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Comment by V-2 | Hacker News Reader

I can't see a good reason to assume an alien civilization would be industrial to begin with, whatever discovery path might lead one there.

And I don't even mean they could be underwater creatures etc., which is also a possibility.

Imagine Earth as we know it, inhabited by humans as we know them, but no fossil fuels (due to a different geological history), very few metal ores (making every metal as scarce as, say, platinum) - and you're stuck in an eternal stone age, possibly with more advanced social organization, but never getting beyond our ancient or medieval standards.

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That seems like an interesting plot for a story. Stonepunk? It seems a sufficiently advanced society could have Antikythera type computing mechanisms ground from stone. And extravagant "wood"-working artifacts shaped by sharp stone tools (obsidian single point turning tools for your lathe?). So you could have advanced looms for textiles, etc.. And then without metals you don't have electrical conduction, but what could you do with electrostatics? And telescope and microscope optics seem in the realm of possibilities. How much of our chemistry knowledge depends on metals? Could we have genetic engineering without metals? Interesting.

Children of Time touches on this in some interesting ways: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Children_of_Time_(novel)

Just as likely for there to be no fossil fuels and no metal is for there to be vastly more fossil fuels and metals.

I don't see any reason why it's more likely for an alien civilisation to be suffering from a comparative lack of resources than it is for us to be suffering from a comparative lack of resources.

And if both types exist, we'd be more likely to hear from the ones that have resources than from the ones that don't.

From the western culture point of view I'm sure it seems very weird to not have oil/metal, but you're describing numerous historical non-western cultures. Easter Island, Japan, etc.

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