The Fossilist Manifesto: explaining this world to the next.Graham Hill

Granite memorial to our ‘Airliner Culture’ and airliner incised granite megalith.

‘I hope that we’ll learn to look after our environment better, and our own Palaeolithic bodies. And, of course, it would be lovely to think that all our achievements in literature, music, art and science will be passed on and built upon by future generations. I think the lessons of the past give us grounds for optimism. We are, after all survivors. But perhaps the near future will be less rosy, and our civilisations will crumble. Our descendants might eventually be forced to go back to the ways of the ancients, to become hunter-gatherers once again.’Alice Roberts, The Incredible Human Journey. 2009.

‘Voices of doom may be persuasive, but theirs is a counsel of despair. The world- and our own children- deserve better. The truth is that global environmental problems are soluble. Let us go forward and solve them.’ Mark Lynas, The God Species. 2011.[If you are hopeful, please read his book and be further encouraged.]

‘The desire to convey some essence of ourselves, whether High Church or Kilroy Was Here, is the great impulse behind deep time messages. But there is also a deep desire to shape the future and to use the idea of the future to shape the present. Many legacies stem from this desire…Still, one could bury a time capsule and hope for the best. Once only kings could marshal durable deep time messages. Now we all can at least try. ’Gregory Benford, Deep time: how humanity communicates across millennia. (1999).

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Contents

1 Title page2 Contents page (You are here!)3 The Fossilist Manifesto4 The curation of Fossilist objects: The Gallery, The Basement, Landfill.7 Earlier Fossilist works.10 Some accidental Fossilist work12 Some Fossilist Projects: iPod, concrete eggs/concrete geodes, Many Tol, Lithic Archive27 The Casserole of Ozymandias29 Religion: The tablets of stone30 Intermediate technology Fossilist objects33 Incised highly polished stones39 Fossilism outside Penzance Railway Station?40 The Darlington Brick Train 199742 Ephemeral Granite44 Fossilist critique of a glass button46 DNA: language of life, language of The Ozymandias Project?48 Review of new technologically advanced long term data storage.

‘…a shattered visage lies, whose frownAnd wrinkled lip and sneer of cold commandTell that its sculptor well those passions readWhich yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things…’

Excerpt from Ozymandias. Percy Byshe Shelley

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The Fossilist Manifesto

Our civilisation is global. The last pre-contact peoples probably already know of us from our silver flying machines contrailing overhead. It is the symbol of the advanced twin engined high subsonic airliner that I propose as a glyph to send into the future as a signal of intention to communicate our messages.This manifesto will not be a proposal alone.There already exist over a hundred Fossilist objects. Some will survive and carry information into the distant future and will be increasingly conspicuous in our worldwide geo-anthropic sediment layer as more ephemeral remains decay.The task of Fossilism is no less than to send intelligible information to humans in the distant future. These seeds will help to make sense of the rapidly decaying and oxidising tantalising glimpses of organic and metal remains exposed when intrepid tunnellers drive adits into landfill anaerobic lenses compacted under overgrown rubble landscapes.The content of the messages will be open to the object maker, limited only by the ingenuity of their communication methods and by the physical limitations of the durable materials they choose to work with.The party is nearly over.In our dying days many people may comfort and occupy themselves with Fossilist activity whilst hopeless people panic and rend their clothes.With concrete and ceramics and glass and stones quiet people will make intriguing objects to talk directly to distant survivors.This is who we were.This is what our built world was like.These were our achievements.These were the creatures that lived with us.And yes we were aware of what we were doing and yet carried on regardless almost to the very end!As a manifesto this essay may be expected to be the polemic of a madman.Indeed; but you are cordially invited to construct your own objects and make your own messages as well as to copy and adopt any ideas contained within.Whether you wish to incise an image of your street and bury it in your garden or create a New Rosetta Stone for modern language in roofing slates or anything you can think of that you wish . There is little time and many hands are needed. We are giving up pretending to ‘save the planet’. My hope is for at least a tiny remnant of human population to survive. I have given myself something to do by sending messages to them. I hope to remain dignified and calm to the end.[Having just read about the work of the 29 scientists of the planetary boundaries expert group popularised by Mark Lynas in his book; The God Species, there is the outline for a plan to save civilisation. I hope that we have the time to make the collective effort to achieve this. At the moment I only see time being wasted and until I have the opportunity to volunteer I shall continue to squander the earth’s resources according to my spending power.]

If the Fossilist project is to be more than a distraction or form of therapy then it must be taken up by millions or even billions of people in order not to be completely overwhelmed by the chaos of the rubbish layer. Casual and accidental disposal of Fossilist objects reduces the chances of them surviving attrition and being found intact. Placement in pits, whether they be in basements of buildings, graves, caves or underground time capsules is of proven worth. A formal description follows:

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The Cu ration of Fossilist ObjectsThe GalleryPublicity appears essential to the success of this project. More is more and survivors even if many of the objects do not make sense to future survivors, will at least be informed that people in the past were aware of their likely future and wished to communicate with them.Curators will be needed to place these objects in gallery spaces. Regrettably this may require some of these early objects to meet the requirements of modern art and have an exclusive and monetisable aspect. This is something I have failed to achieve. Maybe YOU can make a commercial proposition out of Fossilism and claim gallery space at Tate Modern in London, MoMA in New York or in new centres of Capitalism such as in Beijing.When Fossilism becomes a subject of popular and intellectual discussion then the language of the work will develop in order to more effectively communicate and be reproduced in many individually crafted objects as well as being an element of mass production, such as ceramic designs on sewage pipes or in advanced stone cutting to produce contemporary grave furniture.

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Airliner incised granite boulder, perforated using beach pebbles. I installed it in the garden of Newlyn Art gallery on 5/3/09 and gave the staff a hand written copy of ‘The Fossilist Manifesto’ and a Fossilist slate plaque describing ‘Road Transport’.The holed granite remained for nearly 2 weeks before ‘disappearing’.

The BasementA typical museum or gallery displays only a fraction of its acquisitions at any time and some may only be seen on request if they appear in an inventory. It is the aim that after any successful public display these objects will reside; forgotten in these vaults. When the building collapses after looting and often burning; the Fossilist objects will preferentially survive and remain to carry additional information that this site is a repository of curated knowledge. Such an object is in The Royal Cornwall Museum, Truro and is hoped to show where a prehistoric pottery and worked stone collection is from and identify the future ruins in which the collection resides; as a museum.

Images clockwise: Slate showing centre of find spot with holed megalith at Clodgy Moor, person to scale and selection of arrowhead types found there and in Royal Cornwall Museum collection at Truro with steps and fluted column to label the ruins. Map on back of slate showing relationship between find spot and museum with rivers to help. An arrowhead; part of the Clodgy Moor collection . Photo of Clodgy moor holed megalith. Drawing of the same, showing incised airliner motif and buried ‘concrete egg’ deposit under the foundation.

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LandfillRejected by the curator or perhaps deliberately placed in their rubbish bin by a self-effacing artist (if that is not an oxymoron); these objects will be compacted into a geological deposit, perhaps further consolidated by being built upon if civilization persists. Within this rich seam will be a treasure trove of exotic fragments made legible by the guidance of Fossilist objects; technological seeds and warnings from before history broke may give our descendants the missing elements to get it right next time.

Images: left; my first Fossilist object, an airliner engraved on a tiny slate fragment, presumably filed in the bin for landfill in the London area and right; some of the scenes engraved on a turned serpentine lidded bowl; a Fossilist piece likely installed in the geological deposit formed by the garbage from New York. In fairness to the curators of the great modern collections of UK and USA, these objects might be in the basements of their illustrious buildings.

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Some Earlier Fossilist WorksIt might already appear that G. Hill is under the delusion that he has thought a new idea. Much of our history and all of our prehistory has been reconstructed through archaeology in which information has been gained from study of objects and their relationship to each other. I will argue that most of this evidence has reached us without the intention and planning to directly communicate with a future civilization and I would class nearly all finds including graves, ritual pits, buried hoards and even time capsules where they reach us carrying information as ‘Accidental Fossilism’ and I shall discuss this under that heading.However there does seem to be a very basic need to express across many generations ideas and perhaps the pathetic Kilroy style reminder that someone was here and feeling lonely and mortal even if beyond reach of comfort. Gregory Benford(1999) defines and expresses this tendency thus:‘This simple, universal impulse gives us the most common type of deep time

message. In nooks and crannies of once great buildings, one finds the cut or carved or scrawled evidence of a desire to not go unheralded into oblivion: ‘Kilroy lives.’

