Intelligent Life on Earth 56 Million Years Ago

Almost 56 million years ago the Earth's climate suffered a fast and significant warming. It's quite possible that an ancient industrial civilisation was intensely active at that time.

The warming, known as the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum, was due primarily to a rapid rise in carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere. The event may have happened over a very short period of time, possibly as short as 1,500 years, and the number of species that went extinct rose to several times that of normal levels.

During that period the average temperature was already several degrees higher than today, meaning there were no polar icecaps, but nevertheless sea levels rose due to thermal expansion. If a civilisation existed at that time it would have had to deal with relatively rapid changes to its coastal habitats and to weather patterns.

The parallels with what is happening to our climate right now are eerily obvious.

If the warming was due to the activities of an advanced civilisation it is likely that the rapid climate change was responsible for its demise. Finding out exactly what happened could give us valuable information that may help save our own civilisation.

A city on Earth, more than 56 million years ago. During that time the climate warmed rapidly. The civilisation that existed at that time would have found its existence increasingly threatened as a result of its unsustainable use of the planet's resources. We are facing the same threats. We must find a way to avoid making the same mistakes that that were made by previous advanced civilisations on our planet.

Finding the evidence of a civilisation that existed 56 million years ago is extremely difficult. Over such a timescale geological processes (plate tectonics, weathering and erosion) would wipe the Earth's surface clean of almost all traces of buildings, technology and transport infrastructure. For example, if our civilisation ended now, within a few million years there would be nothing left of any artefacts we created, or of our urbanisation which only covers about one percent of the surface of the planet. The only signs would be spikes of metals and possible traces of plastics, and certain radioactive isotopes in sedimentary deposits (if we destroy ourselves with a global nuclear war the evidence would be readily detectable millions of years in the future). Such chemical signatures would be the only evidence that we could reasonably hope to find, and even these would be very hard to find if the civilisation was only industrially active for a few hundred years.

If the civilisation had developed space flight capability then that would offer more hope. The best place to find evidence of its existence would be away from Earth. There may well be ancient space probes orbiting within our Solar-System, and on the surface of its airless worlds, that have been preserved quite well. Of course, the vastness of space would mean finding them will still be a challenge, but as we map the surfaces of many of the Solar-System's planets and moons in ever greater detail we may soon find something.

A previous industrial civilisation on Earth millions of years ago may have developed spaceflight capabilities. Evidence of their activities away from our planet would be the best way to prove their existence. Spaceships such as this one may have been built to enable the colonisation of our Solar-System and beyond as an attempt to survive the warming event that their activities on Earth inadvertently caused.

I discussed the possibility of finding evidence of ancient mining activity in the asteroid belt in my earlier article titled 'Pre-Human Technology in the Asteroid Belt'. If such evidence is found then it is possible that the civilisation felt the need to construct interstellar ships to colonise planets around other stars, probably as a way to preserve at least some of their knowledge and culture as the Earth rapidly became hostile to them. Right now there could be one or more Earth-like planets in nearby star systems that are thriving with the descendants of Earth life. The civilisation that populated those worlds may still exist, or another may have since risen to take its place. Perhaps they even returned millions of years later and influenced the rise of human civilisation on Earth.

Colonists from a pre-human Earth civilisation walk upon their new world. Their civilisation's activities on Earth millions of years ago damaged the climate to such an extent that their species faced extinction. Colonising an Earth-like planet orbiting another star seemed to be the only way for their species to survive. Perhaps one day, when we are able to visit other star-systems, we will discover life descended from Earth life.

The rapid climate change 56 million years ago is not the only time a possible industrial civilisation existed before our current one. There has been speculation that there could well have been a dinosaur civilisation, possibly created by a descendent of a Troodon, that would certainly have ended when the Cretaceous-Palegene extinction event occurred 66 million years ago. And extinction events such as the Toarcian turnover 183 million years ago could also be related to yet another industrial civilisation abusing the Earth's resources.

Discovering proof of the existence of pre-human industrial civilisations on Earth is quite an intoxicating prospect. Life has existed on our planet for at least 3.5 billion years, and life with very complex brains, and consciousness, has existed for hundreds of million of years. There has been ample time for multiple civilisations to rise and fall. The chances are that at least one of them would have developed to an industrial and even highly technological level.

