From: "James Wynn" 
Subject: RE: (urth) arcologies like mountains
Date: Wed, 17 Jul 2002 10:52:21 -0500

I'm inclined toward short-timeline theories myself - simply because I don't
think beyond a maximum of a million years in the future, the characters
could credibly be considered human. Although a review of the archives
reveals a wealth of debate on this subject, I wasn't on the list then. ;-)
So I'll offer my pennies:
Mantis wrote:
As for the mine at Saltus: well, urk -- do you believe that excavations of
Roman cities prove that they were in place a million years ago?  Probably
not.
Matthew Malthouse wrote:
But the point I think was made about the mines is that they are not mining
the crust for raw materials (ores) as we would understand it but mining
the detrius of the past - that's unlikely to be less than many many times
what we'd find today in the whole archological deposit between the Iron
Age and now.
From the beginning of the Bronze Age til now - 5000 years --- the currently
available technologically-advanced archeological artifacts available for us
to "mine", is still impressive.
Imagine that extended to 100,000 years - mostly encompassing the output of
artifacts since the first industrial revolution a mere 250 years ago ---
well, one could probably mine for generations in the New Jersey garbage
dumps even if we shut them down today.

-- Crush



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