Evolution: a new paradigm

[hyphenate]

This is something that I've been thinking about for some time, not as a serious topic in that it's what has happened, but as some food for thought, and some good reflections for me as a writer to ponder what "might have been."

The earth's age is still somewhat up in the air, though most figures place it at 4.5 billion years ago. (Bet that scares a lot of Young Earth Creationists!) The timeline is somewhat speculative, but there is enough evidence to show that it is not likely to be much "younger" than that, taking into consideration the age of the solar system, the need for millions of years (probably closer to a billion) to form the earth from core out, and to start the first age of life, not to mention the subsequent life forms that eventually created the beginning of our own species.

Recently I sat down with a friend and pondered something that is mainly a "what if" scenario, something that is a science fiction theme mostly, and has no real bearing on anything other than the suspension of disbelief. What if there were another intelligent race of beings on earth before the dinosaurs, before any real native lifeforms came into being?

If time is infinite, it makes sense that there might be (and probably are) lifeforms that are older than we are in the universe, and probably more intelligent, advanced and technologically beyond ourselves. So it doesn't surprise me that at some time in the very distant past, some other intelligent beings could have come to earth and lived here. Whether they stayed or not is somewhat irrelevant, but over many billions of years, the earth could very well have changed in such ways that the presence of such people might have vanished almost completely.

No, this isn't a Eric von Daniken thread, or a Stargate thread, but there are some things that remain mysteries even now that challenge the mind about their origin, and refuse to release our sense of imagination and sense of wonder.

If such a race lived here, and finally in the end culminated their civilization with complete annihilation, there would be little to no trace of them here. If they left Earth at some point, they might have "seeded" life to get a start at some point, and perhaps, let's say, they watched over the world at various times through our evolution to make sure that their creation was successful. We can even postulate that Earth was an experiment for another race--a chance to see what their mingling did here, and what changes they might make to seed another planet with life similar to our own, only removing undesirable outcomes with other "tests."

As an SF writer, this has been approached in the past, but it is more exciting to me at this time because of the Creationists compleat denial and ignorance of such possibilities. I keep a special place in my mind that patiently awaits the day when aliens finally make first contact with us overtly. The shock and awe on the fundies' faces will sustain me long after I'm dead and in a grave, to have the fundies try to explain it.

We can only work with what we truly have observational evidence of, but we are still at a point in our history where there are often more questions than answers. We are also making leap after leap into technological advances where only a few know exactly what they are doing--the knowledge is there, but the wisdom in interpreting that knowledge hasn't entirely caught up. It might be a century or two longer before we can have more questions fully answered, but it is definitely a rush to speculate on what might have been, and eventually, what might someday be. :)

[nebenaube]

1. for all we know...

We are Atlantis 2.0 or some subsequent version...

[GreenPartyVoter]

2. I subscribe to the theory that we have kille doff this plaent before.. or at least

someone did.

How amazing that chimps are making tools and spears now? If that's not proof of evolution then I do not know what is.

[heidler1]

5. IMO Chimps did not just become makers of tools. We just got

around to admitting that other animals can think. I'm 81 years old and was taught in public school that only humans can think. Animals only have instinct to guide them. I knew my dogs could think, plan, dream and communicate by the time I first went to school. Religion caused this bull shit and has not completely given up yet.

[Duppers]

11. Well put!

"We just got around to admitting that other animals can think."


Succinct and to the heart of the matter, heidler.

[H2O Man]

18. That chimps make use

of tools has indeed been known for a long, long time. When the Leakeys were doing their wonderful studies at Olduvai Gorge, one reason that they knew the artifacts they found were not from chimps was because the materials being used had been carried in to the site near the ancient lake from substantial distances. This collecting of raw materials and carrying them, sometimes for miles, to a "base camp" was different from the behavior associated with chimps.

Two of Louis Leakey's students would become well known for their studies that document the intelligence of others from our family tree: Dian Fossey with gorillas, and Jane Goodall with chimps.

That chimps have made use of tools, and that they throw things, have been known for a long time. The part about the use of spears in hunting appears to be a recent advance.

I also agree with you 100% about the intelligence of other animals. Those with pets recognize this, if they are paying attention. Dogs are a great example. I used to raise pigs (for pets) and they were amazing. The intelligence of dolphins is another example. And you are absolutely correct that some religions have attempted to convince people that there is an unnatural distinction between humans and the rest of life on earth.

[cyborg_jim]

24. Or maybe we should not think we have 'special' thought

Because in the end it always comes down to us somehow being 'extra-special' - and with all the progress we have made in understanding cognition the inevitable conclusion that is a computational process does not sit well with many.

