Dave,

On Thu, 31 Aug 2006 12:35:38 -0400, David VanHorn wrote:

> There's a very good book called "deep time" that deals with the subject of
> communication across intervals of 10,000 years or so.  The author worked on
> the panel that suggested various ways to communicate the hazards.
> 
> They had input from various government bodies too, with suggestions like
> burying CDs with the information around the site..

Yes, that'll work - as long as you dig them up every ten years and re-copy them so that any decay of the aluminium coating is obviated! :-)  Not to 
mention that even now we have recording media that are almost inaccessible, because technology has moved on and the drives that created them 
have all broken.  Try restoring a backup from a pre-Travan tape these days...

Cave painting should work though, as long as we can find the colouring material used to do the ones we've found.  Carving in stone is pretty good, as 
long as the surface is protected from the weather.
 
> Something that they touched on in the discussion was interesting to me, and
> I contacted the author with the idea of constructing fortifications around
> the site, all "pointed" inward, based on the concept that regardless of
> languages, we seem to be able to identify fortifications as such. Having
> them ring the site should convey the idea that there's something dangerous
> in the middle, but even then you get to the point of making it
> "interesting", where a buried and concealed site would just be another
> featureless plot of ground.

How about building a huge stone structure to contain the nasty stuff - a pyramid shape is the most stable.  Ah!  It's been done, and did we carefully 
investigate them, reading the hieroglyphs and working out whether they were a warning, and testing for anything nasty inside as we went?  No, we 
just dug our way in!  Hopefully our descendants would be more careful - but actually I doubt it...

Cheers,


Howard Winter
St.Albans, England


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