What if...? (Only smart people need answer please.)?

Question

( Please do not waste your time by writing "That will never happen, or man will not exsist..etc) (please, just consider it.)

I have been thinking about this a lot. Let’s say, one day, The U.S. falls as Rome did. 2000 years later archaeologists from the future are digging up clues that may reveal to them our daily lives. Much in the same way people do this today when searching for pyramids and artifacts. What would they think of us?

My friend says they will find all of the McDonalds and think these were our churches.
I think they will dig up coffins and find skeletons with breast implants resting on their ribs. (I hear they last forever). They might think it’s a part of a burial ritual. How about you?

Additional Details

5 minutes ago
Maybe they will think celebrities were gods, and young girls were priestesses because they have posters (Alters?) of Justin Timberlake in their rooms.

BlueOctag... You come off as very condescending. I don't know if you aware of it, but you are a little rude.

Lets not assume that progress is a straight line (Consider the Mayan and Roman Empires). Perhaps our tecnology will surpass even that of our successors. What will they think of us then.

Answer 1

I've actually thought of this a bit myself. You've brought up some things I never thought of, like the McDonald's being seen as our churches and breast implants as a burial ritual. I can see both those things happening.
What about the grocery stores... or Wal-Mart Supercenters? Will they be seen as community gathering places? And lets not quit at the breast implants... what about all the other surgeries people are having, both medical (necessary or not) and cosmetic? Will they think we were all mutilating ourselves? And the celebrities as gods... truly interesting... but what if they were instead viewed as some kind of royal line instead?
Personally, I'd just like to hear about all the stuff they come up with. Hope I get reincarnated as a fly on that wall.

Answer 2

I think that would make for an interesting story.

But with the way things are going, I don't think McDonalds is EVER going to die out, no matter how many times it is blamed for childhood obesity.

Anyway, if I was an archaeologist in that time digging up breast implants, I'd either think that they thought it was a way to differenciate between males and females after death, or that they'd given them some nice little pillows to rest on. Perhaps even that they'd supplied the dead with stress balls in case they woke up and realized that they were buried 6 feet under.

=D

Answer 3

I think that the findings would be placed into a museum, but knowing today's technology in contrast to what WE know as 2000 years ago, there would also be billions upon billions of objects with writing on them. We have a written language and everything we do revolves around it. There is so much we have with writing on it today, that I think people of the future will have a pretty good idea of what likfe was like today.
Not to mention, communication is HUGE compared to 2000 years ago, other coutries around the world will have history books written of our downfall and the knowledge of the U.S. lifestyle is unlikely ever to be lost.
However it is something to think about... Good question. =)

Answer 4

Einstein said he didn't know how WWIII was going to be fought, be he knew how WWIV - with sticks and stones. There won't really be much left accept for bones and rubble. What archeologists in the future think of us is relative to how advanced THEY are. I know what you're getting at, kind of like with a time capsule. I think we would be looked upon as good and bad, good because we have freedoms today that will be gone in the future, bad or primitive because we spent more time chasing money than
loving our families, and discriminating against each other for skin color and cultural differences when this is a melting pot.

Answer 5

They will undoubtably know MUCH more about us than we have been able to learn about the ancient Roman and Egyptian cultures. Why will we be so different? We have many written documents. We have computers, with information stored on them. We have this marvelous invention of of media: photography, TV, VCR, IPODS, movies, films, etc. And we have libraries that have written documents of what happened BEFORE we were ever here. In short, we have the technology that the ancients did not. And that is what they will find, and thus will know a LOT about us.

Answer 6

While it is possible that between now and 2,000 years later that our way of life will be as forgotten as say the Pharonic Egyptians, I think that scientist of the 41st century would have a refined sense of history. That means they will have a greater base of knowledge about our society than we currently do about the 1st century. But as I said before, if for some reason all vestiges of our recorded history were completely lost, then it would depend on the open-mindedness and objectivity of scientists of the future to be able to accurately discern for themselves what our artifacts imply about our existence.

Answer 7

I have often thought about this, and the one thing I do not think anyone would understand is a traffic light, there are diffrent kinds of light boxes suspended above streets, and they are yellow.

I also wonder if they could acess our modern record keeping systems, computers. If they could what diffrences would they find, would the internet still exist?

I think they would also find our organizations strange, we seem to like everything together.

Answer 8

They may conclude that we were illiterate because paper (books, magazines) will likely have disintegrated. The paper we use today is much more fragile than papyrus, cloth or stone tablets. Also, there would be no way to "read" digital/analog media, such as computers and television.

Answer 9

Wow, I never thought about that...
I think that it would depend on the future culture and society. They'd probably think that celebrities were like the pharoahs (worshipped as gods, etc) and we all worshipped them. I think they'll dig us up and think we were brilliant, much like the ancient egyptians, but savage :). Thanks for asking such a good question.

Answer 10

They will think our garbage dumps are gold mines because they will know how to use all the stuff we throw away. Unfortunately they will think we put a curse on these vaults. As they start to mine these goodies they will all get sick from the dirty diapers that never biodegraded in the land fill.