I’ve been reading and thinking about ancient civilazations a lot lately. Something that just came to me… there appears to be very little evidence of civilzations before 3000BC(ish) as far as say, the Egyptians go.
Let’s imagine our own curent civilization into the future. I think that we are moving more and more towards having less impact on the environment, especially as far as waste products go. Non-biodegradable/inorganic materials will be used less and less as time goes on until the only reason to use plastics/metals will be for structures that demand the benefits of those materials (though alternatives to those may even come around…) Nevermind where all the old stuff made of the non-eco friendly materials goes for the moment…
If, having reached this point in civilization, we suddenly disappear, every trace of our existence would degrade back into the environment over a number of years. Let’s say 10,000. Especially if our civilization ended up focusing on eliminating any impact it has and once had on the planet’s environment… Pretty realistic I think.
Now what if for some reason, we must abandoned Earth at this point. Start fresh somewhere else. Who knows what the reason is, perhaps it’s part of the whole getting the Earth back to how it was meant to be. Anyway, we’ll assume the world population remains around 8 billion (I think there will be a limit we will reach at some point) most of whom must be transported somewhere else. The steel/aluminum etc. bio-alternatives are not plentiful enough to build all of the space craft necessary, so we melt down all of our now-ancient machinery etc. in order to build the massive number of ships needed.
We leave Earth, all traces we’ve left behind degrade within 10,000 years, except for a the few remnants that persist in the few left behind with the vague memory of what once was. An elite few perhaps who were chosen to remain on Earth to start over.
10,000 years after we have left Earth, civilization has grown back strong again. Many of the lessons we learned that led us to “go green to the extreme” have been forgotten, or just ignored because they are outdated beliefs from some unknown civilization. “They were around 10,000 years ago. They didn’t know anything.” The lessons have to be realized all over again.
Now what if this already happened? There is some reason to believe that around 10,400 BC Atlantis disappeared and the remaning Atlanteans went to Egypt, built the Sphinx, and planned the Giza pyramids. All of that is of course up to interpretation etc. But what if the story happened as I described above?
It’s also interesting that iron is rare in Egypt, and that any iron they did have was treated with reverance since the only way they got it was in meteorites. (They also believed the Gods’ bones were made of iron, or so I’ve read).
Anyway, by the time (900’sAD-present) anyone has cared enough to actually go excavating for the artifacts of ancient civilization to attempt piecing together what all went on, many traces have since disappeared. Also a previous ultra-advancedcivilization may not have been dependent on non-biodegradable materials at all to begin with.
So those are just some of my thoughts on the subject. More to come I’m sure as I read more on the subject.
