The La Brea Tarpit of 2005

Someday, thousands of years from now, when some advanced society digs up our era, they will find some amazing things. Their anthropologists will have a blast dissecting our lives and our largely constructed environments.

When they dig up community pools, filled with children, dressed (or undressed, as the case may be) in skimpy little pieces of cloth held together by strings... will they think this was some religious center? Will they be able to detect the smelly, greasy substances that we painted on our bodies? Will they understand the remains of the diving board or will they assume this was some sort of sacrificial pit where the young were sacrificed to the sun gods?

There is the long aluminum pole with a loop on the end, that might have been used to push the human sacrifices off the end of the Holy Plank. There are reclining chairs lining the sides of the Sacrificial Pit where the devout could observe the sacrifices. There are elevated chairs where, apparently, the high priests presided over the whole affair. There are elaborate dressing rooms, containing toilets and showers, presumably so the humans who would be sacrificed could be cleansed before they were marched to their deaths. Some of these sacrificial pits will be found to hold a thousand or more young children. While future societies will be repulsed by the idea that food was served at these sacrificial gatherings, apparently a large portion of the buildings near these sacrificial pits were devoted to the preparation and distribution of food items.

Here's to the world's future anthropologists... may they not fall off of a sacrificial plank.