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Culture: History
Unambitious record of civilization   (+4)  [vote for, against]
Carve clay and teach some history with it

There have been many proposed projects involving teaching hypothetical future peoples how to rebuild society. Also various complete guides to our civilization and complex and elaborate time capsules. These are fun to consider but would be enormously expensive and therefore unlikely to actually happen.

I propose caches of baked clay tablets of no commercial value or particular other interest be written. They should be designed to be easily counterfeited to lower the risk of plunder for art's sake. They should not be particularly well-made or attractive. A single small room's worth should be enough for a catalog of languages and descriptions of our histories, cultures and peoples.

Twenty or thirty of these rooms should be placed in twenty or thirty dry, uninteresting places and the places included in or with famous treaties and other official, widely duplicated records.
-- Voice, Mar 18 2017

Rosetta Cemetery Rosetta_20Cemetery
[theircompetitor, Mar 19 2017]

To make it even more robust the walls, floor, and ceiling of the room itself can also be imprinted.
-- Voice, Mar 18 2017


AOL CD's would make a good medium.
-- RayfordSteele, Mar 18 2017


I remember being in a room like this while reading The Foundation Trilogy. Room had lasers and woo woo, but if you want to do it on clay tablets that will be less expensive. Since it might no be humans reading it, I would increase the size of the type face to be accommodating. What to write ? What to write ?
-- popbottle, Mar 18 2017


Perhaps a Danielle Steele novel?
-- RayfordSteele, Mar 18 2017


Work has to be done to hold something static against time. It would be nice if the compendium was continually being copied, a living encapsulation.

Thirty seems small, for a fahrenheit 451 society to get to.
-- wjt, Mar 18 2017


//teaching hypothetical future peoples how to rebuild society.

Why would anybody want to rebuild our society? They should try making something better, which wouldn't be difficult.

Avoid rebuilding twitter and facebook as a first non-priority.
-- not_morrison_rm, Mar 18 2017


Facebook and twitter are just the virtual reincarnation of village gossip and communal emotion, everyone is looking for, in this isolated modern iteration.
-- wjt, Mar 19 2017


I'm borderline interested in a crowd-sourced bid to twitter to just shut down until at least Tuesday, November 3, 2020...it would certainly improve my sanity.
-- not_morrison_rm, Mar 19 2017


// it would certainly improve my sanity //

Cui bono ?

Can you put some numbers on that ? A cost-benefit analysis would be appropriate.
-- 8th of 7, Mar 19 2017


Is there a movie where people in the future try to reconstruct civilization and get it all wrong?
-- pashute, Mar 20 2017


//Is there a movie where people in the future try to reconstruct civilization and get it all wrong?//

See: the history of the world from earliest times to the present day
-- pocmloc, Mar 21 2017


//Is there a movie where people in the future try to reconstruct civilization and get it all wrong?//

Sounds like an Ireland Travelogue...
-- RayfordSteele, Mar 21 2017


The idea could be cheaply implemented by requiring children to do their homework on stone tablets.
-- FlyingToaster, Mar 21 2017


There's not much nourishment in stone, and their teeth will be ruined ... or are they meant to be swallowed with water ?
-- 8th of 7, Mar 21 2017


You've misunderstood, [8th]. Obviously the children are to be seated upon stone tablets while they work. I don't see how it will help with recording history but they'll graduate with an appreciation of Zen asceticism.
-- Voice, Mar 21 2017


... and hemorrhoids ?
-- 8th of 7, Mar 21 2017


I don't think you need a lot of these clay tablets. As long as you can give the re-emerging society the knowledge it needs to ferment fruit juices, everything else will sort itself out in due course.
-- MaxwellBuchanan, Mar 21 2017


// society rebuilds

Brexit Brit...sorry, Brexit England, where society decides to opt out of having pesky foreigners, even if they can cook really tasty food.
-- not_morrison_rm, Mar 21 2017


[nrm], you seem to have misunderstood the meaning of the phrase "border control". Nobody currently in England who can whip up a decent balti or a proper pizza will be allowed to leave.
-- MaxwellBuchanan, Mar 21 2017



random, halfbakery