Life After People Page #8

Of buildings,

Very little evidence

Of the activities of man.

What we would see

Would be a jungle of vegetation.

the future of cities

In a life after people

Can be best imagined

By looking to the past.

this is minute street

In Greenwich Village.

Most new Yorkers might come here

And wonder why it curves

Like this.

It curves

Because once upon a time

There was a stream here,

And then a brook.

There were more than 40 streams

On Manhattan island.

All flowing down

And carrying the rainwater

Down to the sea.

So what happens today?

The rain falls, the snow melts,

But it flows

Right along the street

And down into that storm drain

There.

If there weren't people here

Anymore, there'll be no one here

To maintain the sidewalks

And maintain the streets.

They'd start to crumble up.

They'd start to break apart.

Trees would come back,

Vegetation would come back,

And eventually

The hydrological cycle

Would reestablish itself.

And who knows,

Maybe Minute Street

Might once again

Become minute brook.

using historic maps

And computer modeling,

Scientists

With the Manhattan project

Are rediscovering

What Manhattan Island

Looked like when explorer

Henry Hudson first sailed

Around its shores in 1609.

here we are in Foley square,

The administrative center

Of New York City

And location to the famous

Courthouses you see on TV.

This place hasn't always had

Such colossal buildings

And stony streets.

Once upon a time, 400 years ago,

The collect pond was here,

The freshwater source

For New York City.

Right behind me,

There was a stream that drained

Down to the Hudson River shore,

Another stream

To the east river.

And there was

This beautiful pond

That was nestled

In an amphitheater of hills.

So what would happen?

If all the people

Were to disappear?

The buildings,

They would tumble down.

The soil would start to reform.

Trees would start to grow

Out of them.

They would become the new hills,

The new amphitheater

Around this place.

Nature would reestablish itself

And slowly bring this place

Back into the green heart

Of what it means to be here

On planet earth.

new York city,

Like the rest of the planet,

Has changed radically.

The transformation

Is most shocking in Times Square?

As the once beating

Heart of the city is silenced

By nature's onslaught.

It's 10,000 years after people.

Could it be possible?

After only 10 millennia

That humanity has vanished

Without a trace?

Human scientists once predicted

That our history and culture

Would live on through our radio

And television broadcasts,

Which carry on?

Through the universe

Toward the infinite,

Perhaps to be tuned in

By an intelligent species

On a distant planet.

some people think

That there's an expanding shell

Of radio and television

From earth, expanding outward

Alerting the universe,

"here we are

And this is our culture."

Unfortunately,

Recent calculations

By of all people, the seta,

Search for extraterrestrial

Intelligence group,

Has shown that all

Of this dissipates

Within one and two light-years

Into noise.

if this is true,

Our signals won't even make it

Out to the newest star

Beyond the sun.

So what will remain 10,000 years?

After people to tell the story

Of the once great civilizations

That walked the earth?

Iron corrodes,

Concrete crumbles,

Wood and paper decay.

Still, some of what man

Built on earth remains.

The most colossal

Of our stone structures

Like the Great Wall of China

Have aged like mountains,

Subject to erosion,

But at such slow time scales,

They will still be recognizable

In some form for eons.

The great pyramid at Giza

Is so massive that it lasts

Long enough to be swallowed up

By the desert sands.

The hover dam

Built to be as tough

As the canyon walls around it

Is one of the last?

Man-made structures

Still standing.

But now thousands of years

In the future,

Earth is about to be visited

By the last

Of the great collapses.

it's the environment

That eventually wins.

Earthquakes, sandstorms, rain.

But there are a few exceptions.

I would have to say

That mounts Rushmore,

Carved out of solid granite

In an ecologically stable place,

The only enemy it has

Are wind-driven pellets of rain?

I think that mount Rushmore

May be around

A hundred thousand years,

Possibly 200.

Possibly even in time

To be looked at in awe

By the earliest

Of our replacements.

and who or what might

Those replacements are?

Perhaps chimpanzees

Might somehow make the leap.

but we have to consider this:

Some scientists believe

That it's easy for nature

To bring animals

Up to a clever level

Where they might use tools,

They might become masters

Of their environment.

But the leap to being able

To stare at the sky

And imagine a cosmos,

To be able

To contemplate yourself,

To be able to contemplate

Your own role in the earth,

This may be a leap

That was a sheer accident

For humanity.

In which case,

You're not talking

About a complete recovery.

You're talking about a planet

That may continue,

But nobody to talk about it,

Nobody to think about it.

if earth's

4 1/2 billion years of existence

Were condensed into 24 hours,

The passage of 10,000 years

Would be a fraction of a second.

Man's time on the planet so far

Would be

About half a minute long.

So, like an abandoned village

On a global scale,

The earth will move on

Without us.

There was life

before people.

There will be life

after people.

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