Det finns en hel del av historier om framtida arkeologer som missförstår vår tid. En massa av dessa berättelser ses över i Gary Westfahls Locus-artikel "The Accompanied Archaeology av framtiden ". Om din mamma kommer ihåg en av berättelserna i den artikeln är det förmodligen antingen James A. Mitchells, baserat på Frihetsgudinnan, inblandad Den senaste amerikanska :
Like Poe's letter-writer, the Persians often misinterpret what they find in these cities. Seeing a sign on the hotel Astor House, the narrator assumes that Astor is "the name of a deity, and here is his temple." They assume that the purpose of the Statue of Liberty was to cast light on the city and cannot believe one of their men who visits it and reports that there are no signs of lighting devices. They come upon the surviving pillars that once supported one of the great bridges of New York, but noting how far apart they are, they conclude that this could not possibly represent the ruins of a bridge. Observing the statues of Native Americans that once stood outside cigar stores, the writer's comment is, "How these idols were worshipped, and why they are found in little shops and never in the great temples is a mystery." It is significant that these future Persians, like later archaeologists we will encounter, have a tendency to interpret enigmatic buildings and objects as aspects of a primitive, polytheistic religion; clearly, it never occurs to these Moslems that the ancient Americans might have practiced their own form of monotheism.
annars Robert Nathan s The Weans :
As one example of their faulty conclusions, the archaeologists assert that "The Weans were probably not at all a friendly or hospitable people" based solely on two pieces of evidence. First is New York City's Statue of Liberty, whose "one arm upraised" is interpreted as a sign of "a threatening attitude." Second is the discovery of an "inscription" reading "the dodgers were shut out." This reference suggests that Nathan's explorers are examining not only buildings and artifacts but also written documents: a table of baseball statistics, evidently found in a newspaper, is regarded as "a primitive form of banking," and there are a number of garbled references to literary writers such as Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Ernest Hemingway, William Faulkner, James Joyce, and Dylan Thomas. Their other errors include: rendering the name of the city of Washington as "Pound-Laundry"; interpreting the name of labor leader Jimmy Hoffa as a common noun, "hofa"; and assuming from the term "hot dog" that the Americans "ate dogs, roasted." Again, the archaeologists are overly anxious to see evidence of primitive, polytheistic religions: they assert that "each city-state worshipped a different Divinity"; a fragmentary description of a rock'n'roll concert is thought to concern a religious event; and the once-influential gossip columnists Hedda Hopper and Louella Parsons are conflated as "a powerful Divinity named Hedda, or Lolly."
Citaten är från Westfahls artikel.
Mitchells The Last American publicerades 1889. Nathans 1960-bok The Weans grundades på två noveller, " Gräver vikarna " ( Harpers tidskrift , november 1956) och" En vidare rapport om språken " Harpers tidskrift , april 1959). Men om din mamma är säker på att hennes bok bara var 100 år framöver så kan det inte vara något av dessa: Mitchells bok är satt i 2959, Nathans 6000 år i framtiden.