Here are some attempts to talk to the future from people who antedate the Fossilist Manifesto:

1 GILGAMESH, with instructions to find it written on a lapis tablet in a copper box in the Great Walls of Uruk. The dead sea scrolls and copper scrolls have also been placed in a stable environment in a fair attempt to reach out in time, perhaps deposited by a persecuted sect in fear of annihilation .2 THE PYRAMIDS and CATHEDRALS. Great stone structures are ostensibly about religion and communicating a loyal message to their gods; some of them hidden or beyond the reach of mortals, but any commissioner is trying to immortalise their name in a keystone or carved image. Perversely our cathedrals of power, worked in megatons of poured concrete; power stations carry messages of concentrated political power and even the power to break atoms, fossilised in their fabric in some cases.2 HOUSE OF LOVE. Chiselled symbols in stone at Ephesus, Turkey with many more recent scraffito additions to stonework by archaeological tourists. Ubiquitous scratched stone surfaces are more than practical and mundane. They may not only be seen ‘defacing’ archaeological sites and sacred sites such as the pillars of cathedrals but also vantage points in the landscape, such as the slate outcrops overlooking Boscastle and the walls of the custody cells of Maidstone Police Station.(I occupied one on March 28th 1995). These are the ‘Kilroy was here’ style scratchings of transient beings craving identity in a vast and empty universe.

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3 QUATERMASS AND THE PIT, BBC TV drama, Nigel Kneale, 1958 onwards. A 5 million year old spacecraft buried under London communicates with the present. Other great sci-fi genre ideas including the Arthur C. Clarke, 2001 black megalith might also be mentioned.4 A WARNING TO LAST 10 000 YEARS, Desert Space foundation, Eureka County Courthouse, Summer 2003. A competition to design durable artwork to warn a future civilization about the nuclear waste to be deposited under Yucca Mountain.5. PLAQUES ON DEEP SPACE PROBES. Best examples are those on Pioneer 10 and 11 ; metal inscribed plaques designed to be read and understood by aliens.6 OZYMANDIAS, poem by Percy Bish Shelley.7 THE OZYMANDIAS PROJECT. 1993. David Green. A repository for human culture. The deep time capsule part of the project is designed to be resistant to entry by early survivors of the end of This Civilization; awaiting advanced drilling techniques before they can harvest the fruits of this one.

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Images: left;Foot points the way to a woman at ‘The House of Love’ incised into a paving stone and right; later tourists’ graffiti incised into an ancient wall at Ephesus, Turkey.

Left: incised in slate outcrops at a viewpoint over Boscastle. Even in exposed conditions a signature dated to 1904 is clearly legible.

8 ARTWORK ON THE HOOVER DAM. 1935. The structure is one of the engineering marvels of the 20th century and likely to last as a ruin as long as Khufu’s pyramid at Giza. The artist Oskar J. W. Hansen was fully committed to expressing messages about the builders across distant time. The main sculpture of a 142 ft flagpole flanked by massive winged bronzes is a descriptive floor.To quote usbr.gov :‘Surrounding the base is a terrazzo floor, inlaid with a star chart, or celestial map. The chart preserves for future generations the date on which President Franklin D. Roosevelt dedicated Hoover Dam, September 30, 1935. In this celestial map, the bodies of the solar system are placed so exactly that those versed in astronomy could calculate the precession (progressively earlier occurrence) of the Pole star for approximately the next 14,000 years. Conversely, future generations could look upon this monument and determine, if no other means were available, the exact date in which Hoover Dam was dedicated.Near the figures and elevated above the floor is a compass, framed by the signs of the Zodiac.’9, THE SVALBARD GLOBAL SEED VAULT. To quote Wikipedia:‘…is a seed bank located on the Norwegian island of Spitsbergen near the town of Longyearbyen in the remote Arctic Svalbard archipelago, about 1300km(810 mi) from the North Pole. The facility preserves a wide variety of plant seeds held in an underground cavern. The seeds are duplicate samples, or “spare” copies, of seeds held in gene banks worldwide. The seed vault is an attempt to provide insurance against the loss of seeds in gene banks, as well as a refuge for seeds in case of large-scale regional or global crisis[surely an element of David Green’s Ozymandias Project now realised]…The prime ministers of Norway, Sweden, Denmark and Iceland participated in a ceremonial “laying of the first stone” on 19 June 2006…Spitsbergen was considered ideal due to its lack of tectonic activity and its permafrost, which will aid preservation. The location 130 metres(430 ft.) above sea level will ensure that the site remains dry even if the icecaps melt…Prior to construction, a feasibility study determined that the vault could preserve seeds from most major food crops for hundreds of years. Some seeds, including those of important grains, could survive for longer, possibly thousands of years.’10. PINCE NEZ, MOUNT RUSHMORE. The four Presidents of The USA, carved by Gutzon Borglum et al. from 1927-41 are consciously likely to be recognisable as human heads after thousands of years. One of them bears a technical innovation. To quote: ‘President Teddy Roosevelt wearing pince nez, huge granite sculpture at Mount Rushmore National Memorial, [image] as seen on Wikipedia.’References1, 6/1/09. Wikipedia, Time Capsules [An excellent article; critical of the limitations of most time capsules as repositories of culture. From a Fossilist point of view most of them are stated to be opened at a specific time interval after burial, implying an unbroken history to make this possible and so failing as Fossilist objects.]2 I visited and took photographs in 2008.(Oh yes!)3 Vague childhood memory and Wikipedia confirmation 2-/12/08.4 Remembered from New Scientist magazine read in (?)2003. Details from Google search and Benford, G. 1999. Deep Time, Avon Books Inc., pp. 33-85.5 Childhood interest; details from Ridpath, I. 1981. Hamlyn Encyclopaedia of Space, pp. 151, image. Also Gregory Benford’s account (see ref.4), pp. 89-134.

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6 Google research lead from Wikipedia ‘Time capsules which mentions ‘ The Ozymandias Project’. This contains the poem; chosen by David Green. 6/1/09. 7 see 6. Email sent to David Green on 6/1/09 and a communication established with my revered antecedent.8,23/12/12.usbr.gov Bureau of Reclamation Lower Colorado Region.[Hansen] He compared the dam to such works as the great pyramids of Egypt, and said that when viewing these man-made structures, the viewer often asks of their builders, “What manner of men were these?”9 Wikipedia 2/1/2013 ‘Svalbard Global Seed Vault’. aetherambler.net/The Ozymandias Project/History of Project. 4/1/2013. Letter from Michael Novacek, The American Museum of Natural History to David Green [circa late 1992]‘…-What should we do first? My bias leans toward capturing the vast collected and uncollected database on biological diversity because possibly 30% of this diversity will be erased in four or five decades…’10 antiquespectacles.com 4/1/13. Wikipedia.com ‘Mount Rushmore’ 4/1/13 ‘The durable granite erodes only 1 inch(25 mm) every 10,000 years.’

Some accidental Fossilist works‘In the land of lobelias and tennis flannelsThe rabbit shall burrow and the thorn revisit,The nettle shall flourish on the gravel court,And the wind shall say: ‘Here were decent godless people:Their only monument the asphalt roadAnd a thousand lost golf balls.’Choruses from ‘The Rock’, T. S. Eliot.(1)THE BUSINESS OF ARCHAEOLOGY. An outstanding example would be the encapsulation and rediscovery of towns such as Pompeii and villas such as at Oplontis. More generally the deliberate burial of intact objects in graves and the conscientiously durable grave furniture such as tomb stones have a greater chance of survival beyond that of its civilization than the trampled and ephemeral domestic materials, likely distorting our view of prehistory.THE TML (Channel Tunnel) has an engineering life of 100 years but is likely to remain Fossilised in its 100 million year old chalk bedrock, as well preserved as a slightly crushed Micraster or Conulus Cretaceous fossil urchin. The tunnel boring machines have already carved out side chambers for themselves. Thousands of major engineering projects will leave concrete and rock signatures on the scale of pyramids and leave clues as to their purpose and thoughts of their makers. For instance:M25: London orbital motorway. This announces the significance of The capital city to an impartial observer, even when overgrown and is all the more obvious to an observer from Earth orbit.(2)WORLD WAR 2 Aircraft bombs and aero-engines are buried deep in London Clay and other soft but ancient sediments.(3)SHIBBOLETH, Doris Sakebo. Refilled with concrete in The Turbine Hall, Tate Modern, London; this obviously artificial simulation of a crack will prove that the future ruin was more than just a decommissioned coal-fired power station. Evidence for the latter is the enhanced concentration of coal on the Thames foreshore nearby, including fossils. I picked up a Stigmaria ficoides rootstock there in August 2008.

