Possibility of eradication of all records of human history?
Discussion
In a slightly similar vein to the nuclear power station thread, imagine that there is a serious extinction event (nuclear war, weather, asteroid) that was bad enough to wipe out a good portion of the human population but not bad enough to kill every last little group.
Most of the infra structure would be destroyed, power production, communications etc and as most people would be dead there wouldn’t be the expertise to save/rebuild any of it.
Human life would be forced to return to subsistence level.
Here’s the question: would it be conceivable that there could be so few people and therefore such little expertise that those people would be so distracted trying to survive that they wouldn’t be able to prevent the further degradation and disintegration of infrastructure and buildings over the generations.
Further, would it be possible for this to go on so long that buildings and infrastructure would disappear completely, along with any record of our previous existence?
In other words, is it possible that there have been past technologically sophisticated human civilisations that we have absolutely no trace of due to catastrophic events?
Ie few enough people to forget but just enough people to, eventually after many generations, repopulate the planet?
Most of the infra structure would be destroyed, power production, communications etc and as most people would be dead there wouldn’t be the expertise to save/rebuild any of it.
Human life would be forced to return to subsistence level.
Here’s the question: would it be conceivable that there could be so few people and therefore such little expertise that those people would be so distracted trying to survive that they wouldn’t be able to prevent the further degradation and disintegration of infrastructure and buildings over the generations.
Further, would it be possible for this to go on so long that buildings and infrastructure would disappear completely, along with any record of our previous existence?
In other words, is it possible that there have been past technologically sophisticated human civilisations that we have absolutely no trace of due to catastrophic events?
Ie few enough people to forget but just enough people to, eventually after many generations, repopulate the planet?
Edited by Driller on Sunday 30th January 14:30
Driller said:
In a slightly similar vein to the nuclear power station thread, imagine that there is a serious extinction event (nuclear war, weather, asteroid) that was bad enough to wipe out a good portion of the human population but not bad enough to kill every last little group.
Most of the infra structure would be destroyed, power production, communications etc and as most people would be dead there wouldn’t be the expertise to save/rebuild any of it.
Human life would be forced to return to subsistence level.
Here’s the question: would it be conceivable that there could be so few people and therefore such little expertise that those people would be so distracted trying to survive that they wouldn’t be able to prevent the further degradation and disintegration of infrastructure and buildings over the generations.
Further, would it be possible for this to go on so long that buildings and infrastructure would disappear completely, along with any record of our previous existence?
In other words, is it possible that there have been past technologically sophisticated human civilisations that we have absolutely no trace of due to catastrophic events?
Ie few enough people to forget but just enough people to, eventually after many generations, repopulate the planet?
An American friend recently sent out email discussing this exact topic. I understood, from one reply, that there is a US-centric (Library of Congress, perhaps) effort to capture all human ‘knowledge’ and build a repository somewhere. I’ll check the email, but it may have even mentioned the Moon!Most of the infra structure would be destroyed, power production, communications etc and as most people would be dead there wouldn’t be the expertise to save/rebuild any of it.
Human life would be forced to return to subsistence level.
Here’s the question: would it be conceivable that there could be so few people and therefore such little expertise that those people would be so distracted trying to survive that they wouldn’t be able to prevent the further degradation and disintegration of infrastructure and buildings over the generations.
Further, would it be possible for this to go on so long that buildings and infrastructure would disappear completely, along with any record of our previous existence?
In other words, is it possible that there have been past technologically sophisticated human civilisations that we have absolutely no trace of due to catastrophic events?
Ie few enough people to forget but just enough people to, eventually after many generations, repopulate the planet?
Edited by Driller on Sunday 30th January 14:30
I think an event, of the magnitude you mention, may well have that sort of impact.
Certainly any electronic disaster, nuclear explosion of sufficient size, would impact not only the information, but the physical media, so you’d be possibly unable to access what you may know was there, anyway.
Interesting stuff re the records but imagine if there have been multiple civilisations that have appeared, grown and been destroyed. Imagine how each would have looked.
Would they have been similar or radically different re the things they discovered and what they achieved?
I find the idea fascinating.
Would they have been similar or radically different re the things they discovered and what they achieved?
I find the idea fascinating.
I heard an item in the radio some years ago about the storage of nuclear waste.
