What do you think will be left of us in 1000years? What do you thing Archeologists or

AMKC

Historians will remember about or tak about the from the early 21st century?
I can't think that many of out current building will still be standing. Maybe the Golden Gate bridge will still be there but that is 20th century infrastructure. What will remain from now if we do not destroy ourselves first?

Wibbs

A fairly substantial amount of plastics will still be mostly around. Maybe as a layer they'll call the Plastic Age. If electronic data survives they'll have an incredible record. If it survives of course.

Some buildings will be still around. Public buildings made of stone that are considered already historically important like say the White House in the US, though it's not of our current time. I'd bet a few people's houses will be around, added and subtracted from a central core. There are examples of those from many centuries ago that are around today. The Pantheon in Rome is a second century Roman building that survived and was repurposed. Even older and built when Jesus was a boy, literally, is the Maison Carrée in France, another Roman temple, that over the 2000 years it's been around has been a house, a shed, an art gallery and a room of sorts attached to other buildings. It got a new roof and door down the years and now stands alone in a square like it would have in 10AD.



The Italians knew how to build stuff to last. It's well worth a visit if you're in that neck of the woods. The inside is underwhelming mind you. Dark and small. Where whatever god it was dedicated to would have lived. I saw it before it got cleaned up, so maybe they've jazzed up the inside as well. To think that not so long ago the Parthenon in Athens would have looked pretty much in the same condition until the Turks and Greeks fighting each other blew it up.

Duckworth_Luas

AMKC wrote: »

Historians will remember about or tak about the from the early 21st century?
I can't think that many of out current building will still be standing. Maybe the Golden Gate bridge will still be there but that is 20th century infrastructure. What will remain from now if we do not destroy ourselves first?

The Golden Gate Bridge was destroyed by those gorillas about 10 years ago.

grogi

AMKC wrote: »

Historians will remember about or tak about the from the early 21st century?
I can't think that many of out current building will still be standing. Maybe the Golden Gate bridge will still be there but that is 20th century infrastructure. What will remain from now if we do not destroy ourselves first?

Plastic. Heaps of plastic.

Gregor Samsa

So many years ago, every Saturday night walking home from Fibbers, we used to stop in a Chinese takeaway called Uncle B’s on Dorset street and get a 3-in-One. We’d then we’d walk down to the Archbishop’s place in Drumcondra and eat it sitting on one of the benches under the trees. We’d dispose of the packaging in a bin, but would bury the plastic forks in the ground around the bench - in the hope that future archeologists would eventually find a mass of them and assume that the place held a particular significance. We did this weekly for years.

TheValeyard

Get yourself buried in chainmail armour, stone age clothing, 19th century helmet and new phone and ipod.

If there is no catastrophe then Dublin (for instance) will look the same in many parts. I can't imagine the future knocking down the cathedrals or the Georgian buildings. ( I know we did once but that era is over). There is less likelihood of modern buildings being around.

touts

Cultural and literary dark age. Things seemed to be progressing nicely and then suddenly nothing. We have literally billions of paper fragments right up to the 2020s. And then it appears society collapsed. It appears to be some sort of apocalypse of knowledge. No music. No books. No popular entertainment. Not even any government or company records. It is very strange.

We do however have millions of these strange small items made of metal, plastic and glass. They range in size from roughly hand sized to large versions that appear to have been hund on walls. Their purpose baffles us but without any paper records we may never get to the bottom of their purpose.

SEPT 23 1989

No junk built in the last 30 years will survive in Dublin thankfully

The 1000 year old things we see now will
Still be there

I will say that the Victorian stuff was built to last over engineered works of art even down to the sewerage systems

They will still be there

policarp

DNA will our next generation a clue as to what we were up to.

Church on Tuesday

Quite a lot of pictures, most of it pretty banal.

Flinty997

I just wrecked on my kids head. They were asking what was it like in olden times.
So I told them this is olden times in 50 yrs or so. So you tell me what its like.

Capt'n Midnight

As long as there aren't new cracks, concrete gets stronger with age

The Pantheon is a concrete structure that's nearly 2,000 years old. Unlike modern structures it's not reinforced with steel so expansion caused by rusting won't affect it like it would newer buildings. Still thing they should do something about the hole in the roof.

Harbours, canals, open pit mines will still be obvious in 1,000 years.



In 1,000 years when they drain the Baltic or Mediterranean they'll find lots of sunken ships.

Samuel T. Cogley

Flinty997 wrote: »

I just wrecked on my kids head. They were asking what was it like in olden times.
So I told them this is olden times in 50 yrs or so. So you tell me what its like.