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(4) Fossils in concrete. Usually trace fossils or as a Paleontological term; ichnofossils. Bicycle tyre prints and footprints in recently cast concrete leave a clue to wheeled transport and the use of protective footwear. Some may be more deliberate and include ‘Kilroy woz ere’ style calls for immortality.

The artist; Christopher Locke has made moulds of obsolete consumer products and cast them in fine concrete. To quote pichaus.com:

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The filled in ‘crack’ in The Turbine Hall of Tate Modern, London. The lack of realism of its form imply a symbolic purpose for the future ruins.Below: outside on the foreshore the beach includes furnace slag and coal from its use as a power station.

A remnant of concrete from making concrete eggs. This is an impression taken from a die cast metal model of Concorde.Appreciated by Baz Mayhew and gladly gifted to him.

‘Christopher Locke has made ‘modern fossils’ by hand, everything from cassettes and floppy discs to Nintendo and joysticks. They represent pieces of modern technology that almost has become “extinct” in these days because of improved technology.Also for sale as art objects accurately replicated in concrete are; ‘Concrete cameras and Future fossils…For their Future Fossils series, husband/wife duo, Bughouse (aka Rebecca Johnson and Jeff Klarin) gave gravitas to iconic bygone gadgetry. Children of the 70s/80s and pre-iphoneography camera-enthusiasts will enjoy revisiting the 8mm, 16mm, 35mm and Polaroid cameras in particular.’A concrete sculpture of a jet engine on its pylon, mounted on a plinth with a finely detailed compressor disc is the work of Australian sculptor; David Waters. A concrete sculpture standing next to Coolhaven subway station was commissioned by the War and Resistance Museum in Rotterdam in 2008. Called ‘The Shadow’ it measures 600 x 550 cm and is in the form of a freely interpreted Heinkel He 111 bomber standing on its tail. The open bomb bay reveals correct details of the bomb stowage.(onnopoiesz.com) References

(1) My assertion. I have been field walking for prehistoric worked stone and pottery since 2004 and have met specialists in these disciplines as well as archaeologists and museum curators. I recommend The Portable Antiquities Scheme.

(2) Childhood reading of ‘Danger UXB’, M. J. Jappy (Gillingham Public Library) and watching the eponymous TV series and BBC Time Team excavations of wartime aircraft impressed me about the ability of dense objects to be deeply buried after falling from high altitude.

(3) I visited London in August 2008 and reached Tate Modern via the exposed beaches at Thames low tide and The Millennium bridge. I looked for the crack in the floor and photographed my wife lying down next to it.

(4) I had not heard of Locke’s work but it was brought to my attention by Ellie and she showed his images on Facebook after seeing my pieces. More of Christopher Locke’s art in concrete and his thoughts about the pieces can be found on heartlessmachine.com. Bughouse is featured on jeremyriad.com.David Waters work including the ‘concrete jet engine’ are to be found on artsopen.com.au 25/12/12.

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Some Fossilist Projects(1)iPod. Exact copy scratched into a slate plaque with a design on the back to reveal its purpose.

(2)CONCRETE EGGS /CONCRETE GEODES. These are cast into a supported papier mache form with an inner waterproof container holding a curated object. This may rattle if it is for instance a die cast metal aircraft model or otherwise a separate pebble in glass jar is encapsulated in the form.

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Completed on 1/4/09. Classic iPod in slate with animated danceron the back,connected to theear, to scale.Music notation is a possible glyph if it is also found on durable lithic flutes and chimebars.

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Images. Above: ‘Eat The Rich’; a provocation containing a flint fossil as a rattle and a stainless steel knife, fork and spoon encapsulated in oil.Left; papier mache balloon forms with corrugated cardboard airliners on the inner surface.

Images. Below; die cast metal airliners in plastic bottles as rattles. Right; balloon forms supported externally by sand in a bucket.

Images. Left; casting the concrete. Below; removal of papier mache .

(3)MANY TOL; A recreation of the Cornish Men-an-Tol holed coarse granite megalith, made by volunteers using hammer stones. The aim was for a larger hole diameter than the 0.51 metres of that stone; possibly to accommodate the larger girthed modern people who may wish to ritually pass through .[Precursor smaller holed stones were completed in 2008 and the full sized granite completed in July of that year. The Fossilist attributes will be further discussed later with manufacturing notes and philosophy discussed in ‘The surprisingly late adoption of slotted perforation implements and what this suggests about The Neolithic outlook’(Google).]

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Some concretegeodes. They contain rattles to encourage acurious person to open them.They contain metal aeroplanemodels, shiny medallions with some of our cultural symbols and even books such as ‘HolyBible.’

Left on Werrytown beach .Below: Clodgy Moor with plumb bob, levered vertical.

(4)LITHIC ARCHIVE An appeal is made to all people to scratch modern themes on to pieces of slate and other gravable stones. I made 6 in 3 days, limited by creativity as much as opportunity. With publicity millions could be made.

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Lack of artistic ability need not prevent works being made.

Lack of artistic ability 2. See how airliner culture people live in 2 storey houses and other multi-storey apartments. The building continues up to the slate break to emphasize this.

An airliner with contrails carved into the cortex of a flint nodule. This kind of engraving has been found in the Neolithic Capsian tradition of North Africa and near to this nodule (5, Hoath Close, Kent, UK) a prehistoric flint pick was found bearing flint flake made striations in its cortex(boxed image), indicating the likely survival if not disturbed.

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We went to the moon and below:A pair of F22 Raptors.

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Images right and below. 2 sides of a slate showing airliners crashing into The World Trade Centre twin towers.

Left. Complex and ambitious slate with a demonstration of oil extraction from a geological formation and a world infrastructure based upon it on land, sea, air and in space.

Image right: A picture dictionary for English words. ‘Man, Woman, Child, Baby.

Image of Blue whale, Right whale and also to scale; Harbour dolphin, human swimmer and whaling ship.

(5)CAVE PAINTING Paintings, scratchings etc. made on walls of tunnels, basements, bunkers, mines and other secret spaces before abandonment and sealing. This is a recognisable human activity and is happening today as it did in Lascaux and other prehistoric sites.(6)GLAZED POTTERY and other fired wares like stamped bricks and clay tablets. Purpose made Fossilist ceramics carrying tiny motifs; resistant to fragmentation are preferred to those which become a mostly missing jigsaw puzzle. Making a production run of identical large design Fossilist ceramics would largely overcome that problem. That problem is discussed and a solution realised in the section; Casserole of Ozymandias’. (Accidently)baked tablets preserved some of the first writing in Mesopotamia. Later in Classical Greece votes were scratched into glazed pottery fragments(Ostrica).(7)AEROSPACE MEDALLIONS A search of the world will yield many coins and commemorative medallions yield intriguing images of contemporary; often technological subjects. Examples from the Solomon and Marshall islands include ‘AV8B Harrier II’ and ‘First Man in Space’. Also of interest are the Isle of Man Millennium Collection and medallions from Danbury and Franklin mints producing the ‘Men in Space’ and ‘America in space’ collections respectively. It only remains to make caches or hoards in suitable ceramic, glass or concrete containers; perhaps perfused with a suitable protective medium such as a low volatile oil or pitch to reduce oxidation. A concrete geode; ‘Triumph of Socialism’ contains a North Korean medal bearing images of planes, a ship and a soldier.

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(8) NEW ROSETTA STONE. A single massive hard fine grained stone with modern language comparison texts is the model suggested by David Green, with helpful engraved pictures or glyphs. These may be duplicated or the task divided between a group of stones. The Fossilist Project has begun the task as a Rosetta stone in fragments. Wherever possible fine stone objects and humble slate fragments contain pictures accompanied by words in different languages. A very productive event might involve a group of students with diverse languages working together on a group of slates.

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Greenstone bangle: ‘sorry’; rejected by The Saatchi gallery but graciously returned by post.

Airliner contrailing mace and Sea war slate.

Slate given to Hayley for her garden.References:

(1) iPod and a few other modern gadgets seem to be in need of immortalising in stone. They have antecedents in the popular sci-fi drama TV series ‘Star Trek’ which had several kinds of multifunctional hand-held gadgets called Tricorders.

