3 ms·

haven't read the paper, but how does "They conclude that no ruins of ancient football stadiums, highways or housing projects would survive geological time" squa

haven't read the paper, but how does "They conclude that no ruins of ancient football stadiums, highways or housing projects would survive geological time" square with the existence of fossils?

JumpCrisscross 2y ago
> how does "They conclude that no ruins of ancient football stadiums, highways or housing projects would survive geological time" square with the existence of fossils? Broadly speaking, fossils are rare and we site our cities on river deltas and such which have bad conditions for them.
- flir 2y ago
  Wait, wait, I thought mud was great for preserving fossils? Eg that Albertan Nodosaur fossil that turned up recently. And if they're working stone, the evidence won't even need a preservation step, because it was never organic - just a mudslide or a storm.
  - Jerrrrrrry 2y ago
    0.00000001% of animals are fossilized. 99.9999% of animals are extinct. We had almost nothing, but a lot of it was inferrable.
    - flir 2y ago
      I feel like everyone's jumping over the worked stone. We're assuming a technological civilization here, but without accidental geoengineering or even surviving artifacts. Flaked flint and pottery get everywhere. It just doesn't seem likely to me. The arguments seem very "God of the gaps" in nature.
      - Jerrrrrrry 2y ago
        >The arguments seem very "God of the gaps" in nature. It is an argument from ignorance, but the timescales of pottery (1-20k ya) dwarf the porcelain thrones and nitrous oxide disposables that will be the only remaining artifact of our existence in 10 million years. Which is still a brief moment in time, compared to the timescales of the epoch proceeding.
  - JumpCrisscross 2y ago
    > thought mud was great for preserving fossils? If rapidly and anoxically deposited. Undersea landslides and volcanoes do that. Dredging operations may, too.
    - flir 2y ago
      I really chewed up my original comment. "a mudslide or a storm" was supposed to bind to the bit about organic fossils, not the bit about inorganic artifacts. I think "rapid" might be a relative term (I'm thinking of the Mary Rose and the Vasa). When you get to the more durable artifacts that come with a technological civilization we really should be thinking in decades, maybe centuries.
pvg 2y ago
I haven't read the paper either but billions upon billions of organisms constantly have some tiny chance of ending up in the conditions where they fossilize and could later be found. A few thousand or million exposed structures over the few-thousand-year lifetime of a civilization is, in comparison, a microscopically smaller chance of preservation. Nature, in contrast, gets effectively infinite shots at this, the fossils record still has gaps that dwarf the lifespan of human civilization as it is.
causal 2y ago
It's a numbers game. The stadiums, highways, etc. are very few and are being built during a blink of history, compared to fossils which typically come from animals that were around for tens or even hundreds of millions of years. The sheer number of creatures that lived and died means we've had a few lucky pieces preserved. Earth's surface isn't very static. On a geological timescale it is constantly moving and churning.
- generic92034 2y ago
  > Earth's surface isn't very static. On a geological timescale it is constantly moving and churning. The major part on a timescale seems to be over, though. When the Sun's increasing luminosity in 500-600 million years will evaporate the oceans, eventually plate tectonics will stop.[1] [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_the_far_future https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_the_far_future
short_sells_poo 2y ago
Perhaps it's down to scale? If a single relief of a single building block survives, is that still considered a ruin of a football stadium, or just an imprint of a building block? The Colosseum would certainly not be able to survive for 100 million years. If some intelligent beings find a single building block while doing archaeology, they'll likely not be able to recognize it's purpose, if they even recognize the building block for what it is. The structural integrity of (comparatively) smaller fossils is much more likely to survive for 100s of millions of years. A large building will be eroded by roots, wind, acid rain, etc. A fist sized rock containing the imprint of a trilobite, buried in soil and safe from most elements, will easily survive for 100s of millions of years. Or perhaps the author meant that the vast majority of our buildings are not built to last. An asphalt highway - if unmaintained - will be unrecognizable in a hundred years. Roman roads survived for a few 1000 years because of their very crude nature: they are just a pile of rocks. But even such structures will fall prey to soil erosion and the relentless assault of nature. Unless said roads see foot traffic, they'd be also quickly overrun by trees and grasses.
namaria 2y ago
The fossil record is incredibly fragmented and incomplete. There are weird structures that we discovered and haven't yet made sense of as well. The known unknowns in science vast outnumber the known knowns.
- jayrot 2y ago
  > There are weird structures that we discovered and haven't yet made sense of as well. Do you mean biological structures? Or do you mean physical/geological/natural structures? If the latter, can you give some examples? Specifically of structures we haven’t made sense of that could be “intelligent design”, as you seem to be suggesting.
  - pvg 2y ago
    Or do you mean physical/geological/natural structures? There's a bunch of these, the bulk of which eventually get reasonable explanations. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bimini_Road https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bimini_Road I'm surprised there's no Wikipedia list of these.

haven't read the paper, but how does "They conclude that no ruins of ancient football stadiums, highways or housing projects would survive geological time" square with the existence of fossils?

