Prehuman industrial civilization on Earth?

[Moontanman]

9 minutes ago, dimreepr said:

I suppose they could learn to glue things rather than weld but it does seem a stretch to consider it industrial.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Industrial_civilization

 

It would be the underwater equivalent of an industrial civilization, sorta like the idea of a planet that has organisms that live in a hydrogen atmosphere. We have done some really wild bioengineering in just a few thousand years. What could a civilization do over a much longer time period by just selective breeding? West of Eden by  Harry Harrison does a pretty good job of speculating this idea. 

[YaDinghus]

Industry is an anthopocentric term to begin with, so there is only 'industry as we know it'

[StringJunky]

19 minutes ago, YaDinghus said:

Industry is an anthopocentric term to begin with, so there is only 'industry as we know it'

Industry is an emergent phenomenon arising from the communal self-beneficial actions  of a group. Bees, ants and termites come to mind....as well as people. It's a machine made up of organisms and each one is a cog.

Edited May 28, 2018 by StringJunky

[YaDinghus]

3 minutes ago, StringJunky said:

Industry is an emergent phenomenon arising from the communal self-beneficial actions  of a group. Bees, ants and termites come to mind....as well as people. It's a machine made up of organisms.

That's an interesting way of going about it. I would have characterized state-building insects as industrious, though not naturally or necessarily as industrial. In the context of your definition, we wouldn't need to look far for pre-human industrial societies, as state-building insects have been around for tens of millions of years. If we do however consider engines and engineering to be an essential part of the definition of industry, we might run into trouble again