Archeological Representation

I have developed the concept that, if a society is abandoned or destroyed, and then investigated by archeologists far in the future, the more technically advanced the society was the more distorted will be it's archeological representation.

The abandoned civilization will be exposed to nature. So it makes sense that the closer to nature it was, the more primitive, the less distorted will be it's archeological representation. The more primitive society will be the more accurately preserved, while the more advanced will have the most distortion.

It is actually prehistoric people that left the most accurate representation of their daily lives. People progressed from living in natural shelters, such as the proverbial cave, to structures made of stone and then to wood. But each is more vulnerable to the ravages of time than the one before it. Writing surfaces progressed from clay tablets to a form of paper called papyrus. But this distorted the archeological representation because clay can last far longer than papyrus.

The same can be said of writing itself. The progression from hieroglyphics to cunieform (use wedge-shaped symbols inscripted with a reed on clay tablets) to alphabets made possible the storing of far more information. But each is more difficult for an archeologist far in the future to piece together than the one before. The most primitive writing is hieroglyphics, the use of picture-like symbols, but that would also be by far the easiest to decipher for anyone who was initially unfamiliar with it.

If our societies were left as they are now and examined by archeologists, say two thousand years from now, how accurately could they piece together our way of life? The first things to be found would be that which is bulky and resistant to the elements. They would find plentiful foundations of buildings, roads, and the hulks of vehicles, trucks, trains, planes and, ships. They would also find machines, tools, coins and, millions of plastic bottles. They would find road and business signs, although few would be at all readable. Coins would be found, but probably no paper money. There would be remains of electrical wires everywhere.

But there would be no trace of any electronic or computerized records. All computer data and programs would be completely lost. Even if some stored computer data could somehow be found, maybe optical storage such as DVDs, the byte coding would be irrecoverable simply because it is so far removed from the way things are done in nature.

So much of modern communications relies on such prearranged codes, including the tones that represent dialed numbers on landline phones and the lines on the screens of cathode ray tubes. This would be forever lost in two thousand years. All writing on paper, movies on reels and music, including vinyl records and magnetic tapes, would be irrecoverably lost. Not only that, but the fact that it is our era that is engaging in large scale archeology of ancient civilizations means that knowledge of those civilizations would be largely lost also, because the sites will not be left for future archeologists.