What's our version of the pyramids?

[the_diego]

I once made a list of things I might re-create before I die (and things I definitely can’t.) The theme was people with active minds but basically had nothing much to do:

1. Uffington White Horse, some say a unicorn (UK) - soil excavated to expose the underlying white chalk deposits
2. Ancient burial mounds (US), now a golf course - basically heaped oyster and clam shells
3. Mohenjo Daro - a planned city
4. Nazca Lines (Chile) - shallow ditching and colored stones strewn
5. Swastika Forest (Germany) - white larches planted amid pines
6. Spiral stone jetties (various) - rocks heaped along a spiral pattern on the shallows
7. Bagshot Row re-created - permanent tunneling and interior works
8. The Hindenburg - rigid structure but using helium this time
9. A flying boat that will dwarf the Spruce Goose
10. A bamboo car (an obsession here in the Philippines)

[LSLGuy]

@Backwater_Under_Duck

The one thing that we’ve got, which will be partially visible and traceable on a grand scale for a long, long time, is the Interstate Highway System. Makes the old Roman roads seem, somewhat less.

Very little abandoned concrete from WWII is still extant in the US. Anyplace with freeze-thaw cycles will substantially destroy untended concrete within 50 years. After a century without maintenance the interstates will still be obvious in the extreme southern US, but all-but gone further north.

It’ll take longer for water to spread the debris enough that there’s no record even to advanced instruments.

[Miller]

I suspect that our pyramid will not be any sort of monolith, but rather, a landfill packed with discarded Happy Meal toys.

[Urbanredneck]

@The_Stainless_Steel_Rat

I think in the spirit of the Pyramids, Mount Rushmore, or even more likely, the Crazy Horse monument (if it is ever completed) may still be around in two millenia and might spark interest and speculation among our decendents (if we can arrange a major war that destroys all our records, it would help push it along…).
.

Actually Mount Rushmore requires constant maintenance to repair cracks that develop so I’d guess if 1,000 years went by with none they would erode down so much as to be barely recognizable.

[the_diego]

Modern man isn’t a mound builder. He’s a digger. In Utah

[Malthus]

@LSLGuy

Very little abandoned concrete from WWII is still extant in the US. Anyplace with freeze-thaw cycles will substantially destroy untended concrete within 50 years. After a century without maintenance the interstates will still be obvious in the extreme southern US, but all-but gone further north.

It’ll take longer for water to spread the debris enough that there’s no record even to advanced instruments.

Yup - that’s why I nominated, not the highways themselves, but the cuttings made through solid bedrock to accommodate them (and railways). Up here in Canada, in the “Canadian Shield” areas, those are major works and will long survive pretty well everything else we deliberately build; I doubt ordinary erosion would hide them.

[Whiskey_Dickens]

@iiandyiiii

Even with a major world catastrophe, the big picture sum-of-human-knowledge is likely to survive in some form (most likely digital in some underground repository somewhere, at the very least), so I don’t think it’s likely that even long-term descendants of ours won’t have some idea of why we built what we built.

I’d like to vehemently disagree. Even without the major world catastrophe, we have difficulty maintaining and reading data for more than a couple of decades.

This fallacy that someone is going to maintain great-great grampa’s livejournal entries from his 20’s through the centuries seems to be pretty prevalent. In reality, most if not all of this data will be lost or unreadable before g-g-grampa is even dead.

Take for example the BBC’s grand Domesday project in 1986. The plan was to make a new version of the Domesday book (originally written in 1086), but this time do it digitally (because of course that way it would be permanent, I guess?).

By 2002 the curators were already concerned that the format had fallen out of use and the disc drives were becoming hen’s teeth. Only 16 years had passed, and a media giant (BBC) along with a technology giant (Philips) weren’t able to maintain the grand project. They survived 1% of the 2,000 years that the OP stipulates. The wiki page references 3 working examples, and it doesn’t seem like they’re long for the world.

If the BBC and Philips can’t do it, your personal digital data is completely doomed. If you want something preserved, scribe it onto vellum or chisel it into granite. Seriously.

[drewder]

I personally think the biggest engineering feat of our day is the interstate highway system.

[Urbanredneck]

@LSLGuy

Very little abandoned concrete from WWII is still extant in the US. Anyplace with freeze-thaw cycles will substantially destroy untended concrete within 50 years. After a century without maintenance the interstates will still be obvious in the extreme southern US, but all-but gone further north.

It’ll take longer for water to spread the debris enough that there’s no record even to advanced instruments.

No, one can still visit the remains of German DDay bunkers and the Maginot line.

[TriPolar]

@Urbanredneck

No, one can still visit the remains of German DDay bunkers and the Maginot line.

Those were massive constructions, but they’re not going to last thousands of years.

ETA: Hoover Dam is a massive concrete structure like that. I suppose with constant maintenance it could last for millennia, but it would probably require massive reinforcement if it has to stay intact and still hold back it’s full capacity for water. Otherwise too many micro-fractures will weaken the structure over time. Without water or sediment building up perhaps only a massive earthquake would cause it to totally disintegrate by 6500AD.

[sitchensis]

A concrete road doesn’t have to stay pristine for it to be recognizable. All the concrete could turn to rubble, all the bridges and culverts could blow out, it could be covered by trees and moss and it would still be recognizable.

[lisiate]

@drewder

I personally think the biggest engineering feat of our day is the interstate highway system.

