And you base that on what evidence?

@WileEQuixote you don't need evidence to say something did not happen. You need evidence to say it did.

There is no evidence that any other creature has reached the level of Civilisation Creation other than Homo Sapiens.

@djalicex you cannot prove a negative, your statement is a negative without support.

There is no proof possible for a negative conditional.

@WileEQuixote That is basically what I said. I'm glad you agree.

@djalicex except you’re wrong.

You stated ‘No’, so you’re arguing for a negative position that you cannot support.

“No, there was no civilization” cannot be proven.

Care to recant?

@WileEQuixote

but I have offered no argument.

My No is based on the lack of evidence to the contrary.

@djalicex correct, you have no argument to present, as you cannot have one....

@WileEQuixote

Well, I could have one but I didn’t know that it was required as you have not present an argument either way yourself.

I could point out that the fossil record shows nothing remotely advanced enough that would be capable of building a civilisation other than Humans and they only managed that relatively recently.

The fossil record goes back nearly 4 billion years when the Earth was incapable of sustaining anything like advanced lifeforms which could build civilisations.

For there to have been a non Human species to have built a civilisation and leave no trace of that civilisation or its evolutionary fossil record would be very unlikely.

That’s my brief thought process of why I said no. So what are your thought on the subject as you seem to think the answer is yes.

@djalicex I don’t. The entire point of the article is that we cannot know.

You cannot support a negative (as you tried) and there can be no positive as, literally, there’s a 1.X Billion year gap that has no data.

And the physical changes to the earth in that period have wiped out all traces of anything prior.

So there is a 1.X Billion year gap, which is longer than the dinosaurs lived, as they existed between 230 and 65 million years ago,

Homo sapiens appeared in Africa 200,000 years ago.

So, 1.5B years would theoretically be more than enough time.

But, we cannot know.

It is therefore impossible to claim there were none.

@WileEQuixote

I don’t think that is even what the article is saying. It seems to suggest that if there were an ancient, non human civilisation we would have to look really hard for it but says that occurrence was highly unlikely anyway. Not that we cannot know.

The article says:-

‘’So it might take both dedicated and novel detection methods to find evidence of a truly short-lived event in ancient sediments. In other words, if you’re not explicitly looking for it, you might not see it.’’

‘’Are these events indications of previous nonhuman industrial civilizations? Almost certainly not.’’

@djalicex correct, it's a thought experiment, and the majority of the point is asking what traces we are leaving behind and could we use those or similar to find a prior civilization.

However, we still cannot rule it out, so a "No" is logically impossible to prove.

@WileEQuixote

Well, it is very hard to prove anything absolutely.

I call myself an Atheist because I don't believe in gods. Sure, there could be gods but the evidence suggest there are no gods beyond a reasonable doubt.

Surely that is all we can ever do with any question.

@WileEQuixote still, nothing has been found no evidence

@Simon1 correct.

Because the whole point of the article is that in billions of years there would be no trace.

Not really the point.