How would humans have developed without fossil fuels?

Question

I am designing a world where humans have somehow developed or have been put onto a planet in a primitive state. This world has only been habitable for about ten thousand years and therefore only has the most basic of life, including a few sea animals and slug/worm creatures that can be eaten safely.

Since this world has only had life for ten thousand years, and advanced life for about a thousand (working at an increased evolutionary rate due to higher radiation to cause mutation which supports this increased development) there are no fossil fuels, only a range of semi-tree-like plants scattered near the coasts along with huge inland grasslands (actually more like moss-lands) and deserts.

My question is this: How would human culture and civilization have varied without access to fossil fuels? In particular, how would the development of technology and the growth of population be different without fossil fuels?

I would also like to know how evolution might affect these people over a period of time under these circumstances to make them conquer this world. For the record the Water to Land ratio is about 55/45 if that would make any considerable difference.

Answer 1

First off, you need to understand the time scales involved with evolution.

On Earth, life first evolved around 3.6 billion years ago. It then took 3 billion years before simple animals evolved. It then took an additional 50 million years before bilateria evolved (animals with a front and a back, like a slug). It then took an additional 75 million years before land plants evolved.

So, step one in the reality check is 10,000 years is way, way too short of a time period for life to evolve, even if it could be massively accelerated. However, an accelerated rate of mutation wouldn't necessarily have done that.

Today, there are all sorts of things that cause mutation. And single-celled organisms have a really high rate of mutation. But a key part of our initial evolution is that we evolved to harden ourselves against high rates of mutation to preserve our DNA, so that our complex multicellular bodies wouldn't destroy itself.

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To answer your question directly, we'd die. And for a lot of reasons.

First, we'd suffocate. It took 2.5 billion years for earth to start getting its oxygen coat. With such simple life forms, there'd likely be no algae producing oxygen, and so we'd have nothing to breath. At best, there'd be some oxygen, but not enough to create enough ozone, so we'd die from radiation poisoning.

Then, we'd starve. If the only extent life was small sea slugs, then humans would quickly die. We require a complex diet of vitamins and nutrients, and we get that from a combination of plant and animal matter. Sea slugs wouldn't provide that. At best, the only plant life at this stage would be ferns or similar, and that wouldn't be able to give us the necessary nutrition.

And finally, we'd be killed by the elements. Even if we had enough food to eat, we probably wouldn't survive due to weather. Early humans required fur to protect themselves from the elements. Without the shelter of fur, much less trees or other large plants, our ability to survive would be incredibly limited. At best, we'd be trapped in a very specific part of the globe.

Answer 2

It is possible to have a world with a long evolutionary history without fossil fuels:

1. Place your humans there at the beginning of the first fossil-fuel-accumulation era, so that any fossil fuels that will accumulate will do so after the humans have had their day, so to speak. As the oldest coal deposits on Earth were laid down in the Carboniferous era, starting your scenario about that time would eliminate this fossil fuel.

2. Have a world with little or no plate tectonics so that fossil fuels will not accumulate. The best you'd get in the way of fossil fuels in this situation is peat bogs. In order to have the necessary conditions, an earth-size & mass world would have to have a smaller moon, a more distant moon, and/or no moon at all, and/or the world itself would have to be smaller, in order to reduce tectonic activity.

The main problem with the rapid evolution scenario posited is that the radiation levels required would probably be very dangerous or lethal to humans; any local life forms would have evolved to be at least somewhat radiation-tolerant.

Anyway, assuming an earth-like world with established life, but no reserves of fossil fuels, the most logical consequence would be that high-carbon organisms - such as trees - would be harvested and cultivated as a fuel source, much as is the case here today.

One of the main consequences is that liquid fuels such as oil would be scarcer from the outset. It would be possible to have such fuels, but they would probably be of animal or vegetable origin. Vegetable-based fuels could include alcohol or heavier oils for spark-ignited or diesel engines respectively (Old vegetable oil from fish & chip shops can be filtered and used as diesel fuel).

The evolution of technology may not differ much at all. Steam engines can run on timber or charcoal, and technology can progress from there. The main difference is that carbon sinks other than peat bogs will not have accumulated significant carbon, so a more conservative approach to fuel usage will have to be instituted from the outset.

Peat bogs accumulate useable fuel at a rate of at most a few millimetres per year. This is not technically a fossil fuel, but a slow-renewable fuel. The rate of peat deposition is lower than the potential rate of its use. However, this would likely be the only significant source of geological fuel deposits available.