China’s Expressway system is even larger, and entirely built since 1988

[iiandyiiii]

@Whiskey_Dickens

I’d like to vehemently disagree. Even without the major world catastrophe, we have difficulty maintaining and reading data for more than a couple of decades.

This fallacy that someone is going to maintain great-great grampa’s livejournal entries from his 20’s through the centuries seems to be pretty prevalent. In reality, most if not all of this data will be lost or unreadable before g-g-grampa is even dead.

Take for example the BBC’s grand Domesday project in 1986. The plan was to make a new version of the Domesday book (originally written in 1086), but this time do it digitally (because of course that way it would be permanent, I guess?).

By 2002 the curators were already concerned that the format had fallen out of use and the disc drives were becoming hen’s teeth. Only 16 years had passed, and a media giant (BBC) along with a technology giant (Philips) weren’t able to maintain the grand project. They survived 1% of the 2,000 years that the OP stipulates. The wiki page references 3 working examples, and it doesn’t seem like they’re long for the world.

If the BBC and Philips can’t do it, your personal digital data is completely doomed. If you want something preserved, scribe it onto vellum or chisel it into granite. Seriously.

I’m not a programmer or an IT professional, but I thought even routine old data (like weird old 90s websites) is saved and swapped/transferred from server to server such that it is essentially immortal. I certainly could be wrong, though.

[the_diego]

Not terribly relevant to the OP (and some say a bit white supremacist) but this photo arguably sums up man’s intellectual achievement at that time.

[dracoi]

I suspect it won’t be things that survive, but the ones that didn’t. Or things we did rather than built.

For example, they’ll say “No one can get to the moon without a proper deflector shield! Just look at all that space debris up there. They’d have been smashed to bits!”

Or they’ll look at the remains of a bridge and decide it was really just a way to control shipping traffic, because everyone knows you can’t build a decent bridge without carbon nanotubes.

[LSLGuy]

@iiandyiiii

I’m not a programmer or an IT professional, but I thought even routine old data (like weird old 90s websites) is saved and swapped/transferred from server to server such that it is essentially immortal. I certainly could be wrong, though.

It’ll be saved exactly as long as the owner thinks it’s profitable to do so. Which won’t be all that much longer for lots of it.

Here’s a pretty good paper on the issues: Mass storage and long-term preservation

See also Digital preservation - Wikipedia

[rsat3acr]

@Lancia

On a serious note, I submit Cahokia as the closest thing North America has to the pyramids. A vast array of man-made mounds (some of which are ten stories tall and several hundred yards wide) built ca. 1200 CE. Some of the mounds were used as bases for temples, some were used as fortresses… and some were used as tombs. They were built by hand—obviously—using clay and soil hauled in hand-carried woven baskets.

Now if you’re talking about something much more recent—say, built in the last 100 years—then I have no idea. The industrial revolution gave us the ability to build some pretty awesome things (the Hoover dam and the Chunnel come immediately to mind) but I can’t think of anything that we have built in the past century that will still be standing 4000 years from now if left to their own devices. The aforementioned Mt. Rushmore might fit the bill, but in the grand scheme of things it wasn’t that difficult to create.

A lot of big stone pyramids down Mexico way, much closer to being the Egyptian pyramids than Cahokia.

[Urbanredneck]

@dracoi

I suspect it won’t be things that survive, but the ones that didn’t. Or things we did rather than built.

For example, they’ll say “No one can get to the moon without a proper deflector shield! Just look at all that space debris up there. They’d have been smashed to bits!”

Or they’ll look at the remains of a bridge and decide it was really just a way to control shipping traffic, because everyone knows you can’t build a decent bridge without carbon nanotubes.

Thats pretty close to the wackos who have insisted that the pyramids, the statues on Easter island, and Stonehenge MUST have been built by aliens or else humans with super powers.

[JWT_Kottekoe]

The Clock of the Long Now is being designed to last 10,000 years and still be ticking in 12,000 A.D.

The 10,000 year clock

The full scale 10,000 Year Clock is now under construction. While there is no completion date scheduled, we do plan to open it to the public once it is ready. The essay below by Long Now board member Kevin Kelly discusses what we hope the Clock will be once complete. This is one of several projects by Long Now to foster long-term thinking in the context of the next 10,000 years.

There is a Clock ringing deep inside a mountain. It is a huge Clock, hundreds of feet tall, designed to tick for 10,000 years. Every once in a while the bells of this buried Clock play a melody. Each time the chimes ring, it’s a melody the Clock has never played before. The Clock’s chimes have been programmed to not repeat themselves for 10,000 years. Most times the Clock rings when a visitor has wound it, but the Clock hoards energy from a different source and occasionally it will ring itself when no one is around to hear it. It’s anyone’s guess how many beautiful songs will never be heard over the Clock’s 10 millennial lifespan.
…

[LSLGuy]

@LSLGuy

@iiandyiiii

I’m not a programmer or an IT professional, but I thought even routine old data (like weird old 90s websites) is saved and swapped/transferred from server to server such that it is essentially immortal. I certainly could be wrong, though.

It’ll be saved exactly as long as the owner thinks it’s profitable to do so. Which won’t be all that much longer for lots of it.

Here’s a pretty good paper on the issues: Mass storage and long-term preservation

See also Digital preservation - Wikipedia

I knew I’d posted something about this topic of digital preservation before. Fortunately the SDMB preserved it for me; I just couldn’t find it quickly enough.

This thread from 2004 is relevant: How long can different mediums store information? - Factual Questions - Straight Dope Message Board. I just checked and the pdf I reference in post #3 is still at that url. Worth reading.