The Great Pyramids as wireless power plants

[Gumby]

Interesting theory that's been circulating around the Internets. There is some very compelling evidence that the Egyptians (and other ancient civilizations) had wireless electricity.

http://youtu.be/tiMMERUpaNY

And here's a more technical walkthrough of the plans...

http://youtu.be/UfFRFPJbsHM

Makes more sense than an elaborate tomb for Pharaohs.

[Lone Wolf]

You can reject this.  There's simply no chance that this is true.

The Giza pyramids were built during a time period where there's a wealth of archaeological and hieroglyphic data and I'm not aware of credible evidence for anything remotely like this.  There's some evidence that electroplating may have been performed in the ancient past in Mesopotamia, but that is as far as it goes.

Wow, I think the guy just claimed that the Ark of the Covenant (!!) acted as the conductor in the power plant here.

Ancient civilizations were filled with brilliant people and they did incredible things -- just nothing like wireless power.  For a great, well-researched book on just how smart the ancients really were, let me trot out my old recommendation:

[quote=Me]Ancient Inventions - It's humbling to see just how brilliant humans have been throughout the ages.  Centuries and centuries ago, humans had created things like steam-powered doors, flame throwers, cataract surgeries, and automatons that could enact entire plays.  Our ancestors were performing successful brain surgeries with stone tools long before we have any written records.  Interestingly, this all bolsters Medium Tex's thesis that much of what makes us special now (versus then) is the adoption of fossil fuels.[/quote]

[Gumby]

You can reject this.  There's simply no chance that this is true.

Gee. Thanks for that magnificent rebuttal, LW. A super-sized 90,000,000 cubic foot tomb makes much more sense.

The Giza pyramids were built during a time period where there's a wealth of archaeological and hieroglyphic data and I'm not aware of credible evidence for anything remotely like this.

Maybe you need look a little harder?

I agree that it sounds far-fetched. I just thought is was an interesting paranormal theory.

[Lone Wolf]

Gee. Thanks for that magnificent rebuttal, LW. A super-sized 90,000,000 cubic foot tomb makes much more sense.

There's no need to drop into a defensive crouch.  Let me try to expand a bit on why the conventional wisdom has this right.

I'm saying that there's no physical evidence that anything like this was ever done and no written evidence of any sort that references technology like this.  The use of the pyramids for burial structures, on the other hand, is well-documented and understood.

There's a clear evolution from very early Egyptian tombs to Djoser's "step"-style tomb, which Imhotep constructed by more or less stacking up the old-style tombs.  (You'll remember Imhotep from "The Mummy" and "The Mummy Returns"!)  After that, they started filling in the "stepped" parts with stone and encasing the whole thing in limestone.  This led to the style you famously see at Giza.  So this isn't something that one day just sprung up, fully formed.  In other words, there's a clear chain of evolution from early burial styles to the Giza complex.

The walls of many pyramids also contain spells specifically relating to burial procedure.  These "spells" are called The Pyramid Texts.  They specifically talk about protecting the remains of the pharaoh and all the ways that the pharaoh can travel in the afterlife in order to make his ascent into the sky.  They spell out with great specificity what the pyramids were intended to do.

The surrounding complexes contain lots of other interesting burial-related material, such as a series of complete but disassembled burial boat.  Modern workers actually reassembled it into a beautiful ancient Egyptain barge, which is worth checking out.

So I'm simply claiming that the pharaohs (who held themselves up as gods) built incredible monuments to themselves.

The documentary's claim is that the Ark of the Covenant was used to conduct wireless electrical power through the Great Pyramid.  I didn't see any evidence offered to support this idea and I can't help but call it... extremely hard to accept.  Like MMT.  (I kid, I kid!)

If there is some piece of evidence that I'm missing here, let me know.

[stone]

Weren't the pyramids the ancient Job Guarantee program? 

I think people just have a hankering for big projects. A bit like the Apollo missions I guess.

I read somewhere that the medieval cathedrals in Europe were actually built by volunteers. That sort of shows that it can be a community desire to have an amazing monument rather than simply being an egotistical individual's desire.

[MediumTex]

Hmm, well maybe they should fire that sucker back up again.

I'm sure Cairo could use the extra power.



To me, this theory suggests a solution that seems far more complex than the problem it is seeking to solve.

According to this theory, did the pharoahs just later "re-purpose" the pyramids as burial sites?

