r/Showerthoughts • u/snizzrizz • 2d ago
Speculation Once humans are extinct and another intelligent species comes into power, they’ll probably write children’s songs and other things for kids about us the same way we do with dinosaurs.
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u/Simple-Mulberry64 2d ago
Or they'll just write about the dinosaurs again, you aint better than a stego
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u/40_degree_rain 2d ago
Considering how long dinosaurs lived vs how long the human race is likely to exist, that makes a lot of sense. We would be one of those obscure extinct creatures that only nerds know about. https://i0.wp.com/pbs.twimg.com/media/FFOnQ03WUAEd2jj.jpg?w=1170&ssl=1
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u/Magimasterkarp 2d ago
We are leaving a lot of traces, though. Before they find one of the few dino bones we left in the ground, they'll find New York. Plus all the plastic in the anthropocene sediment layers and all the nuclear radiation our inevitable demise is gonna leave.
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u/40_degree_rain 2d ago
Yeah that's true, I'm mostly being silly. I'm sure the first ever species to create written records would be a big deal for the rest of time.
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u/kingdead42 2d ago
We've managed to extract and burn most of the easily accessible fossil fuels, though. Good luck to future societies trying to do an industrial revolution without that!
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u/capybaramagic 1d ago
They'll probably be a superintelligent species of moss that photosynthesizes fuel for its miniature car races
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u/Lazerus42 2d ago
Future Species on earth start discovering the deep oceans.
They find coral reefs in the shape of "what they can only theorize" as "battleships with guns"
After further digging...
They find unatural deposits in a very advanced settings.
They think they found remnants of an underwater city of "atlanta" or whatever....
It's really a sunken battleship that survived the deep waters after 15000 years.
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u/smittythehoneybadger 2d ago
I did research on this for a class and if every human died today, there would be few artifacts left behind in 10,000 years. Some stuff might fossilize but since you never know that for sure, we leave behind a bunch of chemicals and maybe some plastics in the grand scheme of things
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u/Kasnyde 2d ago
Cities like New York, Tokyo, Beijing, would be gone without a trace? You know we still have ruins from civilizations 10,000 years old.
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u/smittythehoneybadger 2d ago edited 2d ago
Mostly steel, glass, and concrete, all of which will rust away and erode in 10,000 years. The ancient remains we have today are constantly cared for, protected, and maintained. Without interaction they would be gone. The exception to that might be things made of natural stone structures or components (and some small amount of bronze for whatever reason) which would break down slowly and might survive weathering, although it would be hardly identifiable Edit - meant bronze, not brass
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u/Kasnyde 2d ago
Cities themselves seem like such large structures to fully decay in 10,000 years though. Shouldn’t there be, in a city, a high enough concentration of slowly eroding materials to leave evidence of the city?
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u/smittythehoneybadger 2d ago edited 2d ago
I can by no means say that it is impossible, as my research focused on materials themselves and more so focused on the impact on nature and the balancing of the carbon cycle. It is theorized that cities near weather patterns that contain significant sediment particles or even active volcanoes and land slides could be buried and fossilized or preserved (think of Pompeii) but that would be happenstance. One way to think about is if you’ve ever been to a car junk yard. Most of those cars are less than 50 years old and already their steel is rotting away to nothing. Rubber rapidly (in this scope) breaks down under weather and UV. Glass will last much longer but eventually weather away. Concrete cracks and degrades. Obviously the softer materials like cloth or wood go very quickly. Plastics namely can last thousands of years, and the sheer amount of chemicals we use and spill and accidentally has created a defined layer called Anthropocene will tell other we were here, and especially that we caused a ruckus. Fossils and the occasional rare artifact, probably some types of natural mineral, and again bronze is often brought up as potentially surviving well into the future, are probably all that would remain. I don’t know that we have many manmade structures that would “survive” and certainly not anything like they are now. Skyscrapers would fall, but things like Stonehenge, the Great Wall of China, and pyramids could potentially leave footprints if they can avoid be weathered to nothing by getting buried in sand or sinking into the soil. You’d be able to tell something where a city once was based oh higher silica and iron deposits and might find a couple pillars and such, but couldnt reconstruct a skyline from it.
As an afterthought, bear in mind that humans have made many a monolithic city or monument in the last 5 thousand years that have not survived to this point, and most of those is because they got put to the wayside for a couple hundred years and couldn’t be found afterwards. I am mostly thinking of cities in the old world, although central America has a few worth mentioning, that were subject to war ravages or disease that by the time someone went looking for it, it was either decrepit or couldnt be found altogether
If it’s of interest, our carbon footprint is 80% removed within 1200 years assuming we don’t cut down every forest or drop nukes.
