As to being the first, we've only been civilized, if you can call it that, for a mere 5,000 years - the working definition for that descriptive being the length of recorded history. Cripes, we've only existed as a unique species for ~20,000 year. At the rate we're going, I'd place even money on us no lasting another 20,000.
So, given this, and the fact that there has been evolved multicellular, animate life on the planet for the last ~500 million years, who can state with authority that we are the first "intelligent" specie to evolve? Unless you don't believe in evolution... Oh wait, I guess we decided not to go there. Back to our main program. Anyhow, 500 million years on a geological time scale is sufficient for subduction to have completely obliterated sizable portions of earthly real estate. Evidence of some unfortunate prior specie's ephemeral 20,000 year claim to having become civilized could well never be found by today's archaeologists. This is not a new concept, several science fiction writers have written stories that transpire over geological time periods. Frederich Pohl, Larry Niven, and more recently, Michael Seimsen who wrote *The Dig* which addresses this very proposition. In his story, a hominid species rose to approximately iron-age levels of technology ~120 million years ago, before having been being wiped out in the Cretaceous era mass extinction. These unfortunate individuals had a rough go of it, what with all the dinosaur predators roaming around at the time (Sarah Palin would have *loved* this story, presuming she could have gotten past the 6,000 year issue). As a result of the relative hard times they were living in, these hominids did not expand to the point of becoming a global blight, unlike the current inhabitants. The did have art, though. On a much broader scale, we have what: 200 billion galaxies that we can see, each with tens to hundreds of billions of potentially habitable planets? I have a sneaky suspicion we are not the first to have experienced "the quickening", universally speaking. --Doug On Sun, Apr 1, 2012 at 12:42 PM, Owen Densmore <[email protected]> wrote: > Gentle readers, as much as I like /.-like digressions, interesting humor > (but not religious rants), has anyone anything to add to the idea that life > origins may be bound to the era after Population II star formation? > > If so, we may be among the first of these very young life forms, +/- a > billion years or so. > > -- Owen > > ============================================================ > FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv > Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College > lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org > -- Doug Roberts [email protected] [email protected] http://parrot-farm.net/Second-Cousins <http://parrot-farm.net/Second-Cousins> 505-455-7333 - Office 505-670-8195 - Cell
============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