[Ediacara]

13. I don't think tool making is new in Chimps

But this is the first time it's been observed because these chimps are hunting in the middle of the night.

[zeemike]

3. How about this scenario

That Man came from Mars and that Mars was the garden of Eden in the biblical sense.
And after Man in the garden gained the "knowledge of good and evil" it descended into warlike conflict that destroyed the planet of Mars and was taken from that planet and placed on earth, which at the time was no garden of Eden due to the existence of large dinosaurs that made agriculture and gardens hard to keep up.
But they did survive and later became the civilization of Atlantis with great technology skills that were lost when the methane layer in the deep sea ruptured and caused the flood we now call the time of Noe.

[JCMach1]

4. intergalactic seeding is more likely... primitive 'alien' microbes

land on the planet via comet, asteroid, or meteor. Life is seeded on the planet and the whole chain of evolution begins. We may eventually find the aliens on the planet are US.

[Warren DeMontague]

6. It's speculated that in the Early Solar System, Mars may have been more hospitable for life

than Earth. It could have started there, then been seeded here through rocks blasted into interplanetary space via meteor impact.

For all we know, we could be Martians.

[SidDithers]

26. Are you saying Man and dinosaurs existed together?...

completely discounting the Mars aspect of your scenario, wouldn't we then have evidence of dinosaur fossils and "Man" fossils in the same geologic time frames?

Sid

[cyborg_jim]

27. What about birds? Other mammals?

It wouldn't just be man after all!

[SidDithers]

29. Birds and other mammals...

descended into warlike conflict on Mars, and were then moved to Earth, where they found it hard to survive because of the large dinosaurs? You did say Man in your original scenario, not birds and other mammals.

Or are you being sarcastic, and I'm just not getting it.

Sid

[longship]

7. "If time is infinite..."

Time is not infinite. It is inextricably wrapped up in the fabric of space along with the other three dimensions. When this universe began with the big bang, it created time and space together. In other words, it would be meaningless to ask the question, "what happened prior to the big bang", since there was no prior.

Our solar system is about 4.5 G years old. However, the universe is about 14 G years old. That's plenty of time for a multitude of advanced civilizations to be around. Unfortunately, given the nature of the fabric of space and the outrageous distances, and the multitude of possible sites for life, it is not likely that any advanced civilization would look precisely at Sol for life.

Interesting ideas there, though. However, they really are more scifi than sci.

[Trajan]

8. I have a problem with 'no prior' ....

I rarely use the word 'paradigm', but 'what if' man simply has not grown enough to understand 'what happened prior to' the BB ....

To assume that all things were 'created' at the BBE, then I might was well believe in a supernatural entity (which would be necessary to provide cause) who wished the universe into being, but then I wind up with BIGGER questions than mere 'prior to's .... Like 'How does a supernatural entity exist outside of a nature that does not exist ? .... What is the essense of a universal creative entity which exists in nothingness 'prior to' 'causing' the universe to exist out of nothingness ? ....

How can a cause exist in nothing ? .... A universe springing into existence from nothingness would demand a causal impulse; but if such an impulse DID exist, then how can we claim 'nothingness' ?

I think those questions are FAR more difficult to ponder than mere consideration of an infinite, energy/material continuum ....

I think that the present, finite materialistic universe DID exist, even if we dont possess the 'paradigm' that illuminates it to us ....

It is far less problematic for me to accept a pre-existent materialism than a pre-existent supernaturalistic causation within a supposed state of non-existence ... In either case, it is obvious that SOMETHING must have 'existed' ....

[longship]

14. Ah, but big bang cosmology does not explain...

any causal agent or power. There is some speculation and there is much work being done these days on getting there.

However, your plea for a time dimension disconnected from spacial dimensions is pretty much ruled out by relativity. If the big bang is the origin of space, it must also be the origin of time. Now this is a model which goes back almost a century, to the mid-19-teens. What's remarkable about it is that measurements have never shown it to be inaccurate in its predictive power. Einstein's model of gravitation, the relationship of space and time, and the predictive power of measurements in both inertial and non-inertial reference frames have never been shown to be inaccurate within a non-Planck limited space.

Where the big bang breaks down, and where relativity models break down, is below the Planck limits, where quantum rules no longer average out and therefore become important.

But stating that you are uncomfortable with a model where time originates along with space is a prime example of "argument from personal incredulity". Just because you are uncomfortable with a facet of science, that doesn't make the science any less valid. Some good examples of this exist in quantum mechanics where things rarely behave like common sense would ever predict. Yet, it doesn't stop the computer you are using--composed of billions of quantum devices--from functioning. Likewise, it does not prevent the designers of that computer circuitry from being able to predict how the device will work in the real world.