(2) My Dad; M. S. Hill, confirmed details in a telephone conversation of 4/1/09. He cast 2 tapered square section concrete flower containers in 1977. The hardboard forms had jig sawed hardboard cut-outs attached of diamonds and crowns (a date reference to HRH Queen Elizabeth II Silver Jubilee), leaving permanent impressions in the outside walls of the tubs. They remain to this day on the backyard of my parents’ house near Gillingham in Kent. Dad points out that the concrete is only now reaching its full strength. In a chalk area these constructions may last for a geological amount of time if buried.

(2a)Rachel Whiteread. I was an avid reader of newspapers in 1993 when Rachel Whiteread won The Turner Prize for young British artists and read about her and other shortlisted work through the amusing commentaries of critic; Brian Sewell in The Evening Standard newspaper. I liked ‘The house ‘which involved spray concreting the inside of a terraced house to leave an internal cast after the fabric of the building was stripped away. The work gained in stature by being demolished. It seemed to reveal the living space in which most people are expected to spend their exists(3) I can make holes through rocks using only other rocks. What began as a way

of designating modern manufacture on finished objects so as not to cause problems for museum curators became an acute problem in 2008 as it proved arduous to incise deeply a date of small size involving curves such as in ‘8’.The airliner motif immediately solved the problem; being entirely straight lines. In the night of 23-24/12/08 whilst having a fever due to influenza the

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airliner emerged not only as the motif for our world culture but also the first point of communication with a future estranged one.

(4) Tintagel incised slates in Royal Cornwall Museum, Truro look fresh after

more than 1000 years. A slate bracer of Later Neolithic to Early Bronze Age date (4400-3500 years b.p.) still shows fine manufacturing scratches.

(5) An incised slate showing a sailing boat has been found nearby and has remarkable if ambiguous profusion of details and is still to be dated but appears to be at least Early Medieval and perhaps prehistoric. Slates are capable of retaining fine details if not abraded i.e. not exposed or in the top soil even in acidic conditions. A find of a slate disc with a cross-hatched design on one side and arrows on the other found in October 2012 in a Neolithic context at the excavations for Truro Eastern District Site is another example of good preservation.

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A major fragment of a slate bracer; mellowed with age and contact with acidic sediments but still showing fine striations from its manufacture.

Airliners on a greenstone bracer and celt. Airliner on granite holed megalith

Image : slate engraved with image of a sailing boat of great age.( Cornwall)(6) A lifelong interest in exploring air-raid shelters and pill-boxes in Britain and

such fortifications as Atlantic Wall gun emplacements always contain graffiti. I have visited sites of Palaeolithic art in The Dordogne in France and Nerja, Spain and seen the recently discovered incised mammoth in Gough’s cave, Somerset. Alice Roberts writes on page 267 of ‘The Incredible Human Journey(2009, Bloomsbury.)‘Further along in the same chamber [Peche Merle, Lot, France.] there was another hand stencil, this time in red ochre. I found these hands incredibly moving- it was amazing to think of that Ice Age artist, so many thousands of years ago, placing a hand on the wall and recording that moment. I felt privileged to be seeing those images. It was like a message that had been passed down from ancient times to the present. What did it say? I know the meaning is lost forever, but for me those hands say ‘we are people, just like you.’’Chislehurst caves, Kent contain many carved heads, names and brief descriptions in the chalk walls, mostly made in the 20th century.

I made a complete strip photo of both walls of Heamoor Roundabout subway; luckily as it was shortly afterwards completely painted over.

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Carved into the chalk of the walls of The Chislehurst caves in Kent.

An amusing figure we named ‘The Troll’ enlivened the blanked walls. We caught them in the act of painting him over in January 2009.

The Wigmore-Hempstead subway near Gillingham, Kent has accumulated a rich palimpsest of graffiti and took some photographs, but before I could do a

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Detail from murals painted on both walls of Heamoor roundabout subway.It has since been over painted cream.

complete set of strip pictures it was officially vandalised in 2008 by over painting. Later blackboard style painting allowed people to make ephemeral messages with country rock chalk.

(5a)The Cities Underground TV series; broadcast on Discovery channel show many nearly inaccessible or soon to be sealed chambers; often containing official signage, graffiti and even murals.

(6)Popular culture made me aware of Homemaker crockery which is a ‘modern’ machine printed tableware with small pictures of desirable consumer goods from the late 1950s. when fragmented the small size of the motifs makes some of them likely to be preserved whole. Transfer ware designs from the 19th century are still well preserved and the willow pattern bird and footbridge are often found. There is a great deal of commemorative pottery bearing contemporary technology, such as Apollo 11 mug which I drank from as a railway guard until I crazed the base from dropping my train key into it. This and mugs such as ‘Spaceport USA’ bearing an image of the Space Shuttle would intrigue future people but for the problem of fragmentation of these large images.

[During a visit to Royal Cornwall Museum in January 2013 by chance I saw an exhibition of Homemaker crockery. It was made exclusively for Woolworths between 1957 and 1970 and designed by Enid Seeney, working for Ridgeway Pottery. She said:“With the benefit of hindsight, I feel satisfaction at having produced work which truly belongs to the 1950s…”( She had left the company to get married and this was her last and commercially most successful design).In a dream come true: ceramicist Helen Johannesson revived the designs in 2006 with a range of objects on her plates including a kettle, electric angle poise lamp, mobile phone and food processor. Examples of these plates, sugar bowls and a lidded jug are for sale in the museum foyer under the tag ‘Homage to HOMEMAKER’. Helen says:“My YoYomaker plate feels like you’re in the 1950s, but modernised.”]

(6a)I had heard of Grayson Perry and heard his appearance on BBC radio 4 as the guest on Desert Island Discs. The photos of his pottery, some of which won him The Turner Prize, show that he is putting contemporary images on to his pottery. As well as the social and psychological drama there are aeroplanes, high rise

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Hempstead to Wigmore subway before over painting with blackboard paint.

buildings and people in modern dress. His craftsmanship is outstanding from the photographs seen and even fragments of his pots will be interesting. I hope that some of his pots survive intact! (7)+of the big technology of the 20th century, otherwise stray coin finds in Britain may only show that the Queen was grumpy. The 50p coin is a canvas for baffling designs but one shows the fiftieth anniversary of the D-day landings with a crashing perspective view of fighting planes and warships. The 2011, 50th anniversary of The World Wildlife Fund includes dozens of tiny creatures with centre-piece of a giant panda which may outlast the bamboo shoot eating evolutionary dead-end. (Maybe having a very large brain is also a problem). The £1 coins include quite informative images of bridges: 2004; the Forth Railway Bridge(cantilever), 2005; The Menai suspension bridge, 2006; Egyptian Arch railway bridge and 2007; Gateshead Millennium bridge.(8) On 4/1/09 I realised the need for a New Rosetta Stone comparing texts in English, Chinese, Spanish etc. with as many helpful symbols and pictures as possible. It might be possible to teach some mathematical ideas as well.

Whether it will be in the form of a massive object like Arlington Cemetery or Minim Gate, Ypres or as thousands (or millions) of ad hoc slates produced by bilingual people I do not know. I suspect the latter and certainly the task has begun with dozens of such slate and other lithic objects in existence.I attempted an email discussion with David Green on 6/1/09 after discovering The Ozymandias Project(Google). This was achieved beginning 12/10/10 at a new active email address. He had contacted and was encouraged by such people as Carl Sagan but could not gain the funding to develop the project into hardware.

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Slates with the number line, base 10 numerals, zero, negative numbers, the operations of plus, minus, multiply and divide and the balance of equals with fraction and decimal notation compared with their position on the number line.

He had proposed a New Rosetta stone as part of the project as a megalith with helpful illustrations.

