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The Silurian Hypothesis: Could Earth Have Hosted a Prior Industrial Civilization?

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The Silurian Hypothesis is a thought experiment posed by scientists asking whether an advanced industrial civilization could have existed on Earth millions of years before humans. The concept was formally explored in a 2018 scientific paper and later discussed in a January 2020 Paris Review article. The hypothesis does not claim such a civilization existed, but instead examines what geological traces, if any, it might have left behind. This line of inquiry also has implications for how we might detect industrial civilizations on other planets. The idea challenges assumptions about the uniqueness of human technological development in Earth's long history.

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The Silurian Hypothesis: Could Earth Have Hosted a Prior Industrial Civilization? · ShortSingh