There was a committee that sat to discuss the warnings that would be used on any bunker, so that in the event of a complete breakdown of any society, the markings would make it clear that in spite of your curiosity to open this bunker to find out about the past, it really really wouldn't be a smart idea for 40000 years or so.
There was a committee that sat to discuss the warnings that would be used on any bunker, so that in the event of a complete breakdown of any society, the markings would make it clear that in spite of your curiosity to open this bunker to find out about the past, it really really wouldn't be a smart idea for 40000 years or so.
Modern civilisation has made changes to this planet down to bedrock level, not to mention all the plastic, that is not going to disappear in a few thousand years. AFAIR geologists think there is so much waste plastic being embedded in new sediment that we are in a new geological age that will be visible in the strata for the rest of the earths existence.
Modern scientific knowledge is also too widespread for it to totally disappear, even if the machines and tools required to put them into practice are lost. Any new civilisation will be built on the knowledge of what's possible, and that is half the battle.
Modern scientific knowledge is also too widespread for it to totally disappear, even if the machines and tools required to put them into practice are lost. Any new civilisation will be built on the knowledge of what's possible, and that is half the battle.
MBBlat said:
Modern civilisation has made changes to this planet down to bedrock level, not to mention all the plastic, that is not going to disappear in a few thousand years. AFAIR geologists think there is so much waste plastic being embedded in new sediment that we are in a new geological age that will be visible in the strata for the rest of the earths existence.
Modern scientific knowledge is also too widespread for it to totally disappear, even if the machines and tools required to put them into practice are lost. Any new civilisation will be built on the knowledge of what's possible, and that is half the battle.
Imagine that the earth’s population was reduced to a few thousand people that was constantly on the verge of extinction but which managed, tediously, to grow very, very slowly over say 5 thousand or 10 thousand years.Modern scientific knowledge is also too widespread for it to totally disappear, even if the machines and tools required to put them into practice are lost. Any new civilisation will be built on the knowledge of what's possible, and that is half the battle.
Under these circumstances I wonder if it would be possible for these things to pass into folklore and then be lost.
Most people are not scientists and it’s difficult to be a scientist when you don’t know whether you’ll survive the day or not.
Just throwing thoughts out there 🙂
There’s a wonderfully satirical article called ‘Fragments’ by Umberto Eco in his anthology ‘Misreadings’ (the book is brilliant), where he imagines, post nuclear apocalypse, a new civilisation inhabiting the poles. They eventually discover ‘cryptolibraries’ and time capsules from Europe.
Well worth a read.
Well worth a read.
Edited by Diderot on Sunday 30th January 18:28
Found a link: https://onlinereadfreenovel.com/umberto-eco/33770-...
Fragments starts right at the bottom of the text on the link …
Fragments starts right at the bottom of the text on the link …
Driller said:
In a slightly similar vein to the nuclear power station thread, imagine that there is a serious extinction event (nuclear war, weather, asteroid) that was bad enough to wipe out a good portion of the human population but not bad enough to kill every last little group.
Most of the infra structure would be destroyed, power production, communications etc and as most people would be dead there wouldn’t be the expertise to save/rebuild any of it.
Human life would be forced to return to subsistence level.
Here’s the question: would it be conceivable that there could be so few people and therefore such little expertise that those people would be so distracted trying to survive that they wouldn’t be able to prevent the further degradation and disintegration of infrastructure and buildings over the generations.
Further, would it be possible for this to go on so long that buildings and infrastructure would disappear completely, along with any record of our previous existence?
In other words, is it possible that there have been past technologically sophisticated human civilisations that we have absolutely no trace of due to catastrophic events?
Ie few enough people to forget but just enough people to, eventually after many generations, repopulate the planet?
Doubtful, because if they existed they left a lot of easily accessible coal and oil unexploited.Most of the infra structure would be destroyed, power production, communications etc and as most people would be dead there wouldn’t be the expertise to save/rebuild any of it.
Human life would be forced to return to subsistence level.
Here’s the question: would it be conceivable that there could be so few people and therefore such little expertise that those people would be so distracted trying to survive that they wouldn’t be able to prevent the further degradation and disintegration of infrastructure and buildings over the generations.
Further, would it be possible for this to go on so long that buildings and infrastructure would disappear completely, along with any record of our previous existence?