I think that the bit about the Ark of the Covenant being the master key to the power generation capabilities of the pyramids to be especially farfetched.

Then again, in 3,000 years someone may be sitting around a campfire talking about how the ancients built magic cylinders that took men to the moon, and that there are actually banners and equipment still on the moon that were left behind by the ancient "star men".  Someone in this discussion from the future might point out that during the period 3,000 years ago there was still widespread hunger and suffering on the surface of the earth and that any civilization that could not even feed all of its members was very unlikely to have had the ability to send some of its members on an exploratory trip to the moon.  As the group digests this exchange, I imagine other members of the group nodding in agreement.

[Gumby]

Gee. Thanks for that magnificent rebuttal, LW. A super-sized 90,000,000 cubic foot tomb makes much more sense.

There's no need to drop into a defensive crouch.  Let me try to expand a bit on why the conventional wisdom has this right.

I'm saying that there's no physical evidence that anything like this was ever done and no written evidence of any sort that references technology like this.

There seems to be a fair amount of out-of-place physical evidence in the historical record, such as copper-topped poles and inscribed images of wireless lights, among others. And there are well known hieroglyphics about supposed Egyptian electric technology:

[align=center][/align]

[align=center]See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dendera_light[/align]

The use of the pyramids for burial structures, on the other hand, is well-documented and understood.

Yes, but the modern theory of wireless electricity wasn't even dreamed up until Tesla tried to build the Wardenclyffe Tower in the late 1800s — years after the first explorers had already published their work on the pyramids. There's no way the first scientists who explored the pyramids could have even hypothesized such a kind of technology. For all we know, defunct power plants were converted into pharaoh tombs.

There's a clear evolution from very early Egyptian tombs to Djoser's "step"-style tomb, which Imhotep constructed by more or less stacking up the old-style tombs.  (You'll remember Imhotep from "The Mummy" and "The Mummy Returns"!)  After that, they started filling in the "stepped" parts with stone and encasing the whole thing in limestone.  This led to the style you famously see at Giza.  So this isn't something that one day just sprung up, fully formed.  In other words, there's a clear chain of evolution from early burial styles to the Giza complex.

The walls of many pyramids also contain spells specifically relating to burial procedure.  These "spells" are called The Pyramid Texts.  They specifically talk about protecting the remains of the pharaoh and all the ways that the pharaoh can travel in the afterlife in order to make his ascent into the sky.  They spell out with great specificity what the pyramids were intended to do.

The surrounding complexes contain lots of other interesting burial-related material, such as a series of complete but disassembled burial boat.  Modern workers actually reassembled it into a beautiful ancient Egyptain barge, which is worth checking out.

So I'm simply claiming that the pharaohs (who held themselves up as gods) built incredible monuments to themselves.

The documentary's claim is that the Ark of the Covenant was used to conduct wireless electrical power through the Great Pyramid.  I didn't see any evidence offered to support this idea and I can't help but call it... extremely hard to accept.  Like MMT.  (I kid, I kid!)

If there is some piece of evidence that I'm missing here, let me know.

I agreed that the Ark of the Covenant theory is totally off the wall. Anyway, there is a whole book documenting the power plant theory...

http://amzn.com/1879181509

The book has overwhelmingly positive reviews. Perhaps the reviewers were all gullible, but it seems odd that there aren't more naysayers reviewing the book.

All I'm saying is that it seems a little odd that the Egyptians — who were fairly intelligent — would have wasted so many resources and energy building a 90,000,000 cubic foot tombstone.

Who knows? Maybe it was to implement a Job Guarantee buffer-stock policy. (EDIT: Stone, we had the same idea. nice!)

[Tortoise]

Haven't had a chance to watch the videos yet, but I love this topic and have a few initial thoughts.

At least one of the purposes of the pyramids seems to have been communication across vast stretches of time.

The shape and material of a pyramid are near-optimal for resisting wind and sandstorm erosion over time. Even if the pharaohs were a bit egotistical and just wanted to build giant monuments to themselves, they built the monuments to communicate their existence to countless future generations. Almost as if to say, "We were here. Human civilization is much older than you think it is."

Quite a few interesting corollaries follow from the mere acknowledgment that human civilization is orders of magnitude older than it appears on the surface.

