What outlandish conclusions can be drawn from fossils formed today?

[The Controvert]

Suppose a future archaeologist looked at the fossil record of our age. What conclusions (correct and incorrect) would be evident?

For example, would they incorrectly conclude that humans evolved straighter, healthier teeth practically overnight?

Speaking of teeth, does the recent trend toward teeth whitening lead to some strange conclusions?

A correct conclusion is that recent improvements to nutrition led to a taller average human.

I suppose someone might conclude that humans shrivel over time as older people tend to be shorter plus really tall people tend to die earlier.

[panache45]

Or to extrapolate . . . there's a well-known sci-fi story about some future beings discovering nothing about us, except a Mickey-Mouse watch. Very "outlandish conclusions."

Someone will be along to identify that story.

[t-bonham@scc.net]

Another science fiction story where the only artifact that survives for thousands of years is the common porcelain toilet bowl.

They are found all over, in every archaeological dig, in nearly every house & business building. So the scientists conclude that these were probably an altar for the household gods.

[TriPolar]

Some women were partially silicon based life forms.

[jackdavinci]

Originally Posted by panache45

Or to extrapolate . . . there's a well-known sci-fi story

Motel of Mysteries comes to mind...

Motel of the Mysteries, written in 1979 following the 1976–1979 exhibition of the Tutankhamun relics in the USA, concerns the discovery by future archaeologists of an American motel and the archaeologists' ingenious interpretation of the motel and its contents as a funerary and temple complex

[Walther Ego]

One of the biggest mysteries of future is what happened to the SUV-culture. Their influence diminished unexplicably at the turn of millenium. The problem is we don't even know what language the SUV-people spoke. Some connect the rise of SUV-people to the wide migrations of the Japanese - evidenced by thousands of Japanese cars found widespread over Europe and America as well as elsewhere. Other scientists argue the SUV-people were a different, much bigger race. Since their vehicle, so central to their culture, seem clumsy for pure transportation, ithey were either cult objects or signs of social prestige for chieftains.

[Alka Seltzer]

That in the 1990s the Earth was overrun by an invasion of strange silvery disc-like creatures, led by the fanatical AOL tribe. After an epic struggle, they were defeated. Their discarded shells lie piled in huge waste heaps, each a testament to the accuracy of human marksmanship.

Slightly more seriously, future generations might look at the number of extictions and conclude there had been some sort of environmental catastrophe.

[HorseloverFat]

I cant imagine someone from the future being able to find and examine fossils from our age but also be completely ignorant of our technology and lifestyle. The befuddled future archaeologist is something of a silly caricature. Most likely a lot of this would be assumed. Not to mention, we've generated so much junk that all finds will be surrounded by our technology and other artifacts that will help solve all sorts of mysteries, the same way we examine the tools of icemen or fossilized humans.

[The Controvert]

In the distant future, aliens discover fossilized human remains from this era. With carbon dating, they determine a time that human teeth suddenly became straighter. (Not sure if they can tell they are also whiter from fossils)

Why would you assume those beings are able to deduce the answer? I think even with evidence from other surviving artifacts, the true reason would elude them.

[HorseloverFat]

Because they would see that this was a technologically advanced people and that teeth would have been manipulated via technology: dentistry, nutrition, cleaning, etc. The idea that they would assume we all lived and died in a pre-technological era, especially with the population numbers they'll be able to figure out is silly.

Its an old sci-fi trope, and its silly. Future observers will have at least the sophistication of modern observers of the past. We don't sit around and think "This iceman was found with various colorings on him. Why did evolution choose for these strange patterns?!?!" Err, we know its tattoos. Its not that hard to figure out.

I guess you could come up with a very foreign observer, like a non-carbon based life in the far future. Fine, but they might not even know what the hell teeth are or if what they are looking at was once alive. If we're going to play this game, then if they're already at the stage where they understand such things such as human, teeth, societies, etc then its not that large of a leap to understand technology, in fact, its probably impossible to know these things and not understand societies, culture, technology and how these things affect the fossil record. Humans are very obviously a tool-using species. Removing us from our tools is an unlikely conclusion a remotely competent archaeologist would make.

