It’s human nature to want to look ahead, into the unknowable future,
and to contemplate what might unfold for us. And it’s partly thanks to this innate
sense of wonder that concepts like the Kardashev Scale strike such a chord. But, alongside that,
we also have a tendency to want to look back. To gaze with interest and sometimes trepidation at
where we’ve come from… and at what we once were. So, could it ever be possible that society itself
would one day regress back to a former level? This is Unveiled, and today we’re answering the
extraordinary question; what if humanity was a type zero civilization?
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In all the Kardashev Scale content on our channel, we’re forever looking forwards. Imagining future
worlds (or current but technologically advanced, extraterrestrial groups) at Kardashev types two,
three, four, or more. And we always (somewhat depressingly) footnote these vast
cosmic explorations with the fact that we, humans, still rank at only around 0.7 on the scale. We’ve
still got a long way to go (perhaps hundreds of years) before breaching even type one and
becoming a true planetary civilization. But at least we can dream! And at least we can,
in many ways, see the path toward type one emerging before us. However, is there also an
unspoken danger afoot? Might we one day err away from that path and, in so doing, fall back?
A type zero civilization is the bottom-most rung of the Kardashev ladder. The base layer for any
hypothesized group, consisting of a kind of starter pack of tools to get things done
and a sequence of first steps that are needed. Exactly where it begins is somewhat up for debate.
With humankind, some consider it to be when the first mass migrations of ancient hominids
took place, around two to three million years ago… organized groups were starting to form,
and the route from there to civilization can be pieced together. But perhaps, in our case,
it’s simpler to focus in on the emergence and rise of homo sapiens specifically, around 300,000 years
ago. From there, we can think of Kardashev’s first stage as being subdivided into multiple smaller
stages. At 0.1, it’s the early stone age, with primitive tools consisting of refashioned rocks,
and with the recent discovery of fire pushing us forwards. At perhaps late 0.2,
the wheel is invented, plus other complex devices like early levers and pulleys, which leads to
settled groups, farming, territorial disputes and, unfortunately, the first infighting and war.
As we rise from there to our current level of 0.7, we incorporate things like an increased
astronomical knowledge; an increased awareness of our place in the universe; and an increased
technological knowhow. We more broadly contemplate deeper, metaphysical topics like life itself,
death, consciousness, and the fabric of reality. The big questions like “why are we here?”,
“what happens when we die?”, and “is any of this really real?” start to formulate in our minds…
spurring us ever on, further up the Kardashev ladder. And, naturally, at the heart of it all,
is our need and use of energy. Right now, we still have a long way to go on that front
before humankind can be considered efficient… but, even so, were we to drop back down to the
bottom of type zero tomorrow, the world would be a very different place. For a low type zero,
they haven’t yet realized that energy can be taken from what we now call fossil fuels, at all.
The wonders of coal, for example, as a means to make things work, haven’t yet revealed themselves…
while the realization that burning through coal is actually no good for the planet as a whole
is still thousands of years away. For a flat type zero, at the very beginning, things like heat,
wind, the sun, the stars, Earth itself, are still largely a mystery. And the idea of using them for
our own gain hasn’t even begun to form yet. One civilization trait that often appears as
we move further up the Kardashev Scale is some form of social cohesion. For example, in some
versions of type three, a group will have mastered wormhole physics and built a wormhole network, and
so any one being in that group can be at any one place at any time they please. Meanwhile, in some
versions of type five and above, a civilization should have mastered the hive mind, a kind of
collective consciousness that means that all type five lifeforms instantly know everything about
everything, all the time – like they’ve memorized the internet, only now the internet is the entire
universe. And that’s all pretty impressive… but suffice to say that at type zero we’d have nothing
like it. The plain old-fashioned internet would be no more, as would any form of communications other
than speaking face-to-face. Even a traditional postal service is beyond the means of the lowest
subdivisions of a zero, given the logistics and organization required to make it work. And the
need for some kind of written language or standard symbolism, which likely won’t have developed yet.
While, again, the subgroups of type zero aren’t universally agreed upon, it generally
isn’t until at least 0.3 or 0.4 that any form of wider organization is implemented. Before then,
type zeros are more a collection of hunter-gather style groups, crossing paths at random,
surviving thanks to their own individual nous, and developing tools, views, and strategies for life
quite independently from one another. Once the key inventions like the wheel (at around 0.2)
take place, however, and settled groups form as a result, there also comes social structure,
hierarchies, leaders, and innovators. Yes, the downside here is that disagreements strike up,
and conflict can break out… but the upsides are that knowledge is increasingly pooled.
Members of the growing civilization learn from each other, and breakthroughs are made at an
increasingly rapid rate. And nowhere more so than with travel, as a mid-type zero breaks out of
their local region to explore their wider world, as humans did just a few centuries ago. Vehicles
are created to make this task easier across water, over land, and in the skies. And, before long,
those isolated groups of the past are now all connected… which impacts everything from food to
technology, from the growing group’s understanding of history to its focus for the future. And,
naturally, that group begins to look even further afield, away from its own planet and toward the
surrounding moons and alien worlds that by now it has gained a better understanding of.
The advent of space travel is generally thought to be a key milestone for a mid-to-late type zero
society, bringing us up to our own current level. So, with this in mind, is it possible to go
backwards through all those subgroups? It’s a favorite plotline for dystopia fiction,
centring on human characters that have somehow forgotten the level of civilization that we
today take for granted. And perhaps a ruthless enough extinction event could strip humanity of
all our knowledge until this point. Were a planet-wide disaster to strike, for example,
and were it to kill off all but a small percentage of the population; and were that population to
survive under extreme conditions for thousands (perhaps millions) of years… then it figures that,
over the many generations, memories of the past would dissolve. The cars, skyscrapers, computers,
and rocket ships of our contemporary, Kardashev 0.7 lives might transform into topics of myth
and legend for a future type zero human. But, on the other hand, thanks to physical
structures like the Svalbard Seed Vault, the various “frozen zoo” projects aiming
to preserve the genetics of the entire natural world, the countless human-made monuments across
the surface of Earth, and the digitalisation of knowledge in general, we have made it so that at
least imprints of our civilization (as it is) should last for a long time. We’re certainly
still at the mercy of space, and one large enough asteroid (for instance) could quickly end us…
but unless that asteroid were to also smash the Earth into nothingness, then there would
be traces left behind. Traces that an imagined type zero might one day be able to piece together,
to map their way back to the here and now. If, of course, that’s the direction that they’d
choose to take. And that’s what would happen if humanity was a type zero civilization.
What do you think? Is there anything we missed? Let us know in the comments, check out these other
clips from Unveiled, and make sure you subscribe and ring the bell for our latest content.