# Advanced dinosaur civilization **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [June 9, 2022, 4:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/advanced-dinosaur-civilization/965923 "2022-06-09T16:22:16Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 9
**Author:** ![k9bfriender](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/k9bfriender/32/3283_2.png) [@k9bfriender](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/k9bfriender)\ **Post date:** [June 11, 2022, 6:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/advanced-dinosaur-civilization/965923/161 "2022-06-11T18:59:21Z")
And cyanobacteria developed carbon capture using biological techniques. Are they a technological civilization? ---
**Author:** ![Crane](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/crane/32/3495_2.png) [@Crane](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Crane)\ **Post date:** [June 11, 2022, 7:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/advanced-dinosaur-civilization/965923/162 "2022-06-11T19:03:41Z")
I don’t believe I proposed such a thing. I was exploring a definition of civilization that would allow the inclusion of animal societies. Without that the dinosaur hypothesis is not possible. ---
**Author:** ![k9bfriender](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/k9bfriender/32/3283_2.png) [@k9bfriender](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/k9bfriender)\ **Post date:** [June 11, 2022, 7:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/advanced-dinosaur-civilization/965923/163 "2022-06-11T19:07:50Z")
> [@Crane](#): > > I don’t believe I proposed such a thing. Then I don’t understand why you give credit to natural evolution to the recipients of that evolution. > [@Crane](#): > > I was exploring a definition of civilization that would allow the inclusion of animal societies. So, you are just making up an entirely new definition for the word? That’s fine, so define it, rather than simply making odd non-sequiturs about natural abilities of certain animals. What definition of civilization would you like to be using here? > [@Crane](#): > > Without that the dinosaur hypothesis is not possible. On that, we are agreed. In order for there to be a dinosaur civilization, we are going to need to redefine what a civilization is quite considerably. ---
**Author:** ![Crane](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/crane/32/3495_2.png) [@Crane](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Crane)\ **Post date:** [June 11, 2022, 7:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/advanced-dinosaur-civilization/965923/164 "2022-06-11T19:15:39Z")
> [@Exapno\_Mapcase](#): > > an alteration of the landscape and ecosystem by deliberate, planned measures, not innate instincts such as nesting and herding. Are you proposing that nesting, herding, communication and transportation are not innate human instinctual drives? They seem to be universals in human activity. I’d say civilization is the ability to boil water. That’s universal and not innate, and temporally covers everything from roasting a drum stick to powering a nuclear submarine. ---
**Author:** ![MrDibble](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mrdibble/32/114_2.png) [@MrDibble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MrDibble)\ **Post date:** [June 11, 2022, 8:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/advanced-dinosaur-civilization/965923/165 "2022-06-11T20:18:43Z")
> [@slash2k](#): > > What effect did the forty million years of non-avian dinosaur evolution preceding the Chicxulub strike have on what happened after? So we’re back to the OP’s terminated clade? > [@slash2k](#): > > Even a smaller disaster might have wiped out a civilization that had not yet spread too far from its origin. Just how do you think civilization came about? _First_ was a multi-continent-spanning tool-using species, that _then_ developed civilizations at various loci. Not _all_ development in one Lost Valley. A disaster might wipe out the civilization itself, but not the path to it. That’s too ridiculous a notion to credit. > [@slash2k](#): > > There is some evidence (not yet definitive) that the Youngest Toba volcanic eruption ca. 75K BP came close to wiping out modern humans, for example, and by that time modern humans were already dispersed to several continents. Toba didn’t come close to wiping us out, bottleneck or not. We were already too dispersed for that to happen, > [@slash2k](#): > > On a more limited scale, the Late Bronze Age Collapse and the collapse of traditional Easter Island society after 1600 show civilizations reverting to drastically simplified forms after a period of development. Stuff we can all tell _by the abundant artefact evidence_. So even those collapses weren’t happening in some Lost Valley fantasyland. > [@slash2k](#): > > If a dinosaur civilization had existed, what sort of environment would they prefer, and what would their tools look like? They would look like worked stone and we can see that. Unless you’re postulating a civilization that never used stone tools which - yeah, going to need more than Just Asking Questions for that one, thanks. > [@slash2k](#): > > As a thought exercise No, thanks, the dinosauroid was fantasy in 1982, it’s still fantasy now. > [@slash2k](#): > > they construct shelters of wood and plant matter Like I said to someone else - wood that they obtained, how? > [@slash2k](#): > > maybe something like the wigwams and wickiups of some North American First Nations groups Do you think Native Americans were processing their shelter materials with their teeth? > [@slash2k](#): > > I think it rather difficult to argue that the builders of Gobekli Tepe had no civilization I don’t find it difficult at all. The Gobekli Tepe culture is _not_ a civilization. We [already covered that.](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gobekli-tepe-what-do-we-really-know/820508) ---