[CalMeacham]

For example, would they incorrectly conclude that humans evolved straighter, healthier teeth practically overnight?

I think it's far more likely that they'd look at all the dental work -- huge numbers of fillings, bridges, and false teeth -- and wonder what happened to our teeth to make them so awful in so short a time.

That in the 1990s the Earth was overrun by an invasion of strange silvery disc-like creatures, led by the fanatical AOL tribe. After an epic struggle, they were defeated. Their discarded shells lie piled in huge waste heaps, each a testament to the accuracy of human marksmanship.

In Frederick Pohl's second Heechee novel, Beyond the Blue Event Horizon, humans discover the artifacts of Heechee civilization, including huge numbers of Japanese-fan-shaped things that they couldn't figure out a use for. They get called "prayer fans", because it was assumed that they were religious articles.

They turn out to be books in recorded form.


All our CDs and DVDs will last a long time, and might persuade future alien archaeologists that we worshipped the bright and shiny multicolored discs. Or maybe we used them to locate the North Star.

[MeanOldLady]

Originally Posted by TriPolar

Some women were partially silicon based life forms.

I once heard Dr. Drew theorize that one day archaeologists might conclude that implants were part of some bizarre ritual, largely exclusive to rich women. Which it kind of is.

[Derleth]

Originally Posted by CalMeacham

All our CDs and DVDs will last a long time, and might persuade future alien archaeologists that we worshipped the bright and shiny multicolored discs. Or maybe we used them to locate the North Star.

Only if they were idiots, or so lacking in magnification technology they couldn't see the very regular patterns imprinted on the aluminum laminated between the plastic.

Also, there is likely nothing that would destroy all our cultures without destroying all our artifacts as well. Not even plague or massive economic collapse would get everyone, every single Westerner, worldwide.

[CalMeacham]

You are absolutely no fun.

[jayjay]

Originally Posted by CalMeacham

You are absolutely no fun.

You'd think that a poster whose username references probably the second-most influential Lovecraftian after old Howard himself would have a better imagination...

[CalMeacham]

It's not just the lack of "fun". Citizen Derleth seems to think that figuring out what such recording discs are would be a slam-dunk. For anyone lacking similar technology as a clue, it wouldn't. How long it would take to figure out is a good question, but I suspect it would take a while until someone had the flash of genius to unravel the mystery. That, pretty much, was Pohl's point in BTBEH. if you want a current example, consider Birdstones and Bannerstones. Their real use is still uncertain*, and one of the big "explanations" was that they were religious or fetish items:

http://www.lithiccastinglab.com/gall...tonespage1.htm






*

SPOILER:

I think an excellent case can be made that they're essentially handles for atlatls, but that topic would take us too far afield.

[Mijin]

Just to join the no fun crowd:

I think that more than enough artefacts will survive / fossilise for them to piece together a very accurate picture of how we lived. We're incredibly messy.

In fact, if they're technologically more advanced than us, they'll probably know more about our era than we do. There are bound to be "unknown unknowns" in our world.

[WhyNot]

Surely y'all's Sociology 101's profs made you read "Body Ritual Among the Nacirema"? I loved that piece.

If not, read it before you read the wikipedia article about it. Spoilers abound.

[davekhps]

[quote=Derleth;12847676]

Originally Posted by CalMeacham

Only if they were idiots, or so lacking in magnification technology they couldn't see the very regular patterns imprinted on the aluminum laminated between the plastic.[/i]

But those patterns degrade over time-- a *short* time, a matter of years. What kind of patterns would be left after, say, 10,000 years, let alone 100,000 or a million?

Maybe I'm biased from the recent wave of"World without humans" documentaries running on the Discovery Channel and other networks, but one point many folks seem to make is that most of what we consider enduring really isn't once its opened up to the corrosive mix of time and the elements. Many materials degrade more quickly than we generally assume, even the stuff we don't expect to, like plastics.

Fossilized bones survive. Stone survives. Plastics can't. Metal *can* survive, but only over civilizational periods (10,000 years), over periods of fossilization, probably not.

