What Fossils Will Modern-Day Civilization Leave Behind? (sciencemag.org) 183
sciencehabit writes: Millions of years from now, advanced humans -- or perhaps visiting aliens -- may dig up the remnants of today's civilizations. What are they likely to find, and how will they interpret our relationship with the creatures around us? A new study reveals that archaeologists will need to rely on bones, not any of our former technology. "If you read a lot of postapocalyptic science fiction, one of the things that disappears in almost all cases is written records, computer records, things like that," says one of the scientists. "There are computer records and code from decades ago that modern computers can't recognize because it's so far out of alignment. So imagine two million years from now... So what are we left with? It's whatever is buried in the ground."
And what will that be? Well, lots of humans, cows, and chickens. And, of course, tons of cats and dogs. "Of all the animals, dogs and cats are more likely to be buried in a manner similar to people," says another scientist. "There are pet cemeteries that are set up similar to human memorial parks. So if anything like that is stumbled upon, that's going to say something different than a pit that people threw a bunch of pigs into randomly. I think it's going to be obvious that we felt differently about dogs and cats versus pigs and cows and chickens."
And what will that be? Well, lots of humans, cows, and chickens. And, of course, tons of cats and dogs. "Of all the animals, dogs and cats are more likely to be buried in a manner similar to people," says another scientist. "There are pet cemeteries that are set up similar to human memorial parks. So if anything like that is stumbled upon, that's going to say something different than a pit that people threw a bunch of pigs into randomly. I think it's going to be obvious that we felt differently about dogs and cats versus pigs and cows and chickens."
They won't find anything (Score:5, Interesting)
On geologic timescales, there will be no "fossils" any future beings will likely find...
"What paltry smudge of artifacts we do leave behind, in those rare corners of the continents where sediment accumulates and is quickly buried—safe from erosion’s continuous defacing—will be extremely unlikely to be exposed at the surface, at any given time, at any given place, tens of millions or hundreds of millions of years in the geological future."
The Anthropocene Is a Joke
On geological timescales, human civilization is an event, not an epoch.
https://www.theatlantic.com/sc... [theatlantic.com]
Re:They won't find anything (Score:5, Informative)
"Dinosaurs lasted 180 million years—36,000 times as long as recorded human history so far. And we've only found a few miraculously preserved fossils!
"A cryptic smattering of lakeside footprints represents their entire contribution to the Triassic period. A few bones and footsteps miraculously preserved in New England and Nova Scotia are all that remains from the entire 27-million-year Early Jurassic epoch. No trace of dinosaurs remains whatsoever from the 18-million-year Late Jurassic. A handful of bones from one layer in Maryland represents the entire 45-million-year Early Cretaceous.
"If, in the final 7,000 years of their reign, dinosaurs became hyperintelligent, built a civilization, started asteroid mining, and did so for centuries—it would be virtually impossible to tell.
"So that’s what 180 million years of complete dominance buys you in the fossil record. What, then, will a few decades of industrial civilization get us?
https://www.theatlantic.com/sc... [theatlantic.com]
Re: (Score:2)
Further I would add that whereas dinosaurs had to get lucky to be fossilized (extremely lucky), humankind builds a LOT with stone. It may be that in our short time, we've built more with stone than there were fossils of the entire dinosaur race.
Re: (Score:2)
> humankind builds a LOT with stone.
Not anymore - now we mostly use brick and concrete, which don't last very long. We remain astounded by the durability of ancient Roman concrete, which far outlasts anything we're using today, and has still mostly eroded away in a few short millenia.
Re: They won't find anything (Score:2)
Re:They won't find anything (Score:5, Interesting)
And even then, with the development of corrosion-resistant alloys and metals, such as stainless steel, aluminium, titanium, there's a high chance something will be preserved and still be identifiable in 100,000 years time. Something as simple as a lost iPhone, dropped in a river, could be preserved and be left practically undamaged for a very long time.
Re: (Score:3)
From the distribution of radioactive isotopes from nuclear testing,
For that you need to have an idea that there was a nuclear test somewhere. And after a few decades, those spots are not easy to spot. No one is running around with a geiger counter and a mass spectrometer mapping every square meter of the planet.
steel, aluminium, titanium, there's a high chance something will be preserved and still be identifiable in 100,000 years time. ... in the long run they all will rot away. Especial
Completely unlikely
Re:They won't find anything (Score:4, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2)
That is an interesting point, but means, someone is dedicated looking for an old civilization.
