alt Hacker NewsI don't think we have to go that far back. Plate tectonics, submersion and weathering does a good enough job of wiping the slate clean off the surface of the Earth, that any evidence of earlier hominids developing pre-industrial, coastal civilizations say, a million years ago, would be now under the crust. What we consider civilization is about 5000 years old, so it's not inconceivable that the cycle might have occurred multiple times during geologic time spans. Perhaps this is the first time civilization was not interrupted and made its way through to a technological civilization.
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>coastal civilizations say, a million years ago, would be now under the crust.
Nah, you way off on that, coastlines have remained relatively same last million years, def not subducted into an ocean trench
Huh?
We have plenty of fossil evidence from, from your example, a million year old hominids. Far more than we would need to expect to see evidence of civilization.
Subduction makes up for a tiny tiny proportion of where coastal land "goes" in any age.
You'd need an enormous set of coincidences for a past civilization of hominids to go unnoticed.
I mean sure, if they somehow didn't have any trade goods that went in land, didn't work with metals enough to do any appreciable mining, and didn't breed any plants or animals enough to change their genetics. Any hypothetical hidden past civilization would have to have been weird in a number of ways to not leave any evidence.