That said, the stuff that *will* survive for future archaeolgists are things that aren't here at home: satellites in orbits high enough to avoid degradation and reentry, and possibly lunar probes. Any traces of human technology on Earth could be long gone, but Richard Nixon's name on the Apollo landers could last forever.

[Student Driver]

My ex and I joked one time that future archaeologists would find fossils of various dog breeds and wonder what the hell kind of of environmental pressures could exist that would transform wolves into... the mutants you see today. Tea cup/purse dogs dug up in digs around Southern California, the occasional giant skeleton of a Great Dane found and mused about.

[PlainJain]

Originally Posted by Derleth

Only if they were idiots, or so lacking in magnification technology they couldn't see the very regular patterns imprinted on the aluminum laminated between the plastic.

Some things would get missed though. I'm sure they would recognize that Smoky is a bear wearing a hat but would not infer that it signified "don't start forest fires".

[Gary "Wombat" Robson]

[moderating]
This isn't really a GQ, and although a bunch of books are mentioned, it's not really for Cafe Society, either. I guess since the OP is looking for opinions and guesses, IMHO is the place. So moved.
[/moderating]

Originally Posted by TriPolar

Some women were partially silicon based life forms.

You're thinking of silicone, not silicon. Still kinda funny, though...

[jayjay]

Originally Posted by Gary "Wombat" Robson

[moderating]
This isn't really a GQ, and although a bunch of books are mentioned, it's not really for Cafe Society, either. I guess since the OP is looking for opinions and guesses, IMHO is the place. So moved.
[/moderating]

You're thinking of silicone, not silicon. Still kinda funny, though...

Unless he was thinking of fembots.

[CalMeacham]

Fossilized bones survive. Stone survives. Plastics can't. Metal *can* survive, but only over civilizational periods (10,000 years), over periods of fossilization, probably not.

Where are you getting your information? PMMA (the plastic in CDs and DVDs) lasts an outrageously long time. It's not attacked by biological organisms, and doesn't oxidize. steel will rust away before those discs will.

http://aem.asm.org/cgi/reprint/38/3/551.pdf

It's true that CDs and DVDs are given short lifetimes in recent articles, but that;'s for how long they last for playing (and I suspect the lifetimes they give are way too short), based on the coatings coming off. But i think that you can still extract useful information from the substrate even after the coating's gone for a permanently-made (not re-recordable) disc. If, of course, you know to look for it.

[Mijin]

Originally Posted by davekhps

Maybe I'm biased from the recent wave of"World without humans" documentaries running on the Discovery Channel and other networks, but one point many folks seem to make is that most of what we consider enduring really isn't once its opened up to the corrosive mix of time and the elements. Many materials degrade more quickly than we generally assume, even the stuff we don't expect to, like plastics.

Well, I'm no expert on this but certainly there are materials that we know last thousands of years, since there are countless relics around that have survived that long: concrete, various metals, gold, diamonds, glass etc.

If we're talking millions of years some of the above will likely survive but also, what about fossilisation? I'd be willing to bet that much of our junk will be capable of forming fossils in the right conditions. It's not like bone is some super long-lasting material.

So that's another potential answer to the OP: they might think there was a second explosion of life, like the Cambrian explosion. Suddenly life took on diverse shapes like discs, rectangles or 8-inch cigar shaped.
(joking aside, they'll piece together everything about us)

[Zebra]

I'd like to think that in 1,000,000 years they'll find a huge pile of cartridges in the desert. They know what machine the cartridges work with and they future sits down to play the Atari E.T. game and goes nuts trying to finish it. Wars break out. Mass suicides occur. Madness sweeps across the land.

[Heracles]

It's one thing for techno-archaeologists to figure out how to read a CD-ROM, but quite another to break the CSS encryption on a Transformers DVD. But maybe they're better off not knowing.

More seriously, if we stop publishing books on physical media in another 10 or 20 years, then our legacy will depend entirely on future humans' ability to use an iPad or a Kindle.

More on the durability of modern media: http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2002/ma...arch.elearning

[Freudian Slit]

Originally Posted by t-bonham@scc.net

Another science fiction story where the only artifact that survives for thousands of years is the common porcelain toilet bowl.

