David Kipping

The climate had got to a point where humans could figure out how to manipulate the stable conditions to grow crops and farm animals and things.

But there was another period, about 120,000 years ago, called the Eemian, which is the last interglacial period.

So modern anatomic humans should have been around then, right?

120,000 years ago, we were here.

You could have taken one of those babies and put it in our society and really wouldn't know the difference.

Probably had the same brainpower we do and yet as far as we can tell even though that period lasted for about 15,000 years of an apparently stable climate Civilization didn't begin so I find that really fascinating there was almost like a second there was a second opportunity a previous opportunity for us to get this ball going and

And we didn't figure it out that first time around.

Yeah, they might not have gone as far as us, right?

They might have got to some kind of Neolithic stage, but they never got to an industrial stage or they never got to a space age.

Yeah, I don't know.

You'd have to ask an anthropologist that.

Certainly a space age.

They certainly don't have nuclear power plants.

Certainly the fuel deposits don't appear to have been depleted, the oil reserves.

They don't see plastic everywhere from a previous generation.

Because we've created so much concrete and plastic that I've spoken to anthropologists who say there's no way you could miss human, in a geological sense, in the future.

Even if all of our cities had eroded away,

The plastic that we have produced would produce such a huge signature.

You'd see this like layer in your rocks.

So it'd be pretty hard to miss us.