Answer 3

Some points to consider:

1) If life is relatively new on your world, you won't have much in the way of iron ores, as most of those were produced by microbial activity: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_ore

2) If you don't have plate tectonics or vulcanism, you're likely not to have much in the way of other ore deposits, as most of those were formed by hydrothermal or magmatic processes: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ore_genesis

Answer 4

Fossil fuels are not required. If you have enough forests, you can make charcoal from wood - here is old way. Charcoal allows for metallurgy, (slower) industrial revolution and steam power. Productivity would be increasing bit slower and growth would not be as steep, but entirely doable.

According to Wikipedia:

The original fuel for forge fires was charcoal. Coal did not begin to replace charcoal until the forests of first Britain (during the AD 17th century), and then the eastern United States of America (during the 19th century) were largely depleted. Coal can be an inferior fuel for blacksmithing, because much of the world's coal is contaminated with sulfur. Sulfur contamination of iron and steel make them "red short", so that at red heat they become "crumbly" instead of "plastic". Coal sold and purchased for blacksmithing should be largely free of sulfur.

So coal is good for steam power but not for metallurgy.

You would not have trains and cars, population mobility would be slower (and so will be progress). You would have canals instead of railroads - think Erie Canal, Grand Canal of China and Canals of UK. Canals would go everywhere like railroad goes now. Areas with little river water would be much harder to cross - only on roads, on animal-powered vehicles. Or caravans.

Metal would be much more expensive, wood (and bamboo if you can have it) used more often. Water mills and wind-powered mills would be used much longer. bamboo is strong and grows fast - ideal crop for your settings. Bamboo bicycle was made 100 years ago.

Metal sheets can be also replaced by waterproofed cardboard in many use cases.

Wood can be made rather strong. H4 Spruce Goose is aircraft with largest ever wingspan, size similar to Boeing 747 and Airbus 380 (biggest widebody jet airliners) made mostly from wood (birch plywood and resin).

Another good source of oil to start your industrialization would be whale oil.

Later you can get wind power and solar power.

As your civilization advances, they can learn genetic engineering and engineer bacteria which produce oil from wood chips. That can be used as diesel fuel and even (as kerosene) for rocketry.

Progress is entirely possible without fossil fuels - it would be just a bit (maybe quite a bit) slower start.

One thing which requires dense fuel is aviation. So possibly no planes until you can generate diesel fuel from algae. So less travel, less global turism, less global pandemics.

Answer 5

Others are suggesting, quite sensibly, that you'd need humans to exist prior to fossil fuels being generated, or on a world which geologically doesn't allow this to happen. However, it has also been mentioned that the time scales you'd initially planned are completely unreasonable given how long it has taken for humans to evolve; and perhaps more importantly the specific environmental circumstances which allowed them to evolve at all, which would be lacking in such a primeval past.

However, I have an alternative solution. At one point I read the notion that if humanity depletes the world of fossil fuels now, future generations will not be able to industrialise again given a cataclysmic event which would send them back to the stone age. That is a possibility; you don't set this in the distant past, you set it in the distant future after a number of catastrophes which wiped out human technology after we depleted all the fossil fuels.

In this case a few things are worth noting: most importantly humans won't be able to industrialise again, because even if they can make charcoal by burning trees, or cut peat, it simply won't exist in the quantities to provide something similar to what we have been fortunate enough to enjoy. This means that even if a minority of engineers manage to emerge who tinker about and develop technology, they won't exist in the numbers required to propagate or extend this knowledge much, or quickly. No coal, no oil. You'd have to rely on horses and people to power things. So people can't really move very far or fast and you probably will never see globalisation either. The humans could conceivably develop the scientific method and know a lot about the world, but that's not to say they could do much about it. The economy will always be agrarian; the masses are to harvest the farmland. So at best you have a minority of noble scientists or noble engineers who play about with clockwork devices.

With regards to population: if I recall correctly the human population of the world was pretty stable prior to industrialisation; minus things like the black death. So you'd see the typical situation, of large families because half the children die from disease, or maybe everyone's starving because even if they learn how to avoid disease they can't achieve industrial era food production.

Worst case scenario is that the human population remains stubbornly high, and they completely exhaust their resources by using trees to make charcoal to industrialise, so the whole world begins to look a lot like Easter Island is now; devoid of trees. Which would probably help to make their environment all the more alien and depressing than it is now. Which again will push society technologically backwards further still and the world would support a smaller population still (no trees you get issues like soil erosion which will reduce available farmland, and reduce the quality of what farmland is left). I can't see how they'd manage to create something like the computer you're using now. It requires a huge amount of technology and engineering prior, which could not be supported without widespread fossil fuels.