Future natural history: Post-human TLs

[reddie]

I first planned to start a thread concerning pre-human TL divergences, but decided that this particular idea--post human worlds--might be easier to write about, since everybody can extrapolate into the future.

Anyway, let's think about the worst possible scenario: human extinction. What does mankind leave behind, and who or what inherits the earth? The way homo sapiens goes out is up to you (there's virtually no disaster possible than can actually wipe out life on earth; only an actual shattering of the crust--reducing the planet to an asteroid field, essentially--would be able to do so. But larger organisms aren't as hardy as microbes!)

[Tyr]

See Earth Abides for this. Good book...

Nothing much of interest, mainly just nature reasserting itself with a few disasters from nuclear power stations mucking up and other less dangerous equipment causing fires.

[reddie]

I was thinking in the long run, though...what sort of ecology crops up ten million years post-homic?

Earth Abides? Was that written in the 1940s? Or am I thinking of Alas, Babylon?

[carlton_bach]

Ever watch 'The Future Is Wild'?

[Glen]

Ever watch 'The Future Is Wild'?

That seems to be what Reddie is going for, eh?

[Suit_N_Tie]

That seems to be what Reddie is going for, eh?

I have the dvd's for this show, just incredible is all I can say about the series :)

[BurningWickerman]

That show ruled. Giant squids that swing from tree to tree- genius.

[Diamond]

There is a book called 'After Man', by Dougal Dixon (who I think was one of those responsible for The Future is Wild), which deals with this subject. Very fascinating read. He's got packs of boar-sized predatory rats taking over the niche left vacant by the extinction of wolves and other mid-level predators.

[Romulus Augustulus]

Post-human? Simple. Star-colonizing solar-powered kill-robots that often have downloaded human personalities. So our "souls" continue to exist, but in immortal robot bodies. Later on, we become energy based.

[Count Dearborn]

The rats, roaches, and red kangaroos take over.

[MarkA]

I have the dvd's for this show, just incredible is all I can say about the series :)

I agree. The thing is that many of the beasties portrayed were very similar to types from our distant past. Evolution follows similar paths that may lead to what appears to be profoundly different beasts but at the core are very alike.

Boar sized rats! What an insight! I think that could happen as rats are a very successful species and are at least as aggressive as us.

[Max Sinister]

What does mankind leave behind

Paper unfortunately rots if not properly preserved, concrete and other stones crumble, and iron rusts. I'm not sure how long glass lasts - but I guess, less than 50 million years. So what will a new intelligent species (if they'd emerge) find? A few fossils and a few artefacts on the moon...

[The Sandman]

The vast strata layers of radioactive dust and debris should give post-human archeologists an idea that something was there before them, as I can't think of any natural cause that could produce similar results.

[Max Sinister]

Nobody said that humanity had to end by a global thermonuclear war...

[Suit_N_Tie]

That show ruled. Giant squids that swing from tree to tree- genius.

I totally agree, it was well worth the purchase of the dvd to see that!

The only thing that annoyed me was the plains monkeys of Brazil. They could have eventually evolved into bipedial/proto-humanoids, but they didn't go anywhere with it.

[Max Sinister]

It was truly a great production.
Why they didn't let the monkeys develop to humans? Maybe because they wanted to show how the world could develop *without* an intelligent species.

And BTW: The squids in the trees looked cool and everything, but are they realistic? How does their orientation in three dimensions work if they always make these loopings?

[Hendryk]

Paper unfortunately rots if not properly preserved, concrete and other stones crumble, and iron rusts. I'm not sure how long glass lasts - but I guess, less than 50 million years. So what will a new intelligent species (if they'd emerge) find? A few fossils and a few artefacts on the moon...
Don't forget plastic. Millions of tons of it. To quote Douglas Coupland, "Ski boots are the worst. They'll be around till the Sun goes supernova." Anyway, thesandman's right, even without a nuclear war, there's enough radioactive waste buried here and there (or just left to sit around in places like Siberia) to provide any sentient species that might come after us with all the evidence they need about the existence of mankind. They'll inevitably notice their Geiger counters going wild in places where they geologically shouldn't.

I totally agree, it was well worth the pruchase of the dvd to see that!
Just checked the website of "The Future is Wild" show, it looks really cool. I think Lovecraft would have been quite interested--he imagined that in 50 million years' time, with mankind long extinct, Earth will be ruled by a species of sentient insects.

[Tyr]

I was thinking in the long run, though...what sort of ecology crops up ten million years post-homic?

Earth Abides? Was that written in the 1940s? Or am I thinking of Alas, Babylon?