Perhaps we should try that, too?
Re: They won't find anything (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
More to the point stainless steel isn't rough-proof under any normal conditions. As the name says, it just "stains less", it's not "stain-proof" steel. Especially not on geologic timescales. And once rust gets started it doesn't progress all that much slower than in normal steel - in fact it's generally considered a very bad idea to put normal steel in contact with stainless, as the normal steel will begin rusting almost immediately, and the will can easily spread to the stainless.
Re: (Score:3)
No one is running around with a geiger counter and a mass spectrometer mapping every square meter of the planet.
No one human using current technologies and without it's intergalactic archaeology Indiana Jones hat on.
If I were an intelligence (human or otherwise) with the capacity of scouting planets, chances are I'd have some geiger-functioning gizmo around me.
We are talking about speculative fiction with a bent for hard sci-fi here. In that context, it is not unreasonable to assume *this* cannot happen.
Re: (Score:2)
There's no need to find a "spot". Isotopic evidence of nuclear testing is all over the planet, thousands of miles from the testing that caused them.
Re: (Score:3)
While I don't entirely disagree with you, I think it's worth pointing out that a fair bit of science has historically been just coming up with reasonably credible reasons the way things are as they are.
Then again, the people who were pretty sure it was 'bad air' that gave you disease, or that baby formula is "obviously" better than breast milk had (in their time) very sound "scientific" reasons for what they believed to be true.
"what we think we know is fact" != "what actually is fact"
There are a pretty vas
Mining (Score:5, Interesting)
If, in the final 7,000 years of their reign, dinosaurs became hyperintelligent, built a civilization, started asteroid mining, and did so for centuries—it would be virtually impossible to tell.
No, it would not because any industrial society would have required significant mining operations to provide the resources it needed and we would have seen clear signs of this in the form of artificial and partial discontinuities in the geological record which are simply not there.
Re: (Score:2)
The over 100,000 mines, most likely gold mines, made by mankind about 5,000 years ago all over southern Africa, were just discovered a decade ago. Why do you think we would "discover" a million year old mine?
The maya buildings all over south america that recently got discovered were found by radar and lidar satellites. They were completely covered by jungle.
Re: (Score:2)
Why do you think we would "discover" a million year old mine?
If we can discover the handful of tiny mines which existed 5,000 years ago (the Grimes Grave [wikipedia.org] flint mines in the UK are another example) which were created by primitive stone age tools how are we not going to see the effect of a massive industrial mining machine that strips huge quantities of minerals from the Earth? There are going to be huge areas with the geological record stripped away in a manner inconsistent with nature....and that's even before we consider the huge spoil heaps and tailings ponds that
Re: (Score:2)
The cloud of junk left in higher orbits is going to be even more obvious!
Re: (Score:3)
"Dinosaurs lasted 180 million years—36,000 times as long as recorded human history so far. And we've only found a few miraculously preserved fossils!
How many dinosaurs, 7 billions like us? Last time I checked, dinosaurs didn't know how to create complex structures, like the ones made with 99% titanium ; diamonds reserves ; some constructions, etc... and let's not forget nuclear waste... depending on what it is, like I129, 15 million years half-life, will tell our successors that something was going on here.
Re: (Score:2)
If the dinosaurs had started asteroid mining, then the evidence would be out there, almost undisturbed.
For human influence, you only have to look closely at the sky and the large amounts of satellites in stable orbits (or the strange debris field that enclosed the Earth). There is stuff of ours on the Moon that will last millions of years, not to mention the other planets...
Re: (Score:2)
Actually, there's no such thing as a truly stable orbit. You get out near geostationary where there's (very nearly) zero atmospheric drag, and there's plenty that are stable enough on human timescales. But even those tend to need a little station keeping to correct for the constant perturbations by the gravity from the sun, moon and other planets, and especially the solar wind.
Large asteroids and planetoids can remain in relatively stable orbits over those timescales, since the square-cube law makes them
Re: (Score:2)
Actually, there's no such thing as a truly stable orbit.