They are found all over, in every archaeological dig, in nearly every house & business building. So the scientists conclude that these were probably an altar for the household gods.

They don't call it worshiping the porcelain god for nothing!

[alayez]

Originally Posted by panache45

Or to extrapolate . . . there's a well-known sci-fi story about some future beings discovering nothing about us, except a Mickey-Mouse watch. Very "outlandish conclusions."

Someone will be along to identify that story.

I think you mean a story by Arthur C. Clarke. In the distant future, Venusians travel to an Ice Age Earth. No living humans. The find various artifacts, mostly incomprehensible, including a Mickey Mouse film. They manage to play it back. There's a neat ending where the Venusian archeologists note that at the end of the film, the face of the hero is constricted into a circle surrounded by blackness, as the face displays powerful emotions. What does it mean?

The title of the story eludes me, but the nightmarish force of this little story came right back after not having read it for like 45 years.

[goodie]

I just want to see their faces when they figure out diapers..."They wrapped their own children in feces?!?!"

[SantaMan]

My favourite of this type is 'Treasures of the Aquarians
http://www.superseventies.com/treasurs.html
http://www.amazon.com/Treasures-Aqua...3057327&sr=8-1

My favourite is the "Aqua Bed" and the Whamo plastic plates/dinnerware (Frisbee)

"A startling and important archaeological discovery was recently made in the
area of our planet once known as California, when a cache of artifacts dating
from the 1960s was unearthed, relatively intact, during the building of the
transglobal tunnel."

" Various examples were found throughout the dig site, leading some researchers to believe that the MINIMAL SKIRT was a fundamental element of the Aquarian female child's wardrobe."

[Beruang]

Perhaps something like this?

http://www.maniacworld.com/beatles-1...ars-later.html

[gonzomax]

It would be interesting if they landed in 3 places. One an eskimo village. The 2nd NYC. The third in Borneo. That would be fun when their dating techniques found them the same age.

[Toxylon]

Vast differences between contemporary cultures is business as usual in present-day archaeology and anthropology. You could pick, say, 1000 AD and find locations where Stone Age hunter-gatherers are in full swing and others where universities and cathedrals rise. Or, say the 1950's: primitive pastoralists and subsistence agriculturalists, even some H-Gs alongside nuclear power, television sets, automobiles and skyscrapers.

[gonzomax]

Originally Posted by Toxylon

Vast differences between contemporary cultures is business as usual in present-day archaeology and anthropology. You could pick, say, 1000 AD and find locations where Stone Age hunter-gatherers are in full swing and others where universities and cathedrals rise. Or, say the 1950's: primitive pastoralists and subsistence agriculturalists, even some H-Gs alongside nuclear power, television sets, automobiles and skyscrapers.

Unless my information is incorrect, the world did not end 1000 AD.

[Kobal2]

A US military guy on another forum I lurk told the story of how during Operation Iraqi Freedom, through a paperwork SNAFU, his Air Assault infantry unit a few hundred kilometers from the shore was issued a ship anchor. Not a zodiac or similar small boat anchor, either : apparently the thing had to be delivered by flatbed trailer. The grunts had a grumblefest and just left it there, somewhere between Najaf and Kerbala, when they moved out.

As a poster on that forum said, in a thousand years an archaeologist is going to get really confused.

[CutterJohn]

Originally Posted by alayez

I think you mean a story by Arthur C. Clarke. In the distant future, Venusians travel to an Ice Age Earth. No living humans. The find various artifacts, mostly incomprehensible, including a Mickey Mouse film. They manage to play it back. There's a neat ending where the Venusian archeologists note that at the end of the film, the face of the hero is constricted into a circle surrounded by blackness, as the face displays powerful emotions. What does it mean?

The title of the story eludes me, but the nightmarish force of this little story came right back after not having read it for like 45 years.

Its called History Lesson. Wonderful story. The man is a master.

