Imagine you are an intelligent being, living on earth about four hundred million years into the future. You have got pictures of recovered remains from a time period of extensive use of carbon compounds. The objects from this time are very scarce in rocks and it is difficult to understand how the objects were made and used. Very little is known about possible life forms using such objects. Bob Bovin is a professor in materials chemistry and devoted photographer. He has photographed some remains of belongings to the intelligent ape, homo sapiens, just now populating the earth. The objects, here deposited in bitumen of some New York streets, are candidates to be preserved for considerable long time, also seen in the time scale of the earth, about four and a half billion years.
