United Nations of Earth (UNE) archeologists have announced a major discovery of human proto-technology at an excavation site on the outskirts of Ryukyu, Earth's second largest city.
The objects of interest, several thin plastic discs, are believed to be a basic electronic storage units. Composite analysis confirms the discs are over 250 years old, dating back to the 1990s.
Image: One of the flimsy electronic storage units. This one has been dubbed “Phloppy” in honor of the human who first found it
The find was made by accident last month, when construction workers clearing an industrial wasteland uncovered a semi-intact structure called 'Walmart'. After the significance of the site was realised, specialist archeologists were dispatched to what has now been confirmed as a human digital-age marketplace, the best preserved of its kind.
Though any historical discovery always captures the imagination, the sheer value of the haul has UNE arthropologists very excited, as Dr. Montana Jones of Ryukyu's Three Mountains University explained: "These are first class historical documents. Digital age humans, although effectively a pre-sapient species by modern standards, were known to crudely record information electronically. And that information must have been important if they went to the effort of saving it. If we are somehow able to decode and translate this information, we may finally shed some light on what actually happened during that time period."
At the turn of the 21st century human rule stretched across Earth, although power was dispersed between several warring nation states. A series of large scale continental conflicts saw the Holy Roman Empire emerge as a global power under the stewardship of Ulm, which would ultimately democratically reform into a prototype world government - a precursor to today's United Nations of Earth.
Dr. Montana Jones continued: "Advanced optical analysis show the discs are labelled with an unusual marking; 'XXX'. What's fascinating about this is we think it's handwritten [a human practice that was common pre-2100]. These discs are extremely rudimentary - electromagnetic pulsation suggests they may only have 0.0000012 zetabytes of information. Unfortunately our computer systems today are too powerful to comprehend information so small, and we may have to build a new system from scratch to allow it to interface with the discs."
The UNE's Social Science Academy has announced a special project into investigating the discs, and is hoping to disseminate the information retrieved live on a special pan-galactic broadcast.