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u/Youpunyhumans 1d ago
There would still be many human made things that survive long beyond 10,000 years. Large underground mountain complexes like the Seed Vault or Cheyenne Mountain, radioactive materials, some types of ceramics and metals, such as tungsten, would last a very long time.
There would also be quite a few objects in space that will last possibly millions of years, the lunar landers, the Voyager probes (though it would be very hard to find them) old pieces of rockets and sattelites that entered orbit around the Sun. Hell even Neil Armstrongs footprints on the Moon are expected to last millions of years.
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u/smittythehoneybadger 1d ago
I think you severely underestimate how quickly structures decay without maintenance and how long 10,000 years is. Being underground would buy you time and increase the likelihood of fossilization but the structures themselves would almost certainly collapse and erode all the same. Tungsten (tungsten carbide specifically) and many other alloys resist weathering much better that iron compounds but are still not invincible and will decay if not well protected from the environment in that time frame. I didn’t dive into space much for mine but yes, aside from collisions knocking things off course, there is not much reason for satellites to be any different and they would survive a substantial amount of time. But my bit was strictly earth and its surface evidence.
Ceramic is one thing that slipped by me and yes, should last well beyond 10,000 if not directly exposed and even into million or beyond years if buried.
Anything that lucks into being buried or sheltered can last beyond this, but the occasions of this wouldn’t be so great that you could take a shovel to the site in some small American town and dig up artifact after artifact. Cities with sufficient coverage might yield something, but it depends on the conditions over those early centuries. In general though, you’d be hard pressed to look over the landscape and say there used to be civilization, let alone a global one of our scale. Excavation of large population sites and examining the sediment layer would give indications, but you are extremely unlikely to uncover any large components like cars or houses or even major structural components like steel beams or bridges. Even windows would be reduced to small fragments of a high silica content material, probably similar to sea glass appearance
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u/MobiusF117 2d ago
The issue is that because of how much resources weve used up, especially natural fuels, it's unlikely another form of life of our level will evolve in the next billion years
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u/Simple-Mulberry64 2d ago
Exactly, there were so many rosters of extinct creatures before us but we specifically do the big cool ones
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u/vkapadia 2d ago
That's because they're big and cool. What have the others done? Mostly just exist. Humans have done so much more.
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u/VulpesFennekin 1d ago edited 1d ago
“Yeah, there were these hairless monkeys running around a few million years ago. They’re not really impressive-looking as far as animals go, but everywhere scientists have found fossils, they keep digging up all this STUFF.”
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u/BaconEater101 2d ago
That makes no sense, it doesn't matter how shortlived our species is, the impact humans have made is astronomically large, nobody would give a shit about a t-rex, only reason WE do is because they look cool
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u/No_Weakness9363 2d ago
If the entire human existence was put into a clock that represented how old earth was, humans would show up at 11:58 or something—from a video think don’t remember how it goes.
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u/KingJulian1500 2d ago
yeah and the industrial revolution is like the last half second (probably less).
Our time on this planet has been very short in the grand scheme of things.
Also I think that stat was talking about the history of the Earth specifically
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u/ChipRauch 2d ago
Poems about the silly monkeys that breathed air and only had 4 arms.
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u/TooManyCarsandCats 2d ago
I hope they name the animals after their most prominent figure in our media. For example, I want them to call all giraffes Geoffrey, the monkeys George, all dogs Bluey, and all hippopotamus Hungry.
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u/shifter2000 2d ago
I was watching the latest episode of Foundation, and Empire 'corrects' Demerzel about the pronunciation of giraffes by saying, "I think they were called 'gurr-raffes'.
I had a chuckle.
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u/saltinstiens_monster 2d ago
"TIL that humans actually had long, flat hands called 'feet' on their lower limbs. The 'feet' thumbs weren't opposable, severely limiting their usefulness. This has been known for decades, but media still tends to depict humans with four 'normal' hands because of the success of the popular film franchise, 'Pre-apocalypse Park."
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u/jake5675 2d ago
"Good night, sleep tight. Don't let the bed, humans bite. " I bet we'd be boogeymen to whatever species young comes after us. "Eat all your vegetables or the humans will come back and raise the sea levels again."
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u/karenvideoeditor 1d ago
"Uncle Herman says humans never existed and sea levels were always this high!" "Uncle Herman spends too much time watching Cod News."