**Author:** ![DrDeth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b487fb/32.png) [@DrDeth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrDeth)\ **Post date:** [June 11, 2022, 8:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/advanced-dinosaur-civilization/965923/166 "2022-06-11T20:55:08Z")
> [@Pleonast](#): > > I’m not sure how much evidence we have that dinosaurs never developed anything like human intelligence. > [@HMS\_Irruncible](#): > > Which could be rephrased as “I am unsatisfied with the state of efforts to prove that Russell’s teapot isn’t orbiting Neptune.” Not at all. Certainly there could have been some very smart dinos, smarter than ravens or parrots. But they didn’t have an “advanced civilization” as we know and define it. We have evidence of what appears to be dino "communities’ of a sort, there is no reason there could not have been very smart dinos, one that maybe even used simple tools. After all ravens and parrots _are_ dinosaurs, and smarter than that is not impossible. A parrot can be as smart as a five yo human. So saying “human level” intelligence is ridiculous is wrong. We _can_ ridicule the idea of a “advanced dino civilization”, sure. But not a smart dino. We have smart dinos _today._ > [@k9bfriender](#): > > Anyway, to the OP, what defines a civilization to you? That may help to set the bar appropriately. That is a good question. Do we need cities? A written language? Domesticated animals? The wheel? Steam power? what? > [@Exapno\_Mapcase](#): > > It would require the creation of a very short-lived but extraordinarily fast evolving branching that has no known starting point. No dinosaurs appear to have had large brains or tool manipulating hands. Like what would happen on a island. Darwins finches took only 2 million years to evolve. Parrots and ravens are dinos. True, their brains are not huge, but they are damn smart. Say we get a dino one step smarter than a parrot- one with a 12yo human int. They have a community, they store food, they use but not make simple tools, like sticks, rocks. We’d have no sign of that. And, by stretching we _could_ call that _a sort of proto_ civilization. But that is by no means the sort of advanced civilization the Op wanted. No tools, no plastics, no electricity, no cities, etc. ---
**Author:** ![DrDeth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b487fb/32.png) [@DrDeth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrDeth)\ **Post date:** [June 11, 2022, 9:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/advanced-dinosaur-civilization/965923/167 "2022-06-11T21:01:13Z")
> [@MrDibble](#): > > I don’t find it difficult at all. The Gobekli Tepe culture is _not_ a civilization. We [already covered that.](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gobekli-tepe-what-do-we-really-know/820508) I re-read that thread, and I can’t see where [lynne-42](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/lynne-42) said it wasn’t a civilization. She seemed to indicate that that was a interesting question, but not answered yet. In fact many say it is: [https://www.worldwidewaves.co/blog/2021/3/18/the-story-and-consequence-of-gbekli-tepe#:~:text=In%20other%20words%2C%20Göbekli%20Tepe,as%20the%20“Fertile%20Crescent.”](https://www.worldwidewaves.co/blog/2021/3/18/the-story-and-consequence-of-gbekli-tepe#:~:text=In%20other%20words%2C%20G%C3%B6bekli%20Tepe,as%20the%20%E2%80%9CFertile%20Crescent.%E2%80%9D) I_n other words, Göbekli Tepe was not a settlement, but rather a sanctuary, and it was built by a civilization keen on providing skills and information to its inhabitants. In fact, the origins of the domesticated wheat that we consume today can be traced back to this exact region, referred to as the “Fertile Crescent.”_ But again, this all comes down to “what defines a civilization”? IMHO, Gobekli Tepe is not a true civilization, but I would agree with calling it a “proto-civilization”. So by this, no dinos never had a civilization. ---
**Author:** ![MrDibble](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mrdibble/32/114_2.png) [@MrDibble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MrDibble)\ **Post date:** [June 11, 2022, 9:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/advanced-dinosaur-civilization/965923/168 "2022-06-11T21:02:59Z")
> [@DrDeth](#): > > . Do we need cities? A written language? Yes, and … no, but some kind of non-verbal recordkeeping, yes. > [@DrDeth](#): > > Domesticated animals? The wheel? Steam power? No, no, and definitely not. ---
**Author:** ![EastUmpqua](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/eastumpqua/32/6025_2.png) [@EastUmpqua](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/EastUmpqua)\ **Post date:** [June 11, 2022, 9:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/advanced-dinosaur-civilization/965923/169 "2022-06-11T21:05:32Z")
@Pleonast I started a [new thread](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-humans-as-observers-occupy-a-special-place-when-observing-earth/966007) in IMHO that’s similar to this thread. But it’s in IMHO so less “you’re wrong and here’s why” posts. I’d like your input. Thanks ---
