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Deep Time (mander.xyz)
submitted 9 months ago by to c/science_memes@mander.xyz
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[–] 3 points 9 months ago (5 children)

Chronologically, sure. But are years really the appropriate measure of accuracy here? Biological evolution moves a lot slower than cultural or technological evolution does.

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  • [–] 5 points 9 months ago (4 children)

    Hold on. Dinosaurs might of had like some kind of post communist utopian society. They might have been more culturally developed than humans.

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  • [–] 4 points 9 months ago (1 child)

    I tried asking a geologist this question once and just got a funny look.

    But let's say for the sake of arguement that dinosaurs did have a civilisation, if that civilisation was on the level of mediaeval technology then would there be any evidence after millennia and an asteroid impact? If we're talking about houses made of wood and roads made of cobblestone and no refined metals, would we be able to tell?

    There's an idea that they may have been prior civilisations but they will wiped out and never left any evidence. It would certainly explain why humans are so much more intelligent than the rest of the animals. We aren't actually special at all, we are just the latest iteration of biological inevitability.

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  • [–] 2 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

    Its a frequent idea but I don't think there's any supporting evidence from people I've talked to.

    I think if a small community existed with houses, it might be permanently unknowable. If a widespread civilization with stone and wood construction existed we would certainly have found some evidence.

    Though I think stone and wood construction came very late even for humans. I don't remember my anthropology class well but its suggested based on hunter gatherers humans often had a sort of nomadic foraging/hunting society until about 10,000 years ago when permanent agricultural settlements started developing.

    Like humans are kind of weak and soft, we walk funny, we're omnivorous endurance pack hunters and fishers. Like in terms of mammals we're very weird. In the larger animal kingdom we're pretty weird but maybe not as weird as like mollusks, birds, and crabs where evolution also seemed to have done a series of back-to-back rapid changes in evolutionary pressure by sort of creating and occupying an uninhabited niche in the environment.

    I especially am fond of the idea that like "crabification" there's like a "birdification" and a "hominidification" evolutionary process based on occupying a series of vacant ecological niches that step into each other. So if something like that is true it might be more visible in the fossil record.

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