> the French government estimates the current rate of removal will clear the battlefields between 300 and 900 years from now
If it ends up taking until the upper end of their estimate, casualties from WW1 could span an entire millennium.
If it ends up taking until the upper end of their estimate, casualties from WW1 could span an entire millennium.
Many of the early "acheologists" (they were more like tomb raiders, invading egyptian tombs, stealing the contents, and shipping to Europe) died of misterious diseases, or got mad in some way, it is where the "cursed pyramid" trope came from.
Recently it was found out that the culprit for these, was mostly fungus, the fungus locked inside those places over thousands of years, would slowly fill the air with toxic stuff, that then would poison anyone breaking in, with effects ranging from poison-related death/disease, to poison-related brain damage (thus, madness).
Also, losing technology and weapons is not new, India Oral tradition has tales that scientists estimate they were already "mythical" 6000 years ago, and they talk about "giant metal arrows that create pillars of fire and light", "air chariots that shoot other air chariots with light" and "air chariots that fire arrows that follow heat"
Or Atlantis, that was already mythical in ancient Greece (what we know of Atlantis, is about ancient greeks writing about the Atlantis myth... so to them, Atlantis was already a mythical thing).
And of course, people would always stumble into random crap left behind by earlier generations.
For example recently something puzzled many historians, when in germany archeologists found a bronze-age battlefield with traces of having people from all countries in Europe (something kinda bizarre, since until then bronze-age was considered mostly isolationist), with signs of a large scale battle (bizarre because historians thought the population to be too small then, for that happen), and lots of signs of civilisation (advanced clothing and weaponry, including signs of that the soldiers involved were some kind of special forces, having expensive clothes and weapons, multiple scars on their bones, and yet were very strong and healthy).
Or another interesting one, here on HN someone shared recently about the people found dead on tar pits are frequently murdered, not just died there stuck, and research matched ancient roman legends (To the romans, it was a legend already), about how they heard that ancient countries threw prostitutes, adulterers, enemy nobility, and other undesired people into the tar, instead of giving them normal execution and burial.
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2005/05/0506_050506_...
Ancient Indian mythology is creepy as fuck though, got to agree - they even mention units of time of sizes like 8.64 billion human years and longer mentioned in scriptures more than 2000 years old... I mean, I imagine they got to that by playing with exponentiation and logarithms for the first time while trippin' on some 'shrooms... but that's still a good creepy basis for some alternate history tales :)
Do you have a source?
Also I realise this sounds crazy out there, but if you're interested keep an open mind and read them. The actual copies and stay away from research authors like Childress.
It's all pseudoscience/"amateur" history though. As far as I know, no experts take it seriously.
I grew up in a religious household and even as a kid, I couldn't help but draw parallels between current technology or science fiction and religious icons or events, before I even knew the name for that concept.
For example, in Islam the Quran mentions a steed, made of light in some tellings, whose step takes it to the farthest point within its sight.. [1]
A craft that travels at/near the speed of light?
They also have the concept of seven skies, or heavens; could it be seven planets known at the time?
What about the different orders of angels in Christianity, flying beings (again made of light in some versions) each having an increasing number of wings?
And of course there are already adaptations of the story of Atlantis as an alien mothership that crashed into the ocean and eventually sank.
In any case it's fun to think about.
Each one either ascends to the stars or collapses, but they all leave behind remnants that continue to shape the world for those who come after them.
Given the current political and environmental turmoil worldwide, it may not be too far-fetched that we humans of today are but one page in Earth's story. Whatever happens to us, the planet will live on and others may eventually take our place.
[1]: http://www.numenera.com/what-is-numenera/ [2]: https://torment.inxile-entertainment.com