So could researchers find clear evidence that an ancient species built a relatively short-lived industrial civilization long before our own? Perhaps, for example, some early mammal rose briefly to civilization building during the Paleocene epoch, about 60 million years ago. There are fossils, of course. But the fraction of life that gets fossilized is always minuscule and varies a lot depending on time and habitat. It would be easy, therefore, to miss an industrial civilization that lasted only 100,000 years—which would be 500 times longer than our industrial civilization has made it so far.
It's possible that one or more prehuman civilizations existed and we wouldn't know it. Is your mind blown yet???


https://www.theatlantic.com/science/...zation/557180/