Do you think it's possible that there were civilizations on Earth before?

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grayure

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Yes, in two different ways. Aliens are likely to have visited the planet in the past and technological cultures have evolved from native life as well, for example coleurosaurs. The problem with this, though, is the paucity of evidence, and this is a rationalistic rather than scientific position, justified thus. Earth has existed for nearly five billion years and the Galaxy for about twice as long. The number of suitable environments for the evolution of technological cultures is huge and it is therefore very likely that this planet has been visited in the past. Besides this, there have been times in Earth's history when certain species have converged with human characteristics, two of these being the coleurosaurs in the late Cretaceous and the oreopithecines about 30 million years ago. There are also supposedly a few fossilised artefacts dating from millions of years ago. However, i have to admit that this sounds crazy and is not backed up by empirical evidence.
 
I was thinking that maybe it is possible that humans or other creatures roamed the Earth, tens of thousands years ago? Maybe they were even more developed than us. They could have been wiped out by a comet or even a change in the climate, something like that. And now, tens of thousands of years on, there is no evidence that they even existed? Imagine, maybe they'd been through the same problems we're going through. Maybe they caused the last ice age. Do you think it's possible? Maybe humankind is part of one big cycle...
 
Anything is possible, but I find this possibility very unlikely indeed. If they existed, why did they allow themselves to be wiped out? And if they were at least as advanced as we are, why haven't we found any signs of them? Surely if dinosaur bones can be fossilized and last for hundreds of millions of years, then so can concrete building foundations, metal vehicle frames, etc.
 
I've often pondered this very question. It seems to me with the Earth as old as it is and taking into consideration what man has been able to accomplish in just the last 200 years, that it seems highly unlikely that over the millions of years since the Earth cooled that many civilizations didn't come and go. The planet could have easily erased any evidence of their existence. After all, look at what hurricane Ike was able to destroy in just one day!
 
There were humans that long ago, and they did leave traces that can be found today. Archaeologists have found traces of human habitation going back many tens of thousands of years at least. But they had no modern technology like we do.
 
I think it's been brought up before, but you'd need evidence that points to it. For a civilization more advanced than ours *not* to leave any evidence of itself behind is hard to grasp - I mean, we know of dinosaurs that lived 230 million years ago... but a civilization say, just a million years ago - there's nothing...?

Even Man, today, will have evidence of himself almost forever.... Satellites we've launched to Geosyncronous orbit will remain there for millions, if not billions of years, for there's not much that would affect them there. Plastics will last for tens to hundreds of thousands of years, and even our gravesites will be preserved for a very, very long time.

I can't say the chance of such an occurance is zero.... but I'd say it's very unlikely.
 
No. The archaeological record everywhere in the world is well known today, and there are no traces of any ancient civilizations earlier than Mesopotamia.
 
Doubtful, human scientific and technical knowledge grows at an exponential rate. That means that for the first 4-5 million years of humanoid existence we used little more technology than did apes. And steadily since our departure from being hunters and gatherers, humans have been able to specialize, record our advancements and advance on previous advancements-thus exponential scientific knowledge.

This all takes time and the fossil/written evidence supports this belief.

If you don't care to have any credible evidence you may feel free to believe anything you desire, including the belief that the Unicorn-people once ruled the world
 
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