Life After People

[tommyball]

Did anyone else watch the History Channel's new show Life After People? It illustrated exactly what would happen to our world if all humans suddenly vanished (the why/how of our absence was not discussed). Our grasp over nature is tenuous at best and many of our cities and towns would quickly decay without maintenance. The fact that modern information , in the form of printed and digital media, really has no longevity compared to stone heiroglyphics was particularly poignant.

One could easily deduce from this show that past civilizations could very well have thrived on this planet and vanished without a trace.

Commercials and previews of UFO Hunters, premeiring on Feb. 6 also ran during the show, but that's for another thread.

-todd.

 

[MotorCity]

Yeah, great show. FYI -- if you go to the history channel's web site, there are about 7 video extras that didn't make the cut. Those are worth watching too.

 

[spookyparadigm]

As an archaeologist, I liked some of it but other parts bugged me. And the one that annoyed me most was the "there will be no traces in a few thousand years."

Bull.

Wooden and bone artifacts of all sorts are found in small but persistant quantities from archaeological sites of the past 10,000 - 30,000 years, and isolated examples, such as the wooden spears of Schoeningen, Germany, date to 300,000 years ago. Stone tools go back 2.5 million years ago. The example of stone hieroglyphics from Egypt would be more compelling if we also didn't have papyri and inscribed mummy wrappings from Dynastic Egypt.

While in the long haul, most things wll be ground up and destroyed, evidence will survive in small quantities, preserved by unusual circumstances. Soft tissue impressions, footprints, etc. are found from hundreds of millions of years ago, never mind fossils of bones. Amber traps insects from tens of millions of years ago. These of course represent only a small fraction of the animals and plants that lived and died, but even a small sample provides a lot of evidence.

 

[tommyball]

As an archaeologist, I liked some of it but other parts bugged me. And the one that annoyed me most was the "there will be no traces in a few thousand years."

Bull.

What's your opinion on the archaeological longevity of plastic?

The show covered how the metal in cars would weather, but these days cars have substantial plastic components as well. I always imagined a wide layer of plastic in future strata...

-todd.

 

[Seth]

As an archaeologist, I liked some of it but other parts bugged me. And the one that annoyed me most was the "there will be no traces in a few thousand years."

Bull.

Hear, hear!, my brotha. Take bones, teeth, and sometimes soft parts of dead organisms for example. We have an abundance of fossils up to and around 540 million years ago! The composition of bone and other living material is organic. I will never believe a city, or car for that matter, will deteriorate to nothing as eluded to. Spookyparadigm is correct, it is illogical to predict "no traces in a few thousand years".

Wait a minute...did I just support Hoagland on something?!

 

[DamnDirtyApe]

I took it to mean that there would be no overt visible signs of civilization upon the surface of the planet. It would appear as if mankind never existed, unless you started doing archeological excavations.

 

[spookyparadigm]

As an archaeologist, I liked some of it but other parts bugged me. And the one that annoyed me most was the "there will be no traces in a few thousand years."

Bull.

What's your opinion on the archaeological longevity of plastic?

The show covered how the metal in cars would weather, but these days cars have substantial plastic components as well. I always imagined a wide layer of plastic in future strata...

-todd.

Don't know. The assumption is that it will take forever to break down. Which if true, would mean a huge index layer of plastics. Then again, we don't know how it will break down in the real world. But if I had to guess, the estimates are conservative. Bill Rathje, used to be a Maya archaeologist, became the first garbologist after he started doing some experimental archaeology with the garbage of 1970s Tuscon. His research shows that due to the packed in and sealed nature of landfills, garbage from the 30s looks almost fresh. Hot dogs still intact. Newspapers easily readable.

I figure that a index of the 20th century would be millions of miles of broken up trackways of asphalt and concrete. That won't last millions of years, but enough of it will last that humans digging up our refuse in a few thousand years would call us the Roadbuilders. But the Plastic Culture is probably more accurate.

 

[spookyparadigm]

As an archaeologist, I liked some of it but other parts bugged me. And the one that annoyed me most was the "there will be no traces in a few thousand years."

Bull.

Hear, hear!, my brotha. Take bones, teeth, and sometimes soft parts of dead organisms for example. We have an abundance of fossils up to and around 540 million years ago! The composition of bone and other living material is organic. I will never believe a city, or car for that matter, will deteriorate to nothing as eluded to. Spookyparadigm is correct, it is illogical to predict "no traces in a few thousand years".

Wait a minute...did I just support Hoagland on something?!

I can believe entire cities going. But I am skeptical of an entire intelligent species leaving no trace.

 

[spookyparadigm]

I took it to mean that there would be no overt visible signs of civilization upon the surface of the planet. It would appear as if mankind never existed, unless you started doing archeological excavations.

I wondered about that myself. But if all it takes is a little digging, that's not exactly wiped clean.