Wednesday, June 24, 2020

Ozymandias the Cave Man

There are about three dozen symbols found in caves around the world, dating back tens of thousands of years. Layers of minerals deposited at a known rate indicate these symbols were used for tens of thousands of years. Human beings thousands of miles and thousands of years apart decorated cave walls with these same non-verbal communications.

We may never know what they meant, if they meant anything at all. It may have been meant to say, "Look upon my works, ye mighty, and despair." Instead, it now simply says, "I was here, but now I'm gone."

Maybe they just meant, "I'm human and I'm here." That's pretty much all we can gather from them, at this point, anyway.

The electrons ordered in such a way to record the words you now read will not be permanent. In tens of thousands of years, the storage of this data will be aeons gone. In an undiscovered niche of a deep cave, though, some of those ancient symbols will likely still be recorded.