Ccc 221 - Wishing to Travel Back in Light Years - Our Fingerprints Don’t Fade from the Lives We Touch

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Using our compass as we move towards the west direction for surface survey, we find ourselves climbing on top of huge chunks of metal pieces. They are so huge that we almost find it similar to trekking. These are the pieces we return to the next day and they somewhat look like older days solar panels. And this assumption seems quite legitimate since after a certain point of time humans had almost run out of fossil fuels to meet their demands of energy, then definitely they might have used these huge metal solar panels to harness solar energy. There is also a half remaining structure somewhat south to where we found these metal pieces, seems like a fountain which has long been out of use.

Prominent buildings like where I can recall, was the Research Annex in the past which we surveyed using drones, seemed to have been later on constructed and used as housing a lot of people. We find remains of clothes, broken down and whatever are the remaining pieces of rectangular cots resembling beds.

The analysis of the information that we will gather about past changes from this site will be used to theorize about people in the future, such as using past reactions to climate change to predict what effects of global warming caused such inhospitable environment on earth. We can learn about how a culture changes through time and about what the various differences and similarities between past cultures were. Around what seems to be the ‘A’ block of that time, the building still stands. The paint, whitewash and cement have withered off, but the brick foundation still stands. The ceiling has collapsed, but the interiors are still accessible. We find paintings on the walls. They are splendid and depict various scenes of the life inside this 300 acre area. There are small caricatures of many things painted here. Sports, there is something that looks like a cultural performance. There is also the convocation painted. On the other side, after dusting off excess dust and dirty particles and clearing away we find paintings of the architecture that once stood here. Tall buildings, a titanic shaped central building which as I recall must have been the library. There is also a huge series of paintings in which the heritage of the surrounding areas has been painted. It matters because it is a way to learn where our current culture came from and from that knowledge we can predict what humanity will be like in the future.

Archaeology is important because it’s about the context. It’s about how one little thing might not matter overall, but could change the world when combined with other things around it.

Just on a personal level, archaeology at Shiv Nadar University site has provided information about past people that may have lived in these areas and those who inhabited this area after them. It also produced evidence about civilizations that may be distantly related to me, and unearthed artefacts that tell me more about my heritage. We unearthed graves and found skeletons. But these were different from those which had been discovered by humans in the 2000’s. Maybe because of lifestyle and environmental changes their bodies had adapted in a certain way which eventually resulted in changes in bone structure. But, it’s not just ancient, unearthed stuff that makes me believe all this matters. Coming to this site, Shiv Nadar University matters because it tells about my past, past of planet earth when humans still inhabited it, and one day, even we’ll have become the past, so it is important to come back here and discover

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This sounds crazy. I know what you’re thinking, “Excavating at these deserted and ruined places matters because we become the past? What is that even supposed to mean?” But seriously, coming to Shiv Nadar University after 1000 years matters because it tells us information about past cultures at this place that no longer exist. It is the scientific process involved in surveying, data collecting and excavating at these ruins that teaches us about previous ways of life and gives us a window into how things have changed. It is essentially the history of humankind. We also discovered burnt seeds. I was essentially surprised to see them because now-a-days, we do not even consume solid food, every dish we desire, we have juices and syrups of the same dish which we can simply suck from the glass with a straw. So yes nutrition has now become a fluid and what ‘agriculture’ existed years ago is no longer alive.

Religion as it existed years ago cannot be found on the spaceship I come from now to Shiv Nadar University ruins. I did excavate broken idols of man and woman which had been beautifully painted and I am assuming these were the solid forms of higher forms of energy that the mankind living here worshipped.

“If a tree falls in the woods and no one’s around to hear it, does it still make a sound,” I question if no one’s around to unearth and document this society that existed but is now in ruins, will it still exist? We are the archaeologists of the future and we will essentially preserve whatever we find out about the past way of life here at Shiv Nadar University. Things have changed, people have changed but that doesn’t mean we forget the past or try to cover it up. It simply means that we move on and treasure all the memories.