Could be Earth Abides which was set/written in the 50s

[serebryakov]

I think I'd posted it somewhere somewhen, but...

http://www.sivatherium.h12.ru/englver.htm

Quite a detailed history of a future without man, 25 MY ahead.

[Paul Spring]

Don't forget plastic. Millions of tons of it. To quote Douglas Coupland, "Ski boots are the worst. They'll be around till the Sun goes supernova." Anyway, thesandman's right, even without a nuclear war, there's enough radioactive waste buried here and there (or just left to sit around in places like Siberia) to provide any sentient species that might come after us with all the evidence they need about the existence of mankind. They'll inevitably notice their Geiger counters going wild in places where they geologically shouldn't.



Most radioactive isotopes decay into something non-radioactive or only slightly radioactive within a few thousand years. If you're talking millions of years in the future, I doubt there will be any radioactive trace left from nuclear fuel or waste.

[Imajin]

The moon will be their best bet for finding something, I'd say...

Imagine if all human artifacts were lost on earth, but the moon artifacts remained... what would the future Earthlings think? They may believe the humans to have come from another planet... maybe Mars if they go there and find rovers...

[Doctor What]

Most radioactive isotopes decay into something non-radioactive or only slightly radioactive within a few thousand years. If you're talking millions of years in the future, I doubt there will be any radioactive trace left from nuclear fuel or waste.

U-235 (the isotope usually used in nukes and power plants) has a half life of about 700 million years.

Iodine-129 has a half-life of 15.7 million years. It's mostly a by-product of fuel rods and nuclear detonation.

Thorium-232 has a half-life of 14 billion years. Fortunately it's found in very small doses (it's a by-product of certain thorium processing processes).

[reddie]

Paper unfortunately rots if not properly preserved, concrete and other stones crumble, and iron rusts. I'm not sure how long glass lasts - but I guess, less than 50 million years. So what will a new intelligent species (if they'd emerge) find? A few fossils and a few artefacts on the moon...

There will also be a fair amount of anomalous, very thin strata, obviously laid down over a very brief period of time.

[reddie]

It was truly a great production.
Why they didn't let the monkeys develop to humans? Maybe because they wanted to show how the world could develop *without* an intelligent species.

And BTW: The squids in the trees looked cool and everything, but are they realistic? How does their orientation in three dimensions work if they always make these loopings?

It's explained in the book that the squibbons always keep their eye-stalks approximately parallel to the ground, hence their 3-d imaging really isn't in trouble.

[Doctor What]

Remnants of Post Apocalyptic Earth (http://www.alternatehistory.net/discussion/showthread.php?t=2749)

We're going to leave a lot of traces of our existence in our trash...

Ironic that the only thing humans may be remembered for will be our garbage.

[reddie]

Remnants of Post Apocalyptic Earth (http://www.alternatehistory.net/discussion/showthread.php?t=2749)

We're going to leave a lot of traces of our existence in our trash...

Ironic that the only thing humans may be remembered for will be our garbage.

Well, that's basically what archaeologists dig up: rubbish heaps.

[Soyuz]

All the equipment that was left on the Moon will be there for a while... If someone millenia from now stumbles upon them, they'll start wondering.

P.S. G'dam it. And then I looked back and read Imajin's post.

Well, to add something new, however unlikely, someone may still stumble upon one of our deep space probes. And most likely humanity will be here a while longer so we'll be able to shoot out several more.

P.P.S. Well, to add something else, someone in the future will also notice the lack of fossil fuel on our planet (if we continue the way we're going). This will also have to be an exo-solar civilization because even if another sentient species evolves on earth, it will never reach the industrial stage in its developement, so it would be unlikely that they will put that much effort in trying to find evidence of us.

[Paul Spring]

U-235 (the isotope usually used in nukes and power plants) has a half life of about 700 million years.

Iodine-129 has a half-life of 15.7 million years. It's mostly a by-product of fuel rods and nuclear detonation.

Thorium-232 has a half-life of 14 billion years. Fortunately it's found in very small doses (it's a by-product of certain thorium processing processes).

I believe those are all naturally occuring isotopes, though. After millions of years they will probably have corroded or been ground up or smashed or scattered so that they won't be much more concentrated than you would find them in a natural deposit.

After millions and millions of years, when all of the large structures are long gone, I think that the best clue to our existence will be surviving fragments of chemicals like plastics and perhaps glass, that don't form in nature but are so resistant to decay that they will last many millions of years intact.

Also, the same processes that cause fossilization could also preserve at least impressions of man-made objects in stone.

[Wendell]

Are we killing off Mankind, or just wiping him from the earth?

