non-amp link: https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2018/07/anthropo...

I like the idea of using the post atomic era radioactivity as a signature.

Doesn't the age of steam leave a coal ash deposit over the ocean floor?

It is odd that we don't look underwater for civilizations from before the end of the last ice age. We observe sea levels rising now from the melting of the ice caps, so why would it not have happened then too?

Underwater archaeology is a significant subject of study.

http://www.pnas.org/content/111/19/6911

And here's an article about underwater archaeology in the popular press:

https://www.theguardian.com/science/2017/apr/26/the-first-br...

... which makes it clear that archaeologists are being pretty systematic about looking for settlements that were on the shore and are now drowned.

Because the end of the last ice age was only 12,000 years ago; and in that time frame, if that warming was caused by a prehistoric civilization, there would be a ton of evidence for that civilization's existence.

Not if they built their towns and cities on top of active volcano's for a plentiful source of hot water.

The ideas conveyed in the article are interesting in their own right, there was no need for profanity. I wish that Hacker News had a downvote option for cases such as this.

You can't be serious. You want to downvote an article full of information, only because a person quoted in that article used the f word? So much that you feel the need to shout it out into the world?

No. I want to downvote an article full of information because the author decided to open the article with an f word quote that was unnecessary.

You can have your normalization of profanity in your pop superhero blockbuster movies. I hold my scientific journalism to a higher standard.

That's so puritanical that I doubt many people wopuld agree with you. I certainly don't.

Not just puritanical. It's elitist as fuuuuuu-