What if I told you there might have been advanced civilizations on Earth long before the ones we know about? 🌍🏛️ Some scientists and historians believe there’s evidence that hints at incredible societies that existed tens of thousands—or even millions—of years ago. From strange ancient structures that seem too advanced for their time to mysterious artifacts that don’t fit into our history books, the clues are mind-blowing. Could these lost civilizations have been wiped out by massive disasters, leaving behind only fragments of their stories? 🌋🌊 Some think the myths of Atlantis and other legendary places might actually be based on real events. Credit:
CC BY 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/:
Gavin Schmidt: by NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Gavin_Schmidt_-_climate_scientist.jpg
Silurian: by Matthew Wells, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Silurian_(2264872621).jpg
Doctor Who and the Silurians / British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC)
The Time Machine / Warner Bros. and co-producers
Global Temperature: by NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center: Kathryn Mersmann, Kate Ramsayer, Gavin A. Schmidt, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Global_Temperature_Anomaly.gif
Denbora geologikoa: by Koldo Biguri, CC BY-SA 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Denbora_geologikoa.jpg
Earth: by Cameron Beccario, https://earth.nullschool.net/ru/#current/particulates/surface/currents/overlay=pm10/equirectangular=-315.00,0.00,179
Bright Angel: by NASA/JPL-Caltech/ASU/MSSS, https://science.nasa.gov/resource/perseverance-captures-bright-angel-in-360-degrees/
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CC BY 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/:
Gavin Schmidt: by NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Gavin_Schmidt_-_climate_scientist.jpg
Silurian: by Matthew Wells, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Silurian_(2264872621).jpg
Doctor Who and the Silurians / British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC)
The Time Machine / Warner Bros. and co-producers
Global Temperature: by NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center: Kathryn Mersmann, Kate Ramsayer, Gavin A. Schmidt, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Global_Temperature_Anomaly.gif
Denbora geologikoa: by Koldo Biguri, CC BY-SA 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Denbora_geologikoa.jpg
Earth: by Cameron Beccario, https://earth.nullschool.net/ru/#current/particulates/surface/currents/overlay=pm10/equirectangular=-315.00,0.00,179
Bright Angel: by NASA/JPL-Caltech/ASU/MSSS, https://science.nasa.gov/resource/perseverance-captures-bright-angel-in-360-degrees/
Animation is created by Bright Side.
#brightside
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Music from TheSoul Sound: https://thesoul-sound.com/
Listen to Bright Side on:
Spotify - https://open.spotify.com/show/0hUkPxD34jRLrMrJux4VxV
Apple Podcast - https://podcasts.apple.com/podcast/idhttps-podcasts-apple-com-podcast-bright-side/id1554898078
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Stock materials (photos, footages and other):
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https://www.eastnews.ru
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FunTranscript
00:00Now, let's assume that another species, whether humanoid or dolphin-like, could have
00:05existed millions of years ago.
00:07How do we find their traces?
00:09There was a Doctor Who episode about a non-human industrial civilization on Earth that existed
00:14long before us.
00:16These reptiles, called Silurians, were forced deep underground by a catastrophic rise of
00:21temperatures on Earth, and there they thrived for centuries.
00:25That inspired scientists to create the so-called Silurian Hypothesis.
00:30If there was an advanced civilization before us, we should find their traces somewhere.
00:34Well, let's try.
00:37Climatologist Gavin Schmidt and astrophysicist Adam Frank decided to dive into this themselves.
00:44Like us, any technologically advanced civilization would be hungry for energy.
00:49So they looked for global effects that would leave a widespread mark.
00:53For example, hints of large-scale industrial processes, like plants and factories, and
00:59their leftovers.
01:01Then comes the question of how long these civilizations would last.
01:04If they existed for a long time, we should look for long-lasting signs, like residues
01:09from burning fossil fuels, mass extinctions, synthetic chemicals not found in nature, and
01:15even traces of nuclear fission.
01:17Basically, we should search for the same kinds of things that humans are currently leaving
01:22behind as evidence of our activities.
01:25Unfortunately, this evidence isn't that easy to find.
01:29Let's imagine an unsettling scenario if humanity suddenly disappeared.
01:34Even though it seems like we've left a lot of changes on our planet, the future civilization
01:39millions of years from now would struggle to find any remnants of our existence.
01:44Why?
01:45Well, our planet has existed for 4.5 billion years.
01:49Most life on Earth has existed for more than 400 million years.
01:53Compared to that, our industrial period only lasted around 300 years, and we haven't
01:59left any significant traces.
02:01Our record of Earth's history is full of gaps, especially the further back you look.
02:05The fossil record captures only some things, being very selective and incomplete.
02:11On average, one fossil emerges every 10,000 years, and dinosaur footprints are even rarer.
02:18Tides rise, oceans change, and plate tectonics can easily wipe out evidence of entire civilizations.
02:25After a couple of million years, chances are any physical signs of a civilization would
02:30disappear.
02:31In order to find at least something, we have to look for things like odd sediment patterns
02:36or unusual isotopic ratios.
02:39Also, fossils mostly form in water, leaving us in the dark about creatures on land or
02:45in the jungles.
02:47So even if there was a technologically advanced society millions of years in the past, and
02:52even if they were far more advanced than us, we might struggle to find any clues of its
02:58existence.
02:59Frank and Schmidt tried to understand how we could ever hope to spot signs of them.