Well firstly Dad was a grumpy fecker. :pac:

Wibbs

Capt'n Midnight wrote: »

As long as there aren't new cracks, concrete gets stronger with age

The Pantheon is a concrete structure that's nearly 2,000 years old. Unlike modern structures it's not reinforced with steel so expansion caused by rusting won't affect it like it would newer buildings. Still thing they should do something about the hole in the roof.

True though Roman concrete has some extra properties even over modern types and was extremely durable, resistant to cracking and seawater, depending on the mix of course. They were masters of the mix itself. The Pantheon dome a good example. The type of aggregate varies from the base to the oculus(hole). They added pumice and reduced limestone in the mix as they built up and reduced the thickness. So it gets lighter and thinner as it rises. The oculus itself acts as a major stress reliever too, as do the patterns built into the structure. Then there are hidden buttresses and arches in the supporting walls.



It's an incredible feat of Roman material engineering and still holds the record of the largest non reinforced concrete dome in the world. Nearly two thousand years later.

Though it's also a good example of why such things survive. It is one of a tiny number of buildings from that time that have. They obviously have to be built extremely well. Out of stone/concrete preferably and out of non precious materials that won't be nicked by later generations. When the western empire fell Rome was stripped of marble and bronze and anything else that wasn't nailed down. The fine marble on the exterior of the Great Pyramid in Egypt was stripped to help build late medieval Cairo. That's also why marble statues from antiquity are far more numerous than bronze ones, because bronze was valuable. These things can become a quarry of sorts for later cultures. Buildings and items to survive also need to remain useful or be repurposed for later cultures. Again the Pantheon a good example as it was turned into a Christian church and Christianity lasted so was protected. Istanbul's Hagia Sophia another example because it followed a similar path of being repurposed by another later religion Islam. Or be so out of the way or buried as to be ignored. That can work too. Tutankhamun's tomb an example of that.

cj maxx

Capt'n Midnight wrote: »

As long as there aren't new cracks, concrete gets stronger with age

The Pantheon is a concrete structure that's nearly 2,000 years old. Unlike modern structures it's not reinforced with steel so expansion caused by rusting won't affect it like it would newer buildings. Still thing they should do something about the hole in the roof.

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That was when skill was used in building so that block / stone meshed and gained strength and integrity, not just glued with additives.

Dr Turk Turkelton

Nokia 3310.

ohnonotgmail

Dr Turk Turkelton wrote: »

Nokia 3310.

with the battery still on 90%

storker

I imagine a scenario from not a thousand years but millions years from now, when Zarg and Zorg step off their explorer craft into the dust of the third planet from the star of what they know as the VOL-14 system, and report back that, as suspected, there's nothing to see there and there are no signs of life, let alone civilisation, not even in the distant past. After a while they leave, never having suspected the incredible story that had unfolded over aeons on that now-dead planet.

storker

SEPT 23 1989 wrote: »

No junk built in the last 30 years will survive in Dublin thankfully

Archaeologist: "These people were so advanced....they actually built houses with pyrite to save themselves the troubled of demolishing them later..."

I think central Dublin will be a tangle of briars, Saint Stephen's Green will become like Farthing Wood with a cocophany of indigenous wildlife; Irish elk and woolly Mammoths will stalk the hills of County Wicklow, and the laughter of hyenas' puppies will, once again, be heard across the whole island (they will say: "that is our revenge")

I don't think we'll be extinct, we'll just be computers living in some kind of simulation that is more predictable and prosperous than the raw, organic version.

o1s1n

Wibbs wrote: »

The Pantheon dome a good example. .

It's rare that I'd ever be 'moved' by an architectural structure, but standing under the concrete dome of The Pantheon knowing how old it is really does take your breath away.

You get so used to seeing ruins of the past as mounds of earth that to see something so old frozen in time can be very hard to comprehend.

I've never been to Egypt but have always wanted to see the
Khufu ship in person for the same reason.

Wibbs

Rome has a few of those bits and bobs laying around, some you just walk by or over and don't notice as such.

The ponto Fabricio


Built in 60 AD.

The Alacantara bridge in Spain from the early second century AD



At one end it even has the temple/tomb of the engineer that built it. It remained a useful structure and the temple survived again because it was turned into a small chapel.



The inscription mentions that the bridge will last forever through the ages. That's not a bad CV for the builders.

Samuel T. Cogley

A Tyrant Named Miltiades! wrote: »

I think central Dublin will be a tangle of briars, Saint Stephen's Green will become like Farthing Wood with a cocophany of indigenous wildlife; Irish elk and woolly Mammoths will stalk the hills of County Wicklow, and the laughter of hyenas' puppies will, once again, be heard across the whole island (they will say: "that is our revenge")

I don't think we'll be extinct, we'll just be computers living in some kind of simulation that is more predictable and prosperous than the raw, organic version.