The Casserole of Ozymandias: an attempt to save a treasured text.If it is assumed that the meaning of a written language can be retained(an unlikely prospect after the end of civilisation) then the task of saving a document is simplified. The Casserole of Ozymandias is an unusual demonstration of a method. It addresses the problem of fragmentation of larger stone tablets as it prefragments the tablet down to much less fragile sizes. It then labels the back of each fragment in order to define the page. The new problem of where the possibly further abraded edges fit together is addressed. This is an unresolved issue for floating text pieces in such fragmented texts as The Dead Sea Scrolls.The poem Ozymandias; chosen by David Green as apposite to his eponymous project is stored in a close lidded transparent Pyrex glass casserole dish. It is intended to be emplaced in a limestone cave or similar and likely be sealed under flow stone. The poem is incised into more than 2 fragmented text panels. The novelty is that the break edges carry overlapping text so that further edge damage still gives an overlap. Hence the fragmented word ‘Ozym-‘ could be matched to an edge inscribed ‘-ymandias’ and other truncated words and gaps would match on the break edges. The effect is enhanced by surrounding the poem with an incised text box. The loss of fragments of text is tolerated. A disturbance by a treasure hunter or digging animal may involve pieces being taken and like a second hand jigsaw puzzle it is unlikely to be retained complete.Having demonstrated the method I toyed with the idea of proposing it to religious organisations as a way of preserving sacred texts. I was half-hearted and my first response from the secretary to The Archbishop of Canterbury was discouraging.The small companion slate I sent with my letter; titled ‘Religion’ may be in local landfill where it has a good chance of outlasting all the paper Bibles ever printed!I expect that ‘True Believers’ will not be needing the services of a durable document as their sacred book will miraculously survive, whether by faithful rememorizing or copying and to suggest otherwise would be an insult.None-the-less I suggest that a monastery would be well employed to copy the pages of its books onto small overlapping slate fragments and store them in its crypts, catacombs and graves.ManufactureThe method for making the text was laborious and involved making a large set of paper photo copies so that exact overlapping templates could be pasted onto the slates to cut through with small steel hand-tools. If the task was to reproduce a larger work then machine tools and computer control would become attractive. A hybrid between the prototypes and crude hand made demonstrators of Fossilism and the state of the art unrealised by David Green’s Ozymandias Project could mass produce millions of items and technically competent, motivated and modestly funded teams could solve the problem of making a durable paper book in combination with a robust encapsulation. A demonstrator for this: ‘The Holy Bible’; part of the concrete egg/geode series will be discussed later.

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Religion: The tablets of stone.A solution to preserving a religious text is to summarise it into a short message. It will not be possible with major religions as no-one will agree on what a fair summary would be. However a new religion could be based upon a very short text from which contemplation would divine additional layers of meaning.This sacred text has some of the innovative aspects of other religions and is the best one yet.(sic)It can be learnt and meditated on for a lifetime.

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The Casserole of Ozymandias: construction of 2 overlapping texts.

Hand incised poem 22/1/09 to 1/2/09 in casserole dish.Also inspired David Green’s Ozymandias project. The Archbishop’s secretary addressed his reply to ‘Percy Shelley’, after I sent a summary of the method for preserving The Bible.

An apparently broken tablet.The text actually overlaps.This leaves relatively robust fragments with edges tolerant to further damage. Complete loss of some fragments is countered by a having another overlapping tablet set in the same cache. The back of each fragment is incised; ‘Oz’ to allow it to mixed with other text fragments.

Apart from the tablet sent to The Archbishop of Canterbury on 3/2/09 another was freely chosen by Chloe on the same day.The final copy is in my possession. I claim no worldly position and was working as part of the ‘Godhead’ that includes you and all.These tablets may represent the best of religion from our times bequeathed to future hunter-gatherers long after the paper books have gone and the statues and ruins are meaningless grotesques. Here it is:

Intermediate technology Fossilist ObjectsThe objects made by G Hill have been hand made with no use of machine mass-production and without sophisticated materials and construction methods.David Green has essentially proposed for The Ozymandias Project objects representing the state of the art in information storage with the expectation of updating the technology whilst civilisation exists. The organisation of sufficient resources and the correct technological moment to freeze the designs are possible reasons for it not having progressed beyond a study yet. Commercially viable consumer products that have a dual Fossilist and current function might be designed and made by existing businesses. Products might include:A new ‘Homemaker’ range of crockery, featuring flat screen televisions, iPods and whatnot. Embossed sewerage pipes, porcelain lavatory bowls and washbasins carrying diagrams of how human waste is managed in a sanitary manner.Some glazed ceramic products already immortalise contemporary technology. wildestyle.co.uk advertise a range of decorative bathroom feature tiles. They include:‘hand crafted tile with Mini cooper picture’ and ‘hand crafted ceramic tile with VW campers beach scene’. The description helpfully continues:‘The image is drawn, relief work is marticulously[sic] applied, followed by several layers of glazing that enrich the textures and vibrant colour. The tiles are then fired in kilns for 24 hours at temperatures reaching 1050 deg c immortalizing this work of art in stone.’Intaglios carved into gemstones depict figures and scenes from Roman times and are nearly indestructible. Recent revivals of the art include:‘Vintage Glass Airplane Intaglio Turquoise…Each piece was hand painted into a reverse carved image’(etsy.com, 3/1/12).And slightly more likely to fragment

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ReligionGod is lightthrough holeslike starsare you and meopen and closeLose yourselfBe

according to their greater size, glass-ware is sometimes engraved with near contemporary technology. Vintage cars and World War II airplanes are notable:‘Ebay.co.uk/The-Glass-Engraver Spitfire WW2 Airforce Aeroplane Aircraft engraved glass tumbler gift present £10.50 61 sold.’Hologram glass blocks containing ‘bubble’ pictures are a late 20th century invention. The saxophone player I gave to my dad, with musical notes emerging is a likely Fossilist piece. Glass objects may become opalescent but some regrinding may reveal 3-dimensional representations of some of our most ephemeral activities.

incrystals.co.uk can render photos into glass blocks at gift option prices:‘Here at incrystals we specialize in advanced digital technology that allows your old pictures of family, friends and even pets to be converted into a 3D object.’Some structures contain voids to save money and improve their performance.Poured concrete into foundations may contain bottles and other strong and impermeable containers of contemporary nuggets. Some objects might be ‘fossilised’ without the benefit of a container, leaving a hollow cast in the manner of the empty loaf of bread, huddled bodies and dog found in the ash deposit at Pompeii.

An illustration from ‘Victorian Inventions ‘by Leonard De Vries(1971) shows ‘Electroplating The Dead.’ ‘Dr Varlot, a surgeon in a major hospital in Paris, has developed a method of covering the body of a deceased person with a layer of metal in order to preserve it for eternity. ‘This whilst claiming to have a strong and metal finish; it would likely require exceptional efforts to prevent the contents from destroying the metal from the inside or simply rupturing from pressurised gas. Perhaps with a small hole in the top it could be used as a gas light. Steampunks are already interested.

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A fairy or faerie etched in bubbles inside a glass block as a hologram. Objects like this are affordable and could contain complex visual information. The saxophone player I gave to my Dad(a jazz fan) was issuing a stream of musical notes from the bell; indicating sound and its method of transcription. This fairy piece might indicate fantasy, imagination, myth and magic once a six limbed flying creature had been discounted.

Many of the objects to be entombed and immortalised are unable to give more than surface information due to internal processes of decay. Creatures; are corrupted from the inside even before they decay from the outside due to the microbes available in the gut. This process is prevented in canned food by heat sterilisation but inorganic reactions between the food and the inside of the can and in the food itself in the presence of its own water destroy its nutritional value in a few years. Books contain minute traces of acid that break the cellulose chains and release more acid which accelerates the process. As with many stored food products; this process is delayed by including buffering agents which preferentially remove the acid until the agent is exhausted. Other organic and living materials have great longevity if carefully stored. We may wish to pass on a sample of honey or a freeze dried delicacy or even some viable seed corn! Books made with acid proof paper may last for a few hundred years under ideal conditions. Reproducing those conditions in a sealed capsule might be easier and more reliable than in a library. A further elaboration would be to reprint the book onto a more durable material. A project to make a super-paper(perhaps it has already been invented as papyrus or parchment) or using the advantages of a sealed chamber print onto copper or lead as has been used in some of The Dead Sea Scrolls and Curses from the Roman bath spa respectively is suggested.The motivation for such an intermediate technology project would be dual:The Fossilist use might be no more than a curiosity to the buyer and would be a foreseen but unintended outcome.A treasured text might be kept safe from fire, flood, pests and wanton destruction in a concrete egg, hidden in a bunker or buried. It could be accessed as a great comfort; as sustaining as frieze dried food and bottled water. Suggested works might include The Bible, The selected poems of T. S. Eliot and almost certainly Peppa Pig on Pirate Island. 2 concrete eggs containing Bibles have been made as proofs of concept. The surface has a deeply inset cross and the Legend; ‘Holy Bible’ thanks to the corrugated letters stuck to the inside of the papier mache form. The Bible edition was chosen for its modest size, but more importantly for its modern ‘acid free’ paper construction. Between the book and its concrete capsule is a desiccating filling, modelled on natrum; the preserving medium favoured in ancient Egypt. A dried mixture of sand, salt and bicarbonate of soda at least simulates the development of an optimum filler to prevent acidic autocatalysis.On page 168 of Alan Wiesman’s 2007 book: ‘The World Without Us’ he states that:

[James Lovelock: proposer of The Gaia Hypothesis that the planet self regulates as though it is a living organism] ‘now fears that the living planet is suffering a high fever, and that we are the virus. He suggests we compile a user’s manual of vital human knowledge (on durable paper, he adds) for survivors who may sit out the next millennium huddled in the polar regions, the last habitable places in a super-heated world, until the ocean recycles enough carbon to restore a semblance of equilibrium.’

