What about Previous peak civilizations?

[hjames]

Okay, so postulate that we are not the first time earth civilization has had an industrial period?
Now postulate some more ... what if the previous peak was not a human civilization?
What does that even mean? Intelligent dinosaurs?? Lizards bipeds like in Doctor Who?
Who knows? How would we even know if it happened? How can we test for it?
How many years back can we see who was here, and what they left behind in the geological record?

Well, some scientists have come up with a pretty good paper speculating all of this!

"If an industrial civilization had existed on Earth many millions of years prior to our
own era, what traces would it have left and would they be detectable today? We
summarize the likely geological fingerprint of the Anthropocene, and demonstrate
that while clear, it will not differ greatly in many respects from other known events
in the geological record. We then propose tests that could plausibly distinguish an
industrial cause from an otherwise naturally occurring climate event"

https://arxiv.org/pdf/1804.03748.pdf (a quick read - only 28 ages)

 

[Judas Priest]

I have also pondered over the possibility of how many civilizations may have risen and fallen over the eons of time.

 

[jgannon]

I am currently re-reading a book entitled" The Sixth Extinction" by Elizabeth Kolbert. It's a great book which argues that we're in the middle of a mass extinction event right now. That's an intriguing idea that there could have been other civilizations that industrialized and then perished here on Earth in an earlier time. But while fossils are few, there haven't been any found of any species that look like they would be capable of achieving industrialization. We do know that the dinosaurs lived on the earth for approximately 165 million years. They died off about 66 million years ago. There certainly wouldn't have been any industrialized society around at the time that they were around. They themselves, first appeared around 250 million years ago. The first vertebrates. Appeared almost 500 million years ago. Could there have been some form of life during that roughly first 250 million years of that could have industrialized? Based on what kind of life scientists think existed during that time, I'm thinking not.

 

[KeninDC]

Not mocking in the least bit since I've had these discussions over beers with friends, and I've got one smart pal who loves anything about Atlantis.

 

[toxcrusadr]

Very interesting. I don't have time right now to read 28 pages (not with this stack of reports sitting here!) but I would think there are certain issues to consider: Brain size, dexterity to use tools, ability to communicate complex ideas in writing or verbally. A lot of these things have been evaluated with respect to not only early man and his immediate ancestors, but also various other critters throughout the fossil record. As I recall there was a real explosion at one point prior to one of the big extinctions - can't remember which - but there was a huge diversity of weird creatures that disappeared and were never seen again. I read a book called A Brief History of Everything that had a great chapter on this.

Here's the Cosmos summary of the 5 major extinctions:

https://cosmosmagazine.com/palaeontology/big-five-extinctions

Edit: The one I'm thinking of might have been the end of the Permian and beginning of the age of dinosaurs, 250 mya. 96% of all species were lost.

 

[toxcrusadr]

One would think, though, that we'd have seen something in the fossil record, artifacts I mean.

 

[jgannon]

Something pretty wild to consider is that homo sapiens have only been around roughly 200,000 years. When you consider that the dinosaurs were around for 165 million years or so, and we haven't even worked on our first million...

 

[Djcoolray]

Funny you might propose such a topic...

I’ve personally studied the principles of archeology which is a method of collecting data without bias or speculation. The Maya civilization was highly industrious and it’s products made from turquoise has been found in Native American burial sites all over this once great nation. The Pyramids of Egypt are symbols of past industrialization that was thwarted by religious philosophers, in fact Northern Africa was highly populated prior to the addition of Mt. Everest to the Himalayas by way of an earthquake. Both the Himalayas and Mt. Everest were carbon dated to prove that Everest was a later addition to the mountain range and influenced severe wind changes that caused the Sahara Desert. Then the Bible talks of Cedars from Lebanon in Gods temple which depicts and proves a tropical climate prior to the presence of Mount Everest....plus the oldest building in Europe were made from lumber harvested from Northern Africa. East Africa was highly industrial prior to the Jesuits sacking that part of the world in the name of expanding catholicity. China’s ancient culture was highly industrial prior to Gingus Khan galavanting around causing war and famine, the extent of the trade of that early civilization was found in caves on the Oregon coast. Atlantis plunged into the sea at a time when there were multiple earthquakes around the Mediterranean and the Himalayas during the birth of Mt. Everest.

Alien civilizations....

That huge slab of red rock that sling shot it’s way around the sun this last year which put it in the direction of the Pegasus constellation might be an indication of an advanced alien industrial culture. Why else would a slab of red rock of a shape that could not evolve out in space prove the impossible by using the gravitational forces of the sun to increase rate of speed towards its destination ??? Then that slab of red rock is ten times the density of anything on this planet making that slab of red rock a commodity !!!! Only intelligent life can control the exact trajectory angle and timing to be that finite. In the Olympic peninsula there was a patch of trees a thousand feet across that was knocked down all in the same direction and angle at the same time that actually registered on the Richter scale in the state of Washington and no one knows how it happened. Check out Kiro 7 news website....(what knocked these trees down), they are speculating and saying a mystery wind knocked them down. But, that would not have caused the seismic activity that can be verified online.

