Science Mysteries Explained Book entry (excerpt)
How can we be sure there wasn’t a technological civilization living on Earth millions of years ago?
Are humans really the first technology-using animal to walk the Earth? With a billion years of history, it seems pretty unlikely! Though surely if smart city builders had lived here before us, there’d be some kind of sign...
The opening of the entry. Excerpt.
To be totally scientific about this, we have to say that it’s still possible we are not the first high-tech species to live on Earth. And there is, hidden away somewhere in the geological record, evidence of super-smart dinosaurs or something similar.
After all, humans are just another kind of mammal, and our species may even be less than a million years old. Surely in the 135-million-year history of the dinosaurs, there was at least one species that used tools, made fire, built houses... no?
To explain why there almost definitely hasn’t been another high-tech animal on this planet, it’s helpful to look at what humans would leave behind if we all left or died out in the next few centuries.
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