Monumental and funereal granite stonework in the 20th and 21st centuries sometimes reflects the innovations of these times. A biplane is one of the treasures of the Barre granite carvers at The Hope Cemetery, Vermont and other highlights include a half size replica of Joey laquerre Jr’s race car and a bas relief of an 18 wheel truck(roadsideamerica.com). Steve Marsh has a memorial in the form of a 1 tonne

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black granite BMW M3 Convertible, complete with number plates and a parking ticket, residing in The Manor Park Cemetery, Forest Gate, London. UK.(dailymail.co.uk) A lobster style cell phone gravestone is to be found apparently in Israel, guessing from the Hebrew script. Bas reliefs of steam locomotives can be found as memorials to railwaymen in Forest Home Cemetery and Wooster Cemetery, Danbury, CT.

Incised highly polished stones.

A gift to the future and more likely to be noticed and curated would be a shiny stone object. The shinier the surface the finer can be the detail of the incised designs. Materials like serpentine, soapstone and marble are quickly worked and polished but with a greater chance of being abraded unless securely cached. The is variable resistance to corrosion according to the rock chosen and the ground conditions. Dolerite; the greenstone from which Cornish axes were made in prehistory takes a high shine, best seen if the axe has been recovered out of county in non-acidic conditions. G. Hill has made a number of greenstone axes with incised designs and the aim therefore is to give most of them to people beyond Cornwall. The furthest so far is one identified by the airliner symbol; now in Australia.

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Above: ‘One day I’ll fly away’ and below: scratched out and completed, ‘The adoration of the shiny car.’

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Given to a well known curator in London: Scene of the Thames at low tide and on the reverse; under construction The Heron building with The Gherkin to the left.

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London scenes in 2010, from the top deck of a bus and 2008 , the Thames at low tide.

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Previous 3 images. 2 sides of a polished greenstone celt. An F-15 fighter Launches a missile and on a road a fuel tanker and other vehicles travel whilst an airliner takes off over them.3rd image. Part polished flaked axe with 2 airliners and contrails. This was used to split ash logs at The Hot Rocks Experimental Archaeological Event, Saveock, March 17th, 2012.

Previous image. Polished greenstone celt. A business jet with humans to scale and a similar plane flying above. Below are views of oil based infrastructure; a super tanker, refinery and ploughing tractor.

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Previous image. Polished greenstone object styled after the Early Bronze Age ‘wrist guard.’ Examples of this shape were clearly not for protecting against the recoil of an archer’s bow string and many had metal rivet caps over the fastening holes; making this theory even more untenable.

Next 2 images. A pair of polished greenstone ‘wrist guards’. Incised are the objects being used as part of a recognised martial arts technique for disarming the holder of a SHORT knife or dagger. G. Hill proposes that these objects were for this purpose and co-evolved with the Beaker copper dagger. Details in ‘Beaker Vambrace; a community defence against the copper dagger.’(Google). In a Fossilist context these objects may again prove useful, with operating instructions! enclosed!

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Complete views of serpentine box sent to MoMA, New York.

Right; airliner 3-view+ turbine diagram

Fossilism outside Penzance Railway Station?The paved area outside Penzance Railway Station has an informative design of necessarily durable materials. Inset into the tarmacadam is a rectangular stainless steel frame containing a similar material outline of the Cornish coast, correctly orientated and embedded in a Cornish flag. The black field is from pigmented concrete into which closely and evenly spaced drill cores of dark dolerite, granites etc. have been placed. The white cross is made of pale rocks including vein quartz. Hence even after some degradation of the concrete, many of the rock discs will remain and if the steel degrades over a period of hundreds or even thousands of years(1) then its blurred coastal outline will be given by the gap in the continuous grid of drill cores.The polished core ends not only reveal the nature of local rocks but carry incised letters and make up the names of places on the map. The ‘you are here’ is given to a stranger who has not seen the name of the site of the map, by use of reddish Serpentine to carry the letters; PENZANCE.

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Correctly orientated map looking West towards Lands End. Durable local stone and pigmented concrete pick out the Cornish flag. Gaps in the regular stone grid have a stainless steel strip coastal outline.

Close to their positions in the landscape are names of places cut into the polished faces of the rock discs and in filled with contrasting material. PENZANCE is uniquely worked in red serpentine, giving the clue that this is the place where the map is embedded. The proximity of the red inscription to the steel strip to the south of it gives the final clue by looking in that direction to see the coast beyond and the relevance of the strip as a representation of the coastline.

The Darlington Brick Train 1997

FreeFoto.com subject to attribution and making a link licensed me free use of their photograph from their substantial archive. I would love to visit this sculpture. thisisdarlington.com describes it thus:‘The Darlington “Brick Train” was opened on Monday, 23rd June 1997 by Lord Palumbo of Walbrook and is situated next to Morrisons [a large grocery store] on Morton Park Industrial Estate…Modelled on the 1938 record setting 126 mph steam locomotive “Mallard”. Funded by the National Lottery, Wm Morrison Supermarkets, Northern Arts, Department of National Heritage, Darlington Borough Council and headed by sculptor David Mach the project reputedly cost c. £760k. A total of 185,000 bricks were used in its construction along with 170 cubic meters of concrete. The train weighs 15,000 tonnes and covers an area of 600 sq. meters. It is of hollow construction and measures 23ft high by 130 ft. long. It took a team of 34 brick layers, labourers and apprentices 21 weeks to build.’It might be possible to devise many churlish criticisms of this sculpture.Its siting should have been at the railway station. It nostalgically celebrates a lost industrial heritage and steam trains that even then were internationally being eclipsed by diesel and electric locomotives. The heavy use of bricks from a time when coal and labour were cheap is also an anachronism in a modern sculpture. The exorbitant cost; funded by generous self aggrandising benefactors is a reflection of the modern energy and labour needed to reproduce substantial brick engineering structures such as railway viaducts. 15 years on from the commission it is unlikely that such a project would be considered. Supermarket bosses show restraint to mirror their impoverished customers and the public bodies named would be condemned for such folly if they have not already been abolished. I predict the last one standing will be The National Lottery(2)

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The train billows wonderful brick clouds of smoke as it emerges from the earth. May it remain long after the steel buildings fall and the internal combustion engines are silenced .

References(1)bssa.org.uk 25/12/12. Stainless steel. ‘Estimated Pit Penetration Times’Est. time to penetrate 1mm (years) by steel type [commonest type]Location 430(1.4016) 304(1.4301) 316(1.4401)Marine N/A 145 260Semi industrial 85 135 525Rural 250 770 1200

(2)Orwell, G. 1947. 1984. The National Lottery is predicted in this masterpiece and has become a successful revenue generator for governments; a tax on the uneducated who have no other way of imagining an escape from their drudgery. Please visit ‘Big Brother’s Guide To The Lottery’ ; written by Cliff D’Arcy on fool.com

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Ephemeral Granite: a demonstration of the rapid attrition of Man’s work on the surface.Fossilism after being revealed to a welcoming complex of art critics , curators and a clamouring public[sic], will be reproduced in many additions and with a light heart reproductions will be buried under conditions likely to suit the longevity of the materials chosen.Otherwise unloved and abandoned to moulder and corrode at the surface these pieces will have been made in vain.As some kind of meditation on time, mortality and change I carved shallowly into granite boulders using flaked dolerite hammer stones from the same beach in the intertidal zone at Werrytown to Tolcarne, Penzance. The low sun of Winter 2009 shone on the details but after one tidal cycle in half a day the inscriptions were gone.

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View towards Newlyn. First Anti-Fossilist,Ephemeral Granite piece,Worked in Late Oct. 2009Using flaked diorite pebbles.(The dark blue/grey ones in the picture. The coarse granite boulder has a pecked spiral inspired by West Atlantic European megalithic Neolithic art, with an airliner approaching it from the West(foreground).Next day the details were erased and the boulder buried under pebbles by the surf.

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Left:10th Nov. 2009; a contrailing airliner heading East towards one of the London airports.Below: ‘Business as usual.’ Early Nov. 2009.It appears unlikely that humankind will avoid fouling its own nest.