Along those lines, maybe the pyramids were meant to be monuments not only to the pharaohs, but to the very fact of the rise and fall of ancient civilizations over the ages. Perhaps the people who designed the pyramids wanted to draw our attention to that unfortunate, perpetual cycle in order that we might have a fighting chance of coming up with a way to break it.

[Gumby]

I think that the bit about the Ark of the Covenant being the master key to the power generation capabilities of the pyramids to be especially farfetched.

Then again, in 3,000 years someone may be sitting around a campfire talking about how the ancients built magic cylinders that took men to the moon, and that there are actually banners and equipment still on the moon that were left behind by the ancient "star men".  Someone in this discussion from the future might point out that during the period 3,000 years ago there was still widespread hunger and suffering on the surface of the earth and that any civilization that could not even feed all of its members was very unlikely to have had the ability to send some of its members on an exploratory trip to the moon.  As the group digests this exchange, I imagine other members of the group nodding in agreement.

Yes, exactly. There's no way for anyone to really know what all that was for. The whole idea of a 90,000,000 cubic foot tomb just seems very, very strange. It's hard to imagine what kind of return the Egyptians were expecting from that kind of investment.

[MediumTex]

For all we know, defunct power plants were converted into pharaoh tombs.

Maybe it was sort of like the decommissioning process for a nuclear power plant.  Their decommissioning process was to bury a dead pharoah at the site.

[Gumby]

For all we know, defunct power plants were converted into pharaoh tombs.

Maybe it was sort of like the decommissioning process for a nuclear power plant.  Their decommissioning process was to bury a dead pharoah at the site.

[KevinW]

On a technical level, wireless electricity is usually subject to the inverse square law ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverse-square_law ).  The amount of emitted radiation at a point in space is proportional to the square root of what is emitted, as a function of distance from the emitter.  As a consequence projecting electricity in useful quantities to practical distances is extremely inefficient and would require an immense power source.  IIRC that was the fundamental obstacle that Tesla never overcame.  So I'm skeptical that anyone could make this work without something like a nuclear reactor, and there doesn't seem to be any archaeological evidence for anything like that.

[Gumby]

Btw, the sparking Leydon bottle at the top of the Great Pyramid was first observed by Sir William Siemens, the British inventor. He tells the following story in his autobiography:

Sir William Siemens as a Magician
In his autobiography the late Sir W. Siemens relates an amusing anecdote. An Arab called his attention to the fact that when at the top of the Pyramid of Cheops, when he raised his hand with fingers out-' spread, an acute singing note was heard, the sound ceasing as soon as he let his hand fall. "I found his assertion," he writes, "to be true. As soon as I raised one of my fingers above my head I felt a prickling in the fingers. That this could only be caused by an electrical phenomenon was proved by the slight electric shock felt on trying to drink out of a wine bottle. So I wrapped a full bottle of wine that I had with me in a damp paper, and thus converted it into a Leyden bottle, which was soon strongly charged with electricity by the simple device of holding it high above my head. The Arabs had already become distrustful on seeing small lightnings, as it were, issue from the wine bottles held up by myself and companions, and now held a brief consultation. Suddenly, at a given signal, each of my companions wss seized by the guide who had led him up, who now tried to force him to go down again. I myself was standing at the very top of the pyramid when the sheikh of the Arabs came to me and told me, through my interpreter, that the Arabs had determined that we were at once to leave the pyramid, because we were practicing magic, and it mieht damage their chance of earning a living. On my refusing to obey orders, the sheikh caught bold of my left hand. I had awaited this moment, and held my right hand with the bottle in the attitude of a magician, afterward lowering it slowly toward the point of the sheikh's nose. When quite close to that feature I felt a violent shock run through the bottle to my own arm, and was certain that the sheikh must have received the equivalent. At any rate, he fell speechless on the stones, and a few anxious moments passed before he rose suddenly with a loud cry, and sprang down the gigantic steps of the pyramid with long strides. The Arabs seeing this, and excited by the sheikh's constant cries of 'Magic! magic!' released my companions, and followed their leader, leaving us complete masters of the pyramid."

Source: Google Books

Hmmm.....

[Lone Wolf]

There seems to be a fair amount of out-of-place physical evidence in the historical record, such as copper-topped poles and inscribed images of wireless lights, among others. And there are well known hieroglyphics about supposed Egyptian electric technology:

Could you fill me in on the "copper-topped poles"?

I guess what I'm driving at is that if this kind of technology existed, it would leave some kind of actual evidence.  There would be some sort of physical artifacts or at the very least someone would have written about it.  Is there anything like that at all?

