What traces of our lives will the mudlarkers and archaeologists of the future find on the Thames foreshore? There are some clues here.
Less predictable is what they will think of them. After all, who would have thought 200 years ago that their discarded smoking paraphernalia would one day become jewellery?
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The plastic objects will depolymerise and crumble in a few decades. But a supermarket trolley dumped in an acidic bog, and thus protected from rust, should do quite well.
Actually not much will survive from our flimsy age. In particular, there will be an almost total loss of written records, preserved as they are on fragile plastic media and cheap paper that disintegrates in sixty years. The internet will simply vanish as if it had never been. In contrast, books from before 1950 will still be legible a thousand years from now.
One of the things that will last for a very long time is the huge granite blocks forming the abutments of Battersea Bridge. One of them is deeply engraved with the name BAZALGETTE, and future archaeologists will ponder over this mysterious deity whose name appears on many granite blocks found in the tidal swamp that was London.
I apologise to Ralph Hancock if I have misunderstood his reference to BAZALGETTE, however future archaeologists need only to Google this word, and the answer is there!
Don't worry, when I wake from my cryogenic sleep I shall tell 'em all about it - course, I might exaggerate my own part in it - King Hugh? Emperor Hugh? Galaxy Commander Hugh? 😎
Given the failure of our fragile digital technologies, and consequent disruption to cryogenic pods, maybe Freezer-Burn Hugh?
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