3 ms·

I doubt there wouldn't be evidence. A steel building frame probably preserves better than bone. A global population of tool making beings should at least leav

I doubt there wouldn't be evidence. A steel building frame probably preserves better than bone. A global population of tool making beings should at least leave some fossil evidence even if their timeline was only 30-50k years. Lastly, the distribution of natural resources might leave some evidence (like not finding ore where you would expect it).

DougWebb 13y ago
Have you seen a steel bridge lately? They require constant maintenance to prevent them from rusting away. Even stainless steel will rust eventually. The only thing that lasts more than centuries is stone, and only the really hard stones will last for thousands of years. The other problem is location. Humans like to build on coastlines, and coastlines shift. We have very little evidence of ice-age era settlements today, but the few sites we do know of show that there were some pretty sophisticated societies around at the time. It's very likely that there are/were more sites, but today they're under a few hundred feet of water off our coasts. As far as natural resources: apparently there are extensive empty holes in the ground around the great lakes that used to be full of copper ore, based on what's left in the walls. So much copper ore that the mining must have gone on for centuries, or involved tens of thousands of people. No one knows who did that, but a likely possibility is the Phoenicians during the Bronze Age. So that's one example of the type of evidence you're talking about, albeit for a more recent period. To go back much further, we'd have to know what kind of resources they were after and where, and hope that the landscape hasn't changed so much that we can't recognize the evidence of resource mining.
icegreentea 13y ago
Actually, once the frame collapses and gets covered in earth, it'll likely decay way faster than bone. Note the incredible lack of early iron age tools compared to bronze age tools. That said, it's super unlikely that all, or even most traces of humanity will be gone. As you point out, the redistribution of resources - most specifically our landfills will probably be clear signals on the time scales of at least 10s or maybe 100s of thousands of years.

DougWebb 13y ago

Have you seen a steel bridge lately? They require constant maintenance to prevent them from rusting away. Even stainless steel will rust eventually. The only thing that lasts more than centuries is stone, and only the really hard stones will last for thousands of years. The other problem is location. Humans like to build on coastlines, and coastlines shift. We have very little evidence of ice-age era settlements today, but the few sites we do know of show that there were some pretty sophisticated societies around at the time. It's very likely that there are/were more sites, but today they're under a few hundred feet of water off our coasts. As far as natural resources: apparently there are extensive empty holes in the ground around the great lakes that used to be full of copper ore, based on what's left in the walls. So much copper ore that the mining must have gone on for centuries, or involved tens of thousands of people. No one knows who did that, but a likely possibility is the Phoenicians during the Bronze Age. So that's one example of the type of evidence you're talking about, albeit for a more recent period. To go back much further, we'd have to know what kind of resources they were after and where, and hope that the landscape hasn't changed so much that we can't recognize the evidence of resource mining.

icegreentea 13y ago

Actually, once the frame collapses and gets covered in earth, it'll likely decay way faster than bone. Note the incredible lack of early iron age tools compared to bronze age tools. That said, it's super unlikely that all, or even most traces of humanity will be gone. As you point out, the redistribution of resources - most specifically our landfills will probably be clear signals on the time scales of at least 10s or maybe 100s of thousands of years.