Of course not. The moon isn't technically in a stable orbit. But there's a world of difference between LEO orbits and ones that will be around for millions or billions of years.
Re: They won't find anything (Score:2)
Re: They won't find anything (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
First off there's no guarantee that dinosaurs would have plastics - plastics are made from oil, and (I think?) oil formation mostly happened after the dinosaurs died out.
And there is in fact a global layer of radioactive iridium that we assume came from a natural asteroid impact - I don't know if anyone has analyzed it for the no-longer-radioactive decay products of nuclear waste that might have been present at the same time. And in fact there's no guarantee there would be any - current traces are almost e
Re: (Score:2)
I disagree.
A lot of things suffer from oxidation and other transformation process, but in the Earth scale, until next civilization (asuming human extinction) could be around 100 millons from now, and in that time, a lot of things disappear, but certain materials clearly not.
Our mining operations will be appreciable. Nuclear waste and operations too. Even certain type of hard materials like ceramic, jelwery and things like that could remain.
Any building that remains in metals will collapse but other based on
Re: (Score:2)
Even more broadly, the distribution of metals on the earth's surface has been drastically altered from what is 'natural'. To the extent that it's possible future scientists, in a few millions years, won't actually have the same understanding of what 'natural' mineral ores look like.
Deposits of fossil fuels will be much scarcer and of lower quality, too.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Continents would shift, so what are hard-to-reach ocean floor deposits for us could be land for future civilization.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
Quite likely - assuming we don't mine them for raw materials in the future. However, landfills are generally placed in random, maximally uninteresting spots (within distance limitations). With no geologic suggestion that anything of value lies under the sediment, the only way they would be discovered is if someone decided to build a deep basement in the area, or weathering happened to expose it.
Space and the Moon (Score:2)
A lot of things suffer from oxidation and other transformation process...
On Earth that's true but our civilization has made it further than that. We have left artefacts on the surface of the Moon where there is no atmosphere at all as well as in orbit. While some of the orbital material will be lost to de-orbit and burn up some will move gradually in the reverse direction and should still be there when the sun expands, swallowing the Earth.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Tectonic activity will have destroyed everything below the surface.
Given enough time, yes. The Earth's surface is constantly renewing itself with new crust being made and old being subducted under some plate or other. But here we're talking billions, not millions of years. And even then it's not a perfect process and does leave patches of very very old crust. That's where one would have to look.
Re: (Score:2)
Mining and Radioactive Waste (Score:2)
What paltry smudge of artifacts we do leave behind....
Think about the reverse: what do we NOT leave behind? Even if any record of our existence is purged from the fossil record our impact on the geological record from mining and oil and gas extraction will be permanently etched for all to see.
The other hugely significant clue that an industrial civilization once existed will be the ratio of radioactive isotopes remaining wherever we bury expended nuclear fuel rods. These will preserve a record of their production and decay in a fission-based reactor for bi
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
You realize the entire planet is already covered in uranium, right? It and thorium are literally everywhere, in large part because they have such astoundingly long half-lives (i.e. aren't appreciably radioactive) and readily oxidize so that they can be mineralized on the surface rather than sinking into the core like most of our heavy metals have done.)
Re: (Score:2)
You realize the entire planet is already covered in uranium, right?
Not homogenously. Otherwise you could just open a uranium mine anywhere.
Re: (Score:2)
Sure, but who's going to go digging in mineral-poor areas to discover the collapsed remains of our mining tunnels? Much less notice the tiny holes drilled through rock for oil extraction - I mean dig down 5 feet to either side and there's no evidence that the drilling ever occurred, unless you knew that there used to be oil "bubbles" where the rock has long since subsided.
The evidence will be there, but it seems unlikely it would be discovered.
>making any evidence that such a reactor existed a dead-give
Re: (Score:2)
Bone-meal is a wonderful fertilizer.... I suspect that any bones extracted from the ground in the future will get ground down and used to help with growing crops.
They'll find something (Score:2)
At the very least they should find a spike in CO2. Any dedicated paleontologist should find a mass-extinction.
They might find weird, carbon-rich compounds in rocks. ("Plastics") Which might lead some to speculate about a carbon-rich asteroid impact.