**Author:** ![eburacum45](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/eburacum45/32/8690_2.png) [@eburacum45](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/eburacum45)\ **Post date:** [June 11, 2022, 9:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/advanced-dinosaur-civilization/965923/170 "2022-06-11T21:54:54Z")
> [@DrDeth](#): > > Do we need cities? A written language? > [@MrDibble](#): > > Yes, and … no, but some kind of non-verbal recordkeeping, yes. I don’t think dinosaurs would need cities. If they were comfortable outdoors in herds/flocks, then they could live outdoors in herds/flocks. I’ve just recently visited the seabird colony at Bempton, with millions of bird/dinosaurs living in comfort on cliffs and small islands. They don’t need to build cities. But if they had some way of communicating with each other by extending their record-keeping into a physical, durable, transferrable medium, they could have a civilisation. Even more so if they could use this medium for data processing. A million dinosaurs sharing stories, keeping records, charting their local resources and making communal decisions and future plans to alter their environment? Deff. ---
**Author:** ![Exapno\_Mapcase](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/exapno_mapcase/32/1051_2.png) [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)\ **Post date:** [June 11, 2022, 10:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/advanced-dinosaur-civilization/965923/171 "2022-06-11T22:00:15Z")
> [@Crane](#): > > I’d say civilization is the ability to boil water. I said controlled fire, which includes the ability to boil water but is not as limited. Scientists don’t spout glib phrases as a definition. They list a series of broad traits that need to be considered together. A civilization is not a thing, but more of a process that is composed of many smaller processes. > [@slash2k](#): > > I think it rather difficult to argue that the builders of Gobekli Tepe had no civilization, but what is the likelihood that evidence would survive for 65 million years and then be found? This is the wrong question. The correct question is “what is the likelihood that every shred of evidence for primates over the last 20 million years (your number) from everywhere in the world would be wiped out so completely that no pathway from, say, proconsul could ever be imagined?” Remember that a vanished dinosaur civilization cannot be postulated on its own. If it goes, that means that every plant and animal on which it fed and its prey fed also vanished, and so did their ancestors and their ancestors and their ancestors back for millions of years, the entire ecosystem and bioscape and geology simply vanishing off the map, every bit of it. I said earlier that talking about intelligent dinosaur civilizations is special pleading, and your entire post is a good example. Talking about evidence of the last step surviving is working backwards. All the steps must survive. The scientifically correct approach is to look at the actual evidence and determine what can be said from it. If nothing can be said, then say nothing. If your entire argument is made from a series of fantastically unlikely events that contradicts everything we know about the way the world works, then your argument is not science, but fictional speculation. ---
**Author:** ![Crane](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/crane/32/3495_2.png) [@Crane](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Crane)\ **Post date:** [June 11, 2022, 10:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/advanced-dinosaur-civilization/965923/172 "2022-06-11T22:09:42Z")
> [@Exapno\_Mapcase](#): > > I said controlled fire, which includes the ability to boil water but is not as limited. Boiling water is the application of a principle to a device or process. That’s technology. An activity that is not innate in animal populations like nesting and herding, ---
**Author:** ![Exapno\_Mapcase](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/exapno_mapcase/32/1051_2.png) [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)\ **Post date:** [June 12, 2022, 12:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/advanced-dinosaur-civilization/965923/173 "2022-06-12T00:01:13Z")
This is my point. Scientists no longer use terms like technology, which, as we’ve seen here, get people embroiled into definitional feuds. They prefer to use what boil down to a set of visual changes to the landscape that can be objectively observed and catalogued. ---
**Author:** ![Dr.Strangelove](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dr.strangelove/32/6613_2.png) [@Dr.Strangelove](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dr.Strangelove)\ **Post date:** [June 12, 2022, 12:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/advanced-dinosaur-civilization/965923/174 "2022-06-12T00:25:21Z")
Do you think the OP really cares about such narrow definitions of civilization? Sure, working scientists need definitions that they can apply in practice. But if some version of a dino Gobekli Tepe _were_ found, that would represent an absolutely _incredible_ find, and likely require throwing out everything we think we know about how civilizations do form. No one, scientists especially, would care in the slightest if it didn’t strictly conform to what we know about human civilizations. Eventually a new scientific language would develop, and it would differ significantly from the current language. ---
**Author:** ![Exapno\_Mapcase](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/exapno_mapcase/32/1051_2.png) [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)\ **Post date:** [June 12, 2022, 1:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/advanced-dinosaur-civilization/965923/175 "2022-06-12T01:10:39Z")
> [@Dr.Strangelove](#): > > Do you think the OP really cares about such narrow definitions of civilization? You’re quite right. A large number of people posting in this thread care nothing at all about science. That’s why the rest of us are trying to give them some understanding of it and its importance. ---
