scale mining and construction, etc), how would we be able to tell they existed?

lumost 2y ago
The concept of prior industrial civilizations was explored in a 2018 paper https://arxiv.org/pdf/1804.03748 https://arxiv.org/pdf/1804.03748. If you exclude industry, it could be exceedingly improbable that we would find fossil evidence of such creatures unless the species existed for several million years.
- amanaplanacanal 2y ago
  I would think that they would have discovered and burned all the hydrocarbons, just as our civilization is in the process of doing.
  - lumost 2y ago
    The paper explores this, mass burning of hydrocarbons tends to create ocean anoxic events which sequester carbon. They cite a few papers which suggest the PETM and similar events were due to volcanic intrusion on hydrocarbon deposits.
lupusreal 2y ago
There's a problem recognizing intelligent species for what they are even if we can meet them face to face. Dolphins, crows, octopus, orangutans, ... Since they don't build civilization as we conceive it, asserting their intelligence is controversial.
- 0xbadcafebee 2y ago
  One could also argue that a truly intelligent species would not build civilizations, as they tend to create more problems than they solve. The natural solution to natural problems is to evolve, and that works pretty dang well for pretty much all known life, other than our own.
  - gabesullice 2y ago
    > they tend to create more problems than they solve. The natural solution to natural problems is to evolve Is dying of drought, while being survived by less thirsty mutants, really solving any problems? I guess there's some genetic lineage that keeps on replicating. Then we humans decide whether it's similar enough to keep labelling it the same "species". If so, maybe we declare that the species solved the problem of the drought. Meanwhile, I doubt there were any creatures happy to die of thirst for lack of an aqueduct. If we ignore that unfortunate reality and measure success by DNA replication, then civilization might still being doing alright. We've had a bit of a population explosion in the last few hundred years.
  - YurgenJurgensen 2y ago
    "Whatever happens, we have got. The Maxim gun, and they have not." It turns out that having 'true intelligence' probably doesn't matter if the tribe from the next valley over has bronze weapons and armour and would quite like to steal your stuff and enslave your people.
  - Scarblac 2y ago
    The natural solution to big changes is mostly to go extinct. Except sometimes a happy few that somehow manage to make it, and then their offspring is like them. Calling evolution a solution is mostly hindsight.
  - leobg 2y ago
    Reminds me of a stand up comedian who said about AI: “People are afraid that AI will take their jobs. But if it’s really that intelligent, it’s gonna let _us_ do the work”.
mikepurvis 2y ago
Aren’t there certain atmospheric gases that are felt to be only likely to be present in quantity as a result of industrialization, therefore if we see the spectral signatures of those it’s a candidate planet for civilization?
slowhadoken 2y ago
Some prehistoric group probably didn’t shape the planet on a large scale because there weren’t that many of them and they weren’t knowledge or organized enough.
BirAdam 2y ago
Were there some other intelligent species (or even our own) that developed some advanced civilization before 13 thousand years ago, we’d have evidence in plant and animal life. Supporting large populations required humans to selectively breed all of the plant and animal foodstuffs that humans eat today. As such, we’d expect to find animals and plants that were different from wild specimens at the same layers in Earth.
- b112 2y ago
  Would we? We don't dump our crops in bogs, nor bones of cattle. In fact we plough the crop remains into the dirt for the health of the soil, and we grind up the bones of food animals for feed and other uses. All of our buildings and works would disappear pretty fast, and a simple ice age scours the earth very effectively. 13k years is maybe not enough without an ice age, but in 50k years? No trace, except they'd think a meteor struck and caused a mass extinction event. (I'm not even sure our last 200 years, where we really expanded, would even be a blip in fossil records)
  - ahazred8ta 2y ago
    Shell middens. Garbage dumps. Charcoal, burned bones, and carbonized residue from hearthfires. We've identified 150,000 year old villages by digging up their middens. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Midden https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Midden We've found 0.4 million year old wooden javelins in peat bogs. Beyond that, we have intact dinosaur nests with eggs, 100 million years old, and these were not ground down to powder by glaciers. If there were any non-stone-age civilizations older than 10,000 years, their residue would be visible.
    - b112 2y ago
      I think you're not entirely wrong, but the dinosaur remains are fossilized, and that requires special conditions. I know a load of human remains and accouterments were found in bogs. Regards to the glaciers, I suppose there are ranges of effects. The Canadian Shield had all topsoil shorn away, in most places even now it's just a few feet of soil then granite. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canadian_Shield#Ecologyq https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canadian_Shield#Ecologyq In such areas, nothing survived. Shell middens would be wiped away. I may have over stated, but my point was it won't be as easy as some think.
AnimalMuppet 2y ago
Depends on how long ago it was. Two billion years ago? We wouldn't find traces of their industrial activity in rocks - almost all the rocks are gone. We wouldn't notice evidence of mining activity - those mines have been buried by sedimentation, subduction, or vulcanism. We wouldn't find it in atmospheric gas isotopes - those isotopes have long since decayed. Now if it were 10 million years ago, it is much more likely that we would know.
- pfdietz 2y ago
  Much of the iron being mined today was deposited about 2.4 billion years ago, when ferrous iron in the oceans was oxidized and precipitated out as insoluble oxides in Banded Iron Formations. There are even petroleum deposits whose source rocks go back a billion years. And most coal was deposited in the Carboniferous (thus the name).
pvaldes 2y ago
> if there was another intelligent species in Deep Time, if they never engaged in wide-spread reshaping of the planet (huge population, large-scale mining and construction, etc), how would we be able to tell they existed? Because they will survive. Are we talking about sharks?