Proving the "mammal overrun" hypothesis - let alone the "smart mammal" hyothesis - might be difficult. A competing theory might be that chickens escaped the Himalayas and overran the world's native species.
Re: (Score:2)
* They may find out scrap metal sites for tanks.
* they may detect our long dissolved raioactive waste storages
* They will find things in orbit
Lots of permanent stuff (Score:2)
If you just think about what has sank into decently sized rivers and then covered by sediment, there are a ton of things that will be quite well preserved and available for study, all in an orderly timeline.
Furthermore these days we don't let rivers wander as much, even large ones, so there's a greater chance some future historian can find an ancient riverbed to analyze.
But really enough stuff will be transcoded over time and stored carefully that I don't think future historians will lack for data.
Re: Lots of permanent stuff (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Comment removed (Score:3)
Nokia 3310's (Score:4, Funny)
Every single one of them will survive into the next millennium and beyond.
Re: (Score:2)
Nokia 3310's. Every single one of them will survive into the next millennium and beyond.
A good chunk will probably still have power too.
Re: (Score:2)
Nokia 3310's.
Every single one of them will survive into the next millennium and beyond.
And porn DVD cases.
Since their content will be long gone, I'm curious to see what stories the archaeologists will invent to fit the cover.
Will find time capsules (Score:2)
I believe that the future civilizations will think this:
https://local.theonion.com/new... [theonion.com]
Rocks (Score:2)
Rocks. Radioactive rocks. The descendents of roaches will wonder wtf happened. They'll also find some ancient dolphin hard-to-believe scripts telling them about our dumb species as a warning to all.
Re: (Score:3)
Do not step on the grass (Score:4, Funny)
They'll think we worshipped grass.
Plastic (Score:2)
What fossils will we leave behind? (Score:3, Insightful)
Turds laced with microplastics.
Data. (Score:2)
Most of our shows, books and songs will still be around, outside of a percent that have mostly already died due to copyright and lack of good backup mechanisms decades ago. Lots of other data junk along with it too.
There's just too much of a drive to hoard data, and it's likely going to be too cheap not to basically keep a couple archives per person sitting around somewhere on every place we make into a home in the galaxy and beyond.
At some point, we'll be backing up humans casually, and a few exabytes of
Fossils left behind (Score:2)
..people without cellphones.
"We believe that these fossils found without a personal communicator in their hand might be a transitional between homo erectus and homo techno sapiens."
The only fossils... (Score:2)
Not much will last a million years (Score:2)
In a few of million years the cockroach paleontologists will be puzzling over the end of the Age of Mammals, in much the same way we puzzled over the end of the Age of the Dinosaurs.
They will find a thin layer of strange materials in the fossil record which corresponds to a rapid increase in global temperature and melting of the ice sheets. In the hotter more humid conditions insects grew to sizes not seen since the carboniferous era, and the Age of the Insects began.
In the absence of any meteorite impact o
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Parchments... (Score:2)
Containing only participation awards and attendance certificates for industrial training courses.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Why do we assume that any "other" (as if we ourselves are) so-called "intelligent" life will exist in such a time and place that they can ever find their way to Earth
Calm down. It's an exercise.
O wad some Pow'r the giftie gie us, To see oursels as ithers see us! It wad frae mony a blunder free us, An' foolish notion: What airs in dress an' gait wad lea'e us, An' ev'n devotion! -- Robert Burns
Plastic (Score:4, Funny)
It will still be there, when we all are gone.
Perhaps they'll find a Baby Yoda figurine and deduct that it was done in our image.
Re: (Score:2)
Moer likely, they'll think we worshiped it as a idol figure.
And they'd be right.
Re: (Score:2)
The Answer (Score:2)
Nancy Pelosi and Mitch McConnell
If they don't get grinded to sand again ... (Score:2)
Silicon chips, if they don#t get grinded to sand again.
Perhaps plastics - but that is doubtful.
The Statue of Liberty (Score:5, Insightful)
Filter error:
There wont be fossils, but aretifacts may be... (Score:2)
Fossils? Very unlikely.
Memorial park (Score:2)
Really? What's wrong with graveyard?