[Doctor What]

I believe those are all naturally occuring isotopes, though. After millions of years they will probably have corroded or been ground up or smashed or scattered so that they won't be much more concentrated than you would find them in a natural deposit.

True--but U-235 only makes up about 0.7 percent of the uranium naturally found on Earth, Paul. Similar numbers apply to the other isotopes. Even after millions of years of natural processes scattering the stuff around, there will still be 'pockets' of abnormally high concentrations of the stuff (Yucca Mountain for example is suppose to hold 70,000 tons of high-level waste--and that stuff is going to be buried inside a mountain so it won't be quite so scattered as the stuff that's currently stored in all the temporary sites). Trust me--our future replacements will notice something weird in a few places. Whether or not they will actually make the connection to us is another matter.

After millions and millions of years, when all of the large structures are long gone, I think that the best clue to our existence will be surviving fragments of chemicals like plastics and perhaps glass, that don't form in nature but are so resistant to decay that they will last many millions of years intact.

I agree. Like I said in an earlier post, there will be a lot of landfills filled with old tupperware containers and plastic bags--that stuff is extremely resistant to decay. Glass and ceramics are theoretically indestructable--and we've produced so much of that stuff that some of that stuff will certainly survive for millions of years.

Really cool site I came across about the geology of the New York Bight (http://www.geo.hunter.cuny.edu/bight/anthro.html)

Also, the same processes that cause fossilization could also preserve at least impressions of man-made objects in stone.

And the occasional human.... :)

[Snake Featherston]

There's another alternative: namely a civilizational collapse severe enough to revert society back to either Solutrean or Oldowan-level technology, which would erase all previous knowledge of human societies and their contacts. Depending on the length of time it takes to rebuild, you might see multiple posthuman species evolve in regions like America and Australia.

Going extinct and leaving descendants is still extinct. Just ask Australopithecus anamensis.

[Snake Featherston]

It was truly a great production.
Why they didn't let the monkeys develop to humans? Maybe because they wanted to show how the world could develop *without* an intelligent species.

And BTW: The squids in the trees looked cool and everything, but are they realistic? How does their orientation in three dimensions work if they always make these loopings?

Perhaps because monkeys have already become terrestrial. That's what baboons are. Monkeys have not developed anything approaching bipedalism, ever. Every ape species, by contrast, has more or less of it. Humans just make it full-time, the rest of the apes are part-time.

Now, apes developing into humans would require some rationalization. Why would the track towards another group of bipedal species evolve into something approximating Homo? The bipedal apes range from Oreopithecus to Paranthropus. Nothing guarantees that anything looking like Homo would evolve, presuming that chimpanzees become the baseline.

[Kevin Renner]

Boar sized rats! What an insight! I think that could happen as rats are a very successful species and are at least as aggressive as us.

Do they live in the Fire Swamp?????????????????:D:D

[mojojojo]

you may want to check out this group http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/philosphica-dixonia/
and this one http://spec-evolution.sytes.net/index/

[Petike]

Reddie :

I think you would be very interested in this :

http://www.sivatherium.h12.ru/library/Dixon/main_en.htm

Dougal Dixon's seminal "After Man : A Zoology of the Future" (1981).
Still the best and most realistic speculative prose about future fauna - 50 million years after the extinction of man, to be precise...

Found it on the net a few months ago. Don't know if it violates copyright or not, but I'm grateful to the guy who put it there. A great read, imaginative playing with serious evolutionary theories, creative approach and minimum nonsense - I wholeheartedly reccomend it.

[Canadian Dragon]

I remember Dougal Dixon's After Man. I used to borrow it fairly often from the local library system, because the idea of future evolution fascinated me to no end, what with all those strange animals and stuff. :D

[Jomazi]

An isotope like I-129 with a half life of 17 million years will NOT exist in anywhere near 0.7% concentration in nature. In fact, natural iodine contains no 129 whatsoever. So if you find radioactive iodine, it is a very clear sign that nuclear fission has occurred, and nuclear fission is exceedingly rare in nature, in fact it has been completely nonexistent in these last 700 million years (due to low U-235 levels).

Th-232 is the naturally most abundant and stable isotope of thorium and not a by-product.

The tougher types of household plastic would probably hold for hundreds of thousands of years. But perhaps not millions, as they can be chemically attacked, like by Ozone or destroyed by UV-rays or powerful radicals.

Iron and steel is quickly destroyed, aluminum and copper more slowly, but objects such as jewels of noble metals and perhaps titanium as in aircraft engines would last forever. Absurd if the yellow-plume racist baboon sapients of 8 million years into the future wins their second world war by an archaeological finding...