When our species has become extinct, is there anything that would survive long enough to tell the next intelligent species to arise that we were a technological civilization?

Crackhappy@lemmy.world · 7 months ago

When our species has become extinct, is there anything that would survive long enough to tell the next intelligent species to arise that we were a technological civilization?

scorpionix@feddit.de · 7 months ago

But then again look at how many fossiles there still are. And those are all biologically, easily degraded.

You got that one the wrong way around. These fossiles are still here because of the special environmental circumstances in which they formed. Most biological matter decomposes without a trace.

Like suddenly there is plastic in the sediment layers …

If we were to go extinct today, these layers would be incredible thin. 12 k years of human history is a blink of an eye in terms of geological timeframes and for most of that we didn’t produce long lasting materials.