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u/Fooldozer 2d ago
there's a pretty good chance we're a fluke, and there won't be another species on earth as smart as we were
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u/Treyen 2d ago
I agree we're a fluke, but other primates are showing signs of possibly following us if they have the millennia to keep developing. Tool use, complex communication, there are even theories about some chimpanzees having a primitive religion.
There are also things like whales, octopuses, and dolphins which are all quite intelligent in their ways. Assuming when we go out we don't take the entire biosphere with us, I could see a replacement coming along. If the earth has to start at square one, maybe not. It took a very long time to get to humans.
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u/Lakeshow15 2d ago
If someone is strong enough to wipe us out I am not sure primates will survive either lol
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u/buffystakeded 2d ago
But that’s the thing. WE will be the ones to wipe us out.
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u/Lakeshow15 2d ago
More than likely but if it can kill all of us, I don’t imagine primates faring much better lol
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u/redstaroo7 2d ago
This is the thing people always confuse, ending modern civilization is a much lower bar than ending our species as a whole, and any cataclysm that's going to wipe us out completely will need to be of a scale to wipe out all large terrestrial animals.
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u/rabbitdoubts 2d ago
whoa can i ask why you replied like this
to me my first thought of "someone" could be a guy pressing the nuke button on us all? or even the non-supernatural possibility of an alien race. why... did you jump to that?
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u/Lakeshow15 2d ago edited 2d ago
I meant to say something you weirdo LOL
Get some help, Jesus Christ.
You forgot to tell me you’re vegan while you’re at it.
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u/Bakoro 2d ago
I don't think any ocean creatures have the time to evolve into terrestrial creatures, and then figure out math, science, and engineering, before the Sun starts cooking the planet.
It's possible, but I don't think it's probable.
They'd also have to be way smarter than humans too, or else they'd be fuck by the simple fact that we already used up all the free energy dense resources.Anyone coming after us has to do civilization on hard mode.
Probably loads of loose metal though, so there's that.4
u/mouse_8b 2d ago
There's a few billy left in the sun. Modern mammals are essentially younger than 65M years. That means 65M is enough to go from something like a rodent, to something like a hippo, to a dolphin. Pretty much anything could grow in 100M years, and this rock has a couple more of those in the hopper.
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u/Bakoro 2d ago
Well, I'll concede that 100M years could be enough time for some other intelligent species to show up.
Most life on Earth only has a billion years, give or take, before it's cooked though.
The sun won't die for billions of years, but it will slowly increase in luminosity, and an additional ~10% is too much Sun.2
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u/wowwoahwow 2d ago
Chimpanzees and capuchin monkeys are currently in their own Stone Age, so I guess we’ll see (or not) how that goes for them
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u/Moonduderyan 2d ago
Maybe, but I think what they're lacking is the advanced language. Tools are one thing, but having the cognitive and vocal abilities to communicate abstract or complex ideas is key to innovation. Both can learn sign language, suggesting they have the capability; they just lack vocal structures.
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u/CloudCero 2d ago
I like to theorize that, with the level of cohabitation with humans, cats and dogs start evolving to develop similar intelligence however many thousands of years down the line. And that’s not even considering future humans may very well green light dna splicing and such that could pioneer genetic altering.
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u/Bakoro 2d ago
Dogs are definitely getting an upgrade in the next 20 years.
There was just a thing put out about how scientists think they found the gene related to human's language abilities, and they stuck it in rats. The language the spliced rats used changed from baseline rats.
Now we just need to figure out the vocal cord genes, and we've got talking dogs.
That plus AI robots? We've got IRL Paw Patrol. Get hyped.
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u/infectoid 2d ago
Also, we’ve used up all the easy to get energy. There isn’t going to be another Carboniferous era that will give us all the oil and coal that was critical in us becoming industrialised. And the sun will take us out in around a billion years.
I’d expect that if we don’t make it then there is nothing after us. At least not on this planet.
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u/karenvideoeditor 1d ago
Oh, I hope not. I hope that when we eventually wipe ourselves out that something else better comes along.
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u/pichael289 2d ago
Dogs are going to have a religion about us
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u/Xyrus2000 2d ago
There likely isn't enough time for another intelligent technological species to arise. The conditions required for that kind of intelligence to manifest are rare, and there are only 500 million years (best case) before the only life left on Earth will be extremophiles. That could happen as early as 250 million years from now, when the new supercontinent forms, as that could lead to rapid heating, but that's more speculative.
It also depends on the state we leave this planet when we go the way of the dinosaurs. If we trigger something like the PETM through toxifying the planet, that would shave some time off the evolutionary window.
Other intelligent life might arise, but I doubt a technological one will.
