Footprints

In Search of Future Fossils.

What will Earth look like in ten thousand years—or ten million? What stories will future beings tell about us?

In this award-winning work, David Farrier examines the enduring marks of modern civilization: plastic adrift in the oceans, nuclear waste entombed underground, and the 30 million miles of roads encircling the globe. Our carbon may remain in the atmosphere for a hundred millennia, and the ruins of our cities could persist as a distinct layer in the planet’s rock record—testimonies to how we lived in the twenty-first century.

Blending literature, art, and science, Footprints asks us to imagine how our age will be remembered in the myths and stories of the far future.