With the right kind of research we will be able to find strong evidence of the existence of such a civilisation. Paleontological and geological expeditions with the sole purpose of uncovering that evidence should begin at the earliest opportunity, and all space missions, past and future, should have their data examined to see if evidence of an ancient technological civilisation is present in our Solar-System. It is exciting to think that there may well be evidence hidden within the vast amount of data already collected by NASA and other space agencies.

If evidence of an ancient pre-human industrial civilisation on Earth is discovered it would have profound implications. It would mean that intelligence, at least to our own level, is a natural and relatively common evolutionary occurrence. And it would mean that industrial civilisations on other life-bearing planets should be common, too.

Pre-Human Technology in the Asteroid Belt

I've discussed before the possibility of an advanced prehistoric technological civilisation existing on Earth. But due to geological activity any evidence of such a civilisation is likely to have been lost due to continental plate subduction and other processes. Evidence of a pre-human civilisation from hundreds of millions of years ago will be buried many kilometres deep, and even destroyed completely by the immense pressure and high temperature found at such a depth.

We need to look elsewhere.

An ancient advanced civilisation in Antarctica. Perhaps one of the few benefits of global warming will be to reveal evidence of such lost civilisations. Studying such civlisations could reveal the secrets as to how they left the Earth, and where they went.

If a civilisation had developed to a level high enough for space travel then the moon would be an obvious place to look for signs of its existence, but even there geological processes may have destroyed any evidence. Volcanic activity may well have been occurring on the moon as little as a hundred million years ago.

Fortunately there is another region in the Solar-System where such evidence, even from a billion years ago, could be preserved. Geological activity is almost completely absent there. That region is the asteroid belt.

Of course, asteroids are not completely free of erosionary forces. Impacts would destroy surface artifacts over time, but unlike on Earth the results of activities beneath the surface, such as mining or habitat construction, would be preserved almost indefinitely.

This makes objects in the asteroid belt the prime target for research into pre-human civilisations.

And already, the first purpose built asteroid mission has found what could well be evidence of extensive mining activity.

Ceres

NASA's Dawn mission to the two largest asteroids, Vesta and Ceres, is the only significant asteroid belt mission so far. The probe is still in orbit around Ceres and will remain there indefinitely. The intriguing bright spots seen on Ceres could indeed be evidence of mining activity.

Evidence of extensive mining activity in the Occator crater on Ceres

There is also an unusual mountain, named Ahuna Mons, in another region of Ceres that could be a huge mound of excavated waste material, much like the slag heaps found near mines on Earth.

A mountain of excavated material on Ceres

Such discoveries on Ceres show that it must be explored in much more detail from the surface. A lander, rover, or even a manned mission is needed.

If one of the first asteroids to be orbited by a dedicated probe throws up such compelling evidence of a pre-human civilisation, it's highly likely that others will, too.

16 Psyche

Another very interesting body in the asteroid belt is 16 Psyche. The asteroid is unique in its composition - almost pure iron and nickel. Nothing else like it has been discovered in the Solar-System. It's possible that it once had an exterior of rock and ice, and that it was once a planet, and that that exterior was blasted away completely by an unfortunate set of collisions with other massive objects. But the likelihood of that is very small.

16-Psyche - possibly the most heavily mined object in the Solar-System

Another explanation must be found. It could well be that the rocky outer shell was intentionally removed, and if that's true it would probably be the most incredible evidence of mining that we could ever find. It's no surprise that NASA has recently announced it will be sending a probe to 16 Psyche, which will arrive in 2030.

If such a huge amount of material was mined it would be enough to construct thousand of starships and habitats, certainly enough to provide a refuge for millions for a civilisation that needs to evacuate its home world. 16 Psyche could be hiding the evidence of the ancient technological civilisation that lived on Earth hundreds of millions of years ago.

Humans explore one of the last surviving tunnels on 16 Psyche

The evidence of a civilisation that we may find in the asteroid belt may not have originated on Earth, of course. It could have been from Mars or even Venus, both of which seem to have suffered catastrophic climate changes. Such changes would have prompted any advanced civilisation on those worlds to do everything possible to preserve its species. It could have set up home on Earth (it could have formed one of the long extinct Earth-based civilisations), but at that time the Earth's atmosphere would probably have been unsuitable. What's more likely is that the species utilised the vast resources of the asteroid belt to construct interstellar starships (see my earlier article on the evacuation of Mars).

It's thrilling to think that when we do identify life-bearing planets around other stars (which I'm confident we'll do within the next few decades) the life we're observing may well have originated in our Solar-System.