History is only information that is recorded by a biased population....kind of like bad PR !!!

Archeological science is the method of proving something without being there to see it without bias or speculation....

 

[toxcrusadr]

^^^ I have questions. First of all, how was carbon dating used to date Mount Everest? Geologists (not archeologists) have dated its rise to the "Cenezoic Collision" of 60 million years ago. The rocks it's made of would therefore be older than that. There must be abundant and varied geological evidence of that mechanism. I would like to see the geological evidence that an earthquake could remotely do that kind of work, and that one that big occurred during such a recent time period, and how C-14 dating could be used to demonstrate the age of the uplift.

As for the interstellar rock, Oumuamua they called it. Only intelligent life could control its trajectory? Consider: every telescope on the planet watched it as it went through, since we would never see it again. In fact there was quite a bit of scientific debate about its shape and rotation since a lot of the data from different observers didn't seem to match up. I found this article on the development of a model that fit the observations:

https://www.space.com/39767-first-interstellar-visitor-oumuamua-tumbling.html

It's shaped like a cucumber and is tumbling on 3 axes, most likely as a result of collisions. At least, that's the opinion of one team analyzing everyone's data. In any case, we had all these astronomers analyzing its size, brightness, shape and trajectory, and yet none of them seemed to think it was intelligently controlled. One would think that if it was, many observers would be able to observe that independently, and that it would be news if they did, coming from multiple sources and all.

 

[tubed]

The last one could have outdone this one.

 

[JimPA]

I saw on Ancient Aliens according to the ancient Sumerian texts life originated on Mars.
Then they migrated to earth.

There is also evidence of the Nephilum stated in the Old Testament from the giant skeletons found all over earth.
giant-human-skeletons-found-in-greece-3299810

 

[Lazarus Long]

I saw on Ancient Aliens according to the ancient Sumerian texts life originated on Mars.
Then they migrated to earth.

There is also evidence of the Nephilum stated in the Old Testament from the giant skeletons found all over earth.
giant-human-skeletons-found-in-greece-3299810

The "giant" skeletons... So far all have been a hoax or a misrepresentation. There is no actual evidence of giants. Except this:
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/graveyard-giants-found-china-180963976/

 

[JimPA]

The "giant" skeletons... So far all have been a hoax or a misrepresentation. There is no actual evidence of giants. Except this:
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/graveyard-giants-found-china-180963976/

If you do a search there have been many found all over the world including the US.

 

[Lazarus Long]

If you do a search there have been many found all over the world including the US.

Show me one that hasnt been debunked.. Is there a vast conspiracy?

 

[dcmfan]

Withoun even reading the one linked to, I would be willing to bet it falls into that category.

Authors:
Gavin A. Schmidt1 and Adam Frank2
1NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, 2880 Broadway, New York, NY 10025
2Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Rochester, Rochester NY 14620

Yup. Hacks, definitely.

 

[Lazarus Long]

http://earthsky.org/earth/earlier-human-civilization-silurian-hypothesis

Pretty good synopsis of the paper. Not pseudoscience.. There are other clickbait articles about the paper that are misleading. The authors were not saying that there were any unknown ancient civilizations, but simply thinking about different ways in which you could find evidence of such..

 

[JimPA]

Show me one that hasnt been debunked.. Is there a vast conspiracy?

I don't understand why you want to disagree about this subject?

When my father attended Villanova back in the 1940's one of his classes was about ancient studies.
I remember him discussing the subject about giant human type bones being discovered all over the world.

I suggest you contact the names of the authors and references on many of the sites on the internet.
You should speak to them personally since they can give you more information then thy.

giants-of-north-and-south-america

 

[JimPA]

Oops

Heather has started a nice thread that I fear will be closed due to you.

 

[Lazarus Long]

I don't understand why you want to disagree about this subject?

When my father attended Villanova back in the 1940's one of his classes was about ancient studies.
I remember him discussing the subject about giant human type bones being discovered all over the world.

I suggest you contact the names of the authors and references on many of the sites on the internet.
You should speak to them personally since they can give you more information then thy.

giants-of-north-and-south-america

Ok. Your link is not evidence.. I can go through some of those later as they have all been proven to be fake.

 

[Lazarus Long]

Heather has started a nice thread that I fear will be closed due to you.

Well, if we cant interject science into the discussion aboit a scientific paper without closing the thread, go on, Talk amongst yourselves...