Are humans the only intelligent race to have survived on Earth?

One thing that seems to captivate people’s imagination is the prospect of a long lost ancient civilisation. One that existed long before it should have, with technology on a level far ahead of anything else on the planet. Places like Atlantis are often thought of in this way, as are the cities that are said to be sitting on the ocean floor, built during a time when sea levels were much lower, long before modern-day humans arrived on the scene. This is a fun thought, that ancient civilisations that may or may not have been human created things on the world we live on, but how realistic is this theory, and if it’s true, why isn’t there more evidence of their presence?

(A map of the supposed location of where Atlantis was said to be, an advanced intelligent civilisation that’s said to have existed long before we did)

How long have modern day humans existed?

Modern day humans have been around for about 200,000 years, depending on which ancestor species you class as “Human,” that is. Around 50,000 years ago our brains evolved in a major way to allow us to understand more advanced technology. Initially, this technology came in the form of stone weaponry and the understanding of shelter building and possible animal husbandry. People lived in this primitive stone age level of technology until the end of the ice age, around 10,000 BCE, when they began to expand out and experiment with farming and permanent settlements.

Could an advanced civilisation have existed with this level of technology?

Not advanced in the way that most people visualise something like Atlantis. The first human civilisations are recognised in a region that used to be known as Mesopotamia, a region that is now made up of modern-day Syria, Jordan, Iraq, and parts of other surrounding countries. During this time, the most advanced material on the planet was copper, later being developed into bronze. The cities that were founded here started around 4,000 BCE, and we still have plenty of remains to prove they existed.

In order for a much more advanced city to have existed long before Mesopotamia, it could only be done by a race that evolved much faster than humans did, and also in secret. If an advanced city did exist, it could only be done by someone who had the ability to advance their technology at a heightened rate. They would have to be at least 5,000 years ahead in their level of technology to make something like Atlantis, or one of the cities said to be deep beneath the waves when the sea levels were much lower. The human race would not be capable of doing this, no matter how peaceful and science-based their community was.

This leaves only three possibilities.

• The first is that none of these long lost civilisations existed in the first place and we are the only intelligent species to have existed on this planet.

• An intelligent none-human species built them and then disappeared without a trace.

• They were built so long ago that all evidence has since rotted away, decomposed or collapsed into nothing.

Out of all the three possibilities, only the first is plausible. If you want to get into the realm of aliens building things on earth, then that’s a whole different discussion. As for something existing so long ago that there wouldn’t be evidence, this would be possible in theory but would contradict our understanding of how life evolved on this planet.

We have a huge amount of evidence of how old our planet is, and also a deep understanding of how life evolved here. There is no evidence, or even the suggestion that any type of living thing on this earth had a level of intelligence that allowed them to build things before humans came along. If someone, or something, was able to create a large settlement so long ago that there would be no trace of it, then it would have to have existed alongside the dinosaurs, which predated us by hundreds of millions of years.

The Argument for the lack of evidence

Everything degrades and eventually turns into nothing. Plastic bottles take around 500 years to decompose, and hard plastics take up to 10,000 years. The oldest exposed structures built by humans are the pyramids, and a recent study suggests they are eroding from the wind and sand at a rate of approximately 1 meter every 10,000 years. The thickest pyramid is 230 meters wide, which would require 2.3 million years until it, along with everything in Egypt, completely disappeared. If an intelligent race existed even 1 million years ago, it’s likely that whatever they built has long since eroded into nothing. The main problem with this theory is the complete lack of evidence in the smallest form, and also the conflict with our well-established understanding of how life on the planet evolved.