While human bodies stand little chance of fossilising, many of our cultural artefacts do. Structures such as pyramids, concrete, cast iron, shipwrecks in mud, etc, etc. We started out pondering whether a civilisation could have existed before the emergence of humans. I would argue that any such civilisation would have been discovered by fossilised remains of their artefacts. It is of course possible to imagine an intelligent species not building anything to support their existence, but that defies the definition of civilisation, doesn't it.
On an eerie sidenote, I suspect human civilisation's largest contribution to a future fossil record will be fossilised garbage... :-( Jostein 2009/1/19 Luiz Felipe <[email protected]>: > Peter, I saw "Stan" (a T-Rex fossil) at Disney's Animal Kingdom and the > folks at the exibition told me how few specimens existed. It's a very > difficult puzzle indeed. > > There are lots of unexplained artifacts from pre-historic ages that suggest > mankind did have a former civilization that vanished in some global > catastrophe, leaving scattered groups with tales of destruction by flood and > fire. We usually regard our achievements as important, but if mankind > disappeared the next tenants would have little to remember us. > > LF > > Peter Alling escreveu: >> >> On a serious note, most people don't realize how little of the fossil >> record actually exists. I think the entire T-Rex species is known from >> fewer than 100 individuals with only a half a dozen considered "nearly >> complete", representing several hundred thousand years of the species' >> existence. The amount of time that hominids an entire group of mammalian >> species have been on earth is less time than the existence of that one >> species of dinosaur was. If the same amount of time elapsed between the >> rise of a new intelligent creature and our demise, as between us and the >> dinosaurs, I doubt enough would exist of our works to show that we were tool >> users. In fact though there are an awful lot of us, I doubt there would be >> many surviving fossils, as most of us live in areas not conducive to fossil >> formation. >> >> -----Original Message----- >> >>> >>> From: AlunFoto <[email protected]> >>> Sent: Jan 17, 2009 3:45 PM >>> To: Pentax-Discuss Mail List <[email protected]> >>> Subject: Re: PESO - attempt at B/W conversion >>> >>> 2009/1/17 Peter Alling <[email protected]>: >>> >>>> >>>> If birds are related to dinosaurs maybe they did. >>>> Not much would be left of our civilization after a few million years. >>>> >>> >>> True enough. But since there are fossilised remains of early hominids >>> like Lucy, then one has to wonder how a previous civilisation of >>> another species could have come and gone without as much as a trace in >>> the fossil record. >>> >>> Unless, of course, the fossil record is a hoax planted by the previous >>> civilisation. >>> >>> No, wait! That doesn't hold with the fact that Noah's flood caused all >>> the fossils. >>> >>> <g, d & r> >>> Jostein >>> >>> -- >>> http://www.alunfoto.no/galleri/ >>> http://alunfoto.blogspot.com >>> >>> -- >>> PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List >>> [email protected] >>> http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net >>> to UNSUBSCRIBE from the PDML, please visit the link directly above and >>> follow the directions. >>> >> >> >> -- >> PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List >> [email protected] >> http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net >> to UNSUBSCRIBE from the PDML, please visit the link directly above and >> follow the directions. >> >> >> > > -- > Luiz Felipe > luiz.felipe at techmit.com.br > http://techmit.com.br/luizfelipe/ > > -- > PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List > [email protected] > http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net > to UNSUBSCRIBE from the PDML, please visit the link directly above and > follow the directions. > -- http://www.alunfoto.no/galleri/ http://alunfoto.blogspot.com -- PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List [email protected] http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net to UNSUBSCRIBE from the PDML, please visit the link directly above and follow the directions.