It's unfortunate, but science does not necessarily obey or follow people's expectations.

[WinkyDink]

31. Where did the "something" matter that produced the BB come from, then? From "nothing prior"

is an oxymoron.
Anyway, how can there be "nothing" without "something" to contain it, which would then not be "nothing"? (Is it a wall, like in "Eternal Sunshine..."?!)

[and-justice-for-all]

9. Religion is what keeps us...

..From answering those important questions. Ancient dogma that no longer serves any purpose and is only a hindrance to society.

Just think of the leaps that could be made if the revenue that religious kults take in were used to fund not only science and space exploration, but also the many social ills that haunt us still..

We should have already established a Moon base in the mid 90s at the latest, but did we? NO..Why Not? There is noting more important then mans destiny to explore the galaxy..But the dogma has to go, we can keep that dead weight around if we want to achieve that goal. There is, in my opinion, no place for religion in the future.

[Trajan]

10. In all fairness ...

and speaking as an atheist : The mere fact that 'ancient dogma' may restrict free thought doesnt preclude NEW dogma from obstructing progress ....

Can the 'Neodogmatic' obscure like the 'Paleodogmatic' ? .... absolutely .....

(I just coined those words .... just for you)

[Ediacara]

12. How do you know an extinct civilization would leave no record?

Think of it this way: what would paleontologists 300 million years from now find when they looked at late Neogene rocks? They'd almost certainly find things totally out of place with the rest of the rock record. Aside from clear indications that climate changed, and a "minor" mass extinction occurred, there would be lots of clues that a civilization had been here:

-Highways and roads would be preserved if they were "laid down" in depositional environments. They'd appear as long ribbons of bizarre conglomerates made up of pebbles of disparate and far flung provenance cemented together with hydrocarbons. These conglomerate ribbons would be laterally continuous across different rock types and depositional environments and are absolutely unlike anything else found in the rock record.

-Road grids in cities would be utterly unnatural as collections of the conglomerate ribbons would criss-cross at perfect right angles.

-Buildings made with significant amounts of iron would rust in place and could leave huge irregular and unusual haematite deposits.

-Instantly globalized flora and fauna of what we would call livestock and crops. The instantaneous and simultaneous global presence of cattle, sheep, pigs, wheat, corn, rice, tomatoes, peppers, and hundreds of others-; especially from the old world to the new and vice versa, is highly unnatural.

-And of course the literally hundreds of millions of fossilized humans that surely would litter the late Neogene.

Now am I saying that a prior civilization on Earth would leave all of these signs as indicators that they were there? No. But, I am saying that an extinct civilization would leave some indication in the rock record that it had been here. Unless they lived in the earliest Proterozoic or earlier, where we have almost no sedimentary record, I highly doubt there were any intelligent beings that lived on Earth before us for any significant amount of time, or in any significant numbers.

[JackRiddler]

16. It's nice to see someone earn their moniker, DinoBoy. n/t

[Bill McBlueState]

17. thanks

That was a fascinating post.

[maine_raptor]

15. Current theory of the Moon's creation

postulates that a planet like object about the size of Mars collided with the Earth some time after the Earth had cooled. The time period for this impact would be within the first billion or so years of the Earth's existence. Recent discoveries have also shown that life may have evolved rather quickly upon a newly formed Earth rather than the billion or so years that had been previously thought.

Therefore it is easy to assume that some sort of life did exist on this planet prior to that collision, which then wiped all trace of that life from the surface.

If this theory is correct than we are living on Earth, Mark 2.

Anther gap also exists. Our (human) history only goes back about 10,000 years. Yet humans, in one form or another, have been on the planet for over 5 million years. Within that timespan there is ample time for a "civilization" to have risen and fallen.

[mnhtnbb]

20. What consitutes "human" history? Cave paintings date from about 27,000 years ago

and artifacts have been recovered much older than that.

http://www.nybooks.com/articles/19435

[Igel]

19. I'll follow up poster 12.

He limited himself to larger things.

But almost any life form would carry with it bacteria. Bacteria are fairly hard to contain. Now, they've examined the bacteria found in some very, very old rocks. And they've found them to be very simple; later bacteria are more complex.

Unless the previous life forms made the entire earth uninhabitable all at once, so that bacteria that survived in some out-of-the-way spot couldn't survive to re-colonize everyplace else, the idea doesn't wash.

