What could be lost in our past?

In this video I discuss the limitations of paleontology and science and speculate what could be missing or lost to history and time. I ask a very strange question: Could there have been civilizations or cultures made by other non-human organisms?

...sorry if it seemed like I went off the deep end with this one. XD
I don't believe there were past civilizations or intelligences, it's just something I would love to be wrong about and find evidence of. All I am doing in this video is asking the question.

Hope you enjoy!

Please check out C.M. Kosemen's stuff:
Tangent Realms:
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[Xalerdane]

The fact that trilobite fossils are so incredibly common despite the extremely low probability of fossilization should tell you how ridiculously successful they were.

[pillbox]

Intelligent turtles nuked themselves a billion years ago

[spicyspecial]

Let's not mention the great Dolphin Civilization of 800 million BC.

[ItzRetz]

I often wish I could go into 'spectator mode' and fly around through space and time without effecting anything around me as to avoid paradoxes and just spectate anything I could think of.
First off I'd do some of the obvious things anyone would do and go back and see The Great Pyramids in their prime/getting built, or go way back in time to see dinosaurs, but after I'd just start exploring and sightseeing. I'd watch civilizations rise and fall, wars get fought, animals go extinct and evolve, it would be so cool.

[oceans]

If any of these ancient animals reached even pre-stone age levels of intelligence, we'd never know about it.

[ZealSeraph]

It's depressing to think just how many amazing life forms there have been on this planet that have long since disappeared, leaving no trace that they were even here.

[harrysteiman]

As a preteen in the early 1960's a huge multi-level highway interchange was being built, literally, next door to my home. About the same time new concepts of ancient sites, such as Stonehenge, being astronomical observatories, were becoming popular.
I remember thinking how long that interchange would last without regular maintenance and if archaeologists would dig it up thousands of years from then, what would they make of it.
It was made mainly of prestressed reinforced concrete which at the time I thought would last forever. I was very wrong as has been demonstrated repeatedly in the past few years with the unexpected collapse of these highway bridges and interchanges built a mere half century ago. Even the pyramids of Giza, which are made primarily of "soft" limestone will be weathered away after a few dozen millennia.

[talos]

Imagine if we meet a highly advanced alien race and they say “oh your from earth! How are those lizard people doing? Haven’t heard from them in a couple million years”

[owenreel]

Remember ants have been around for millions of years and have had and do have functioning colonies some people call the first civilizations

[THExRISER]

“We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far.”


― H.P. Lovecraft, The Call of Cthulhu

[mommachupacabra]

I really enjoy the philosophical contemplation of saurid civilizations in the aeons past. I asked a geologist once what would be left of us in time - my question was mostly about the millions of vitreous toilet bases all over the planet, and what would become of them as they're subducted down over geological time. His answer was disappointingly simple:

"A clay layer with a unique chemical signature."

[ammitthedevourer]

Trey, you’re one of the coolest science guys! Most people I’ve met or heard of don’t bother playing with speculation for the fun of it. If confronted with something like “what if unicorns existed?” they’ll always answer “but they didn’t” and leave it at that. Imagination just isn’t in their skill set anymore.

People like you know how to play around with scientific knowledge. You can allow yourself to delve into a “what if” scenario without shutting down because “facts.”

I like your tinfoil hat videos just as much as your full on science mode ones. 😊

[possumbly]

Funny you should say that you aren't sure if your audience would like this, since this video was interesting enough to make me me want to check out the rest of your stuff

[isaacgodfrey]

Such a shame to hear about the destruction of fossils in Munich. There's something that always bothers me about trying to archive something, only to be erased potentially forever.

May we one day live to see a time when we all work to better ourselves, and respect and preserve the past.

[darkrazor]

Thought he said great race of yiff and choked on my food a moment there

[randomperson-xymv]

I fear no man, but that phrase " No matter how hard we try we will never know about every organism that has ever lived" it scares me for some reason

[robotbjorn]

Will future intelligent life unearth the fossilized remains of billions of plastic shopping bags?

[scourgeface]

A big flaw with paleontology is that you cannot prove what did not exist, only what did.

[sylendraws]

Well if you want to find out stop speculating and help me make a time machine

[dawesreads]

One of the things that gets me about this is that it doesn’t just happen in palaeontology, but with literature as well. The Iliad and Odyssey are parts of a larger Trojan Cycle of poems, all of which are lost, there are only 3 surviving Roman playwrights, only 5 surviving from Ancient Greece, we often only have fragments of ancient Sumerian and Egyptian writing. And unless we’re really lucky like with the dead sea scrolls and find a cave somewhere that has an entire library of ancient literature or even a couple more plays by Menander, they’ll be lost to the world forever