We Will Disappear (Part 3): What will they make of us?
March 17, 2024
Since there will be precious few examples of our written culture available to describe life from 1850 onwards, no one in the future will know how flight, television, radio, the stock market, etc. came into being. They won’t even have I Love Lucy. Even if they could get ahead of the RF signal by traveling faster than the speed of light, they’d be just as able to watch it as NASA is to read data from any spacecraft of the 60s.
So, they will be left with the tools we have to understand pre-literate cultures. When they dig into our landfills, they will reach several conclusions:
* We worshiped the fecal matter and urine of our young children, so we mummified those materials. We know the little mummies as disposable diapers (the first of which have yet to decompose), but the future will have no way of knowing.
* We worshipped two-ton hunks of metal, which we compressed into small cubes when their utility ended.
* We had ceremonies during which we threw round rubber rings into our lakes and rivers, along with small metal cans and the occasional bottle.
I could go on, but you get the idea.
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