Searching for Lost Civilizations

Searching for Lost Civilizations explores the longevity and detectable remnants of past societies, challenging assumptions about what the geological record reveals about our ancient history. Drawing on a groundbreaking quantitative framework, the book examines how far back in time we can meaningfully investigate past civilizations and introduces the concept of the epistemic horizon— a boundary beyond which our observations offer no insight. It suggests that while we can rule out civilizations similar to ours within the last fifty thousand years, our ability to detect even earlier societies diminishes rapidly, especially on celestial bodies like the Moon.