what would we need to indentify past martian civilization?

[mr d]

hello

 

yes i know under current acceptable data there has never been civilization on mars (irrespective of the mars face). but as the last time the was free flowing water on mars suffcient to support life and civilization was around 1.5 billion years. unless they had some dam fantastic build materials, four thousand for our old stone ones, and a modern building perhaps 200 if not maintained. any structures once existing on the planet would have disintigrated hundreds of millions of years ago.

so how would you even begin a hunt to find if a civilization had existed. best guess i could make would be radio spectrography. a scan for areas where elements that might have composed processed materials could be found. but that would have to mean the civilization would have to had develope some level of metalurgy.

 

strange thoughts

 

mr d

[[Tycho?]]

Look for fossils, or any evidence of life. If you can't find that first there is no point in looking for evidence of a civilization.

[CPL.Luke]

although its pretty hard to find fossils on earth that are more than a few hundred million years old. So its possible that most of the fossils on mars have also long since disintegrated.

 

also assuming that life evolved on mars at the same time as on earth, there shouldn't have been any major multicellular life forms on mars at the time the water dried up.

[CanadaAotS]

I think one of the premises is that life evolved on mars before earth.

 

That would make the "Martian Seed" theory of how earth began with life make sense as well...

 

I'm not a big fan of it though

[scicop]

A trip to Mars?

[Janus]

Here's the problem:

 

Recent evidence points to Mars still being geologically active. Any past civlization on Mars would have likely died out before all the water left Mars. erosion and geological activity mean a rock cycle, which means that Mars' crust could have gone through a complete recycle since said possible civilization thrived, leaving no traces.

[Sisyphus]

Any idea how long a complete recycle would take? For that matter, how long does it take on Earth?

[[Tycho?]]

Any idea how long a complete recycle would take? For that matter, how long does it take on Earth?

 

 

It would go a lot faster on earth, with all of its volcanic activity and plate tectonics. But geology isn't exactly my field.

[CPL.Luke]

mars is for pretty much a dead planet. Its core froze up a few hundred million years ago (the same time the water evaporated). since then the only real activity has been the frequent sand storms.

[calbiterol]

Recent evidence points to Mars still being geologically active.

 

!!

Can you cite this? I, like Cpl.Luke, thought it was considered dead! I would be insanely interested to hear otherwise!

 

There is significant evidence, however, that liquid water existed on the surface as Mars as recently as a few hundred thousand years ago. Furthermore, there are water-runoffs in the rock, which are physical evidence of water - meaning that there was water on the surface before the last geological recycling.

 

I will cite sources for the water timeline as soon as I get around to finding the articles.