The Earth is like a senior citizen, it has forgotten more than us infants will ever know.

This forum appears to be the place where threads start out that have no clue where to go, so if I am in the wrong place I am sure it will be fixed for me by the wonderful land of MODS.

Earth is supposedly 4,000,000,000 billion years old, right? Is it really feasible to expect that we have been the only civilization that has existed here in all that time?

If we were to just use simple math based on the average life span of a human today, say 78 years old, then this is how many lifetimes could have been lived in 4,000,000,000 years...51,282,051.

The supposed age of civilization as we know it is maybe 13,000 years.

If we take the same math and divide the amount of possible lives lived with the age of our civilization then we get this number, 3,944.

That is almost 4,000 possible civilizations that have existed in the time the Earth has been around.

I don't know if my thinking or math is correct, I am sure there are much smarter people here that can correct me where I am mistaken.

It just makes me laugh though every time I hear "recorded history" as a basis for anything.

The Earth is like a senior citizen, it has forgotten more than us infants will ever know.

Great thread.
Ever since I was kid, when I've communed with nature, I get the feeling that Earth is this wise, old, benevolent being.
The human race has come and we will probably go. Earth has a place reserved in her shale for us.

a reply to: baglady333

The Earth doesn't forget; she forgives.

Dinosaurs apparently roamed the Earth for 65,000,000 (million) years, yet we see them as simple creatures that didn't have too much intelligence other than basic survival skills. They were on Earth 5,000 times as long as we have been (according to your number of 13,000) yet we have all this advanced technology. What if dinosaurs were far more advanced than we are? That has always been a question I've wondered about, did dinosaurs make it to space? Probably a dumb question but there it is.

a reply to: 3NL1GHT3N3D1

Would have had to been some really big space ships! lol.

a reply to: NewzNose

Maybe she does both. There is layer upon layer and oceans covering that have been likely displaced many times that have rendered past civilizations to anonymity. I think I was trying to make this recent situation with the "global warming" based on recorded history, obsolete.

4,000,000,000 is a lot of unrecorded history.

a reply to: baglady333

Sure if we ignored all the evidence we've found on the gradual development of life on earth, and the complete absence of evidence for any prior unknown civilisations.......then maybe

a reply to: Prezbo369

Evidence? I am convinced more now than ever the evidence that is not seen is more important than creating a time line based on "recorded history". 90% of this planet has yet to be explored.

a reply to: baglady333

Do YOU forget that which has scarred you deeply?

a reply to: baglady333

'evidence that is not seen' is indistinguishable from evidence that doesn't exist.

a reply to: baglady333

Let me tell you 2 reasons why its feasible we are the first global civilization, and that human civilization doesn't extend much further than 15k years ago:

- exponential growth. It takes forever to start, but after awhile it explodes. Compare the last 100 years to the prior 1000, for example. Or the last 10 to the prior 10,000. You can see that we are urrently entering the explosive growth phase of the exponential growth of our species. We just didn't have the foundation needed to build a global civilization long ago. And we certainly don't see the traces of it laying around.
- It took a good amount of time to create the anatomically modern human that is capable of true omnivorous diet adapting to environment. all those years of dinosaurs, all the extinctions...we can even trace back a few genetic bottlenecks in our own history, due to near extinction. Billions of years where the only innovations were from the slow march of evolution/genetic drift. Then along comes a sapient being in our genetic history that starts the long, slow march of learning to innovate outside of the natural march of evolution. Im certain we would see rock carvings from ancient times if humans were around to innovate based on our dreams, rather than the messy, slow grind of erosion being the only force that changes how rocks look.

Consider that the Romans had architecture, central planning, central heating, running hot/cold water, burgers, cook-books, and wine over 2000 years ago. Not forgetting the Greeks knowledge of medicine and robotics (gears, animated mechatronics) and the Japanese knowledge of metalwork to make rustproof samurai swords. Egyptians had architecture, medicine and writing. They had casual games like Dogs and Jackals (would take 30 minutes to play one game, with fast-paths for anyone who started with a low score). Druids also had knowledge of medicine and the stars.

You'd think that with all that going on, we would be exploring the stars by now, and that manned flight should have been possible centuries ago. There are always some strange artifacts that can't be explained, the Nazca lines, little gold items that look like aircraft, those stone hieroglyphics in the shapes of helicopters (explained as plaster that fell off, yet there are no other examples of places where "plaster has fallen off", and what seem to be batteries. Then there are the Olmec heads carved 1300 years ago, Stonehenge and those stone spheres in Costa Rica.

a reply to: stormcell

I would bet there are countless unnamed/unknown/untold geniuses in the dark reaches of our history. Even including a method to fly on a few occasions. Not that it was anything more than maybe balloons or something...but a way to get higher into the sky.

