20,000 years artificially drilled specimen found in Henan

People's Daily Online ^ | Monday, November 22, 2010 | unattributed

[null and void]

Except that the plastic would have long since degraded to dust and the aluminum would be oxidized away.

[Dr. Sivana]

Except that the plastic would have long since degraded to dust and the aluminum would be oxidized away.

So would modern cheap papers (papyrus and vellum would survive better than newsprint). I am assuming that some small portion of everything would have been somehow saved by chance (e.g. shrunk wrap in a cargo plane that landed in the ocean.

Look what happened to this poor Plymouth buried in a Tulsa time capsule for only 50 years!

[Little Ray]

I think a lot of the landfills would survive, or at least their contents.

[gleeaikin]

I really believe that various catastrophes over the millenia have destroyed many more advanced groups, and set us back thousands of years each time. Can’t wait to see what happens when archeologists finally get serious about exploring undersea shorelines and river mouths. Meanwhile there is Graham Hancock’s site/forum.

Regarding remaining scraps, the other day I saw rat foot prints enshrined in fresh concrete. I immediately thought of a science fiction story in which scientists in a future advanced rat population discover this chunk of concrete in a buried/destroyed city, and are shocked to think that rats were once small, naked unimportant critters that were running around in this vanished civilization.

[Dr. Sivana]

I really believe that various catastrophes over the millenia have destroyed many more advanced groups, and set us back thousands of years each time.

That makes a lot more sense than the Erich von Daniken theory that advanced spacemen made all of that inexplicable stuff.

[ApplegateRanch]

That poor Plymouth definitely failed to dodge the arrow of time.

[The Comedian]

Mess-with-future-archeologists-by-making-silly-stuff ping.

Frowning takes 68 muscles.
Smiling takes 6.
Pulling this trigger takes 2.
I'm lazy.

[SunkenCiv]

Another /bingo. :') Given that the generally taught figure of 7000 years for settled agriculture (and it is known to be at least twice that old) fits into the 20K figure almost threefold, there's plenty of room just in that span. For the 50K figure often given by the racial-superiority advocates (the Replacement model advocates), 7K fits seven times, and with the 14K actual figure, 3.5 times. For the span since the beginning of known modern humans (Homo sapiens neanderthalensis) it's over twelve times that long.

In her Plato Prehistorian: 10,000 to 5000 B.C. Myth, Religion, Archaeology, Mary Settegast reproduces a table which shows four runic character sets; a is Upper Paleolithic (found among the cave paintings), b is Indus Valley script, c is Greek (western branch), and d is the Scandinavian runic alphabet.

[SunkenCiv]

That sentence was a valiant effort, and no one should feel fury from reading it.

[SunkenCiv]

wholeheartedly agree.

[Tuscaloosa Goldfinch]

You found my emu! I kept hoping he'd come home by now, but my wife has been saying, "After this much time he's probably halfway to Alabama." I have to go tell her she was right. Do me a favor and bring him home until I can get there. He likes cornflakes for breakfast and he'll curl up on the front porch at night if you give him an old blanket.

Corn flakes and the blanket I can manage, but the front porch is out. He might chew on the wicker. And I don't have any copies of the New York Times to cover the floor with.