[QUOTE=Stranger On A Train]
Most modern domestic crop species can’t even survive without cultivation. Domesticated crops and animals would become extinct rapidly sans civilization.
Stranger
[/QUOTE]
Most domesticated animals would go extinct also - but maybe not dogs, which did fine in Australia when they went wild. So, would fossil or genetic records of “intelligently designed” animals be an indicator of a lost advanced civilization?
[QUOTE=Voyager]
Most domesticated animals would go extinct also - but maybe not dogs, which did fine in Australia when they went wild. So, would fossil or genetic records of “intelligently designed” animals be an indicator of a lost advanced civilization?
[/QUOTE]
The more highly “purebred” species probably wouldn’t survive a generation. Can you imagine a Cocker Spaniel, a Corgi, or a Great Dane surviving in the wild, without the leavings of human refuse to pick over? The dogs most likely to survive are those least modified from their wild brethren: dingos, Carolina “Yeller” Dogs, various large working spitz species, maybe some of the shepherds that haven’t been bred to stupidity and congenital hip and vision problems. In the long run, I suspect dogs would integrate back into the Canus lupus species from which they are descended, and there would likely be scarce trace, even genetically, of their existance. Fossil records are quite possible, though; the massive variation of otherwise genetically similiar canines that are all sympatrically colocated would indicate something seriously wiggy about their evolution. Ditto with horses and other domestic species if fossil records of them were preserved.
Stranger
[QUOTE=mr. jp]
I recall reading something in Guns, Germs and Steel about some Egyptian coins (or something) being found on the american continent. Which could imply a much more advanced native american civilization than we assume.
[/QUOTE]
Or it might imply that someone who had been to Egypt had also visited this continent in the couple of thousand years since. Which certainly seems a more likely explanation.
So the Scientific American article actually had the answer to this question buried away on page three of the article linked to earlier.
[QUOTE= Alan Weisman]
[snip]the horrible things that we have created that are so frightening—such as our radioactivity and pollutants, some of which may be around until the end of the planet—[snip]
[/QUOTE]
There we go. Long live nuclear reactors! Pun intended.
[QUOTE=mr. jp]
I recall reading something in Guns, Germs and Steel about some Egyptian coins (or something) being found on the american continent. Which could imply a much more advanced native american civilization than we assume. But I can’t bloody find it.
[/QUOTE]
Hell, I’ve got some Klingon coins, let’s see 'em explain that!
[QUOTE=Voyager]
Most domesticated animals would go extinct also - but maybe not dogs, which did fine in Australia when they went wild. So, would fossil or genetic records of “intelligently designed” animals be an indicator of a lost advanced civilization?
[/QUOTE]
A sudden transplantation of many species into remote environments (resulting from both deliberate and accidental transportation) might be a clue in future fossil records.
(I wonder if somebody in ten million years would be able to tell that horses went extinct in the Americas for ten thousand years, or if it would just look like a relatively minor change in the population.)
[QUOTE=MichaelQReilly]
Yeah, but we have knowledge of a pretty catastrophic sea rise around the fertile crescent area connected with the end of the last ice age which isn’t that far removed from the emergence of the first civilzations in that area. We still are finding new remains from Alexandria, and we’re talking about big palaces and we know pretty precisely wher to look. Could we easily locate a pre or early dynastic Egyptian style civilzation in the Mediterranean? Egypt itself have only left their stone temples, the mud-brick cites having long since faded away. Even if we knew where to look for one of these civs, how much would they leave in the way of remains, and what would the ocean floor have done to them over the last 5,000+ years?
[/QUOTE]
You missed the point. Even if one civilization did die out, it would have spread beforehand. It would have required large amounts of fields and would likely have left artifacts across the entire region though trade. And the idea that it would have killed everyone off instantly so they could not revive the civlization is, frankly, fabulously unlikely.