Left: A holly leaf with berries and approaching airliner.20th Nov.2009Given as photographs on a Christmas card that year.

Fossilist critique of a glass button.

On 9th January 2013 on an uncharacteristically bright day I found this dark glass button in a ploughed, rain-washed field. The moulded glass is styled after Victorian black jet mourning jewellery, made fashionable after the death of Prince Albert, but persisting in production well into the middle of the 20th century. Turned up to surface exposure were crushed plastic shotgun cartridge cases with corroding steel closures and green stained firing caps , half an encrusted iron horse-shoe and shreds of black polythene from recent early potato production, a single vintage dulled aluminium ring-pull drink can closure and thick brown glass from ‘onion’ wine bottles, pottery sherds that a pre-end-of-world-civilization specialist might identify as mostly Post- Medieval, including bright azure and sun yellow glazed Majolica, but including apple green glazed and sand and mica gritted Medieval with sporadic Early Medieval grass-marked and occasional black burnished Roman and Late Iron Age pot fragments. In the slightly less acidic than usual conditions of this part of Cornwall my friend metal detected 2 ancient coins; a rare late Iron age Durotriges debased silver stater and a Roman Denarius with some details still visible in the corroded alloy, datable to 160-170 A.D. Flint debitage and several scrapers of Bronze Age and some small blades of Neolithic or Mesolithic age were also found.

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Given an almost complete erasing of archaeological and historical knowledge how would this robust(27mm dia. x 5mm thick) plaque explain the age and outlook of the people who made it?

The circular border contains a world of its own. You are invited into the picture by a winding, well trodden path next to a flowering plant, likely a dandelion, judging by its leaves. On either side of the path it is not overgrown or tree-covered, suggesting cultivation or animal grazing, although the dandelion has been spared, making the second case less likely. Other contributions to the sedentary aspects of this scene are the at least semi-permanent dwelling with substantial door, split log or plank walls and thatch-covered roof. The rear and likely perimeter of the immediate surroundings are demarcated by a fence, which would not deter a determined large animal or human aggressor but implies a private space within a larger landscape of acceptance of those values, which could be defended by implied collective force, mobilised if necessary to uphold a private claim to bounded space.[Post Mesolithic/Neolithic transition]The 2 similar birds in flight close to the dwelling might represent the souls or intentions of the owners of the dwelling. The beckoning path may make the link between them and your own aspiration. The birds may be swallows and hence faithful partners. They may have travelled a long way but are returning to the place they call home and in time for the dandelion, perhaps heralding the Summer of their days(1). The sky is dealt with in even horizontal raised lines. They catch the light and perhaps subliminally represent squinting on a sunny day. Contrast the effect if the lines were rendered vertically(rain!). The sun though not explicit in the sky ; there is a circle above the door which may be an oculus to illuminate the interior of the dwelling, there being no other windows. Symbolically an eye(2) watches from above the door as well as being in a defensive position above the door when it is barred. This may appear to be a safe and peaceful home but in its design there are traces of struggle and precautions against future problems from people outside the fence.The material used to make this image appears to be a hard slightly translucent stone, cut deeply with great effort by an even harder one. The back tells a different story. The domed surface has slight blemishes like on the frozen liquid; water or set birch tar. This novel material, now cold was once hot and pressed onto another bearing the image in reverse.What a wonderful material in which to cast such a humble and bounded scene. What were the people thinking and what happened to them? Did their hopes of raising a family in the dwelling fail?(3)By staying in one place did they starve?(4)

References:(1)10/1/2013 gipsymagicspells.blogspot.co.uk/swallow lore(2)10/1/2013 Wikipedia/oculus(3)10/1/2013 vhemt.org[voluntary human extinction by zero procreation](4)10/1/2013 churchofeuthanasia.org[radical but voluntary population reduction]

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DNA: language of Life, language of The Ozymandias Project?

Data storage methods have historically become more compact, yet more fragile and more rapidly obsolescent.Indus valley culture clay tablets may never be understood but older computer data storage methods will soon be lost too.The Ozymandias Project needs data to be stored in a system that may have to be replaced as new to prevent it from being unreadable by its own evolving civilisation.The end may be in sight for it has become possible to use the amino acids of DNA to encode information about human culture.The biological model shows that the DNA can remain intact for thousands of years under suitable conditions. As a product of the most active and rewarding scientific research area then manipulation of DNA will make it unlikely to become obsolete . It is perfect and perfected; without human intervention and yet may be capable of feats of information storage, copying and expression that are as yet hard to imagine and not before seen in natural evolution.In January 2013(25/1/13 npr.org)‘Reporting in Nature, researchers write of encoding a variety of files- jpg, mp3, txt and pdf- in strands of DNA. Lead author Nick Goldman says DNA is extraordinarily long lasting, compared to today’s hard drives and magnetic tapes. And if the world’s information were written in DNA, he says, it would fit in the back of a station wagon.’www.cbc.ca/new reported: Shakespeare’s sonnets encoded in DNA‘Researchers have stored 154 Shakespeare Sonnets, a photo, a scientific paper, and a 26-second sound clip from Martin Luther King Jr’s “I have a Dream” speech. That all fit in a barely visible bit of DNA in a test tube.’On 2013/01/24, in response to that article ‘Bumpy Road’ observed:‘Yet encoding data into genetic material has been in SF stories for quite a long time. It isn’t putting in the code that is difficult, it is creating a reader for those traces, after you give the researcher the idea that there is more than a blind chance series of repeating proteins.’

[I suppose what you might do would be to create some synthetic life form with a ‘read me’ tag in its phenotype and the stored human cultural information in an otherwise ‘junk’ piece of DNA. It would be useful if it was designed to do something useful like biodegrade plastic particles in the ocean .]

Elizabeth Landau reports for cnn.com on 23/01/13:[Ewan Birney, senior author of the study]‘As long as the DNA is kept cold, dry and dark, it will last for a long time. Consider that scientists can sequence DNA from woolly mammoths tens of thousands of years old that’s preserved by chance.“There must be some point in time when it its cheaper to store information for that length of time as DNA than as something that requires electricity or some other maintenance cost to keep it around.” Birney said. Birney and colleagues did the math, and found that although DNA storage is expensive, its more cost-effective than other methods if you want to preserve a digital

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file for something between 600 and 5,000 years. However, the scientists say the synthesis’ cost will probably come down in the next decade, so DNA storage could even work for ensuring your grandchildren can see your wedding photos.”[At this point it is worth noting that David Green paid particular attention in The Ozymandias Project(www.aetherambler.net/Ozymns.html) to methods of overcoming the problem of errors occurring during transcription of digital information. These researchers using the DNA code have addressed this as well. They could have turned digital code into a base 4 code, maximally using all the amino acids; C, A, G, T for greatest information density but they have only transcribed digital into base 3 code and used the redundancy in the system to spot errors and so encode the correct digit.]The report continues:‘One distinguishing factor in new study is error correction, Goldman said. Built into their method are measures that adjust for possible errors in translating the digital material into DNA and back again…Given DNA’s small size and long endurance according to Goldman and Birney, the method could be used to propagate information about our current selves thousands of years into the future-assuming of course, our descendants in the year 4013 understand languages as we speak them today.’

To summarise.It appears that we are at a point where the distinction between us and nature is again blurred. In the 19th century an organic compound urea was synthesised and the distinction between organic and inorganic had to be reviewed. A life-form reproducing human cultural information has occurred already, according to mark Lynas in ‘The God species’, referring to J.Craig Venter who in May 2010 made a ‘self-replicating life-form out of the memory of a computer. A bacterial genome had been sequenced, digitised, modified, printed out and booted up inside an empty cell to create the first human-made organism’. Predating the work of Goldman and Birney and suggesting my Sci-Fi quip about making synthetic life to store human cultural information:‘…the structure the new cells[Mycoplasma mycoides JCVI-syn1.0] took was that prescribed by the scientists, featuring specially designed DNA ‘watermarks ‘that included three quotes, the names of the researchers on the project, and an email address for anyone clever enough to successfully decode and sequence the new genome.’

ReferencesLYNAS, M. 2011. The God Species. Fourth Estate. London. pp. 3-4.

