Comment by eru
> And she told us that would likely happen again, there would be a gap where our technology proved to be insufficiently durable to last throughout history. Unsurprisingly not everyone in the class thought this was likely, but I figured it was possible.
I heard that fear being muttered mostly about everything going digital and that's much harder for archaeologists to dig up than paper or stone tablets.
However, that's all nonsense, of course: the stuff that people bother to write down is seldom all that interesting. Who cares about who was king or whatever? The real juicy bits are all in our garbage dumps, and we are producing garbage that'll last much longer than anything the ancients could muster. What with all our metal, glass, plastic etc.
> we are producing garbage that'll last much longer than anything the ancients could muster. What with all our metal, glass, plastic etc.
I'm convinced that in a not-too-distant few tens of thousand years, archeologists will be baffled at all these massive deposits of iron, copper, and aluminium - well on its way back to the oxides from whence it came, but chunks of highly refined stuff in among it, presumably at great expense - and for some reason labelled with extremely durable placards made out of ridiculously tough plastic with letters embossed in them. The precise meanings of "SJ12 YPF", "Y196 NBA", "RFS 131Y", or "R420 BRL" will remain lost to the depths of time.