In other words, is it possible that there have been past technologically sophisticated human civilisations that we have absolutely no trace of due to catastrophic events?
Ie few enough people to forget but just enough people to, eventually after many generations, repopulate the planet?
The notion of a pre human, even pre primate, civilisation, maybe not quite advanced enough to knock the K-T meteorite off course, is intriguing. There may have been some vaguely intelligent dinosaurs, but the chances are they never got past the 'keep banging the rocks together' stage.
Getragdogleg said:
We had no idea what the Antikythera mechanism was or how it was made until we developed the technology to scan it and work out what it was.
The time from discovery to scanning was over 100 years.
We may not have known what it did, or even it existed, but we had rediscovered the technology by the 14th century.The time from discovery to scanning was over 100 years.
Back to the original subject - the classic about a group retaining "lost" knowledge A Canticle for Leibowitz
Driller said:
Interesting stuff re the records but imagine if there have been multiple civilisations that have appeared, grown and been destroyed. Imagine how each would have looked.
There have been such civilisations, Mesopotamian, Sumerian, Jiahu, Hittite, Assyrian etc etc We have records of all of them. The oldest go back just over 5000 BC, I presume you mean much older and more technologically advanced civilisations though? As we have found fossils of microorganisms in rock dating back about 3.5 billion years and evidence of others more 'recently' it's unlikely we'd find no evidence whatsoever of an entire civilisation i think. who knows, it's a nice idea. Lovecraft had some ideas about an ancient civilisation that arrived from space and inhabited the South Pole many millions of years ago - his 'old Gods'.popeyewhite said:
Driller said:
Interesting stuff re the records but imagine if there have been multiple civilisations that have appeared, grown and been destroyed. Imagine how each would have looked.
There have been such civilisations, Mesopotamian, Sumerian, Jiahu, Hittite, Assyrian etc etc We have records of all of them. The oldest go back just over 5000 BC, I presume you mean much older and more technologically advanced civilisations though?As we have found fossils of microorganisms in rock dating back about 3.5 billion years and evidence of others more 'recently' it's unlikely we'd find no evidence whatsoever of an entire civilisation i think. who knows, it's a nice idea. Lovecraft had some ideas about an ancient civilisation that arrived from space and inhabited the South Pole many millions of years ago - his 'old Gods'.Terminator X said:
8bn people on the planet and imho not possible to destroy them all or even close to them all by any catastrophic event short of the the Sun going supernova etc.
TX.
Not true. An asteroid similar to one that killed off the dinosaurs would do exactly the same to us. TX.
There have been other extinction events in earth’s history. I’m not sure if we understand why those happened so there could be other mechanisms other than asteroid strikes that would result in the demise of other life (and I’d as well).
TTmonkey said:
Our radio waves will forever travel through space….
As said, Golden records, and other artefacts evidencing our existence, on the Voyager probes should last 5 billion years.This is longer than the continents with current plate movements, so everything on Earth will be subducted into the mantle. Radioactive isotopes from nuclear reactors and bombs being the only physical evidence of advanced life on Earth (ironically, if those are what ends it).
Sun will be become a red giant around then too, obliterating what might remain. Interstellar space really is a good pickle jar.
This has been posted a hundred times probably, but worth a watch if you haven’t seen it:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=uD4izuDMUQA&vl=e...
It depends on the durability of the things a civilisation leaves behind. We’ve stepped that up a bit in the last 100 years.
Say we all vanished tomorrow. There would be plenty of evidence of our existence for a few thousand years - we’ve made some pretty durable things, as an example Heathrow would be taken over by forests, but there would be these weird titanium compressor cores lying about that wouldn’t corrode.
In the really long term, everything we’ve ever created on earth would be rolled into subduction zones and ultimately spat out as mountains, but that’s billions of years.
The debris we’ve left on the moon would be pretty much the only evidence of our existence after a few billion years.
Say we all vanished tomorrow. There would be plenty of evidence of our existence for a few thousand years - we’ve made some pretty durable things, as an example Heathrow would be taken over by forests, but there would be these weird titanium compressor cores lying about that wouldn’t corrode.
In the really long term, everything we’ve ever created on earth would be rolled into subduction zones and ultimately spat out as mountains, but that’s billions of years.
The debris we’ve left on the moon would be pretty much the only evidence of our existence after a few billion years.
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