03:04Discovering actual cities would be the ultimate proof of a Slurian-style civilization on Earth.
03:10But Adam Frank isn't too optimistic.
03:13Even now, our cities cover less than 3% of the surface, making it easy to miss ancient
03:18city ruins.
03:20Whether a city survives over tens of millions of years depends on whether the land around
03:25it is sinking, getting locked into a rock, or rising, getting worn away by rain and wind.
03:31So places like the French Quarter in New Orleans might have a better shot of making it into
03:36the geologic record than, say, Haight-Ashbury in San Francisco.
03:41When it comes to finding artifacts, the odds are pretty slim as well.
03:45No prehistoric iPhone would survive millions of years, fancy glass or not.
03:51Finding their fossilized remnants might be a bit more promising, but it's still tricky.
03:56Considering modern humans have only been around for about 100,000 years, it's quite possible
04:01that we might overlook any traces of an earlier advanced species.
04:08There is one thing, though.
04:09We could stumble upon their traces in rocks.
04:12Our current chaotic era might leave a distinct mark on the Earth's geological history.
04:18Especially since we're basically experiencing PTM 2.0.
04:21I'll get to that in a moment.
04:24So they try to look at the changes in the carbon cycle.
04:27Humans have been releasing a lot of fossil carbon since the 18th century.
04:31This leaves a special mark in the carbon isotope ratio, like a signature that shows the difference
04:37between carbon in living things, such as seashells, and carbon in lifeless volcanic rock.
04:44Scientists also look for signs in the way sediments are arranged.
04:47Large coastal deltas might mean that there were bigger rivers made by folks in this hypothetical
04:52civilization.
04:54Traces of nitrogen could suggest big-scale farming where they used a lot of fertilizer.
04:59Spikes in metal levels in the sediment could mean runoff from heavy industries.
05:04Of course, a single find like that wouldn't tell us anything.
05:08Schmidt says the key is to look for multiple signs together.
05:12Without clear artifacts, the uniqueness of an event might show in various clues rather
05:17than a set of changes linked to a single cause.
05:22On a quest for Silurian-style clues, scientists even decided to check the Moon.
05:28Some astronomers find it surprising that no one has looked into this before.
05:32They even joked about the possibility of dinosaurs building rockets and leaving traces
05:37on the Moon or other celestial bodies.
05:40These astronomers think that Earth-like planets tend to erase signs of civilizations on their
05:45surfaces.
05:46So, they're exploring the wild notion that these beings might've been space travelers.
05:51In that case, remnants of their technology, known as technosignatures, could be lurking
05:56not only on our Moon but also on asteroids, or even buried on Mars.
06:02Where they might endure for millions or even billions of years.
06:06Unfortunately, so far, despite digging into the past 380 million years and examining all
06:12suspicious events, the researchers haven't found a clear mat for a technological civilization.
06:19They don't give up, though.
06:20Frank calls for more investigation.
06:22For example, we could study how modern industrial chemicals stick around in ocean sediments.
06:28This, he believes, could help us identify similar chemical traces in the Earth's history.
06:34If there are no traces, why do we even bother to find something like that?
06:39This research is based on Schmidt and Frank's recent papers.
06:42They were delving into the Anthropocene.
06:44It's the proposed epoch dominated by human activities on Earth.
06:49It's full of these things called hyperthermals.
06:52They're prehistoric events when temperatures on Earth sharply increased over a relatively
06:57short time.
06:58They're like extreme heat waves from the past.
07:01A great example of this is the Paleocene-Eocene Thermomaximum, or PETM for short.
07:08It happened around 55.5 million years ago and saw a rapid rise in global temperatures.
07:14Over 200,000 years, the average temperature on Earth jumped from about 9 to 14 degrees
07:20Fahrenheit.
07:21We study these hyperthermals to understand how they occurred, from natural causes or
07:26human activities.
07:28So these hyperthermals sparked the genesis of Frank and Schmidt's research.
07:33To study them, scientists started examining chemical signals and tracers left in rocks.
07:40When doing that, Schmidt and Frank uncovered some eerie parallels between all the climate
07:45issues we have today and past periods of rapid temperature shifts.
07:49There's a close similarity between the PETM and other hyperthermal events.
07:54So all this work isn't just about solving a historical mystery.
07:59Understanding our impact on the environment can guide us to finding better ways to live
08:03in harmony with the planet and avoid becoming a forgotten species in the future.
08:09Our Milky Way is filled with lots of planets that could be just right for life.
08:14But we don't know if there are other civilizations out there.
08:17Earth is the only place we know of with living beings.
08:21About 200 years ago, people wondered if there might be civilizations on Mars.
08:26Back then, it was a real question.
08:28But once we got pictures from space probes, we decided there wasn't any evidence for
08:33it, and that idea got stuck in our minds.
08:36Now it's not even considered a valid topic for serious science.
08:40It's seen as kind of silly, but no one has set clear limits on what could've happened
08:45on our own planet a really long time ago.
08:48So even if there is no proof, we shouldn't throw away the possibility.
08:52Don't forget, it took humanity a while to recognize dinosaurs.
08:56Maybe Silurians are just patiently waiting for their time.
09:00That's it for today!
09:02So hey, if you pacified your curiosity, then give the video a like and share it with your
09:07friends!
09:08Or if you want more, just click on these videos and stay on the Bright Side!