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the lazy man's way to make something that will last thousands(or more) years: dry stone masonry. I've built a few walls, they're not going anywhere. https://en

the lazy man's way to make something that will last thousands(or more) years: dry stone masonry. I've built a few walls, they're not going anywhere. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dry_stone https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dry_stone

onion2k 7y ago
The mechanical stability of a drystone wall is amazing, but the political stability of the border it represents is very, very fragile. It won't fall over but someone might knock it down. That's the problem the Long Now clock might have solved - it's been marketed as a symbol of human persistence. People are being persuaded that it's important. We maintain our symbolic icons. That political stability is what might keep it standing for millenia, unless people forget what it means.
- hvs 7y ago
  It's very possible that human culture in a millennia (or a century) will see very little value in our current symbols. Most of the ancient world was dismantled by people that saw little value in the dead relics of a previous age.
- TeMPOraL 7y ago
  > We maintain our symbolic icons. Until what the symbol represents starts to conflict with political ideology; then, the symbol gets dismantled to cut people off the undesirable heritage.
  - vageli 7y ago
    > > We maintain our symbolic icons. > Until what the symbol represents starts to conflict with political ideology; then, the symbol gets dismantled to cut people off the undesirable heritage. Or coopted for use by the new ideology.
- Someone 7y ago
  ”We maintain our symbolic icons” …and we destroy those of our enemies (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beeldenstorm https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beeldenstorm, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Destruction_of_Albanian_heritage_in_Kosovo https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Destruction_of_Albanian_herita..., https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buddhas_of_Bamyan#2001,_destruction_by_the_Taliban https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buddhas_of_Bamyan#2001,_destru...) If society collapses, there’s a decent risk the ‘owners’ of the long now clock may start to revere it, with the risk of ‘non-owners’, when they (temporarily) become ‘owners’, to destroy it, or take parts of it home for spoils of war. Alternatively, the ‘owners’ could destroy it themselves for parts.
- NotPaidToPost 7y ago
  It's not possible to protect against destruction by human beings over these timescales, irrespective of whether people remember what the artefact means. Any such project can only use engineering to provide assurance that the result should last that long _if_ no-one destroys it.
  - onion2k 7y ago
    It's not possible to protect against destruction by human beings over these timescales, irrespective of whether people remember what the artefact means. I think once something is more than a few hundred years old then humans will automatically try to preserve it unless there's a good reason not to (reuse of scarce resources, ideological issues, etc). The challenge is getting something to last long enough for our innate desire to preserve history to kick in.
    - NotPaidToPost 7y ago
      > once something is more than a few hundred years old then humans will automatically try to preserve it unless there's a good reason not to This is a very recent development that started circa the 19th century in Europe. Before that no-one really cared.
    - zardoz711 7y ago
      >I think once something is more than a few hundred years old then humans will automatically try to preserve it unless there's a good reason not to Would ISIS's destruction of a few World Heritage Sites, museums, art galleries, etc. fall under "ideological issues" https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/videos/world/2015/08/25/isis-destroying-palmyra-relics-syria-wedeman-pkg-nr.cnn https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/videos/world/2015/08/25/isis-destroy...
- kodz4 7y ago
  I live close to this 1000 year old temple - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brihadisvara_Temple,_Thanjavur#/media/File:Le_temple_de_Brihadishwara_(Tanjore,_Inde)_(14354574611).jpg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brihadisvara_Temple,_Thanjavur... You have to walk through a 100 foot gate of granite just to get in. It blows the mind everytime I walk through at the imagination and ambition to build such a thing. And then inside things are even more breathtaking. It's in daily use for worship and rituals by thousands of people even today. It has seen 8-12 different kingdoms come and go. Not just Hindus but Christians and Muslims administered the area at one time or another. In addition to Stone what you need is Beauty. People universally for mysterious reasons recognize Beauty. If it's beautiful it's going to be protected and taken care off. People will happily die to do it.
  - onion2k 7y ago
