What will be left of us?

This week I read an article in a Swedish newspaper called “Ny teknik”. There was an interview with a construction engineer, Kamran Moazami, who has worked with extreme buildings for 23 years. For example he has been involved in the project Torre Mayor in Mexico City and The shard of glass in London (can be seen in the picture to the right). In his opinion, tall buildings are a great way to prevent cities from getting to large by having extremely widespread suburban areas. He claims that New York already is larger than Australia!

In the interview he spoke about how skyscrapers of today are built to stand for ever. Of course safety is an important question when building skyscrapers, but it is also important to customize the building to where it stands. Some are even built with bumpers to prevent major damage in case of an earthquake! So, Mr. Moazomi claims that the skyscrapers he is part of building can stand for ever. All they need is a change of front and good maintenance! If that is the case, will these high rises give a good picture of mankind today? Of this I am not sure. Maybe the skyscrapers can show the archaeologists of 3006 that we were good constructors,trying to use our land in the best possible way. However I don’t think they present the entire picture of mankind 2006. There is more to us than just tall buildings! The fact that we are able to communicate on a regular basis, will they be able to see that? Mobile phones and computers won’t last that long, books certainly will not! Maybe our communicative skills will die with us.

What other things, besides constructions, are possible to find? There is an obvious chance the archaeologists might find bones and skulls of varying quality. The difference in how lives are lead is likely to be shown. Many people are very unhealthy, consuming large amounts of fat and sugar every day, without exercising. Bones from such people might not be as well conserved as bones from more healthy persons. Another interesting thing to investigate is of course the size of our skulls, indirectly our brains. Maybe a thousand years from now, people are far more intelligent with larger brains. The look that is often associated with aliens (small, skinny, green men with large heads) might no longer be extraterrestrial, but terrestrial! It is a fact that the human body changes as our environment does, and already tries have been made to figure out how our development will proceed. Some believe that the alien look will be the result of enhanced use of computers and less exercise in our everyday life.

The statements above are of course only valid if our planet still exists. As a result of our own will to improve everything around us, we have managed to put a threat on ourselves! The environmental problems of today are worldwide and will take decades to overcome, if ever. When it comes to the greenhouse effect, scientists are unable to specify the future changes in our climate. They are, however, certain that there will be dramatic changes and that the rate of change will increase rapidly. Faster changes are more difficult to adapt to, not only for human beings, but for all animals and plants as well.

There is also a possibility that we manage to kill ourselves before anything else does. War is ongoing in many parts of the world, and some countries reveal their secrets about nuclear weapons as a threat to their neighbors. The most recent example of this is Northern Chorea. Mankind has already witnessed the effects of atomic bombs (Nagasaki and Hiroshima during World War II) and hopefully there will be no further detonations. It would be a sad fact if our forthcomings in science and technology would provide the knowledge that eventually kills us.

I prefer to believe that there will be something left for the archaeologists to find in 3006. Hopefully they will be astonished and interested to find out more about the strange looking creatures from the 21st century. And maybe, after years of research, we will be part of history lessons in the 31st century!