Possible though, since they are finding such settlements in the English Channel IIRC. Once they really get rolling in the Black Sea area they might find some cool stuff there as well. Though, as you say, it’s chancy at best and such discoveries have almost as much to do with luck as anything else.
-XT
It might be there 100,000 years from now, but would it be there 50 million years from now, in any discernible way? Would we really be able to tell from the geological record if a civilization had flourished for a mere 5,000 years at the end of, say, the Triassic?
Quite likely, it’s not like all rock has disintegrated to gravel since then, and we’ve reworked an awful lot of rock on a very large scale. And the abundances and structure of deposits left over from our civilization would be all wrong for anything natural. And then there are nuclear blast sites (probably a lot of them if we’ve vanished thanks to war); not only will they have funny leftovers from decayed nuclear fallout, but they’ll be marked for extra study due to substances like shocked quartz, which only meteorites and nuclear weapons produce.
Looking at the palaeontological evidence, intelligence, as measured by degree of cephalisation, does indeed seem to be inevitable. Intelligence increased continually over time, and it continues to increase. Both the pinnacle intelligence and the average intelligence of organisms increased steadily over time. Disasters and mass extinctions appear to have had no impact on this progress, or if they did have an impact it was to increase the rate of intelligence increase. So as far as the actual evidence we have (sample size: 1 planet), intelligence does indeed appear to be inevitable.
That shouldn’t be too surprising. Intelligence is one of the few evolutionary traits that has no necessary negative impacts and very few practical negatives. Size, for example, has necessary negative impacts. Even if a creature can become larger while keeping all other factors, such as mass, dietary needs or speed, stable, the very fact that it is bigger or smaller will prevent it from entering some openings or make it more prone to being swallowed. The same goes for flight, sociality etc. The very trait the creature is expressing is necessarily a survival liability in some situations.
Intelligence is an exception. If a creature can keep all other factors equal, intelligence in and of itself has no survival disadvantage. Even apparent problems such as curiosity leading to death can be overcome by simply maintaining the same basic fear mechanisms that a comparable less-intelligent organism has.
So its should come as no surprise that intelligence inevitably increases over time. An increase in intelligence provides an advantage at no or absolute minimal penalty. That intelligence then gets refined within the clade, and some of the clade then streamlines that intelligence by, paradoxically, becoming less intelligent. So birds, for example, are less intelligent than comparably sized mammals in most ways, but they pack a huge amount of intelligence into a very small brain. This sort of streamlining seems to provide a jump-off point for the next advance in intelligence.
Everybody in this thread seems making the same mistake: a tacit assumption that intelligence is binary, that an organism either has it or it doesn’t.
Intelligence isn’t binary in either kind or degree. Intelligence exists in an infinite variety and across an infinite spectrum. Humans are currently. at the top of the spectrum in most kinds of intelligence, but there is no reason to assume we are the pinnacle. A creature doesn’t need to be smart enough to destroy asteroids to be intelligent or to benefit massively from their intelligence.
There also things like steel and concrete that do not appear in nature, or least not in large quantities. Place like New York City (more precisely, the ruins of such places) would be noticeable, simply because there would be so much steel, concrete, plastic, etc.
Objectively that isn’t true. In fact for complexity exactly the opposite is true.
There have been numerous periods in excess of 10 million years where the average and maximum size of organisms either decreased or remained static. You are living in one right now. Both the average and the maximum size of terrestrial organisms right now is much less than it was 50, 000 years ago and much, much less than it was 120 million years ago. This is not an exceptional period either. There have been plenty of times in the past when size went down. Size reached a zenith with the age of the dinos, but the periods before and after saw much, much smaller organisms. The absolute largest of whales might be very slightly larger than the largest marine organisms of previous eras, but its slow close that its debatable, which suggests that this size is a genuine physical limit on vertebrate size and one that is inevitably and rapidly reached after every extinction.
Complexity is a term that is hard to even define, much less measure, but by objective measures complexity of individual organisms tends to *decrease *over time, while ecosystem diversity increases. Organisms now are less complex than they were during the carboniferous, for example. Improved homeostatic mechanisms and a optimising of lines of evolutionary experimentation leads to a loss of diversity within organisms. Mammals have a much simpler life cycle than that of fish or amphibians, and as such they have a much smaller genome and express far fewer proteins in a much more stable manner. The same trend can be seen when you compare seed plants with their more primitive ancestors.
After 50 million years you can be absolutely sure that there will be neither steel nor plastic nor concrete remaining in any readily detectable amount.
Steel won’t last more than half a million years at best. That’s a generous estimate assuming that somehow the whole city gets buried in a peat bog or similar environment that could preserve steel for more than 10, 000 years. Such bogs don’t last forever however, and once the bog vanishes the steal disappears overnight.
Plastic is recaclitrant, but as with steel it needs specific conditions to remain stable on more than a millenial timescale.
