Understand and Protect Our Home Planet for the Long Future.

The Monument to Mankind

Icons convey powerful messages, and we humans have been crafting notable and enduring artefacts for a very long time.

Leonard da Vinci’s famous Vitruvian Man is about 520 years old.

Egyptian pyramids were constructed about 4,600 years ago and still stand today, albeit having suffered a little wear and tear.

The extraordinary fertility symbol, the Woman Willendorf statue, dates back about 28,000 years.

The world’s oldest piece of artwork is believed to be Australian Aboriginal cave paintings that date back 40,000 years and maybe much older.

Here at the Long Future Foundation, we observe these long-lasting treasures and marvel at their capacity to convey powerful ideas through time. We want in on that action.

So we have created an artwork concept that is designed to communicate a compelling message about the human condition.

This is an art piece that is designed to last 1,000,000 years.

Introducing:

The Monument to Mankind.

The Monument to Mankind is a monstrous statue of a person dressed in business attire with their head planted firmly in the sand.

It could be a politician or a corporate CEO – you decide.

If the Monument to Mankind is to last 1 million years, it is necessary to build it to scale – we think 300 metres high might do it – and be constructed of a sufficiently robust material, maybe granite.

The Monument to Mankind would need to be located in a geologically stable area that has a reasonable chance of not being flooded by rising sea levels a million years hence.

We envisage this to be a major tourism drawcard and every human on the planet will seek to visit it once in their lifetime.

There will be a restaurant and the food scraps will be collected and composted in order to produce prodigious amounts of methane.

This methane will be used to fuel a giant orange flame that will periodically burst into the sky from an appropriately located aperture on the statue.

Members of the public will be able to view the monument from the outside for free.

However, for a small fee, they will be able to descend into the subterranean viewing chamber to see the statue’s huge face.

Who’s face will it be…

Project Updates

3 December, 2014

We have made a start on this exciting initiative.

First thing, we got David to pose for a series of 20 photographs taken from many angles.

Here is one of the safer ones.

Then we uploaded these photos into the 123DAPP software and it generated a 3D model and from this we created an .stl file.

Then we sent the .stl file to the 3D printer and crossed our fingers.

Unfortunately, the print wasn’t as sophisticated as we would have liked and the 3D print of the Monument to Mankind came out looking a little bit pear-shaped.

But we at the Long Future Foundation don’t take pear-shaped for an answer. We will press on.

December 11, 2014

Michelle Delebet says, “Don’t despair, fellow Longfuturians, lets work with what we have.”

She swiftly takes up some pens and gets to work giving the pear-shaped Monument to Mankind 3D print v1.0 some colour.

And voila! It is still pear-shaped, but at least it is starting to look like a statue fitting of the title Monument to Mankind.

And then we think, hang on - this is not just a statue - this icon – a person with their head in the sand – is the official icon of Climate Deniers.

We need action, immediately!!

So we invent the No Denial Zone poster.

But let us not forget the vision of the Monument to Mankind, the monstrous version.

Here is an artist’s impression of the finished statue.

I am telling you, this thing is big.

Next thing is to drum up some resources and build a scale model.