Been thinking along the lines of Planet of the Apes -but without any man made catastrophe, meteorite impact and climate stabilization- what sort of structures or evidence of our civilization would remain in five or six million years if we all just vanish? Would an intelligent species of evolved insects -or something else- find buried artifacts in the ground like we did the dinosaurs? Would ancient structures like the pyramids or Great Wall remain for that long, and would any modern things like the Eiffel tower, Burj Khalifa, or even some present day Doomsday Vaults survive that amount of time? In our digitized age, I assume that not much would remain, other than satellites maybe or I suppose any modern species that just happens to get preserved like a dinosaur did.
The biggest challenge for future intelligent species, and the reason why I know we’re the first technological ones, is that we’ve mined all of the easily accessible metals and all of the easily accessible fossil fuels. Any intelligence arriving after us is going to have to make a civilization without iron, precious metals, oil, or coal. Unless you get into some sci-fi bio-engineering scenario where they’re growing high tech, they’re doomed to being stuck in the stone age. It’s going to be hard for them to escape the planet, defend it from asteroids, deal with super-volcanoes, build advanced calculating devices… all of the stuff we would already find challenging even with all the resources we have.
Millions of years are not enough to replenish the fossil fuels, and the sun is going to start expanding before enough life lives and dies to produce any useful amount of biomass. Before then, more metals will become accessible, in places, but good luck working it at industrial levels without fossil fuels.
I’m not saying it’s impossible, but we’ve given a severe handicap to advancing beyond a rudimentary agrarian society for any successor species; even if it’s our own descendants re-arrising from a post-apocalyptic environmental catastrophe.
Metals are here, will recycle in the earth. Where will it go?
would remain in five or six million years if we all just vanish?
Literally nothing…
10-20k years left and the only thing left would be like Mount Rushmore and other giant stone monuments.
At 5-6 million years it would only be the layer of plastic in landfills from before bacteria evolved to break it down and nuclear test sites if the future society does isotope testing there. Both things that have much more logical explanations than an ancient civilization with no other evidence.
You should check out the “documentary” (for lack of a better word) called “After Us.” It is specifically about what Earth might look like if humans just suddenly vanished from the face of the Earth.
Seems interesting and tried looking it up without success. Could it be “Life After People” or “Aftermath: Population Zero”?
Life After People is what I was thinking of.
This is material for No Stupid Questions or Ask Lemmy communities, not a Showerthought
Showerquestions
More than they’re going to get otherwise. Also this is a series of questions, not a shower thought.
It is pure conjecture to say any other “intelligent” and industrious species would arise, but many modern constructions would have little to no sign of existence. Any metal, even most stainless steels, would be rusted away or buried many feet deep after millions of years. Even plastics and cement would be deteriorated enough that there would mostly just be the greatly disturbed strata that would give big clues that something either catastrophic or massively industrious happened. Only very rare areas that are geologically stable and have low corrosion would have much of a chance to retain anything recognizable, like how only some cave paintings are still around today.
So, maybe a couple military bases might retain enough structure to piece some things together, but it’ll still be a mess by the time another equivalently
self-centeredintelligent species comes about.I’ve thought about the idea of some future civilization thinking they’re the first and then finding subway tunnels and the flags planted on the moon
See the Silurian hypothesis:
The Silurian hypothesis is a thought experiment, which assesses modern science’s ability to detect evidence of a prior advanced civilization, perhaps several million years ago.
which assesses modern science’s ability to detect evidence of a prior advanced civilization,
We can’t, we know we can’t.
It doesn’t even take lizard people millions of years ago.
Past 50k years is a blank spot. Anatomically modern humans have been around for at least 300k years.
They say it took the ice age ending so we could have agriculture, but that ignores we had 3-4 ice age cycles before the last one where humans were running around. Plenty of time for agriculture each cycle.
Even then, during the last ice age the Sarah desert was a lush rain forest the entire time.
The modern timeline is very Euro-centric, which is an incredibly naive view considering the glaceriers from an ice age are basically a giant bulldozer that erases everything. It plows down mountains. Obviously we won’t find any evidence there, it keeps getting erased every ice age.
And the places around the equater that would have fostered large settlements, are under the ocean due to those glaciers melting.
Just like with everything else, it’s incredibly ignorant to think we know everything and there’s no missing pieces of the puzzle
As a violent psychopath once said:
The absence of evidence is not the evidence of absence.
At least for our civiliſation, there would always be the echoes of ſignals like the Aracebo Meſſage that would be around for future civiliſations to catch regardleſs of what happened here on Earth.