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Review of new technologically advanced methods of long term data storage. I contacted David Green On 25/1/13 and he was aware of the progress in data storage on synthetic DNA but was not convinced that this would last long enough for the requirements of The Ozymandias Project.‘DNA degrades in a mere few thousand years under most conditions…For truly long term storage they have finally got around to investigating micro drilling holes with a laser in quartz…something, I suggested in my original article twenty(or so) years ago.’[Google ‘The Ozymandias Project’]Here is that research:‘Laser-etched quartz will store data for hundreds of millions of years’ wired.co.uk by Liat Clark 25 September 12.‘(according to experiments carried out at Kyoto University’s lab) withstand temperatures of 1000 degrees Celsius for two hours and have its information “played” back without “degradation” using an optical microscope…’[The high temperature experiment is designed to simulate the effects of aging to 10-100 million years.]‘Since the method…which works by imprinting a series of dots in binary code (100 at a time) using femtosecond laser pulses onto four layers of quartz…its likely to be used for long term storage of “historically important items such as cultural artifacts and public documents, as well as data that individuals want to leave for posterity.”Hitachi calls it “CD-level digital data volume”…but imagine if you could chuck that CD into a burning pool of lava and use it again later.’In the blog that follows Chupathingy ( 25 September 2012 02:01)comments:

‘Already obsolete.Harvard has recently been able to store data using DNA. Basically A and C=0 while T and G =1. Using this method it is possible to store 700TB of data in 1 gram of DNA. It also lasts hundreds of thousands of years. Sure this quartz method might last a bit longer, but from a practical stand point using DNA makes a lot more sense as you can store ridiculous amounts of data in an extremely small space.’

Robert Harvey-Kinsey (25 September 2012 02:14) agrees and antedates my idea:

‘Add it to bacteria to make it eternal.If you added those sequences to enough life forms junk DNA and spread them around, the information will survive outside the lab for the foreseeable future. All you would need to read it is to swab a nose or wipe a floor and run a merge on similarity to retrieve it. They have found junk DNA matches in all life forms that most likely came from a shared ancestor billions of years ago. Seems reliable to me.’

David Green gives examples of mammoths and Neanderthal man being at the limits of survival of DNA. Tim K. Lowenstein(2011) makes that point, having cultured a few bacteria from dormant or low metabolic states, entrapped in brine cavities in rock salt dating to 34,000 years b.p. Controversially it has been claimed that older cultures

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might have been obtained from salt formations dating back as far as 250 million years b.p. but it is not clear how a basal metabolism could be maintained in order to at least repair DNA, which would have naturally degraded in a tiny fraction of that time otherwise.(Lowenstein, 2011).Comments: the Hitachi experiment at Kyoto University, whilst at only modest data density compared to DNA storage is readable by optical microscope and is apparently possible to develop to greater storage density albeit with greater difficulty of reading the data. The binary system will require the finder to break the code and assumes that they will be impressed by the dot stream to make the effort. In passing; note the Harvard team’s DNA data storage achievement a few months before that of Birney and Goldman which has similar problems of invisibility and data retrieval. The Hitachi experiment could be used to produce directly readable images in the form of laser tomography storage. Polished glass blocks are internally sculpted with tiny fractures to produce images from family pictures , 3D golf swinging sculptures etc for novelty and family memorabilia.‘Fraunhofer IWS Dresden developed a laser technique of subsurface engraving of lead crystal…The necessary power density of 10E+10 to 10E+12 W per square centimetre is obtained from a special Nd:YLF-laser.’Combining the microscope reading technique of the Hitachi group and an internal miniature sculpture or images might be a useful enhancement of visibility for a chance finder of one of these data storage objects.From enterprisestorageforum.com, a Los Alamos National Laboratory team has used an ion beam technology to engrave microscopic text facsimiles and images onto suitable enduring substrates: ‘Norsam, which holds the exclusive licence to the focussed ion beam technology developed by Los Alamos National Laboratory used to etch text and images onto a Permafilm metal disk; has been working with Los Alamos since 1995, yet it was only last month[ Aug. 2008] that the first Rosetta disks made their debut, at a ceremony sponsored by the Long Now Foundation, Norsam’s first customer and an organisation established to “creatively foster long-term thinking and responsibility in the framework of the next 10,000 years.”“The Rosetta Project is the first prototype of a library that could last for 10,000 years…a way to store information for thousands of years”, explained Laura Welcher, the project’s director… “and all you need to read the data etched on the disks is a 750-power optical microscope.”The Long Now Foundation explained its Rosetta title for the data:‘…We have the Rosetta disks, five round Permafilm metal disks, three inches in diameter, that contain the first two chapters of Genesis, translated into 1,500 languages, for a total of 13,500 pages of text.’

It appears that in the first decade of the 21st century there was a growing realisation that digital multi-media storage was based upon materials that were decaying within a decade and that the software for its retrieval was being made obsolete even more quickly.Margaret Hedstrom puts it thus:‘Most authorities argue that enhanced media longevity is of little value because current media outlast the software and devices needed to retrieve recorded information.’Norsam agrees:

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“…the truth is, that our digital storage media have a shorter lifespan than an old man with a good memory.” (M. Wein).

Norsam continues to develop its miniature etching technology and has found a way of increasing the speed of production.Norsam.com continues:‘Press Release Oct 18, 2012Norsam Technology and Stamper Technology, Inc. Deal to Manufacture and Market Patented Nano Rosetta Data Storage System.Nano Rosetta can achieve up to 50,000 pages of analogue text or pictures on a six inch nickel disc 10,000 times faster than current ion beam technology.Bruce Ha, Founder of Stamper Technology, says, “This patented technology can produce a dime-sized nickel disc that could be worn as a locket. This is a fast, eye-readable replacement for aging technologies like microfilm.’It is clear that industry and academics are working together to make long term storage of not only encoded digital information a reality( with the inherent problem of decoding it if it is recognised as information at all), but also plain text and images.Norsam and Stamper will require a high power microscope to read their information but the disc may be interesting enough in itself to suggest to the finder a closer investigation.Hitachi’s laser etched quartz appears capable of developing beyond a digital storage system and might be developed to produce directly readable miniature plain text(in the way that a dot matrix printer achieves it), as well as 3D images if the same effects can be achieved as is now, by laser tomography storage in glass blocks.Other experiments in long term data storage methods are in progress. Under the banner: ‘Rosetta stone offers digital lifeline’, bbc.co.uk 29 July 2009, Michael Fitzpatrick reports:‘…with semiconductor devices, claims Professor Kuroda, data can be kept intact for a thousand years or more if the humidity around the chip is kept at 2% or less.The team, lead by Professor Tadahiro Kuroda of Tokyo’s Keio University, has proposed storing data on semiconductor memory-chips made of what he describes as the most stable material on earth- silicon. Tightly sealed, powered and read wirelessly, such a device, he claims would yield its digital secrets even after 1000 years, making any stored information as resilient as if it were set in stone itself.The process starts by etching bits and bytes by laser onto silicon wafers, the ultrapure materials, from which computer chips are made. These are stacked on top of one another to form a 10cm-(4 in-) high disk, which is sealed between layers of another type of near-impregnable silicon to keep out oxygen and moisture.’The article speculates about using such a device to save selected cultural treasures in a ‘World Digital Library(WDLP)’. Professor Kuroda says that one of the difficulties facing the project will be to get a world industry agreement on a single digital code standard for archiving and future productions. A point on which Margaret Hedstrom agrees.

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ReferencesEmails25/1/13 To David Green. ‘Synthetic DNA information storage’27/1/13 To Graham Hill. ‘re.’Internet28/1/13 bbc.co.uk 29 July 2009 ‘Rosetta stone’ offers digital lifeline. 28/1/13 designforlasermanufacture.com, Internal sculpturing of glass by subsurface laser engraving.28/1/13 enterprisestorageforum.com, Storage That Really Lasts, Sept 11, 2008. By Jennifer Schiff.28/1/13 extremetech.com 17 Aug 2012, by Sebastian Anthony ‘Harvard cracks DNA storage, crams 700 terabytes of data into a single gram.’03/2/13 geosociety.org vol 21 issue 1(January 2011) Tim K. Lowenstein et al. Microbial communities in fluid inclusions and long-term survival in halite.28/1/13 nature 23/1/13 Nick Goldman et al. ‘Towards practical, high capacity, low maintenance information storage in synthesized DNA[abstract]28/1/13 norsam.com ‘HD-ROSETTA’28/1/13 uky.edu, Margaret Hedstrom, ‘Mass storage and long-term storage. Digital preservation: a time bomb for Digital Libraries’28/1/13 wired.co.uk 25 September 12, by Liat Clark, ‘Laser-etched quartz will store data for hundreds of millions of years.’

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