Isn't it entirely possible that there have been other advanced

Define "advanced."

Once we're talking metallurgy and permanent cities it'd be difficult to miss. Hell, scientists have found pollution from ancient Roman mines and metalworking operations in ice cores taken from glaciers in the Arctic.

>>2238611
>metalworking operations in ice cores taken from glaciers in the Arctic.
Who did that and how?

>>2238624
He means smelting operations produced air pollution that got caught in the atmosphere and then was deposited on artic ice and entombed after seasonal snows.

That ice layers itself yearly and becomes ice cores when in modern times scientists, drill down to analyse past atmospheres

>>2238624

Not that guy but the ice cores act as a
chronological record of contaminants in the environment. I don't know about this specific instance but if there was an increase presence of soot or lead we could easily determine when it entered the atmosphere.

>>2237467
Someone on /his/ once spoke about findings from a huge battle in Germany with a fuckton of bodies. The point was that the remains from that battle is all we know about what seems to be two unknown civilizations fighting it out because nothing about it makes any sense, historically.

>>2237467

No, we would have found some evidence of them by now. The Earth is not infinitely old.

>>2238658
>two unknown civilizations

No, they would have been two barbarian federations fighting it out, there is no evidence for cities north of the Alps before the Romans.

>>2238658
It was a few hundreds of bodies with, I believe, bronze age technology.
Fun and exciting, but not exactly /x/.

>>2238718
>Antarctica

>>2238611

I'm talking about way before roman times. I'm talking about before our recording of time. Before our records start. Before we existed.

>>2238718
No we wouldn't, things disappear relatively except nuclear waste. Even if there were entire advanced cities there could be nothing left. Especially if there's a flood or a meteorstrike "now and then".

>>2237467
How early and how advanced are you suggesting?

>>2240963

I guess my question is twofold. Because I don't know enough about Earth history and its geography, I don't have anything specific in mind.

But early enough for an entire civilization to have lived and evolved without any record or proof of them existing so that they are completely overseen in our view of history. We could be talking about a normal human civilization way before ancient times, that was as advanced or maybe more advanced than ancient greece. We tend to look at Egypt or Ancient Greece or China as oldest advanced civilisations, as the start of a unique upward advancement, but could it have been 'higher' before that. For example the ancient greeks did have a view of previous cultures/civilisations that came before them and were considered superior but that we don't really know anything about. Really inspirational in this regard is the talks in the first part of Plato's cosmology, if you're familiar, about Atlantis, and about many generations of peoples existing, evolving and then being whiped out by a flood or meteor or something and we start over again. Is what we consider the beginning of human kind really the beginning, and are what we consider the beginnings of advanced, intelligent cultured life really the first times.

Or, secondly, maybe even before all the ages of the dinosaurs. It sounds crazy but are there definate reasons why that can't be? So I guess the possibility of another intelligent species having ever existed on earth. How accurate do we imagine our estimations on the age of the earth to be anyway?

By advanced, I mostly mean advanced enough to have their own culture, politics and intellectual identity and different areas of thought. Technological advancement is somewhat less important.

>>2241014
Ancient Greece was the period that came after the Greek Dark Ages, which were after the Bronze age collapse. Greek cultural memory did preserve some events and history from the Mycenaean period during the bronze age. It might be that we push the date of early human settlement back a bit, satellite archaeology, unless I'm behind the times, offers a lot of opportunity for exploration still, but the more developed a culture the more traces they will leave behind.

As for other species, they'd need some similar features to us, fairly high brain mass to body weight and dexterous hands in order to use tools. Think of how many hominids there are, there would have to be a lot missing from their area of the fossil record for us to have a complete lack of knowledge about a potential past intelligent species.

>How accurate do we imagine our estimations on the age of the earth to be anyway?
plus or minus 50 million years I'm pretty sure

>>2237467
Possible? Yes. Plausible? Not really.

Evolution takes a very fucking long time, and we have a pretty good idea of our immediate ancestors and how advanced they were.

There really isn't room in history for advanced civilizations "long ago". The Earth has only been in a state to handle intelligent life for a short period, and complex life on Earth is correspondingly young.

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Nope because all the oil was still in the ground when we got to it.