But there is a bit of fundie trivia you might as well know. Gen. 1:1 has "the earth was void and without form" (KJV). Some groups argue that the verb involved equally well means "became": this makes the 'creation' after that a re-creation, a renewing of what was already there. These are 'old earther' creationists, and many of them would argue that you're right--except that they'd call the previous civilization "angels".

[hyphenate]

22. Even the Greeks and Romans

included some of that into their mythology, having the Titans existing on Gaea before the next "generation" killed Chronus and took over as the gods and goddesses we all "know and love."

The most widely accepted account of beginning of things as reported by Hesiod's Theogony, starts with Chaos, a yawning nothingness. Out of the void emerged Ge or Gaia (the Earth) and some other primary divine beings: Eros (Love), the Abyss (the Tartarus), and the Erebus.<24> Without male assistance Gaia gave birth to Uranus (the Sky) who then fertilised her. From that union were born, first, the Titans: six males and six females (Oceanus, Coeus and Crius and Hyperion and Iapetus, Theia and Rhea, Themis and Mnemosyne, Phoebe and Tethys, and Cronus); then the one-eyed Cyclopes and the Hecatonchires or Hundred-Handers. Cronus ("the wily, youngest and most terrible of children"<24>)castrated his father and became the ruler of the gods with his sister-wife Rhea as his consort and the other Titans became his court. This motif of father/son conflict was repeated when Cronus was confronted by his son, Zeus. Zeus challenged him to war for the kingship of the gods. At last, with the help of the Cyclopes,(whom Zeus freed from Tarturus), Zeus and his siblings were victorious, while Cronus and the Titans were hurled down to imprisonment in Tartarus.

(Wikipedia)

The unfortunate things is that when Xtianity came about, a lot of the practical reasoning and higher knowledge of the Greeks and Romans was discarded in favor of the single god theory, and what could have been a more advanced way of thinking was gradually lost. The several thousand years of human life before the C.E. was filled with a lot of ideas, beliefs and inventions, which the Xtian world rejected, and which, ultimately, led to ignorance, intolerance and far more warmongering.

[gravity]

21. I believe religious doctrine just inhibits imagination

I think of these types of things all the time, and entertain the possibility of past civilizations on our planet even though I really doubt there could be one. If we kill ourselves off, would a civilization 100 million years in the future even know that we exists?

I remember talking to my friend about consciousness, wondering is everything that with think and feel is just a series of millions and millions of synchronized electrical pulses. Science sauggests so, but it goes against all my intuition, which just makes me appreciate the beauty and eloquence of the universe even more. I then thought that there is no way I could even have such an insightful conversation with one of my religous buddies. Saying that we have a soul, is just an easy copout that just trivializes our existence in my opinion.

Being an atheist, I never understand how religious people can think that life without god would be meaningless. The more I learn about the world through science, the more I apreciate the beauty in the universe, and the more grateful I am to be alive to witness it all.

[Zenlitened]

30. "The more I learn about the world through science, the more I apreciate the beauty in the universe"

Totally agree! :hi:

[WinkyDink]

32. But whence the universe? That's my personal sticking point, between belief and atheism.

[shadowknows69]

23. I'm there Hyphenate

I firmly believe there were older civilizations of humans than we are aware of. Perhaps some of them beat feet before the first ice age. Perhaps the striking lack of artifacts suggests they took a less technocentric approach to their civilization. I also believe that humanity has it in them to peform amazing feats with the power of mind alone if developed. Perhaps an ancient civilization unlocked some of these abilities that we only can dream of. Throw a theory out there and I'll entertain it at least. Read and seen too much not to.

[libertypirate]

25. Let's talk about reality

Assumptions are considered reality until another is accepted in it's place, and only when an observation can be shared will it solidify as reality to the masses.

Anything in the past can be used to manufacture an assumption, especially when people want to prove their emotionally driven world isn't crazy. Like when you insist something exists that you can't prove, aka a belief.

[and-justice-for-all]

28. Lets look at it this way...

..What about Pangia? Lets say that there was an ancient civilization that lived on the massive, huge 1 continent called Pangia. Well, knowing that Pangia is no longer in existence you have to take in to account the massive changes to continents from Pangia to the 7 we have now.

Over time things are going to be lost due to the planets massive Continental changes from one continent to 7. After that civilization was lost due to Earths changes, another species arouse, Dinosaurs. So then we end up on the track we have been on for millions of years. That civilization was not lost, they sort of De-evolved until they were able to return to there full humanoid forms.

They went from Somewhat human-like, to Ape like; then finally to Homosaphins. Evolution dud happen and so did perhaps a period of de-evolution of the ancient civilization that we have no evidence for.