Poll: Ancent intelegent life, is it possable?

[Sandernista]

Psh, Homo Erectus is credited with fire so w/e

 

[Kair]

A better question would be, is "is Modern intelligent life possible?".

Haha good joke.

As the future of all Humanity rests on this question, we must hope yes.

 

[Crazy_Dude]

Most people dont realize how freaking big the universe is.

There are billions and billions of stars and billions of stars. And probably thousands of earthlike planets.

I am certain that there is intelligent life outhere. However if we will ever meet them is another question. Since the universe is so freaking big and all. If there was intelligent life out there the chances of us meeting/contacting them would be very slim.

 

[teisjm]

Ok so this is my first thread so go easy on me )
This was sort of inspired by the ancient aliens thread.

Does anyone think it's possible that we (humans) are not the first intelligent life form that the earth has ever produced?

I got thinking about this after seeing a program a while ago called life after people. It was about how the world would look and what would happen if people suddenly disappeared and nature was left to take over again. What surprised me was how fast things would disappear. I think they said after about 1000 years then nearly everything we have built, all out cites and things will be almost all gone, and after one million years there would be nothing left to show we were ever here apart from a few odd strata in the rocks and the stuff we left on the moon. Now i know that if there was life as advanced as us then we would have probably found some sort of evidence by now but what if they weren't quite as advanced? Say they got up to about the mid Victorian level of tech or something.

Don't archeologists find lots and lots of stuff which is several thousind years old?
I mean, we do know a lot about lots of ancient human Civilizations from all over the world due to archeology.

As for the millions of year thingy:
"Dinosaurs are a diverse group of animals that were the dominant terrestrial vertebrates for over 160 million years, from the late Triassic period (about 230 million years ago) until the end of the Cretaceous (about 65 million years ago)."

This is the 1-st line of wikipedias article about dinosaurs ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dinosaurs )
Thats quite a lot of million years, and they seem to have left more behind than a few odd strata behind.

I think if there has been non-human civilizations somewhat close to mid victorian are as you mentioned, we would've found traces, i mean we do find traces of human technology from as far back as the stone-age (arrow heads etc.) and if they had higher tec than that i think it would've left some sort of trace, just like i find it hard to belive, that if humanity died out, and some other spieces rose to dominate the earth, and started practicing archeology, they'd find lots of evidence of our existence.

Yeah but lets put the stupidity of the Victorian age into perspective here. There's bound to be piles of things we haven't discovered and the worst of it all is, EVEN if someone did find something, nobody would care anyway as the size of Victoria Beckhams meals are of more importance than archaeological achievement... -_-

Regardless of the stupidity of the victorian eras people, and todays peoples disregard gfor archeology in favor of victoria bechams meals (i thought it was breats?) we still find lots of stuff from that time , and more importanly to the discussion, much much older times. it wouldn't take a lot of findings to get archeloogists on the trail of an advances pre-human civilization.
I don't mean this as an offence, but i don't see how any of what you wrote says anything about how the chances of a pre-human civilization existing, if i'm missing something, please do tell.

 

[TheRightToArmBears]

Possibly, but I think it's unlikely. We would have found some traces by now.

 

[BlastedTheWorm]

I still think that dinosaurs had a futuristic utopian society, until their downfall.

 

[Ramin 123]

Ok so this is my first thread so go easy on me )
This was sort of inspired by the ancient aliens thread.

Does anyone think it's possible that we (humans) are not the first intelligent life form that the earth has ever produced?

I got thinking about this after seeing a program a while ago called life after people. It was about how the world would look and what would happen if people suddenly disappeared and nature was left to take over again. What surprised me was how fast things would disappear. I think they said after about 1000 years then nearly everything we have built, all out cites and things will be almost all gone, and after one million years there would be nothing left to show we were ever here apart from a few odd strata in the rocks and the stuff we left on the moon. Now i know that if there was life as advanced as us then we would have probably found some sort of evidence by now but what if they weren't quite as advanced? Say they got up to about the mid Victorian level of tech or something.

Don't archeologists find lots and lots of stuff which is several thousind years old?
I mean, we do know a lot about lots of ancient human Civilizations from all over the world due to archeology.

As for the millions of year thingy:
"Dinosaurs are a diverse group of animals that were the dominant terrestrial vertebrates for over 160 million years, from the late Triassic period (about 230 million years ago) until the end of the Cretaceous (about 65 million years ago)."

This is the 1-st line of wikipedias article about dinosaurs ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dinosaurs )
Thats quite a lot of million years, and they seem to have left more behind than a few odd strata behind.