Concrete could last if the city somehow managed to get buried in an alkaline lake with alkaline sedminets, but once again such conditions rarely last more than a a hundred millenia. Any exposure to acid water an concrete rapidly dissolves.
Fair enough. Though I’d argue that what I meant by “complexity” isn’t having a complex life cycle. Being a non-biologist, I regard a pack of wolves as being more “complex” than a school of equal-sized sharks, even though their life-cycle is simpler.
What about glass? The last remnant of our civilization may well be billions of coke bottles.
One thing that keeps getting missed in these types of discussions is the role of manual dexterity which allows for the positive expression of intelligence to the degree that homo sapiens have now conquered. Writing and manufacturing depend on our dexterity as much as our intelligence. Most species other than simians show no inclination whatsoever to evolve with manual dexterity.
Intelligence may be likely, but it wouldn’t be inevitable. Continued evolution isn’t inevitable either, though likely. The conditions of the environment can limit evolution, and limit intelligence. There isn’t a clear boundary line between life and non-life either.
Given circumstances minimally related to the evolution of life on Earth, intelligence does seem inevitable. It allows an organism to exceed a statically defined set of abilities. Simple life forms that are attracted to light won’t be as successful as an organism that can find food other than where the light is.
Life on Earth has is based on very complex reproduction that is likely to evolve. But there are potentially circumstances where a life form develops based on clones, and a hardened heriditary structure could form which resists modification and results in an end of evolution.
But the question of the inevitability of intelligence evolving, where the conditions are conducive to evolution, would be answered with almost certainly. What we call ‘behavior’, is a complex means of survival. Complexity will tend to increase survivability in changing conditions, and when behavior is complex enough, we call it intelligence. Sometimes. Sometimes it appears to be the opposite of intelligence though. Just watch TV for evidence of that.
ETA: Seeing Blake’s post, I would add that my definition of complexity relates to behavior, not phyical structure. And complexity isn’t a guarantee of survival or intelligence either.
I was under the (possibly mistaken) impression that after the building collapsed and the remains began to rust, they would be covered with dirt, which would then be covered by vegetation, leaving huge deposits of unnatural stuff underground. Anyway, I don’t want to continue the hijack any more, so I’ll admit that I could be wrong on this. Maybe we need a new thread.
Of the top of my head, squirrels and raccoons both have considerable manual dexterity.
The problem is that you need to be able to define it objectively for it to have any meaning. Why is a pack of wolves more complex than a school of dogfish? The fish have more social interactions in nay given period, they have much more elaborate mating and courtship rituals and so forth. If there is any greater complexity in the wolves it is apparently all happening inside their skulls, not in the physical world.
I don’t wish to hijack, but I find it difficult to comprehend an argument that states as objective fact that the social behaviour of dogfish is more complex than that of wolves.
While I doubt that socially complex behaviour can be reduced to a few simple variables, it would appear to me at least that anyone objectively observing dogfish and wolves would quickly come to the conclusion that the wolf society is more complex.
I’m not sure what this is meant to mean, but it isn’t true as written. Evolution is inevitable, it can’t cease unless life itself ceases.
I can’t think of any possible mechanism by which this could occur. The transition form non-life to life itself requires some form of preferred reproduction of independent units. Since life starts out in that form it’s difficult to imagine a scenario in which all units could then develop a fixed genome.
Could you explain how that could possibly occur?
The opposite seems more true.
Behaviour can be exceedingly complex without any intelligence at all. Observe a spider spinning a web of a hive constructing honeycomb for proof of that. Complexity doesn’t equal intelligence. A mouse will exhibit a far less complex array of behaviour in its lifetime than a moth. That doesn’t make a mouse less intelligent.
Definitions of intelligence all hinge upon some form of adaptability or plasticity, not complexity. While a moth or bee may show more complex behaviour than a mouse, their behaviour is far less adaptable. While a mouse can survive readily in novel environments a jellyfish or a bee will rapidly die despite their greater complexity of behaviours.
Not only isn’t it a guarantee, it’s totally unrelated to intelligence.
Well it’s a good thing nobody made such an argument, isn’t it?
OK, so the assertion of greater complexity is repeated.
Do you now have any evidence to add, or is this a situation where repeating an assertion and stating that it is self-evident suffices to convince you?
Good idea. New thread: A civilization emerges briefly at the end of Jurassic. What geological evidence would we find today?
Maybe you guys could start a separate thread to discuss whether wolves or dogfish are more complex? Let’s not take this discussion down the rabbit hole. 
Hi Blake, glad to meet up with you in this thread.
Well there is the cessation of life stopping evolution. But I was thinking more along the lines of the next point.
…interrupted have to fill in this part later, think machines though…
I agree. Complexity is the wrong term. Adaptability and elasticity are good terms here. Reflection and modification and the like as well. Complexity could just be lots of detail without intelligence, and probably not good for survival.
Quick editing there. I was going to poke fun at the Fraudian slip;)