Some of us are very neat people. Some of us are messy. Keeping a place neat is a job, whereas making one messy is not. The Meadowcroft Rock Shelter in western Pennsylvania and other ancient sites of habitation seem to indicate that we have long preferred messiness to neatness. As a species we must not like a tidy place. That is good news for archaeologists because ancient messiness provides the artifacts of life long gone. The junk of the past is a clue to lifestyle.
Fast forward. You are the archaeologist who digs up your dwelling. What do you find? Things lined up in rows and stacked neatly? A bit of a mess? An example of entropy? The reality is that even ancient humans acquired more than they needed. “Hey! Look at this thing I found on the ground. I think I’ll put it in the back of the cave.” And there the thing sits, and sits, and sits, possibly for tens of millennia. And it gets buried under more stuff. That’s the reason that archaeologists dig, and dig, and dig.
Now imagine you practice your archaeology ten millennia from now. You come across a landfill (otherwise known as a garbage dump), maybe the one in Manila, where heavy rains caused a collapse of the large dump that subsequently burst into flames and killed 33 people. Do we really need all this stuff? Think about it: The dump in Manila was so large that its collapse crushed a small peripheral shantytown and killed 33.
So, if your place called Earth is a mess, you might ask who is to blame. And while you set about finding a scapegoat, you might look around at the stuff in your personal place. Do you really need all this stuff?
Fast forward. You are the archaeologist who digs up your dwelling. What do you find? Things lined up in rows and stacked neatly? A bit of a mess? An example of entropy? The reality is that even ancient humans acquired more than they needed. “Hey! Look at this thing I found on the ground. I think I’ll put it in the back of the cave.” And there the thing sits, and sits, and sits, possibly for tens of millennia. And it gets buried under more stuff. That’s the reason that archaeologists dig, and dig, and dig.
Now imagine you practice your archaeology ten millennia from now. You come across a landfill (otherwise known as a garbage dump), maybe the one in Manila, where heavy rains caused a collapse of the large dump that subsequently burst into flames and killed 33 people. Do we really need all this stuff? Think about it: The dump in Manila was so large that its collapse crushed a small peripheral shantytown and killed 33.
So, if your place called Earth is a mess, you might ask who is to blame. And while you set about finding a scapegoat, you might look around at the stuff in your personal place. Do you really need all this stuff?
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