I think if there has been non-human civilizations somewhat close to mid victorian are as you mentioned, we would've found traces, i mean we do find traces of human technology from as far back as the stone-age (arrow heads etc.) and if they had higher tec than that i think it would've left some sort of trace, just like i find it hard to belive, that if humanity died out, and some other spieces rose to dominate the earth, and started practicing archeology, they'd find lots of evidence of our existence.

Yeah but lets put the stupidity of the Victorian age into perspective here. There's bound to be piles of things we haven't discovered and the worst of it all is, EVEN if someone did find something, nobody would care anyway as the size of Victoria Beckhams meals are of more importance than archaeological achievement... -_-

Regardless of the stupidity of the victorian eras people, and todays peoples disregard gfor archeology in favor of victoria bechams meals (i thought it was breats?) we still find lots of stuff from that time , and more importanly to the discussion, much much older times. it wouldn't take a lot of findings to get archeloogists on the trail of an advances pre-human civilization.
I don't mean this as an offence, but i don't see how any of what you wrote says anything about how the chances of a pre-human civilization existing, if i'm missing something, please do tell.

It doesn't and you are correct in saying I should have added something more meaningful to the discussion, I just wanted to point out my anger that people generally don't appreciate achievements of mankind when it comes to Science, Geography and the Arts. I'm not meaning to sound pretentious(in other words a big headed idiot), far from it, I just think the prioritisations of the worlds leading powers are unbelievably stupid and self indulgent.

Of course there had to be some form of life before us, or even out in some part of the vast universe but we just haven't found each other...yet. Let's hope when the day comes we will all appreciate it rather than worrying about the size of Victoria Beckhams..."breasts" haha.

 

[Shoqiyqa]

Intelligent.
Ancient.
Possibility.
Cities.
Ridiculous.
Definitely.


Now, to answer the OP: define "intelligent" and "people" or we can't really answer. Wouldn't being intelligent life make them people?

 

[Dana22]

No.

There is no geological, historical, genetical or any other scientific evidence to support this.

 

[Zykon TheLich]

Yes they do find lots of evidence of older civilizations but what i was driving at there is the fact that although we find arrow heads and pottery etc we don't really find that much, and mostly we find things because we know where to look for them and what to look for. most of the stuff that is dug out of the earth takes a trained eye to tell what it is. If you didn't know that then you might conceivably think it wasn't significant. Also if it was long enough ago then the process of subduction and continental drift, as well as erosion and stuff being washed into the see and swallowed up by the ocean depths may have erased or berried under miles of rock most of that evidence.

As for the dinosaurs well yea we find quite a few fossils but the thing about them is that they tell us a lot about the physiology of the animal but almost nothing about the intelligence level.

I see what you're getting at but the truly ancient is hard to find because it was such simple stuff, a few bits of worked stone. Once you start adding in the sort of things that an advanced civilisation makes then you have stuff that is very recognisably not natural all over the place. Definitely things that a trained archaeologist would notice.

Subduction etc might get rid of a bit of it but very little compared to the overall scale of the continents.

Re the dinosaurs, I would say the total lack of any dinosaur made anything would at least tell us that they didn't make tools or buildings or anything else for that matter. EDIT: Except nests, we do have evidence for that.

Really, we find evidence of stuff millions and millions of years old, unless they were very localised and didn't last very long (which would be very, very odd) I think we can rule it out.

 

[Valkyrie101]

No.

There is no geological, historical, genetical or any other scientific evidence to support this.

This. If they were even remotely advanced, they'd leave something that could be identified as unnatural. Think of our own cities - I don't think the Eiffel Tower would disappear completely for an unimaginably long time. And don't forget things like metals and polymers, which effectively don't decompose. Since there is no indication whatsoever of their existence, we can assume they never were.

Besides, where did they go? They could have been wiped out by some sort of global catastrophe, but at the very least there'd be remaining fossils.

 

[Worgen]

if your referring to all that ancient alien bullshit then go stand in the corner and think about what you asked

 

[manaman]

You could be right. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antikythera_mechanism]

Of course there's plenty of things we haven't discovered yet, evidence of an ancient race far more advanced than us is a possibility.

You gotta stop reading cracked.com and wiki about that device. There is a perfectly nice website set up by the people studying it that just sucks most of the mystery out of the device.

Ok so this is my first thread so go easy on me )

Be mindful of spelling, some of us are very... stickler-ish of that.

As for ancient intelligents, yeah. Underwater pyramids off the coast of Japan.

There is one guy (and a few supporters) that claim it's not a natural formation, a few people interested in exploring the area more, and then everyone else thinks it's a natural formation - including the Japanese goverment that has no interest in the site.