The evidence for the conventional interpretation, on the other hand, is overwhelming, stretching all the way back to ancient Greek sources and the writings of the Egyptians themselves.

I agreed that the Ark of the Covenant theory is totally off the wall.

If not, the "top men" that Indiana Jones was promised are studying the Ark will surely figure it all out. 

On a technical level, wireless electricity is usually subject to the inverse square law ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverse-square_law ).  The amount of emitted radiation at a point in space is proportional to the square root of what is emitted, as a function of distance from the emitter.  As a consequence projecting electricity in useful quantities to practical distances is extremely inefficient and would require an immense power source.  IIRC that was the fundamental obstacle that Tesla never overcame.  So I'm skeptical that anyone could make this work without something like a nuclear reactor, and there doesn't seem to be any archaeological evidence for anything like that.

Yeah, it's sort of like how you can (and do) generate extremely minute amounts of current by tuning in to radio waves.  But the amount of current you can get by tuning in is incredibly small compared to the amount of power required to broadcast a strong radio signal.

[Gumby]

There seems to be a fair amount of out-of-place physical evidence in the historical record, such as copper-topped poles and inscribed images of wireless lights, among others. And there are well known hieroglyphics about supposed Egyptian electric technology:

Could you fill me in on the "copper-topped poles"?

Read about the Dendera Light for details. I don't know much about it. I'm not sure we could expect light bulbs to survive thousands of years.

I guess what I'm driving at is that if this kind of technology existed, it would leave some kind of actual evidence.  There would be some sort of physical artifacts or at the very least someone would have written about it.  Is there anything like that at all?

Well, I don't know. From what I can tell, the book actually explores a few different artifacts and many theories relating to ancient Egyptian pyramid electricity power generation.

For instance, here is another interesting 'ancient aliens' theory on what the power plants were used for:

Solving the Pyramid Mystery Part I - http://youtu.be/Jv8CB9VURNc
Solving the Pyramid Mystery Part II - http://youtu.be/lMhyPNme_fs
Solving the Pyramid Mystery Part III - http://youtu.be/CWYJ82iXnWo

The last few minutes of the final video shows an example of a theory on how the pyramids were launching pads for alien astronauts.

You have to admit, the materials used in the pyramid (such as the supposed Mica-lined sluices from Brazil, etc) and the high static charges found by Sir Siemens at the top of the Great pyramid are extremely mysterious, and not very well answered by the tomb fairytale theory.

[MediumTex]

I can hear the pharoah responding to the quirky Egyptian engineer who proposed the giant electric tower:

Pharoah: You want to do WHAT!

Engineer: It will only take 20 years or so to build and take tens of thousands of workers and when we are done it will light a few lamps.

Pharoah: I think I am going to start calling you "Rube Goldberg."

Engineer: Would you feel any better about it if you got to be buried in it when you died?

Pharoah: Would you like to be buried in it right now?

[Gumby]

I can hear the pharoah responding to the quirky Egyptian engineer who proposed the giant electric tower:

Pharoah: You want to do WHAT!

Engineer: It will only take 20 years or so to build and take tens of thousands of workers and when we are done it will light a few lamps.

Pharoah: I think I am going to start calling you "Rube Goldberg."

Engineer: Would you feel any better about it you got to be buried in it when you died?

Pharoah: Would you like to be buried in it right now?

Yeah... that does sound off. I suppose the three-part video detailing the alien launching pads and stationary geo-orbitting satellite energy source actually makes more sense in terms of return on investment

The highly-specific materials and high-precision engineering/plans for a giant tomb don't make much sense — clearly they were the plans of a highly motivated, highly detailed and advanced engineer.

Perhaps a pyramid "tomb" was actually a shrine to departed god-like aliens once the launchpad was decommissioned.

[Lone Wolf]

For instance, here is another interesting 'ancient aliens' theory on what the power plants were used for:
...
The last few minutes of the final video shows an example of a theory on how the pyramids were launching pads for alien astronauts.

!!!

Why do you find the pyramids move convincing as wireless power generators and ancient alien launch pads?  Why not simply monuments to ego, religion, and (as Tortoise proposed), an Ozymandias-like "look upon my works ye mighty" message that we happen to be the recipients of?