    That's an amazing monument. I live 30s walk from this 1350 year old church - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St_Peter%27s_Church,_Monkwearmouth https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St_Peter%27s_Church,_Monkwearm... - it's slightly less ambitious but still a beautiful place, and incredible to think people have been gathering there for that long.
    - arethuza 7y ago
      I'm not in the slightest bit religious, but I do have a fascination with all ancient buildings - religious, military, burial etc. I guess we are lucky in the UK that the place is thick with ancient stuff of all kinds - most of it generally ignored or unknown. e.g. The stone works on Ben Griam Beg - are the a hill fort, are they for catching deer (both seem rather odd given its location) https://her.highland.gov.uk/Monument/MHG9658 https://her.highland.gov.uk/Monument/MHG9658
  - notahacker 7y ago
    Some beautiful structures have survived through constant maintenance of successive civilizations and faith groups. Others have been abandoned to collapse or razed to the ground to punish the people that built it, to clear space to build something new or simply for useful building material. Even the Parthenon, sufficiently revered by successive civilizations to find itself a Greek temple, Roman temple, church and mosque, was redeployed as a gunpowder store with predictable results. Carving a temple out of solid basalt is a more reliable way of protecting from the elements and all but the most determined humans (e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ellora_Caves https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ellora_Caves)
- jpalomaki 7y ago
  Could you get a space vehicle on a trajectory that brings it close to earth only every 1000 - 10000 years? Add there some mechanism that draws attention and transmits it’s message through radio. Would it be doable to have some primitive electronics that would survive so long?
  - extrapickles 7y ago
    Space is a pretty hostile environment over those timescales. Selecting a power source is hard as solar cells almost certainly will not last more than a hundred or two years. Nuclear materials with long half-lives don’t provide much power. Electronics would just have to be big to avoid radiation damage from being a concern.
  - kowdermeister 7y ago
    That's a brilliant idea. I think the electronics part is doable, a radio transmitter is a very simple thing. Some metal alloy with sufficient robustness would probably do the job. We could even build an analog device that could store the messages just like a music box cylinder. https://www.google.com/search?q=simple+radio+transmitter&tbm=isch https://www.google.com/search?q=simple+radio+transmitter&tbm... https://www.google.com/search?q=music+box+cylinder&tbm=isch https://www.google.com/search?q=music+box+cylinder&tbm=isch Also check out Graveyard orbits for decommissioned satellites where they can stay for millions of years and be our monuments from the 21st century. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graveyard_orbit https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graveyard_orbit
  - SmellyGeekBoy 7y ago
    Seems it would be possible to have it spin on its axis so that it reflects the light from the sun towards Earth in some kind of pulsing flashing manner. That would attract attention. No need for electronics. Of course encoding a message in the flash would be almost impossible, but it could serve as a beacon for a future civilisation to attempt to go up there and retrieve it.
    - glaurung_ 7y ago
      Maybe facet the mirrors so that the reflections would flicker in some something like Morse code. I imagine it would be very difficult to decipher and could only convey a few bytes though. Maybe just send a sealed capsule capable of re-entry into an orbit that would actually intersect earth in a few hundred thousand years. I doubt we're capable of that sort of precision though..
arethuza 7y ago
5000+ year old dry stone houses complete with dry stone furniture: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skara_Brae https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skara_Brae Edit: And if you want to go that extra step with your dry stone walls, melt them in place: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vitrified_fort https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vitrified_fort
- monsieurbanana 7y ago
  In the wikipedia article about vitrified forts they say the heat actually weakens the structure.
  - arethuza 7y ago
    Yeah - I didn't mean to suggest it was a good step - they just seem stupendously mysterious sites (I grew up fairly near one and was always fascinated by it).
    - pvaldes 7y ago
      There is a simple explanation for finding vitrified rocks in a fort. Throwing lots of burning oil from the top over a rock of the correct type. They probably found some practical uses for nordic petroleum
masklinn 7y ago
Cyclopean masonry probably helps survive through political instability: small drystone is easy to pull down and reuse. If you can't pull it down without enough technology that you don't need to pull it down it'll probably have an easier time.

