system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
[Three Body Problem] How could such a large amount of successive civilizations develop on a single planet?

I have only read the first book, so maybe this is answered later in the series.

In general, multiple scientists agree that humans on earth have used up enough of the readily available resources (metals near the surface, easily reachable oil, etc.) that if our civilization was completely wiped out, a second one could not achieve an industrial revolution, simply because the resources they would need would be too hard to come by at a pre-industrial technology level.

On Trisolaris however, hundreds of civilizations developed, of which a bunch managed to get further than our current earth civilization.

So is Trisolaris just much richer in resources? Or did the civilizations just stay much smaller and thus use up less of what's around?
gpt
Remember, advanced civilizations don't necessarily *use up* resources. 

After the fall of an advanced civilization, there is now a *global industries worth* of metals near the surface, and all pre-smelted too. Indeed, if you develop fast enough, they're not even *near* the surface- they're *on* the surface. You can literally get a modern civilization's worth of resources without ever making a mine. Likewise a lot of other resources, including many that would be otherwise impossible for an early civilization to get like plastic, advanced alloys or even metamaterials. 

Also, of course, knowledge. Whether it's survivors or dug up books, even basic scientific knowledge can skip a lot of steps in building a civilization.

While there are some renewable resources we actually do use up, most notably fossil fuels, but this can be less of a problem if the planet is older and/or has better conditions for fossil fuel formation, both entirely possible, or if it has renewable sources of power (for example, on the much more unstable Trisolaris, geothermal is likely more plausible). And again, the renewable sources of power are much more doable if there are *already* windmills and solar panels lying around, or at least plans, blueprints and buried parts for them.

Basically, there is a lot of advantages to being after a major civilization. Very few things we "use up" go away when we die. it can be waking up in a world picked clean, or it can be waking up in a world where someone's already done the heavy lifting and you just need to put it in your house.