Tunnels (Score:2)
Tunnels will be our lasting legacy. Especially where they have been made in places with little geological activity. They will preserve tool marks and are erosion resistant. Man made isotopes will be left in the soil from things like metal refining and nuclear activities. These will last for a very long time. We have left our marks on the moon and Mars and these will last for millions of years. Satellites like Voyager will last until they crash or are consumed by something in space. Metal objects like battle
Re: (Score:2)
"Satellites like Voyager will last until they crash or are consumed by something "
I don't think those are satellites. And there is another something to consider
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
Re: (Score:2)
I am corrected, they are indeed not satelites and should be called probes. Too little sleep. My point on their lasting millions, perhaps billions of years stands though.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Tunnels do indeed leak and the surface will eventually succumb - nothing is permanent. If nothing else the mountain they are dug in will eventually erode away. It takes very little time in geological terms to wipe out a chain of mountains.
Those tunnels built in dry areas like Death Valley will leak very slowly and will last the longest. Build a tunnel, or a series of tunnels in a very dry area that is geologically stable, with little moisture and in a good position for the continental plates and that tunnel
Dog Poop (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
plastic and radiation (Score:2)
dog poo in little bags (Score:2)
Well... (Score:2)
Future humans will think we lived with dinosaurs. (Score:2)
First and Last Men (Score:2)
Lots will survive (Score:2)
Those doing microsoldering to repair Macs and iPhones report that a single exposure to water, fresh or salt, begin corroding the minature device components immediately. Louis Rossmann and iPadRehab have several videos showing such corrosion and what it takes to fix the device. I doubt that any smartphone would survive a 100 years under water, much less 100,000 years unde
This is the drywall screw era (Score:2)
Practicing archeologists have told me, perhaps slightly in jest, that our day will be recognized by future archeologists by the ubiquity of ceramic coated drywall and deck screws. The hardened steel ones will be mostly degraded, but the ceramic coated ones and stainless ones are going to form a recognizable artifact layer.
toilets (Score:2)
Toilets will be one of the last traces of our existence. Unlike metal or ordinary concrete, a good ceramic toilet will last almost forever. Vast numbers of these will be found in certain parts of the world.
The alien visitors will puzzle over these for a while and eventually assume that these glistening works of art are religious objects. They will build a theoretical model of our lifestyle and rituals with the sacred bowls.
DNA can persist for millions of years (Score:2)
I want a message in mine to say: "This human is a genetically unmodified organism."
Not glass (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Properly buried these would last forever. Also fracking gas wells.
That's what I thought too. We will leave behind a lot of cement, glass, precious metal artifacts, or anything else made of something chemically inert and of a size too big to wear away in this time or so small that it is protected from wear by being lost, buried, and protected in the natural debris.
I'll hear people mention that nothing can last the natural turning of the crust as it rises on one side of a tectonic plate and then is plowed under on the other end. But how much longer will the Earth have tec
Re: (Score:2)
But how much longer will the Earth have tectonic movement like this?
Long enough. Some are arguing that tectonic movement is actually increasing.
Re: (Score:2)
Concrete won't last for millions of years. The steelwork will corrode and crack open the structure, and the cement will dissolve over millions of years just like limestone. But brick and glass could last a very long time in their original shape.
Plastics are a bit more difficult. Some like nylon (polyamide) I would expect to break down over a few thousand years, but others like PTFE and Polyethylene are chemically very stable. If they are buried where there's no ultraviolet light they are likely to survive a
Re: (Score:2)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
They believe John Wayne movies are reality (Score:2)
It's okay, GP just thinks that gunshots are accurately portrayed in old western movies. When you're shot, you either immediately drop dread, or go flying backward through a plate glass window, they believe - depending on whether or not you are shot in a saloon.
My brother accidentally shot himself. He took care of it with hydrogen peroxide and gauze, not telling anyone about it until a couple years later. That's the most common immediate affect of a gunshot wound - hurts like hell, but doesn't drastically
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Absolutely even "small" details matter.
The point is, I think in the mind of the person who originally posted, "shot" is the same thing as "killed". The saw movies where someone who was shot immediately dropped dead, and think that's what normally happens. That's simply not the case. MOST of the time, someone who is shot lives. In many instances, such as my brother, they don't even go to the emergency room. Amazingly often, the person doesn't even know they were shot until a few minutes later (but most of