Was There a Civilization On Earth Before Humans?
29th June 2019
We’re used to imagining extinct civilizations in terms of the sunken statues and subterranean ruins. These kinds of artifacts of previous societies are fine if you’re only interested in timescales of a few thousands of years. But once you roll the clock back to tens of millions or hundreds of millions of years, things get more complicated.
When it comes to direct evidence of an industrial civilization—things like cities, factories, and roads—the geologic record doesn’t go back past what’s called the Quaternary period 2.6 million years ago. For example, the oldest large-scale stretch of ancient surface lies in the Negev Desert. It’s “just” 1.8 million years old—older surfaces are mostly visible in cross section via something like a cliff face or rock cuts. Go back much farther than the Quaternary and everything has been turned over and crushed to dust.
June 29th, 2019 at 11:53
“There have been geological periods where Earth’s CO2 has been as high or higher than today, …”
While true, that’s just plain misleading, and all for the tie-in to global warming.. More correctly, it should read: There have been geological periods where Earth’s CO2 has been as low as today, but rarely. Really, one could easily say that CO2 levels are dangerously low.
June 29th, 2019 at 17:34
But where’s the fun in that?