That or it'll be under water.

touts

Wibbs wrote: »

Rome has a few of those bits and bobs laying around, some you just walk by or over and don't notice as such.

The ponto Fabricio


Built in 60 AD.

The Alacantara bridge in Spain from the early second century AD



At one end it even has the temple/tomb of the engineer that built it. It remained a useful structure and the temple survived again because it was turned into a small chapel.



The inscription mentions that the bridge will last forever through the ages. That's not a bad CV for the builders.

None of that was built by the likes of Johnny Ronan or BAM.

JupiterKid

Some of the monumental buildings we have today will still be standing in 2,000+ years. Most of our built environment will be gone and replaced.

There will be an abundance of plastic and metal from our era. Organised religion will probably still be around but almost certainly greatly diminished in terms of its mass hold over people.

And the Voyager and Pioneer space probes will still be hurtling through interstellar space...

Hyperbollix

Will there be archeologists in the Mad Max dystopia we are hurtling towards?

Wibbs

Back for a moment to the Pantheon. The huge bronze doors. Now bronze was a very valuable material and as I mentioned usually one of the first things to be repurposed or nicked. Indeed the various bits of bronze on the Pantheon, the friezes, inscriptions and the like were nicked over the centuries. It would have originally had a dirty great imperial eagle in gilt bronze on the front along with dedications and statuary. So for many a year because of that and the fact they don't fill the doorway all the way to the top it was believed the doors were later, likely renaissance replacements, until quite recently when scientists took a very close look at the metalurgy and method of construction only to discover, nope, ah here lads, these are the original two thousand year old Roman bronze doors. The sense of scale of the place doesn't come across in pics that often, but here's an idea of the size of just the doors and doorway.


You can see the polished part where the average height human hand was pushed against those doors. And they're so well balanced a single human can open them. Also note in that pic later papal additions in marble on the left.

Solid bronze, on their original hinges, still working. Look at the feckin' size of the things. :eek: Originally like all classical ornamental bronze they would have been polished to a golden shine. Dark patinated bronze, like unpainted marble statues is a later fashion.

It's possible that's why they survived too, they were just too bloody awkward to remove and as it was a church door protecting the inside that kept the scrapyard boyos away. Then again one pope as late as the 17th century had stripped the portico ceiling of its bronze fitments. Oh and the columns at the front are solid granite, 40 feet tall in old money, weigh 50 plus tonnes each and were chiselled out of the living rock in Egypt, dragged to the Nile, stuck on barges, then on ships ferried across the sea to Rome, were they were then carried again in barges up the Tiber, where they were finally dragged the last half mile to the site itself and then erected. As you do. It would be a bit of a struggle to build it today with all mod cons and would cost an absolute fortune, but can you imagine trying to do that with no machinery as such, just human muscle and human ingenuity.

Chances are pretty good that unless there's a nuclear war or a massive earthquake(and it's already lived through a load of them) that building will still be around in a thousand years.

BeerWolf

That we worshiped a Mouse.

But then again, we've got a lot of information widely available in a lot of mediums.

whisky_galore

Plastic.
Discarded coffee cups.
Petrified dogsh1t still enclosed in plastic bags.
Toyota Hilux.
Penis drawings, perhaps a symbol of religious significance.

If electronic data survived; evidence of a cult that worshipped cats.
And porn, lots of porn.

Capt'n Midnight

storker wrote: »

I imagine a scenario from not a thousand years but millions years from now, when Zarg and Zorg step off their explorer craft into the dust of the third planet from the star of what they know as the VOL-14 system, and report back that, as suspected, there's nothing to see there and there are no signs of life, let alone civilisation, not even in the distant past. After a while they leave, never having suspected the incredible story that had unfolded over aeons on that now-dead planet.

The universe is probably littered with the one-planet graves of cultures which made the sensible economic decision that there's no good reason to go into space - each discovered, studied, and remembered by the ones who made the irrational decision.

― Randall Munroe


There are so many markers for the future.


If ET has a good neutrino detector the nuclear waste dumps should stand out like a sore thumb. Some CFC's will be detectable for hundreds of years.


Mass extinctions. Massive changes in where animals and plants occur, with cats , rats and mice everywhere. Less farm animal fossils though. Massive garbage dumps and empty mines.. Lots of satellites in higher orbits. Microplastics everywhere.

A short spike in radiation due to all the testing in 1950's and 60's . Likewise lead from petrol everywhere but only in a very thing layer. The lead from Roman smelters has been detected in Greenland ice cores.

Tarmac roads and railroad rails. But the embankments and cuttings will also last.

Concrete dams will last ages.

IIRC glass bottles will take up to six million years to decompose.