Picked this up from the library this afternoon, and watched it while cooking supper. 'Life After people'; a neo-malthusians wet dream. A 'what if there were no people' scenario. It covers some of the ground, but misses out on a lot. Industrial leakage, fires from untended utilities, natural disasters, storms.
Personally I found it hopelessly over optimistic. 10,000 years? Our civilisation would be overgrown and gone long before that.
I screamed
1 day ago
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If archaeologists can find post holes thousands of years old I'd expect the foundations of a lot of structures will still be around for alien archaeologists to examine in 10,000 years. The pyramids are still here and nobodies doing much maintenance to them, so I reckon anything really solid is likely to remain visible for several thousand years as well. But yeah, without anyone attending the repointing and sanding down for fresh paint an awful lot of stuff will start falling down quite quickly.
But not readily visible me old china. The discoveries you refer to were found under a landscape protected by man's continuous action and maintenance.
Soil erosion can readily wipe out traces of post holes. Shifts in river courses, and a bunch of other stuff we just don't think about. Unless of course you've done some time in landscape management. Only really massive structures survive if, and only if, someone is looking after them.
Seen from a geological point of view, the earth under our feet is always in motion.
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