If you had all the resources of a powerful kingdom at hand, an ego that won't quit, and belief in your own divinity and that arrangements for your afterlife must be handled with the utmost care, wouldn't you be inclined to build yourself "something nice"? 

You have to admit, the materials used in the pyramid (such as the supposed Mica-lined sluices from Brazil, etc) are extremely mysterious, and not very well answered by the tomb fairytale theory.

It took me a second here but did you switch to Mesoamerica?  Are you talking about Teotihuacan now instead of Giza?

The highly-specific materials and high-precision engineering/plans for a giant tomb don't make much sense — clearly they were the plans of a highly motivated, highly detailed and advanced engineer.

Do you mean that you are skeptical that the ancient Egyptians possessed the engineering ability to construct the pyramids?  Because they were smart people in possession of outstanding engineers and the resources to employ a whole lot of labor.  No aliens required.  Just human ingenuity.  Or is your point more, "Why bother with this?"

I can hear the pharoah responding to the quirky Egyptian engineer who proposed the giant electric tower:

LOL.  That's too good.

[Gumby]

Why do you find the pyramids move convincing as wireless power generators and ancient alien launch pads?  Why not simply monuments to ego, religion, and (as Tortoise proposed), an Ozymandias-like "look upon my works ye mighty" message that we happen to be the recipients of?

As the videos point out, there are too many unanswered questions that 'tombs and monuments' don't adequately answer. Why would they use highly reflective materials to construct various layers of every pyramid? Why would they use highly reflective and electro-conductive materials throughout all of these key areas? Why did Sir Siemens observe "electrical phenomenon" at the top of the Great pyramid, as his guides suggested he would?

Suppose we were on a manned mission to Mars and we the first explorers to discover a set of large geometrically-perfect pyramids — the largest being 90,000,000 cubic feet in volume. And upon conducting a field operation we observed noticeable levels of electrical charges at the top of the largest pyramid as well as highly conductive and reflective materials throughout complex. Would you leave those unexplained observations out of your report? I wouldn't. Why would you ignore them? Why not ask more questions and run more tests?

If you had all the resources of a powerful kingdom at hand, an ego that won't quit, and belief in your own divinity and that arrangements for your afterlife must be handled with the utmost care, wouldn't you be inclined to build yourself "something nice"?  :)

How do you know that every pyramid throughout the world was built for someone with an ego? Sounds just as speculative as any other theory.

You have to admit, the materials used in the pyramid (such as the supposed Mica-lined sluices from Brazil, etc) are extremely mysterious, and not very well answered by the tomb fairytale theory.

It took me a second here but did you switch to Mesoamerica?  Are you talking about Teotihuacan now instead of Giza?

Yes. The videos talk about this. There are many pyramids throughout the world. How do you suppose they had so many similar electroconductive properties to them?

The highly-specific materials and high-precision engineering/plans for a giant tomb don't make much sense — clearly they were the plans of a highly motivated, highly detailed and advanced engineer.

Do you mean that you are skeptical that the ancient Egyptians possessed the engineering ability to construct the pyramids?  Because they were smart people in possession of outstanding engineers and the resources to employ a whole lot of labor.  No aliens required.  Just human ingenuity.  Or is your point more, "Why bother with this?"

Yes, why did the bother with it? Why bother with the highly conductive materials? Why bother with the specific dimensions and precision that are conducive to reflection? Why bother with diverting resources to such a wasteful project? Why bother with creating an electromagnetic field around the area? Why the mysterious tunnels and compartments? Why have an enormous (reflective) gold cap on the top if you know it's going to be looted someday? Why the mica-lined sluices and layers? It doesn't make sense. The tomb theory seems a bit inadequate.

At least the alien theory — which is obviously waaaay out there on the fringe — tries to make sense of those questions. I'm not saying it's actually true. I'm just saying it's a very interesting theory — imagining that the Egyptians used technology that NASA is now experimenting with (as shown in Part I, of the three-part video series).

[dualstow]

I don't believe in any of this stuff, but Gumby, you should look into Graham Hancock's 'Fingerprints of the Gods.'
This book is for you.

[Tortoise]

Very interesting videos, Gumby. I just finished watching them. I especially enjoyed the second one; rarely are ancient technological secrets revealed over the groovy sounds of a dance mix!

I'd like to read a book-length treatment about the "pyramids as wireless power transmitters" theory. Maybe Christopher Dunn's Giza Power Plant would be a good place for me to start. Even if it's complete malarkey, at least it'll be entertaining science fiction.

