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One that came to my mind quickly was our nuclear wastes from power plants. That would be a sure indicator of an advanced civilization. Any non-natural U-238, U-235 or P-244 seem to have very long half-lives that might be valuable to a future archaeologist.

From Wikipedia: The half-life of uranium-238 is about 4.47 billion years and that of uranium-235 is 704 million years

After all, if the current bunch (great apes, dolphins, perhaps some species of crows and parrots and octopi) is a historically typical assortment of moderately intelligent fauna, you’d have to wonder why, over the course of several hundred million years, there has never been any other “farm team” species that made the final push to the big leagues, achieving at least fire/language/hunter-gathering, perhaps even agriculture.

Or has there? Can we be absoluely sure? After all, if some hypothetical velociraptor civilization 75 million years ago lasted for a mere few thousand years, what artifacts would they have left behind that would survive to the present day? Plate tectonics, erosion and weathering, sedimentation, supervolcanos, ice ages (repetitive cycles of continent-wide glaciers scouring everything in their path), long-term cycles of climate change (deserts turning into rain forests)… buildings or cities and everything else would be wiped clean in mere tens of thousands of years or less, let alone dozens of millions of years.

I don’t actually believe in any such thing, but it’s an interesting question: can we definitively rule it out?

To put it another way, if we vanished tomorrow, what evidence would survive a hundred million years that would enable future scientists to deduce our existence? I can’t think of anything other than the Moon landing sites. Or perhaps some industrial artifacts… but what if a civilization like the Mayas ended before having an industrial revolution?

Perhaps the only truly indelible long-term impact we’ll have will be the great extinction of species that is taking place now, on par with the four or five prior ones in the fossil record. But prudent scientists of the far future would undoubtedly ascribe it to some unknown natural cause.

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One possible immediate solution to our problems is to jump in the ocean. The dolphins will form a protective ring around us and keep the sharks away.

Firstly, because (assuming current evolutionary theories are correct) they are far, far more distantly related to ourselves than dolphins, let alone apes.

Secondly, and somewhat sadly, because their intelligence seems to occur within the context of a very short lifespan, since they appear to be a single-mating-cycle species (like salmon).

I was reminded somewhat of a Harry Turtledove book (”A Different Flesh”, IIRC) where one of the basic plot points was the discovery of an alien species with roughly the same basic intelligence as humanity, but where one sex had a similar lifespan to ourselves but the other sex had a lifespan which was very much shorter.

I couldn’t help wondering what a cuttlefish, with it’s superior manipulative ability compared to a dolphin via it’s tentacles, could be trained (educated??) to do given the same amount of time. Conceivably the most intelligent species on Earth outside ourselves isn’t even mammalian.

On Roatan, Honduras, ten years ago at least there was an institute that studied dolphins and also had them do shows. I was kayaking, and came across a giant pen where they kept the dolphins, at least 100×200 yards. I had snorkel gear, so went up to the net to look for the dolphins. Not only did they come by and check me out, they seemed to want their noses and bellies rubbed, which I did through the net. Now, dolphins are notoriously horny, right? So of course while the big one pushed his belly against the net, I saw he had an erection. OK, fine, thank god for the net. But the interesting thing is the two dolphins then proceeded to have sex *right in front of me*, like five or six feet from the net. This was clearly done for my benefit — they had this giant pen after all. So, not only are they smart enough to rescue a whale, they’re mischievous enough to be exhibitionists.

When you need more than just cute animals

This same site, for the month of December, created an advent calendar of 25 astronomy photo’s from Hubble, showing the breath and wonder of the universe we live in.

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These little guys may very well have lived up until historic times.

It’s looking more and more as though existing humans are the descendants of one small sub-grouping among a wide diversity of hominids. The not-so-nice back story is that we likely led to the demise of our extinct cousins in the same way that we finished off the woolly mammoths and giant sloth, by killing and eating them.

In the spirit of animals, I like this one:

Spain Gives Great Apes Legal Rights

The animals have the right to life and protection from harmful research practices.
by Apoorva Mandavilli
published online December 10, 2008

On June 25 the Spanish Parliament’s environmental committee approved a resolution to grant legal rights to great apes, covering chimpanzees, bonobos, gorillas, and orangutans. The resolution, expected to be enacted into law by June 2009, gives great apes the right to life and protects them from harmful research practices and exploitation for profit, such as use in films, commercials, and circuses.

“This is an important historical step,” says Peter Singer, a professor of bioethics at Princeton University and cofounder of the Great Ape Project. Since 1993, when Singer and Italian philosopher Paola Cavalieri established the group, its members have advocated for a United Nations declaration that great apes, like humans, are entitled to life, liberty, and protection from torture.
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The great apes’ ability to use language and tools, to feel pain, and to form lasting relationships with others is evidence, the Great Ape Project maintains, that apes are part of a “community of equals” with humans. “This decision is the first step to recognizing that the gulf between human and nonhuman animals is not absolute but a matter of degree,” Singer says. “I do hope it helps people look differently at their relationship with nonhuman animals.”

The resolution also calls for the Spanish government to promote a similar declaration throughout the European Union. Singer notes that the Netherlands, Britain, and countries in Scandinavia have already taken steps to phase out research harmful to great apes.

http://discovermagazine.com/2009/jan/064

Best to you, Ms. Smith, I’ve learned so much here. Lately I’ve not commented much, as there are so many other more “comfortable” speakers in control of the vocabulary who, between them, make the points I bite at the end of my tongue. Lately I’ve been working my way through some papers by James Crotty, who makes an effort to connect Marx and Keynes and Schumpter and Minksy – they are after all, why I first stumbled into this place. All that and whatever, thanks, sincerely …