Saturday, March 21, 2026

(67) Archaeology blog.

 (67) Archaeology blog.


I painted a wall in the living room, and I constantly had to drive away a stubborn mosquito that was hanging around the freshly painted area. When I finished painting and washing and putting away the utensils, I returned for a little enjoyment. At one point I noticed a slight unevenness - a mosquito! He settled on fresh paint, tried to fly away, and during the match he managed to wrap himself in color from head to heels. Since the colour was already partially dry, and the mosquito tomb was not very pronounced, I left it there.

My wife and I lived in the house until we left for eternity, after us one of our children and a few grandchildren lived in it. Each of the inhabitants painted the ceilings with their own color, the tomb of the mosquito was covered with another and another layer of sculpture, until finally the house was dismantled and served. One of our great-offspring demolished it, used what could be used, took the rest to the garbage dump and there the mosquito ended up in his plastic tomb.

History rolled on, a century, a millennium, a hundred thousand years passed...

Half a million years later, perhaps more, the inhabitants of one planet in the galaxy were returned by a probe that was supposed to bring back samples of material from some very distant asteroid that was once highly radioactive, and which was thought to have passed enough time to explore.

The probe brought only a small pile of some material, which was sent to the appropriate institution for analysis. The material was highly radioactive, and the analysis was entrusted to a scientist who, thanks to its insect origin, was relatively resistant to radioactivity.

The scientist, looking not unlike today's ladybugs, used all the tools at his disposal, from illumination to automatic drills, chisels, hammers and excavators. In the middle of various insignificant sand, he bulged a kind of ball of unknown material. After being illuminated, it seemed to him that there was some kind of structure in the ball. There is no need to stretch the esteemed readers: the structure began to remind him of some kind of creature on the three-dimensional screen! And the creature began to remind the scientist-beetle of some of his co-workers. The scientist-ladybug came to the inevitable conclusion: the ancient inhabitants of that unexplored planet were at the level of civilization when they were already burying their dead in several sarcophagi, and each of them was from a different hitherto unexplored matter!

When he published his discovery, and received the Christmasbeetle Prize for outstanding scientific work, the public finally learned about it from the local press. And one old beetle (or perhaps a fungus) remembered an ancient fable, according to which something full of some kind of deformed porridge or a slime crashed on their planet, and from which all their ancestors allegedly flew out: fleas, flies, fungi, bacteria, animals... That the creature in that scientific work was one of their great-great-ancestors???