hagbard_celine
27-04-2007, 02:43 AM
I sometimes think about what future archaeologists might say about our civilization. Then again the question needs to be asked: Would they even notice us?
Imagine that a cataclysm wiped out our present civilization in the same way that the end of the ice age destroyed any that might have been there thousands of years ago; an ecological catastrophe, massive volcanic activity, cometary impact etc. The surviviors of our times had to "begin again as children". The folk memories of our civilization became legend and myth as the millennia passed until we once again formed a new civilization.
Then one day 10,000 years later, a group of learned men and women come across evidence that a previously unknown civilization exists: our own. Firstly what would they find? Have we built anything robust enough to still be standing after all those years? We know that most of our buildings wouldn't survive because so many buildings from comparatively recent times haven't. Exposed to the elements, without anyone to repair it, bricks and concrete crumble away within centuries. Metal rusts, tarmac cracks and trees grow through it. We have no massive stone buildings like the Pyramids of Egypt and Mesoamerica, and even they are showing their age.
Probably the only thing that will survive might be foundations and cellars, underground structures. Then again there's the nuclear waste bunkers. These have been deliberately designed to withstand thousands of years of erosion. I hope they're good enough not to poison our descendants. I wonder what they'll think we were up to!
Imagine that a cataclysm wiped out our present civilization in the same way that the end of the ice age destroyed any that might have been there thousands of years ago; an ecological catastrophe, massive volcanic activity, cometary impact etc. The surviviors of our times had to "begin again as children". The folk memories of our civilization became legend and myth as the millennia passed until we once again formed a new civilization.
Then one day 10,000 years later, a group of learned men and women come across evidence that a previously unknown civilization exists: our own. Firstly what would they find? Have we built anything robust enough to still be standing after all those years? We know that most of our buildings wouldn't survive because so many buildings from comparatively recent times haven't. Exposed to the elements, without anyone to repair it, bricks and concrete crumble away within centuries. Metal rusts, tarmac cracks and trees grow through it. We have no massive stone buildings like the Pyramids of Egypt and Mesoamerica, and even they are showing their age.
Probably the only thing that will survive might be foundations and cellars, underground structures. Then again there's the nuclear waste bunkers. These have been deliberately designed to withstand thousands of years of erosion. I hope they're good enough not to poison our descendants. I wonder what they'll think we were up to!