ET TU? APPLE?
I have always been somewhat of a history buff and have enjoyed learning about past civilizations. Makes no difference where it is or what period, I just love reading and learning about it.
I have been a subscriber to several archaeology magazines for many years. I signed up for a dig in Israel many years ago but had to cancel due to some surgery or another, I don’t recall which one.
It has always fascinated me when they post these long articles about finding some treasure trove of pottery shards or pieces of crockery and cooking items. These folks get so excited about what they found and often times they will post a photo of something unusual and ask us to try and identify its purpose.
Yesterday, my wife and I headed off to another town around here and we passed one of those giant garbage mounds that I suppose our towns and cities use for trash disposal these days.
You know the kind. They are all clean and neat with grass on the sides that you can see from the road. Nothing blowing all over the roads like in the past. Thank God for that bit of progress.
Anyway, it got me to thinking about future archaeologists in the 30th century who will start to excavate this mound of ordinary items in our lives that we choose to dispose of.
What will they think when they uncover multiple pieces of almost new, hardly used exercise equipment? You know the kind sitting in our garages that we bought and tried out for a few weeks until it became boring or too hard. Those heavy metal ‘total’ gym sets that never wear out and will appear to be some sort of torture device used to extract confessions or testimonies of some sort. If you didn’t know what it was, what would you think a waffle iron could be used for?
Obviously, it’s connected to electricity but how would someone a thousand years in the future understand waffle or pancake mix?
I suppose we’ve all seen photos and drawing of tools used in medieval torture such as the rack. Suppose that was just a tool used to straighten someone’s back by a chiropractor back in the 1200’s? We could have gotten it wrong…
Tools and computers will be easily recognized since there is so much history concerning their development. Historians may get confused with trying to decide the purpose between VHS tapes, CD’s, DVD’s, MP players, 8 track tapes and flash drives since they all performed the same basic functions. I’m sure that future PHD students will spend years writing research papers on these items.
But what about that ash tray your elderly aunt gave you for a wedding present? The god-awful orange one that opens and closes when you flick cigarette ash into it? You never used it, left it in the original box and its discovery in 3025 will amaze and astound folks for years. There will be multiple research papers written about it trying to determine what it could be used for.
Plastic toys such as Hula-Hoops should be a thrill to someone in the future. The idea of putting a large piece of plastic around your body and making it spin will most certainly not be understood. Even if they find a picture describing someone using one, I would imagine the next question would be ‘why’? Kind of like trying to explain owning a pet rock to a German. I’ve tried, and it gets lost in the translation. Can’t imagine why.
A couple of other things that should hold up and be worthy of examination in the years to come are Twinkies and Ding-Dongs. These are hardly indestructible and have a reported shelf life of several hundred years. The people who are brave enough to drink wine from some ancient gourd can try those.
My wife just got a new ironing board. Try and think about what our future historians and archaeologists will think this was actually used for.
See you next week
