There is a time abyss. Anatomically modern humans have been around for 300k years. That’s enough time for several repetitions of our path from early agriculture to computers.
That seems unlikely—our genetic diversity provides evidence of how many humans there were at any point in the past. We would notice if there were billions of humans only a couple of hundreds of thousand years ago. See https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prehistoric_demography.
Furthermore what would they have powered their industrial revolution with? How come there’s still so much surface level coal and oil? A few hundred thousands of years shouldn’t be enough to regenerate that.
And before humans, there could have been other sufficiently brainy species (e.g. Troodon dinosaurs).
I’m guessing that we would still be able to notice that in the distribution of minerals—e.g. maybe all the high iron concentration ores should have been mined, but I don’t really know much about this.
That seems unlikely—our genetic diversity provides evidence of how many humans there were at any point in the past. We would notice if there were billions of humans only a couple of hundreds of thousand years ago
Judging by the existence of the highly sophisticated Ancient Greek civilization (capable of devising and making the Antikythera mechanism, a mechanical computer), there is no necessity for a technological civilization to be billions of people strong. At the time, the entire population of Europe was about 34 million, comparable to the today’s population of California.
Perhaps the hypothetical previous civilization was not a global behemoth like ours, but more like the Ancient Greece.
By the way, it took Greeks only 7k years from the first stone-age agricultural societies to the Antikythera mechanism (and also to simple steam engines and all kinds of other interesting tech).
I wounder how many such brief sparkles of civilization the Earth has seen, with the ruins buried under kilometers of sediment, or vanished without any trace.
I’m guessing that we would still be able to notice that in the distribution of minerals—e.g. maybe all the high iron concentration ores should have been mined, but I don’t really know much about this.
Troodonts became extinct about 76 million years ago. Since then, even some continental plates have been swallowed by the Earth’s crust. But I agree, perhaps it’s possible to infer a possible advanced civilization using geological or paleontological indicators. E.g. certain patterns of mass extinctions, an anomalous rise of CO2 etc.
That seems unlikely—our genetic diversity provides evidence of how many humans there were at any point in the past. We would notice if there were billions of humans only a couple of hundreds of thousand years ago. See https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prehistoric_demography.
Furthermore what would they have powered their industrial revolution with? How come there’s still so much surface level coal and oil? A few hundred thousands of years shouldn’t be enough to regenerate that.
I’m guessing that we would still be able to notice that in the distribution of minerals—e.g. maybe all the high iron concentration ores should have been mined, but I don’t really know much about this.
Judging by the existence of the highly sophisticated Ancient Greek civilization (capable of devising and making the Antikythera mechanism, a mechanical computer), there is no necessity for a technological civilization to be billions of people strong. At the time, the entire population of Europe was about 34 million, comparable to the today’s population of California.
Perhaps the hypothetical previous civilization was not a global behemoth like ours, but more like the Ancient Greece.
By the way, it took Greeks only 7k years from the first stone-age agricultural societies to the Antikythera mechanism (and also to simple steam engines and all kinds of other interesting tech).
I wounder how many such brief sparkles of civilization the Earth has seen, with the ruins buried under kilometers of sediment, or vanished without any trace.
Troodonts became extinct about 76 million years ago. Since then, even some continental plates have been swallowed by the Earth’s crust. But I agree, perhaps it’s possible to infer a possible advanced civilization using geological or paleontological indicators. E.g. certain patterns of mass extinctions, an anomalous rise of CO2 etc.