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.
I read a book by Alan Weisman titled The World Without Us, which covers this very specific topic. According to it, among the very last man-made structures left after hundreds of thousands – if not millions – of years would be the Channel Tunnel between England and France. Another notable example would be the stone faces on Mount Rushmore, as well as some old steel bridges built in an era when engineers couldn’t yet calculate structural load precisely, so they simply overbuilt everything.
A totally not serious answer. Today, I was sitting across from a Starbucks and staring at the logo. It is really weird. I started thinking that if something were to happen to civilization, all these cups, sleeves, merchandise and plastic stir sticks emblazoned with the Starbucks logo may cause future archaeologists to think that we worshipped some half fish woman thing (or whatever the logo is supposed to be).
Alternatively, this xkcd could be fun to do.
According to What If, a layer of processed hydrocarbons in the geological record.
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?
Earth would never get fossil fuels back as their formation was dependent on lacking fungi to break plants down. This is indeed our one shot.
I’ve thought about the idea of some future civilization thinking they’re the first and then finding subway tunnels and the flags planyed on the moon
This is material for No Stupid Questions or Ask Lemmy communities, not a Showerthought
Showerquestions
Showerexistentialdreads
I question my showers.
Sorry, you’re right, will do for next time:) I guess I wrote my inner questions while showering than crafting this as terminal thoughts.
In theory eventually any earth we lived on would be lost to tectonic plate movements and it would be like we were never here. And then the sun explodes so…
Depends on the time period honestly. Biggest signs are gonna be massive buildings or infrastructure projects. I wonder how long voyager will last just drifting?
We got rocks over 4 billion years old. But you’re right, very little would survive after 100-200 million years.
You should check out the “documentary” (for lack of a better word) called
“After Us”“Life After People.” 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.
Came here to suggest this.
Cats basically just move along without a blip.
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.
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.
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.Very little, if anything, would remain of our civilization in five or six million years. At least I wouldn’t think so, aside from what we have floating in outer space. Six million years is an awfully long time, and it’s not like our consumer-based society builds things to last…
They would thrive