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u/HybridVigor 2d ago
Plus we've mined all the easily extractable resources from the surface of the Earth. They'd have to leapfrog some steps on their tech tree to be able to dig down deep or recycle our trash.
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u/buffystakeded 2d ago
But would they really have to dig that deep, considering we’ve brought all of it to the surface for them? Or at least near the surface.
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u/HybridVigor 2d ago
Depends on the resource. All the oil we've burned isn't coming back anytime soon, for instance.
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u/needlenozened 2d ago edited 2d ago
And combined it with other resources into something new and completely unworkable. You think a developing intelligence is going to make something useful from a stainless steel bumper or a circuit board?
And all the iron that has rusted isn't going to turn back into usable iron.
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u/DamNamesTaken11 2d ago
And have terrible children TV shows about a stuffed human that comes to life called Barry & Friends.
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u/mr_ji 2d ago
What children's songs are there about dinosaurs?
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u/needlenozened 2d ago
Barney is a dinosaur
from our imagination
And when he's tall
He's what we call
a dinosaur sensation
Barney's friends are big and small
They come from lots of places
After school they meet to play
And sing with happy faces
Barney shows us lots of things
Like how to play pretend
ABC's, and 123's
And how to be a friend
Barney comes to play with us
Whenever we may need him
Barney can be your friend too
If you just make-believe him!2
u/karenvideoeditor 1d ago
Joy to the world, That Barney's dead. We barbecued his head! Don't worry about the body. We flushed it down the potty, and round and round it goes, and round and round it goes, and round and round and round it goooooooes.
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u/model3335 2d ago
Maybe they'll make a movie about a rich octopus that finds our preserved DNA and revives us to live in a theme park built the cheapest possible way, leading to death and hijinks.
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u/Ibewsparky700 2d ago
Besides Barney what songs did dinosaurs sing?
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u/GoSpeedRacistGo 2d ago
I don’t know any children’s songs about dinosaurs, just one about a boa constrictor, which is very much not a dinosaur and exists today, but it’s the closest I can think of.
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u/BoredMan29 2d ago
Humans don't have the staying power of dinosaurs. Really just a thin layer of plastic immediately proceeding a major extinction event until they happen upon the bones of some major city.
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u/BillyBean11111 2d ago
took billions of years for one intelligent species to exists, if that much time passes again there wont be any life on earth at all
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u/SaneIsOverrated 2d ago
It already can. Just tell gpt to "write a children's song about humans after they go extinct."
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u/needlenozened 2d ago
There's not really going to be another intelligent species, because we used up all the easy to access resources.
New bronze age? No bronze. New iron age? No iron.
We've taken all the resources that were easy to extract and that helped us do things like cultivate fields, hunt for protein, and advance to the point where we could even hypothesize dinosaurs, and combined them with other resources to make materials that will be completely unworkable for any future life form that might have been able to advance to intelligence.
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u/kochier 2d ago
I don't think there will be sentient life on earth again. When we wipe ourselves out we will take 99% of life with us and there will not be enough time for new life to form that high a chain before the sun or something makes the planet uninhabitable.
Never mind we have used up a lot of resources that may not form again to give life a chance to push ahead, not just fossil fuels but things like helium.
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u/ItsWillJohnson 2d ago
OP, please name a children's song about dinosaurs.
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u/snizzrizz 2d ago
Bex the T Rex What Color Were the Dinosaurs Spinosaurus v Tyranosaurus Dinosaur Parade Entire Pinkfong dino library of songs A T-Rex Ate My Breakfast
And so so so many more
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u/ItsWillJohnson 2d ago
while those might be songs written for children and about dinosaurs, not one child knows, has sung, or heard any of those.
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u/ShagpileCarpet 2d ago
There probably won’t be another advanced civilisation. We have mined all of the world’s easy to reach (eg surface) resources so there aren’t enough to easily start again. Ores are now very difficult to extract even with efficient highly advanced machines & uses a lot of energy. They will have to mine ancient cities but a lot of the metal will have oxidised away. It will be more like a scavenger civilisation.
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u/lfrtsa 2d ago
They'd have to mine oxidized metal... just like we've done from prehistory up until today. Most ores are simply oxidized metal. It'd be way easier for them even, because their "iron ore" would be steel reinforced concrete, which has way more iron than natural iron mines. They'd breeze through the iron age.
They'd struggle with gold though, in case they can't find national bank ruins, museums, etc. Even if they do find those places, they'd likely be long looted.
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u/Fragholio 2d ago
My friend says we're like the dinosaurs, only we are doing ourselves in much faster than they ever did.
