It's generally understood that we are the first "civilization" on earth, but I had a friend once propose that what if we weren't? Would anything have survived deep time and the churning of the continental plates to prove that we weren't? Now I dismissed this as preposterous, when later I examined the evidence and gave it a little more thought I realized my dismissal was preposterous, that, from an evidentiary point of view there was nothing to justify my presupposition that humans alone had developed civilization. "Absence of Evidence...." and so forth.
Considering that the fossil record is supposed to preserve only the tiniest fraction of a percentage of the life that has existed on earth, think of what might yet to be discovered? And what would we have to discover to convince us that there were civilizations that preceded us? What extraordinary conditions would be required for these artifacts to survive deep time? Food for thought.
Links:
- https://www.extremetech.com/extreme/267855-silurian-hypothesis-what-if-humans-arent-the-first-civilization-on-earth
- https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2018/04/are-we-earths-only-civilization/557180/
- https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/could-an-industrial-prehuman-civilization-have-existed-on-earth-before-ours/