Glaciation and Civilization
DNA evidence suggests that the human race has been around for about 200,000 years, and human civilization is thought to have begun in only the last several millennia. Our technological progress and our population have experienced explosive, exponential growth: more people are alive right now than have ever lived in the history of our race. 100 years ago automobiles were rare and powered flight had only recently become a reality.
When the X Files movie came out several years ago, I was struck by the first image: two figures moving across a sheet of ice in Texas 35,000 years ago. Books that I read as a child, such as “Stranger from the Depths” and Harry Harrison’s West of Eden talked about ancient, non-human civilizations that lived millions of years ago that vanished without a trace.
I’ve often been struck by how recently in our history human civilization has developed. I find myself wondering what might have kept people from getting together until so recently. We have demonstrated that, comparatively speaking, the leap from agriculture to space travel has occurred in the blink of an eye.
Why did it take so long to take those first steps? Sometimes I wonder if it really took us that long at all. There have been two major periods of glaciation during the human race’s existence, what impact did these have on our development?
I’m not asserting this as a theory, so much as posing a question:
If modern civilization were hit with glaciation on par with the last two glacial episodes, would any trace of our world survive?
The great lakes and the puget sound were carved out of the earth by glaciers. Even assuming that all of our buildings stayed intact, the scouring action of glaciers would break them up and spread them out over a large area. Oxidation, erosion, and biodegrading would take care of most anything else.
I’m not sure about the lifespan of plastics, but if we are talking about a period of 50,000 to 100,000 years under severe conditions, would there be anything left of these, either?
As an aside, I also wonder if human hair growth patterns come from generations of wearing animals skins for survival in an arctic climate.
Just a thought.
-Daniel
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global warming, ice age, glaciers, civilization
made with mars edit
December 13th, 2007 at 4:11 pm
I am totally fascinated by this sort of stuff!
It’s interesting to think what might be left, since on one hand the ice could probably wipe out almost any trace of most structures and many materials in 10-100,000 years… and on the other, sometimes intact organisms are frozen and preserved like the mammoths in Siberia (http://www.answersingenesis.org/home/area/fit/chapter1.asp).
There’s a pretty interesting book, albeit a bit far-fetched, posing the idea of a polar shift around one of those ice ages, and a lost civilization possibly smote under miles of ice on Antarctica (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fingerprints_of_the_Gods). I enjoyed reading it in college. You might take a look at it sometime to expand on your imaginings.