BUILDING ON THE ROMANS ? 3

[C2it]

This section of the forum has been a bit quiet recently.

Having just visited Rome, it's fascinating to speculate where civilisation might now be, if development continued following the Egyptian, Grecian and Roman Empires, rather than declining into the dark ages.

Steam power was there in Hero's time. Nothing really changed until mine dewatering was needed. Could there have been major steam power and subsequent industrial revolution around AD 0 since all the necessary technology was there ? Materials science could have developed along with strong materials, semiconductors ... why not ?

If that pace continued without interruption, where might we be now ? Could Newton and Leonardo have been even more inventive ? What about Einstein ?

Hydrocarbon fuels would have been here and gone. Could there have been a place for the Sinclair C5 ? No, there are limits after all.

 

[kacarrol]

I think on the whole we are more closely linked to our primate ancestors than we would like to think. Like lemmings we are always heading towards, or away from, a population crash and Dark Age. Before the golden years of the empire there was a dark age that followed the rule of the Mycenaeans. Someday, our empire will collapse also; it’s as if we out run ourselves.

And on the larger scale, have a look at the dinosaurs. They evolved to a certain level and then had a population collapse (for whatever reason), and then mammals took over to carry the torch. It may take the next species, or generation, a while to regain the ground of their forbearers but they always do and they gain more ground when they do (three steps back and five forward).

Another interesting set of questions could be asked but are a little off topic from this post...how far will the next golden age go with their inventions? will it be our species or another? and I wonder what future archaeologists will talk about when they look at our bones and leavings.

Until then, a discovery a day keeps disaster at bay!

 

[BigInch]

I'm sure "Why all the most popular people were from Italy" will be one of the topics of the future.

"The top of the organisation doesn't listen sufficiently to what the bottom is saying." Tony Hayward X-CEO BP
"Being GREEN isn't easy." Kermit

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hpiIWMWWVco

http://virtualpipeline.spaces.live.com

 

[GregLocock]

Well if you want the long term view, have a look at the Carter Catastrophe theory. This piece of reasoning claims that there is a 95% probability that the human species will total 1.2 trillion or fewer members, which at current projections will take 9120 years.

A few long term projections.

average 'lifetime' of a successful mammalian species - 1 million years. Hom sap is currently 500 000 years old, so we have 500000 years to go. Hom sap sap is 200000 years old, I'm not sure which age is relevant here.

Average lifetime of a successful human civilisation - 400 years. The Industrial Revolution kicked off in say 1840, so fossil fuel based, democratic civilisation has about 200 years left to go.




Cheers

Greg Locock


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[drawoh]

GregLocock,

I read an article by Stephen Jay Gould about population dynamics. He noted research by Jane Goodall, who observed that the chimpanzee population increased most of the time, but was drastically affected by a couple of catastrophes. First, there was a war between two bands of chimps, that killed quite a few of them. Them, there was a polio epidemic.

Human populations seem to increase most of the time. They are affected by epidemics, visits from Ghengis Khan and Tamerlane, and getting led by people like Francisco Solano Lopez. Most of the time, you cannot predict these things.

The Cretaceous meteorite impact killed off something like 65% of all known species. I am not sure how this translates to the total animal population, but it has got to be way over 90%. It is not surprising that all the big animals got killed off.

I don't see how you can predict this stuff by looking at curves.

JHG

 

[BigInch]

Why not. Big wars and economic upsets happen every 50 years or so, meteorites hit the earth about every 65MM years or so, right?

Just kidding. One thing you must not do is consider anything constant, constantly static, or changing at a constant rate. Nothing ever holds course. Whenever the experts start making those predictions that you know in your stomach are obvously too good, too bad, or too far out of the range of known possibilities, or just plain nuts, and when you say, it can't get any better than this ... guess what? You're right.

"The top of the organisation doesn't listen sufficiently to what the bottom is saying." Tony Hayward X-CEO BP
"Being GREEN isn't easy." Kermit

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hpiIWMWWVco

http://virtualpipeline.spaces.live.com