onion2k 7y ago

The mechanical stability of a drystone wall is amazing, but the political stability of the border it represents is very, very fragile. It won't fall over but someone might knock it down. That's the problem the Long Now clock might have solved - it's been marketed as a symbol of human persistence. People are being persuaded that it's important. We maintain our symbolic icons. That political stability is what might keep it standing for millenia, unless people forget what it means.

hvs 7y ago
It's very possible that human culture in a millennia (or a century) will see very little value in our current symbols. Most of the ancient world was dismantled by people that saw little value in the dead relics of a previous age.
TeMPOraL 7y ago
> We maintain our symbolic icons. Until what the symbol represents starts to conflict with political ideology; then, the symbol gets dismantled to cut people off the undesirable heritage.
- vageli 7y ago
  > > We maintain our symbolic icons. > Until what the symbol represents starts to conflict with political ideology; then, the symbol gets dismantled to cut people off the undesirable heritage. Or coopted for use by the new ideology.
Someone 7y ago
”We maintain our symbolic icons” …and we destroy those of our enemies (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beeldenstorm https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beeldenstorm, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Destruction_of_Albanian_heritage_in_Kosovo https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Destruction_of_Albanian_herita..., https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buddhas_of_Bamyan#2001,_destruction_by_the_Taliban https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buddhas_of_Bamyan#2001,_destru...) If society collapses, there’s a decent risk the ‘owners’ of the long now clock may start to revere it, with the risk of ‘non-owners’, when they (temporarily) become ‘owners’, to destroy it, or take parts of it home for spoils of war. Alternatively, the ‘owners’ could destroy it themselves for parts.
NotPaidToPost 7y ago
It's not possible to protect against destruction by human beings over these timescales, irrespective of whether people remember what the artefact means. Any such project can only use engineering to provide assurance that the result should last that long _if_ no-one destroys it.
- onion2k 7y ago
  It's not possible to protect against destruction by human beings over these timescales, irrespective of whether people remember what the artefact means. I think once something is more than a few hundred years old then humans will automatically try to preserve it unless there's a good reason not to (reuse of scarce resources, ideological issues, etc). The challenge is getting something to last long enough for our innate desire to preserve history to kick in.
  - NotPaidToPost 7y ago
    > once something is more than a few hundred years old then humans will automatically try to preserve it unless there's a good reason not to This is a very recent development that started circa the 19th century in Europe. Before that no-one really cared.
  - zardoz711 7y ago
    >I think once something is more than a few hundred years old then humans will automatically try to preserve it unless there's a good reason not to Would ISIS's destruction of a few World Heritage Sites, museums, art galleries, etc. fall under "ideological issues" https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/videos/world/2015/08/25/isis-destroying-palmyra-relics-syria-wedeman-pkg-nr.cnn https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/videos/world/2015/08/25/isis-destroy...
kodz4 7y ago
I live close to this 1000 year old temple - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brihadisvara_Temple,_Thanjavur#/media/File:Le_temple_de_Brihadishwara_(Tanjore,_Inde)_(14354574611).jpg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brihadisvara_Temple,_Thanjavur... You have to walk through a 100 foot gate of granite just to get in. It blows the mind everytime I walk through at the imagination and ambition to build such a thing. And then inside things are even more breathtaking. It's in daily use for worship and rituals by thousands of people even today. It has seen 8-12 different kingdoms come and go. Not just Hindus but Christians and Muslims administered the area at one time or another. In addition to Stone what you need is Beauty. People universally for mysterious reasons recognize Beauty. If it's beautiful it's going to be protected and taken care off. People will happily die to do it.
- onion2k 7y ago
  That's an amazing monument. I live 30s walk from this 1350 year old church - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St_Peter%27s_Church,_Monkwearmouth https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St_Peter%27s_Church,_Monkwearm... - it's slightly less ambitious but still a beautiful place, and incredible to think people have been gathering there for that long.
