What if Humans Are NOT Earth's First Civilization? | Silurian Hypothesis

Reminds me of the Star Trek: Voyager episode "Distant Origin" where the hero ship happens upon an ancient civilization on the other side of the galaxy that descended from hadrosaurs that left Earth 70 million years ago.

This is why we need to build a pyramid on the moon... you know future civilizations will be like, pyramids or it didn't happen.

„They‘re already here, aren’t they?“ - „THEY have been here long before us, Mr. Mulder.“

"The Brain Eaters," a 1958 horror film had a plot that revolved around an insect civilization from the Carboniferous creating a capsule to escape their refuge from deep underground. Also notable for featuring a pre-Trek Leonard Nimoy.

This whole episode sounds like a bar conversation after a scientific conference. A lot of fun!

This fascinating concept brings to mind the famous sci-fi classic 'Nightfall' by Isaac Asimov and Robert Silverberg. In Nightfall, an alien race lives on a world that features not one but several suns. Each sun is up and visible at some part of the time each day and so the concept of 'darkness' is unknown and therefore terrifying to these aliens. In the story, astronomers make a prediction that a full eclipse will occur in the near future, exposing the alien civilisation to complete darkness. It is predicted that most of the aliens will go insane from the experience. Meanwhile in parallel to this storyline, the alien equivalent of geologists are exploring a dig site that uncover something shocking - a layer of carbon and ash buried under the current layer of habitation. The analysis suggest that the ash represents mass fires and destruction - of a previous 'cycle' of civilisation of that alien race. Further digs reveal something even more shocking - an undeniable pattern of wholesale civilisation destruction occurring with a definite period; over and over. It is eventually realised that the current civilisation of aliens on that planet is now 'almost due' for another collapse - and it looks like the forthcoming ultra-rare eclipse and descent into darkness may be the root of all of this. In short, Nightfall as a story contained a seed of the Silurian Hypothesis - what if our current 'advanced' civilisation isn't the first and indeed perhaps only represents the apogee of this particular 'instance' of human civilisation? Now I don't think there's any substance to that idea here on Earth, but nor do I know for sure either.

I love theories like this because they really explore the vastness of time and space.

i really enjoy these episodes that dont contain overly complex math and phsyics that i cant remotely understand. this was interesting, and fun. thank you.

There was an episode of Star Trek Voyager about this. A dinosaur civ escaped before the asteroid hit and drifted around the galaxy for millions of years until a ship from the same homeworld stumbled into them on the other side of the galaxy.

this reminds me of the Lovecraft's stories, basically Earth was invaded by different civilizations on the course of millions of years, all them sooner of later became extincts, or devolved, or literally just ghosts remains.

I think Silurian Hypothesis should be boiled down to: "Due to subduction, records of surface phenomena will be obscured over millennia" instead of the current: "an Industrial Civilization may have existed before humans existed". It is like modifying the belief that "A teapot might be orbiting Earth" to "It would be difficult to detect something as small as a teapot orbiting Earth".

Absolutely phenomenal. Watch all the way through. Thank you for a profound piece.

its really frustrating to think about how hard it is to build a truly functioning timecapsule that is both reachable(and not parked in geostationary orbit), understandable(no language will survive) and mechanically/chemically stable enough

This is why I love PBS Spacetime. They’ll cover cutting edge physics topics one day, and then give a fair look at far flung topics like the Silurian hypothesis the next. Fantastic work.

An excellent discussion of an interesting hypothesis that many dismiss as too speculative despite, as Matt points out, is a valuable exercise for helping us understand so many questions about life on Earth and elsewhere. A marvellous channel.

Appreciate all of you at PBS Spacetime, your efforts (shoutouts to the animators & editors.) I also appreciate the community here.

This is the proper way to debunk a conspiracy. Don’t strawman the argument or attack the proponents, steelman the argument and actually try to take it seriously, while looking for contradictions that imply falsehood

I find it funny how the Silurian hypothesis was named after the pre-human race called the Silurians in Doctor Who, which were named after the Silurian period, which ranged from 443.8 to 419.2 million years ago, a time when such a civilization may have hypothetically existed. It's all very recursive, like Pokemon Yellow being based on the Pokemon anime which was based on Pokemon Red and Green.

This was awesome. This answered a lot of serious questions I had about this idea.

The same thought processes and experiments could be used to help find evidence of very brief biogenesis on Mars or Venus. Figuring out the origins of trace amounts of unusual stuff is worthwhile.