**Author:** ![Gorsnak](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gorsnak/32/7587_2.png) [@Gorsnak](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gorsnak)\ **Post date:** [June 12, 2022, 1:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/advanced-dinosaur-civilization/965923/176 "2022-06-12T01:21:14Z")
There’s nothing scientific about stating definitively that civilization is an all or nothing thing which doesn’t admit of degrees, or even that there’s some non-arbitrary point on the continuum between microorganisms and a pan-galactic spacefaring civilization that objectively distinguishes between civilization and not-civilization. ---
**Author:** ![Dr.Strangelove](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dr.strangelove/32/6613_2.png) [@Dr.Strangelove](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dr.Strangelove)\ **Post date:** [June 12, 2022, 1:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/advanced-dinosaur-civilization/965923/177 "2022-06-12T01:33:41Z")
Science isn’t some mindless process of naming and categorization. And while scientists generally do have specialized meanings for things, those same words may have less specific meanings in general use. It’s important to understand the context of a question and try to address that, while possibly also being helpful in moving the poster to using more careful language. If someone posts that they have less “energy” after switching their diet entirely to Mountain Dew, it’s not helpful to point out that calorie for calorie, the energy content of sugar vs. other foods is the same. It just means the poster was not using energy in a scientific sense. It’s even worse here, because we don’t have any broad understanding of civilization at all; we have just one data point, heavily biased by our capabilities and limitations as humans. Hell, most definitions include “human” as a prerequisite. The OP is obviously not looking for an answer of “No, because civilizations are human-only by definition”. ---
**Author:** ![Exapno\_Mapcase](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/exapno_mapcase/32/1051_2.png) [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)\ **Post date:** [June 12, 2022, 2:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/advanced-dinosaur-civilization/965923/178 "2022-06-12T02:23:08Z")
If you’re saying he wanted a scientific answer to a question that wasn’t based in science, we agree again. ---
**Author:** ![Dr.Strangelove](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dr.strangelove/32/6613_2.png) [@Dr.Strangelove](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dr.Strangelove)\ **Post date:** [June 12, 2022, 2:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/advanced-dinosaur-civilization/965923/179 "2022-06-12T02:39:20Z")
I’ll never tire of quoting Feynman, so here he is on the difference between the names of things and the things themselves: > The next Monday, when the fathers were all back at work, we kids were playing in a field. One kid says to me, “See that bird? What kind of bird is that?” I said, “I haven’t the slightest idea what kind of a bird it is.” He says, “It’s a brown-throated thrush. Your father doesn’t teach you anything!” But it was the opposite. He had already taught me: “See that bird?” he says. “It’s a Spencer’s warbler.” (I knew he didn’t know the real name.) “Well, in Italian, it’s a Chutto Lapittida. In Portuguese, it’s a Bom da Peida. In Chinese, it’s a Chung-long-tah, and in Japanese, it’s a Katano Tekeda. You can know the name of that bird in all the languages of the world, but when you’re finished, you’ll know absolutely nothing whatever about the bird. You’ll only know about humans in different places, and what they call the bird. So let’s look at the bird and see what it’s doing-that’s what counts.” (I learned very early the difference between knowing the name of something and knowing something.) That not everyone on this thread has the same ideas about what it means to have a civilization is an impediment to understanding, but it is not the difference between science and non-science. Clear naming is a side effect of performing science, but isn’t science itself. ---
**Author:** ![k9bfriender](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/k9bfriender/32/3283_2.png) [@k9bfriender](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/k9bfriender)\ **Post date:** [June 12, 2022, 3:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/advanced-dinosaur-civilization/965923/180 "2022-06-12T03:36:05Z")
Yes, but in this case, they are pointing at a squirrel, and asking what kind of bird it is. At some point words either have meaning, or they don’t. Could dinosaurs had some sort of complex tribal structure, even including complex communication of arbitrary concepts? I would bet not, but there isn’t evidence to definitively rule it out. There are interesting concepts to be explored there, though there isn’t enough record to have much of a definitive discussion either way. But that’s not a civilization, a civilization does have criteria to it. And anything that meets even the barest criteria of a civilization is almost certainly ruled out by a complete lack of evidence that not only the civilization itself, but its precursors and its impact would leave. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/advanced-dinosaur-civilization/965923.md?page=8) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/advanced-dinosaur-civilization/965923.md?page=10)