[t-bonham@scc.net]

Originally Posted by Kobal2

A US military guy on another forum I lurk told the story of how during Operation Iraqi Freedom, through a paperwork SNAFU, his Air Assault infantry unit a few hundred kilometers from the shore was issued a ship anchor. Not a zodiac or similar small boat anchor, either : apparently the thing had to be delivered by flatbed trailer. The grunts had a grumblefest and just left it there, somewhere between Najaf and Kerbala, when they moved out.

As a poster on that forum said, in a thousand years an archaeologist is going to get really confused.

No, it will be gone.

Even here in fairly wealthy America, we have people who scavenge scrap metal items & aluminum cans and sell them for the value of the metal. That anchor is a very large item of high grade metal; it will be worth quite a bit. Even to a local blacksmith. So in a country like Iraq, it will be gone long any archaeologists get there. Even if it has to go in pieces, it will be gone before too long.

[robert_columbia]

I believe Arthur C. Clarke wrote a SF short story ("History Lesson", if I recall), where a ship from another civilization finds the remnants of Humanity amidst the barren and frozen future Earth. The major item that intrigues them is a movie reel, which they assume to be some sort of record of the way of life among the intelligent civilization of our world, concluding that life on Earth was all about violence and car chases.

(Sorry, didn't read thread. This story was already mentioned.)

[Jophiel]

Originally Posted by CalMeacham

I think it's far more likely that they'd look at all the dental work -- huge numbers of fillings, bridges, and false teeth -- and wonder what happened to our teeth to make them so awful in so short a time.

I took a History of Native Americans course once where it was mentioned that anthropologists can date the domestication of corn partially by the increased rate of tooth decay and dental problems in skeletons brought on by the high starch diet. This not being GQ, I didn't look too hard for a cite but this page mentions the effects of early agricultural diets versus the hunter-gatherer thing.

Our own dental issues can help future generations date when we started adding forms of sugar to everything that hit a plate and relying on processed foods.

[dotchan]

A lot of it would depend on what these aliens look like, right?

If they're bipedal humanoid rubber forehead aliens, they'll probably figure out the approximate function of most of our stuff--even if we get stumped by stuff in the past, we can still recognize the most basic tools of life (and man-made objects tend to be very, very obvious as such). In fact, the simpler the tool, the easier it is to tell what it is. A hammer from 10,000 B.C. is instantly identifiable as such in the present day because "large, heavy object with a flat surface on a stick that, when swung, produces blunt force" is something we still need and use every day. And we keep a ridiculous amount of records on stuff that isn't immediately degradable. Yeah, digital records will be a total crapshoot: even if they can get past encryption and understand binary, they may not know why some dude bothered to tell a computer to output "HELLO WORLD". But I think enough of everything else will survive for them to be able to at least piece together bits and pieces of our language, culture, and religion. They may not get us right in the details, but certainly in the gist.

If the aliens are truly alien, then anything goes. Even a human being can creatively interpret a house as "large immobile creature with concrete and rebar skeleton, drywall and skin, and scaly top covering that is infested by parasites". (Insert tongue in cheek comment about future alien Dopers arguing about evolutionism versus creationism with regards to a pocket-watch.)

[Aquila Be]

Originally Posted by The Controvert

Suppose a future archaeologist looked at the fossil record of our age. What conclusions (correct and incorrect) would be evident?

For example, would they incorrectly conclude that humans evolved straighter, healthier teeth practically overnight?

Speaking of teeth, does the recent trend toward teeth whitening lead to some strange conclusions?

A correct conclusion is that recent improvements to nutrition led to a taller average human.

I suppose someone might conclude that humans shrivel over time as older people tend to be shorter plus really tall people tend to die earlier.

A Stephen Jay Gould of fossicking around in 1000,000 AD would look at the fossil record of squirrels in the British Isles and find that a dramatic change in its skeletal structure and genotype occured about 1900-2000 AD, give or take 50,000 years.

In reality, the imported American red squirrel, a late interloper, pushed out and replaced the original grey squirrel from its habitat. The future SJ Gould would quickly come out with an evolutionary theory that he would probably call "punctuated equilibrium" to account for the sudden and mysterious change in the fossil record of squirrels.