Even if it is the ruins of a city, it's at the most 5,000 years old. Ancient, but not exactly pre humans. As well as the fact that even the top supporter of it being inhabited doesn't think it was built by humans. He thinks it was a mostly natural formation that was shaped by humans. They have found some 1,600 year old evidence of habitation on the continuation of the formation on the shore.

 

[microhive]

Intelligent? Sure. Capable of building technology like computers? No.

 

[beniki]

You could be right. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antikythera_mechanism]

Of course there's plenty of things we haven't discovered yet, evidence of an ancient race far more advanced than us is a possibility.

You gotta stop reading cracked.com and wiki about that device. There is a perfectly nice website set up by the people studying it that just sucks most of the mystery out of the device.

Ok so this is my first thread so go easy on me )

Be mindful of spelling, some of us are very... stickler-ish of that.

As for ancient intelligents, yeah. Underwater pyramids off the coast of Japan.

There is one guy (and a few supporters) that claim it's not a natural formation, a few people interested in exploring the area more, and then everyone else thinks it's a natural formation - including the Japanese goverment that has no interest in the site.

Even if it is the ruins of a city, it's at the most 5,000 years old. Ancient, but not exactly pre humans. As well as the fact that even the top supporter of it being inhabited doesn't think it was built by humans. He thinks it was a mostly natural formation that was shaped by humans. They have found some 1,600 year old evidence of habitation on the continuation of the formation on the shore.

Is this based off satellite pictures or someone going down in a sub? I know there was a guy who claimed there were structures on Mars from looking at 2-d probe images, but was later discredited when someone produce 3-d ones showing them to just be random natural formations.

O.T: I remember an episode of Voyager where the premise was some dinosaurs developed to the point of star ships, and left Earth to begin a nomadic life amongst the stars.

Sure, all things are possible and nothing is ever true forever.

 

[x EvilErmine x]

if your referring to all that ancient alien bullshit then go stand in the corner and think about what you asked

Did you even read the op? I never said anything about aliens at all. Nor even hinted at it.

Now back on topic

Well lots of people have said that we would have found evidence if they were here and that's fair enough, however it sort of relies on them being technologically advanced to the point where they can create things that would endure like plastics and such things. What if they were the type of society that eschewed that sort of technology for a more organic type i.e bio degradable things or things that would not survive in a recognizable form.

Also to define 'intelligence' for the purpose of this thread is something that would be comparable to the level of humans plus or minus one standard deviation. Yeah i know that's a bit on the vague side bit i cba to get into a debate as to what exactly 'intelligence' is

 

[manaman]

Ok so this is my first thread so go easy on me )

Be mindful of spelling, some of us are very... stickler-ish of that.

As for ancient intelligents, yeah. Underwater pyramids off the coast of Japan.

There is one guy (and a few supporters) that claim it's not a natural formation, a few people interested in exploring the area more, and then everyone else thinks it's a natural formation - including the Japanese goverment that has no interest in the site.

Even if it is the ruins of a city, it's at the most 5,000 years old. Ancient, but not exactly pre humans. As well as the fact that even the top supporter of it being inhabited doesn't think it was built by humans. He thinks it was a mostly natural formation that was shaped by humans. They have found some 1,600 year old evidence of habitation on the continuation of the formation on the shore.

Is this based off satellite pictures or someone going down in a sub? I know there was a guy who claimed there were structures on Mars from looking at 2-d probe images, but was later discredited when someone produce 3-d ones showing them to just be random natural formations.

O.T: I remember an episode of Voyager where the premise was some dinosaurs developed to the point of star ships, and left Earth to begin a nomadic life amongst the stars.

Sure, all things are possible and nothing is ever true forever.

The formations they are talking about are actually all over the coast of the pacific rim. It's a neat part of the geology of the area, and there are actually sunken walls and other structures which have been modified by humans over the years in places like China and Taiwan. These particular structures actually start on the cost and, according to one very outspoken scientist, show signs of human habitation. Not just built on the site either. He thinks there was a thriving population there that carved statues, built roads and walkways, religious sites, and more.

Like I said before, back on land there are signs of habitation dating back 1,600 years, but even then no where near to the level that the professor claims of the sunken city.

His pictures are misleading as well often taken at the perfect angle to look artificial. What I find the oddest of all is that he claims to have found caricatures and paintings, but has yet to produce any pictures, the only pictures he has on his site even are the same ones he has been showing around since the 90s.

 

[DuctTapeJedi]

http://www.cracked.com/article_16871_6-insane-discoveries-that-science-cant-explain.html [Bam]

Not saying I believe any of this stuff, or discount alternate reasons, but the Baigong Pipes, specifically, kind of freak me out.