JumpCrisscross 2y ago

> how does "They conclude that no ruins of ancient football stadiums, highways or housing projects would survive geological time" square with the existence of fossils? Broadly speaking, fossils are rare and we site our cities on river deltas and such which have bad conditions for them.

flir 2y ago
Wait, wait, I thought mud was great for preserving fossils? Eg that Albertan Nodosaur fossil that turned up recently. And if they're working stone, the evidence won't even need a preservation step, because it was never organic - just a mudslide or a storm.
- Jerrrrrrry 2y ago
  0.00000001% of animals are fossilized. 99.9999% of animals are extinct. We had almost nothing, but a lot of it was inferrable.
  - flir 2y ago
    I feel like everyone's jumping over the worked stone. We're assuming a technological civilization here, but without accidental geoengineering or even surviving artifacts. Flaked flint and pottery get everywhere. It just doesn't seem likely to me. The arguments seem very "God of the gaps" in nature.
    - Jerrrrrrry 2y ago
      >The arguments seem very "God of the gaps" in nature. It is an argument from ignorance, but the timescales of pottery (1-20k ya) dwarf the porcelain thrones and nitrous oxide disposables that will be the only remaining artifact of our existence in 10 million years. Which is still a brief moment in time, compared to the timescales of the epoch proceeding.
- JumpCrisscross 2y ago
  > thought mud was great for preserving fossils? If rapidly and anoxically deposited. Undersea landslides and volcanoes do that. Dredging operations may, too.
  - flir 2y ago
    I really chewed up my original comment. "a mudslide or a storm" was supposed to bind to the bit about organic fossils, not the bit about inorganic artifacts. I think "rapid" might be a relative term (I'm thinking of the Mary Rose and the Vasa). When you get to the more durable artifacts that come with a technological civilization we really should be thinking in decades, maybe centuries.

pvg 2y ago

I haven't read the paper either but billions upon billions of organisms constantly have some tiny chance of ending up in the conditions where they fossilize and could later be found. A few thousand or million exposed structures over the few-thousand-year lifetime of a civilization is, in comparison, a microscopically smaller chance of preservation. Nature, in contrast, gets effectively infinite shots at this, the fossils record still has gaps that dwarf the lifespan of human civilization as it is.

causal 2y ago

It's a numbers game. The stadiums, highways, etc. are very few and are being built during a blink of history, compared to fossils which typically come from animals that were around for tens or even hundreds of millions of years. The sheer number of creatures that lived and died means we've had a few lucky pieces preserved. Earth's surface isn't very static. On a geological timescale it is constantly moving and churning.

generic92034 2y ago
> Earth's surface isn't very static. On a geological timescale it is constantly moving and churning. The major part on a timescale seems to be over, though. When the Sun's increasing luminosity in 500-600 million years will evaporate the oceans, eventually plate tectonics will stop.[1] [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_the_far_future https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_the_far_future

short_sells_poo 2y ago

Perhaps it's down to scale? If a single relief of a single building block survives, is that still considered a ruin of a football stadium, or just an imprint of a building block? The Colosseum would certainly not be able to survive for 100 million years. If some intelligent beings find a single building block while doing archaeology, they'll likely not be able to recognize it's purpose, if they even recognize the building block for what it is. The structural integrity of (comparatively) smaller fossils is much more likely to survive for 100s of millions of years. A large building will be eroded by roots, wind, acid rain, etc. A fist sized rock containing the imprint of a trilobite, buried in soil and safe from most elements, will easily survive for 100s of millions of years. Or perhaps the author meant that the vast majority of our buildings are not built to last. An asphalt highway - if unmaintained - will be unrecognizable in a hundred years. Roman roads survived for a few 1000 years because of their very crude nature: they are just a pile of rocks. But even such structures will fall prey to soil erosion and the relentless assault of nature. Unless said roads see foot traffic, they'd be also quickly overrun by trees and grasses.

namaria 2y ago

The fossil record is incredibly fragmented and incomplete. There are weird structures that we discovered and haven't yet made sense of as well. The known unknowns in science vast outnumber the known knowns.

jayrot 2y ago
> There are weird structures that we discovered and haven't yet made sense of as well. Do you mean biological structures? Or do you mean physical/geological/natural structures? If the latter, can you give some examples? Specifically of structures we haven’t made sense of that could be “intelligent design”, as you seem to be suggesting.
- pvg 2y ago
  Or do you mean physical/geological/natural structures? There's a bunch of these, the bulk of which eventually get reasonable explanations. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bimini_Road https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bimini_Road I'm surprised there's no Wikipedia list of these.