They key is in connecting. Think of it like a complex, interconnected system. The real power is in the synergy created once connected. The discovery of a civilization at one time and place not being lost, and utilized by another in a different time and place.

Even within the same place, Alexandria, there was the knowledge to make a steam engine. But it wasn't connected in a meaningful way in working system. No one even though to connect the two together.

a reply to: bigfatfurrytexan

If the Earth has been here as long as science says it has and we have not as a civilization explored 90% of what is here, how can you say we are the only civilization that ever existed with such certainty? Seems a bit arrogant. Much like saying there is no possibility that there are other planets in the Universe without intelligent life.

a reply to: baglady333


The flood legends that are scattered around the world are to similar and speak of a disaster on a planetry scale , the world rolling on it's axis the Greeks and Romans speak of a year of 360 days up until - 760 bce .

A great way to whipe out a civilization and send humans back to the stone age

originally posted by: Prezbo369
a reply to: baglady333

Sure if we ignored all the evidence we've found on the gradual development of life on earth, and the complete absence of evidence for any prior unknown civilisations.......then maybe

No evidence could have survived the ocean of time to make it to us.

Except fossils.

In 100,000,000 years, you will not be able to look at our fossils and learn we walked on the moon, flew in planes used computers IRL had smart phones.

Theoceans have risen and fallen in every piece of land on earth at one time or another.

If say the US were swallowed by the ocean for say ten thousand years, there would be no recoverable evidence of advanced civilization.

All the buildings cars etc would all be gone, there would be nothing of our civilization left.

originally posted by: forkedtongue

originally posted by: Prezbo369
a reply to: baglady333

Sure if we ignored all the evidence we've found on the gradual development of life on earth, and the complete absence of evidence for any prior unknown civilisations.......then maybe

No evidence could have survived the ocean of time to make it to us.

Except fossils.

What makes you say this? if bones cant be preserved why couldn't the remains of anything else be preserved?

If say the US were swallowed by the ocean for say ten thousand years, there would be no recoverable evidence of advanced civilization.

All the buildings cars etc would all be gone, there would be nothing of our civilization left.

You'd have said the same about the squishy organic remains of all the prehistoric animals that we have found, even marines reptiles, if we had't already found them....

originally posted by: Prezbo369

originally posted by: forkedtongue

originally posted by: Prezbo369
a reply to: baglady333

Sure if we ignored all the evidence we've found on the gradual development of life on earth, and the complete absence of evidence for any prior unknown civilisations.......then maybe

No evidence could have survived the ocean of time to make it to us.

Except fossils.

What makes you say this? if bones cant be preserved why couldn't the remains of anything else be preserved?

If say the US were swallowed by the ocean for say ten thousand years, there would be no recoverable evidence of advanced civilization.

All the buildings cars etc would all be gone, there would be nothing of our civilization left.

You'd have said the same about the squishy organic remains of all the prehistoric animals that we have found, even marines reptiles, if we had't already found them....

Because fossilized bones are not bones.

They are in fact rocks.

Over time the elements in the bones are leached out and replaced by the minerals in the surrounding strata.

Modern buildings are held together by steel rebar, which rusts away, allowing the concrete it is embedded in to simply crumble away.

Drop a modern car in the ocean, come back in a thousand years, there will be nothing of it left at all.

Even the plastics and rubber the tires are made of will be gone.

Salt water is very destructive to our current technology and alloys.

Do you know why modern steel hulled ships aren't giant blocks of rust?

It is called a sacrificial anode. It is a plate that has to be replaced about once a year, because by running electric current through the hull you can make all the rust happen to the anode instead of the hull.

Without this ship's wouldn't last more than a few years without rusting apart.

The ocean would litteraly just dissolve all traces of our advanced civilization, leaving very little behind.

At best we would be thought of as the Egyptians or the sumarians.

It would be assumed we didn't have advanced civilization, because there wouldn't be any planes or rockets or cars or computers left.

Without our modern trappings, how else would they know anything about our culture?

a reply to: stormcell The Romans had surgical instruments for cataracts, how many Egyptian vases that are PERFECT have yet to be explained? Aesthetically speaking, I would say the Egyptians were miles ahead of the Romans. See what I am saying?

originally posted by: forkedtongue

Because fossilized bones are not bones.

They are in fact rocks.

Over time the elements in the bones are leached out and replaced by the minerals in the surrounding strata.

Right.......and for this to happen the carcass has to be preserved, usually by being covered or submerged in some kind of sediment, mud or clay........it certainly doesn't happen if you drop the carcass into the ocean....

There's no reason why modern type artifacts wouldn't leave behind traces (if not fossils) if they were preserved like the fossils we find were preserved.

I know this might destroy your belief/fantasy in such ancient civilizations, but what we want to be true has no bearing on what actually is true.