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[miauw62]

So, I've been thinking about this and think it would give some nice discussion.


Say, humanity dies today. Nothing changes about the climate or anything, all humans just fall over and get a heart attack and die. Pacemakers explode. 10 000 years pass, and aliens with FTL travel find our earth, and colonize it. They start digging, and find archeological traces of us. Or do they? Where would they find our stuff, what would they find and how would they interpret it?

[MetalSlimeHunt]

Most evidence of our civilization is gone, but a good deal of things remain. After 10,000 years, the only thing left of our cities will be their footprints. That said, most coastal cities create clearly artificial footprints that would be recognizable.

Anything large and made of stone will survive mostly intact. The Pyramids, Mount Rushmore, Three Gorges Dam, and Hoover Dam are certain to still be around at this point.

[GlyphGryph]

Buried metal doesn't exactly go away... like... ever. So if they started digging, they'd find plenty, I'd imagine.

Metals and plastics in the ground would easily last 10,000 years. They'd probably find a whole lot of trash. Dumps become historic gold mines, since they have conditions that preserve many types of item.

[Karlito]

10,000 years isn't nearly long enough for direct evidence to disappear. Even after 1,000,000 years, I suspect there would still be evidence of our civilization.

[i2amroy]

Anything large and made of stone will survive mostly intact. The Pyramids, Mount Rushmore, Three Gorges Dam, and Hoover Dam are certain to still be around at this point.

Most of our stone buildings might remain as ruins, but the majority of dams are going to collapse before 10,000 years elapses without preventative maintenance. The difference lies in the fact that when a building collapses it mostly just falls to the ground and becomes a ruin, but when a dam bursts the water tends to wash away a lot of the evidence that it was there.

[Zrk2]

Check out Life After People; it's a whole show about this.

[i2amroy]

Check out Life After People; it's a whole show about this.

Yeah it's a pretty good special, I saw it the first time it aired.

[Vattic]

What you've asked is pretty much the subject of this documentary.

I know there are arguments on both sides but some say humanity has started it's own geological epoch and that this would show up as a layer in the rock.

ninja'd

[10ebbor10]

You guys are also forgetting some other things. Like Space.

While most (read all) of our sattelites will deorbit on their own, and the poor old Mars rovers'll probably get buried, evidence of the moon landing will remain mostly intact.

Oh, and there's the geological effects, which are pretty noticeable. Then there's the monuments, which might survive too. Other things that'll hang around is the evidence of nuclear power plants. It's highly unnatural to find so much radioactive material is such small spots. Besides, the storage things are build to last a thousand years* so they'll be somewhat recognizable.

[PanH]

Pretty much every buildings will be destroyed. The Pyramids survived that long mostly because it's in the shape of ... a pile of stone, which is already quite impressive. The Parthenon is 2500yrs old, and now it's pretty much only the columns left. It's not enough to just being built out of stone, you got to have low pressure (roof would fall) on the walls, for long time resistance. So they'll probably remain in the form of wall ruins.

Dams wouldn't survive, as you need human maintenance, regulating the flow of water, except if we auto it before dissapearing.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

You only need to regulate the flow of water if you are generating power. Without human operators the water will go into the spillways and the dam will be fine for a long time.

[Max White]

Question: Will the continents reform in 10,000 years?
We have introduced a lot of species around to places where they don't have any close relatives. If you are finding animals in America that only have any sort of genetic background in Africa past a certain point in time, and these species have no feasible means to cross an ocean, you can make a guess that at one point that planet had a sea faring civilization.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

No, appreciable continental drift happens in the millions, not the thousands.

[Max White]

They are probably going to wonder where the cows came from then...

[Neonivek]

My favorite way "Humans are special" I have ever seen in a setting was where humans were basically the "In crowd" whos rampant commercialism has lead them to be the coolest race in the universe.

I'd like to say that is what would happen. The aliens would see our videogames, movies, and icecream and go "Wow, humans know how to live"