lumost 2y ago

The concept of prior industrial civilizations was explored in a 2018 paper https://arxiv.org/pdf/1804.03748 https://arxiv.org/pdf/1804.03748. If you exclude industry, it could be exceedingly improbable that we would find fossil evidence of such creatures unless the species existed for several million years.

amanaplanacanal 2y ago
I would think that they would have discovered and burned all the hydrocarbons, just as our civilization is in the process of doing.
- lumost 2y ago
  The paper explores this, mass burning of hydrocarbons tends to create ocean anoxic events which sequester carbon. They cite a few papers which suggest the PETM and similar events were due to volcanic intrusion on hydrocarbon deposits.

lupusreal 2y ago

There's a problem recognizing intelligent species for what they are even if we can meet them face to face. Dolphins, crows, octopus, orangutans, ... Since they don't build civilization as we conceive it, asserting their intelligence is controversial.

0xbadcafebee 2y ago
One could also argue that a truly intelligent species would not build civilizations, as they tend to create more problems than they solve. The natural solution to natural problems is to evolve, and that works pretty dang well for pretty much all known life, other than our own.
- gabesullice 2y ago
  > they tend to create more problems than they solve. The natural solution to natural problems is to evolve Is dying of drought, while being survived by less thirsty mutants, really solving any problems? I guess there's some genetic lineage that keeps on replicating. Then we humans decide whether it's similar enough to keep labelling it the same "species". If so, maybe we declare that the species solved the problem of the drought. Meanwhile, I doubt there were any creatures happy to die of thirst for lack of an aqueduct. If we ignore that unfortunate reality and measure success by DNA replication, then civilization might still being doing alright. We've had a bit of a population explosion in the last few hundred years.
- YurgenJurgensen 2y ago
  "Whatever happens, we have got. The Maxim gun, and they have not." It turns out that having 'true intelligence' probably doesn't matter if the tribe from the next valley over has bronze weapons and armour and would quite like to steal your stuff and enslave your people.
- Scarblac 2y ago
  The natural solution to big changes is mostly to go extinct. Except sometimes a happy few that somehow manage to make it, and then their offspring is like them. Calling evolution a solution is mostly hindsight.
- leobg 2y ago
  Reminds me of a stand up comedian who said about AI: “People are afraid that AI will take their jobs. But if it’s really that intelligent, it’s gonna let _us_ do the work”.

mikepurvis 2y ago

Aren’t there certain atmospheric gases that are felt to be only likely to be present in quantity as a result of industrialization, therefore if we see the spectral signatures of those it’s a candidate planet for civilization?

slowhadoken 2y ago

Some prehistoric group probably didn’t shape the planet on a large scale because there weren’t that many of them and they weren’t knowledge or organized enough.

BirAdam 2y ago

Were there some other intelligent species (or even our own) that developed some advanced civilization before 13 thousand years ago, we’d have evidence in plant and animal life. Supporting large populations required humans to selectively breed all of the plant and animal foodstuffs that humans eat today. As such, we’d expect to find animals and plants that were different from wild specimens at the same layers in Earth.

b112 2y ago
Would we? We don't dump our crops in bogs, nor bones of cattle. In fact we plough the crop remains into the dirt for the health of the soil, and we grind up the bones of food animals for feed and other uses. All of our buildings and works would disappear pretty fast, and a simple ice age scours the earth very effectively. 13k years is maybe not enough without an ice age, but in 50k years? No trace, except they'd think a meteor struck and caused a mass extinction event. (I'm not even sure our last 200 years, where we really expanded, would even be a blip in fossil records)
- ahazred8ta 2y ago
  Shell middens. Garbage dumps. Charcoal, burned bones, and carbonized residue from hearthfires. We've identified 150,000 year old villages by digging up their middens. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Midden https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Midden We've found 0.4 million year old wooden javelins in peat bogs. Beyond that, we have intact dinosaur nests with eggs, 100 million years old, and these were not ground down to powder by glaciers. If there were any non-stone-age civilizations older than 10,000 years, their residue would be visible.
  - b112 2y ago
    I think you're not entirely wrong, but the dinosaur remains are fossilized, and that requires special conditions. I know a load of human remains and accouterments were found in bogs. Regards to the glaciers, I suppose there are ranges of effects. The Canadian Shield had all topsoil shorn away, in most places even now it's just a few feet of soil then granite. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canadian_Shield#Ecologyq https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canadian_Shield#Ecologyq In such areas, nothing survived. Shell middens would be wiped away. I may have over stated, but my point was it won't be as easy as some think.

AnimalMuppet 2y ago

Depends on how long ago it was. Two billion years ago? We wouldn't find traces of their industrial activity in rocks - almost all the rocks are gone. We wouldn't notice evidence of mining activity - those mines have been buried by sedimentation, subduction, or vulcanism. We wouldn't find it in atmospheric gas isotopes - those isotopes have long since decayed. Now if it were 10 million years ago, it is much more likely that we would know.

pfdietz 2y ago
Much of the iron being mined today was deposited about 2.4 billion years ago, when ferrous iron in the oceans was oxidized and precipitated out as insoluble oxides in Banded Iron Formations. There are even petroleum deposits whose source rocks go back a billion years. And most coal was deposited in the Carboniferous (thus the name).

pvaldes 2y ago

> if there was another intelligent species in Deep Time, if they never engaged in wide-spread reshaping of the planet (huge population, large-scale mining and construction, etc), how would we be able to tell they existed? Because they will survive. Are we talking about sharks?