Exobiology... historical culture

[Hades]

In assuming that a carbon based life began on a planet very similar to Earth, would it be a possibility that the history of our very earth would be in comparison very linear to that of this other world's history? Do u think that certain technological advances would occur at about the same time in evolution; or are we a delayed, or even an advanced culture, relative to our time in this period of planetary consciousness? As im sure it has been asked many times before, do u think that languages would form lunguistically similar to our own?

[jordan]

I think their history would be very different then ours. The main problem I see is "carbon based life". This leaves so many possibilities that the odds for anything similar to our past would be very small. A carbon based life could require, by nature, very different technologies to live. Even humans, living on a planet similar to Earth would likely learn at a different rate. We look back and see that learning wasn't steady, but there were times of great advances and times of none at all. Should Newton and Kepler and Galileo not come along and made the progress for science that they did, who knows where we would be. Even Einstein, 100 years ago had a profound impact on what we know understand, that without 1 of these guys, we would be very different as a culture.

[Hades]

ive taken that into account as well, but was more concerned with the idea of how two identical planets history would align. What created the individual brilliance of the contributors u mentioned could perhaps be brought forth in others. What im saying is purely a generalization, but thinking about how unique one intelligent planet is over another fascinates me. Of course, some things would definately influence originality, such as plate tectonics, asteroids, which brings me to another idea, if for instance the dinosaurs did not undergo a mass extinction, would their presence have had an impact on our individual evolution?

[zeroth]

No, even assuming things worked out miraculously close to humans on the other planet, I think jordan point is valid. We didn't discover E=mc2 because it was the next logical thing for us to realize. We did it because that's when we happened to be blessed with the talents of Einstein. When you throw in that an alien's perception will lend itself to different research motivations and "obvious" discoveries to us may very well be beyond their conception while other things seem natural to them but noncommonsencical to us. There is virtually no chance history will match up even close.

[Mokele]

if for instance the dinosaurs did not undergo a mass extinction, would their presence have had an impact on our individual evolution?

 

Had they survived as anything more than birds, we'd still be little shrew-like critters scurrying about their feet.

 

However, if they hadn't gone extinct, it may have been possible for a taxa of dinosaurs to evolve civilization. Of course, their civilization would have been much different than our own.

 

Mokele