  - arethuza 7y ago
    I'm not in the slightest bit religious, but I do have a fascination with all ancient buildings - religious, military, burial etc. I guess we are lucky in the UK that the place is thick with ancient stuff of all kinds - most of it generally ignored or unknown. e.g. The stone works on Ben Griam Beg - are the a hill fort, are they for catching deer (both seem rather odd given its location) https://her.highland.gov.uk/Monument/MHG9658 https://her.highland.gov.uk/Monument/MHG9658
- notahacker 7y ago
  Some beautiful structures have survived through constant maintenance of successive civilizations and faith groups. Others have been abandoned to collapse or razed to the ground to punish the people that built it, to clear space to build something new or simply for useful building material. Even the Parthenon, sufficiently revered by successive civilizations to find itself a Greek temple, Roman temple, church and mosque, was redeployed as a gunpowder store with predictable results. Carving a temple out of solid basalt is a more reliable way of protecting from the elements and all but the most determined humans (e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ellora_Caves https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ellora_Caves)
jpalomaki 7y ago
Could you get a space vehicle on a trajectory that brings it close to earth only every 1000 - 10000 years? Add there some mechanism that draws attention and transmits it’s message through radio. Would it be doable to have some primitive electronics that would survive so long?
- extrapickles 7y ago
  Space is a pretty hostile environment over those timescales. Selecting a power source is hard as solar cells almost certainly will not last more than a hundred or two years. Nuclear materials with long half-lives don’t provide much power. Electronics would just have to be big to avoid radiation damage from being a concern.
- kowdermeister 7y ago
  That's a brilliant idea. I think the electronics part is doable, a radio transmitter is a very simple thing. Some metal alloy with sufficient robustness would probably do the job. We could even build an analog device that could store the messages just like a music box cylinder. https://www.google.com/search?q=simple+radio+transmitter&tbm=isch https://www.google.com/search?q=simple+radio+transmitter&tbm... https://www.google.com/search?q=music+box+cylinder&tbm=isch https://www.google.com/search?q=music+box+cylinder&tbm=isch Also check out Graveyard orbits for decommissioned satellites where they can stay for millions of years and be our monuments from the 21st century. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graveyard_orbit https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graveyard_orbit
- SmellyGeekBoy 7y ago
  Seems it would be possible to have it spin on its axis so that it reflects the light from the sun towards Earth in some kind of pulsing flashing manner. That would attract attention. No need for electronics. Of course encoding a message in the flash would be almost impossible, but it could serve as a beacon for a future civilisation to attempt to go up there and retrieve it.
  - glaurung_ 7y ago
    Maybe facet the mirrors so that the reflections would flicker in some something like Morse code. I imagine it would be very difficult to decipher and could only convey a few bytes though. Maybe just send a sealed capsule capable of re-entry into an orbit that would actually intersect earth in a few hundred thousand years. I doubt we're capable of that sort of precision though..

arethuza 7y ago

5000+ year old dry stone houses complete with dry stone furniture: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skara_Brae https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skara_Brae Edit: And if you want to go that extra step with your dry stone walls, melt them in place: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vitrified_fort https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vitrified_fort

monsieurbanana 7y ago
In the wikipedia article about vitrified forts they say the heat actually weakens the structure.
- arethuza 7y ago
  Yeah - I didn't mean to suggest it was a good step - they just seem stupendously mysterious sites (I grew up fairly near one and was always fascinated by it).
  - pvaldes 7y ago
    There is a simple explanation for finding vitrified rocks in a fort. Throwing lots of burning oil from the top over a rock of the correct type. They probably found some practical uses for nordic petroleum

masklinn 7y ago

Cyclopean masonry probably helps survive through political instability: small drystone is easy to pull down and reuse. If you can't pull it down without enough technology that you don't need to pull it down it'll probably have an easier time.