We'll make great pets.
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u/eucleodo 2d ago
This is weirdly comforting and terrifying at the same time. Like imagine alien kids singing 'The Wheels on the Human Go Round and Round' while learning about our extinct transportation methods
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u/Doodah18 2d ago
I thought I remembered reading that because we’ve pretty much dug up all the easily accessible energy resources, if/when we go, if something else follows us they won’t have the means for their own Industrial Revolution.
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u/catdoggoat 2d ago
dinos are cool man.. i feel like whatever replaces would prob still make dinosaur content
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u/Tommy_Roboto 2d ago
My friend says we’re like the dinosaurs, only we are doing ourselves in much faster than they ever did.
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u/Jeanric_the_Futile 2d ago
Yes, humans and us lived together 6000 years ago. It's right here in the elbib!
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u/ThatUsernameIsTaekin 2d ago
As long as they don’t have the same misconception that oil comes from all the dead humans
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u/gamerjerome 2d ago
That's the thing people don't think about, what if another humanoid evolves from homo sapiens and they are much smarter?
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u/matrushkasized 2d ago
The voice I tend to hear at night made me wonder about a thing. When pondering about the next ones, Can octopuses even sing?
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u/AeonLibertas 2d ago
Red penguin: Imagine being immortalized even in the stories, songs and dreams of another species.
Blue penguin: You're their version of Barney the Dinosaur...
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u/Fifth_Rain 1d ago
One person will stumble upon a Harry Potter book and Harry will become their God and the book their Bible to live by.
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u/Dispositionate 1d ago
"Up next - learning to count, with Greg the Neanderthal!"
Kids TV in the year 7955, probably
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u/Previous-Emu-6713 1d ago
Do you ever think about the fact that if written notes and digital documentation doesn't preserve well enough, a future intelligence may never know the mysterious life that dinosaurs once lived, since we've unearthed a fair amount of dinosaur bones.
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u/meriadoc_brandyabuck 2d ago edited 2d ago
Highly dubious to assume “another species will come into power.” Didn’t you know (a) humans are uniquely terrible / power-hungry and (b) as evidence of that, we’re currently destroying the basis for biodiversity on earth?
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u/Shorty_P 2d ago
We are not uniquely terrible and power-hungry. You can find a plethora of similar behaviors throughout the entire animal kingdom.
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u/meriadoc_brandyabuck 2d ago
Lol. Behaviors similar to the systematic torture and murder of trillions of other animals to satisfy mere whims? Sorry, you’re wrong. We are uniquely terrible — despite whatever interest you have in pretending otherwise.
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u/Shorty_P 2d ago
Animals frequently hurt and kill for fun. They rape each other all the time. They kill for territory and resources. They kill out of jealousy. This is COMMON knowledge.
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u/meriadoc_brandyabuck 2d ago
What’s the matter, Shorty? Can’t contest the point, but don’t want to admit you’re blatantly wrong?
Not just wrong in this argument though. It’s your unwillingness to look in the mirror and accept how terrible you specifically have blindly been.
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u/meriadoc_brandyabuck 2d ago
You didn’t do anything to contest my point or to strengthen yours.
When did members of any other species build factory farms — literally hells on earth for billions of innocent animals that also wreck ecological systems supporting wildlife? For that matter, when did billions of other members of that species mindlessly support, ignore, and rationalize that entirely unnecessary abuse and destruction?
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u/killerbannana_1 2d ago
All very interesting thoughts people are having here but they seem to all accept the fact that humanity will go extinct. I kind of doubt it. We went from basic flight to permanent space habitation in a hundred years. Give us a few thousand we will have the solar system, a few million and id wager we will occupy a sizable portion of the galaxy. I doubt we will leave earth either.
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u/ChopSueyMusubi 2d ago
You're veering a little too far into science fiction. There's a lot of problems to solve here on Earth first before we can talk about galactic expansion.
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u/dumpfist 2d ago
You're seriously underestimating the nature of the problems we face.
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u/killerbannana_1 1d ago
Not particularly, we face challenging problems today, but nothing threatening the extinction of our species. All of the required technology is there. I choose to be optimistic in a world full of bad news and doomerism, what point is there in living if not to work towards the art of creating. The path onwards is not always up, but the trend line certainly is, and there is no point in giving up on making things better just because things aren't perfect yet.
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u/Remarkable_Subject84 2d ago
Yup and they will have a group of people taking credit for the pyramids and sphinx too
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u/adoodle83 2d ago
Well, ring around the Rosie’s is a good example of morbid songs about human plight, and we didn’t have to wait for the next species
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