One thing that's always bothered me about the standard "pyramids as tombs" theory is all the evidence suggesting the pyramids had a strong astronomical purpose in their designs.

For example, Robert Bauval pointed out that the layout of the three main pyramids at Giza corresponds to the three stars of Orion's Belt:



Bauval also showed that in ancient times, the southern shaft of the Great Pyramid's King's Chamber pointed to the constellation of Orion and the southern shaft of the Queen's Chamber pointed directly at Sirius (the Dog Star -- the brightest star in the sky).

At least part of the remarkably detailed engineering of the Pyramids at Giza seems to have had an astronomical purpose. Many historians try to brush this off by saying the ancient Egyptians (and most other ancient cultures) were superstitious regarding the objects in the night sky. That may be, but the precision of some of the ancient engineering suggests they had a strong mathematical knowledge of the stars as well.

[stone]

What would be the most perplexing thing for people of the future to understand when looking at us now? To my mind it would be our finance industry. Investment banking and hedgefunds etc probably consume at least as large a slice of our productive capacity as pyramid building did back then. I guess we make that enormous sacrifice of our resources in an effort to fight entropy to enforce wealth/power inequality. Perhaps pyramid building also fitted in to their system in a similar role. People were preoccupied by needing to build pyramids or provide food etc to the pyramid builders. Having a big mission created a driving force to keep everyone in line and under the command of the establishment.

"Ancient Egypt was doubly fortunate and doubtless owed to this its fabled wealth, in that it possessed two activities, namely pyramid building as well as the search for precious metals, the fruits of which, since they could not serve the needs of man by being consumed, did not stale with abundance. The Middle Ages built cathedrals and sang dirges. Two pyramids, two masses for the dead, are twice as good as one; but not so two railways from London to York.
—John Maynard Keynes"

Looking to the future, Keynes could have said co-located ultra low latency trading systems rather than pyramids or cathedrals. Back then religion was used to commandeer people. Now I guess avarice is used in the same way

[MediumTex]

What would be the most perplexing thing for people of the future to understand when looking at us now?

I think that it will be trying to reconcile the expansion in our knowledge and technology in the last 200 years or so with a seemingly delusional inability to grasp how short the life expectancy must be of any society premised upon exponential economic growth into perpetuity that relies upon finite resource inputs to facilitate that growth.

[Gumby]

What would be the most perplexing thing for people of the future to understand when looking at us now?

I think that it will be trying to reconcile the expansion in our knowledge and technology in the last 200 years or so with a seemingly delusional inability to grasp how short the life expectancy must be of any society premised upon exponential economic growth into perpetuity that relies upon finite resource inputs to facilitate that growth.

That is, if they can actually find any evidence of our knowledge. Data drives would probably turn to sand after awhile and most books would decompose. We don't leave cave drawings anymore. They'll probably just find inscriptions on the side of the post office buildings and religious stone artifacts every few blocks. And lots of plastic, metal and TVs. Future archeologists might assume we were primitive using drywall and steel skeletons on our skyscrapers instead of more advanced polymers, etc.

MTs example of the defunct space program is a great example. Thousands of years from now, Cape Canaveral might just look like a primitive stone henge.

[MediumTex]

What would be the most perplexing thing for people of the future to understand when looking at us now?

I think that it will be trying to reconcile the expansion in our knowledge and technology in the last 200 years or so with a seemingly delusional inability to grasp how short the life expectancy must be of any society premised upon exponential economic growth into perpetuity that relies upon finite resource inputs to facilitate that growth.

That is, if they can actually find any evidence of our knowledge. Data drives would probably turn to sand after awhile and books would all decompose. We don't leave cave drawings anymore. They'll probably just find inscriptions on the side of the post office buildings and religious stone artifacts every few blocks. Future archeologists might assume we were primitive using drywall and steel skeletons on our skyscrapers instead of more advanced polymers, etc.

Our garbage dumps will provide future archeologists with plenty of work.

Strip mining operations will also probably be cause for many questions.  I can see future archeologists and anthropologists speculating that we may have been attempting to build "reverse pyramids" through our open pit mining operations.

Nuclear power plants will also be fun for people of the future to try to understand.  Failing to grasp what we were trying to accomplish with them, people of the future might come to refer to them as "atomic death centers", or maybe "landscape habitability destruction facilities."