I love the idea, but I’m sceptical based on genetics. Our civilisation has moved a lot of species around, from stuff like bringing placental mammals to Australia to things like exporting food crops around the world. Potatoes evolved in the Americas, now you can find them everywhere. Soy beans came from Japan / East Asia but now they’re heavily cultivated in Brazil.
I assume that any previous industrial civilisation, even if it were less adaptable than humans, would probably have spread outside of its home continent, if only to look for oil and minerals. And they’d end up introducing species all over the place, like we have, and modern day geneticists should be scratching their heads and trying to figure out all sorts of mysteries about what evolved where. But so far as I know (I’m not an evolutionary biologist) we just don‘t have those sort of mysteries where species categories suddenly jump continents.
So, sadly, I don’t think that the Earth has had a previous industrial civilisation at least since Australia separated from the other continents. I wouldn’t rule out previous pre-industrial civilisations, though. In fact, given the wide variety of species today which demonstrate at least some tool use—not just great apes but also capuchin monkeys, corvids, even octopuses—I’d be surprised if no previous species ever got to at least homo erectus level.
Would there be wild descendants of the soybean all over the world if we disappeared, can the domesticates go wild without us?
The PETM was associated with a mixup of plant and animal ranges, but it is generally explained as being the result of the 5+ degree C temperature spike shifting all their ranges poleward and this then allowing them to wind up at different longitudes when they shifted back towards the equator, plus the general chaos of a minor extinction churning the ecosystems.
If we go with the least likely part of the scenario mentioned above (antarctic habitat), Antarctica and South America and Australia all were faunally related after the breakup of Gondwana...
Maybe the crop plants weren’t the best example to use. If we all disappeared tomorrow, there would still be rats and dingos and feral hogs in Australia. There would be rats on almost every island worldwide. There would be Japanese knotweed and buddleja and rhododendrons everywhere. There would be bougainvillea across all the tropics. There would be American crayfish and Pacific oysters in Britain. There would be Asian carp in North America. There might be hippopotamuses in South America! Ie it’s not just domesticates, it’s the far larger number of wild species we’ve moved around (probably thousands or more—I couldn’t find an estimate with a quick google search)
If any comparable thing had happened in the past, palaeobiology and genetic taxonomy should be a godawful mess instead of dovetailing nicely with the geological evidence on continental drift. Now maybe I’m just ignorant, and evolutionary biologists are going round scratching their heads and wondering how ancestral koalas suddenly showed up on Madagascar 55 million years ago, or some equivalent mystery. But I’m not aware of any such problem. Maybe the Antarctic habitat explains that, but I have trouble squaring the idea of a civilisation large-scale enough to cause runaway global warming with one that leaves no trace 55 million years later.
The world would be a more interesting place if there was a previous industrial civilisation. I just don’t think there is evidence to support that proposition, and even 55 million years later, there should be some traces. But if someone digs up fossil plastics in Antarctica or something, I will be delighted to be proven wrong.
I love the idea, but I’m sceptical based on genetics. Our civilisation has moved a lot of species around, from stuff like bringing placental mammals to Australia to things like exporting food crops around the world. Potatoes evolved in the Americas, now you can find them everywhere. Soy beans came from Japan / East Asia but now they’re heavily cultivated in Brazil.
I assume that any previous industrial civilisation, even if it were less adaptable than humans, would probably have spread outside of its home continent, if only to look for oil and minerals. And they’d end up introducing species all over the place, like we have, and modern day geneticists should be scratching their heads and trying to figure out all sorts of mysteries about what evolved where. But so far as I know (I’m not an evolutionary biologist) we just don‘t have those sort of mysteries where species categories suddenly jump continents.
So, sadly, I don’t think that the Earth has had a previous industrial civilisation at least since Australia separated from the other continents. I wouldn’t rule out previous pre-industrial civilisations, though. In fact, given the wide variety of species today which demonstrate at least some tool use—not just great apes but also capuchin monkeys, corvids, even octopuses—I’d be surprised if no previous species ever got to at least homo erectus level.
My brain goes interesting places from here.
Would there be wild descendants of the soybean all over the world if we disappeared, can the domesticates go wild without us?
The PETM was associated with a mixup of plant and animal ranges, but it is generally explained as being the result of the 5+ degree C temperature spike shifting all their ranges poleward and this then allowing them to wind up at different longitudes when they shifted back towards the equator, plus the general chaos of a minor extinction churning the ecosystems.
If we go with the least likely part of the scenario mentioned above (antarctic habitat), Antarctica and South America and Australia all were faunally related after the breakup of Gondwana...
Maybe the crop plants weren’t the best example to use. If we all disappeared tomorrow, there would still be rats and dingos and feral hogs in Australia. There would be rats on almost every island worldwide. There would be Japanese knotweed and buddleja and rhododendrons everywhere. There would be bougainvillea across all the tropics. There would be American crayfish and Pacific oysters in Britain. There would be Asian carp in North America. There might be hippopotamuses in South America! Ie it’s not just domesticates, it’s the far larger number of wild species we’ve moved around (probably thousands or more—I couldn’t find an estimate with a quick google search)
If any comparable thing had happened in the past, palaeobiology and genetic taxonomy should be a godawful mess instead of dovetailing nicely with the geological evidence on continental drift. Now maybe I’m just ignorant, and evolutionary biologists are going round scratching their heads and wondering how ancestral koalas suddenly showed up on Madagascar 55 million years ago, or some equivalent mystery. But I’m not aware of any such problem. Maybe the Antarctic habitat explains that, but I have trouble squaring the idea of a civilisation large-scale enough to cause runaway global warming with one that leaves no trace 55 million years later.
The world would be a more interesting place if there was a previous industrial civilisation. I just don’t think there is evidence to support that proposition, and even 55 million years later, there should be some traces. But if someone digs up fossil plastics in Antarctica or something, I will be delighted to be proven wrong.