Today, we encounter traces of humanity on earth that date back to 130 thousand years ago. In summary, we have inhabited this earth for 130 thousand years. It is for sure that we brought about a very different appearance for the face of the earth throughout the period of time that has elapsed. Especially in the past 200 years, it has assumed a totally different state with the impact of the industrial revolution. We built factories, homes, transportation companies, skyscrapers, dams, power stations. We continue to build more.

However, we also disrupt the balance of the world in doing that. The factors that came along with industrialization such as the rise in consumption of fossil fuels, obliteration of forest, increasingly growing population have caused us to encounter the threat that we call global warming. Not to mention the problems that will be caused by the depletion of fossil fuels, the danger of famine that will be brought about by the decline in agricultural production...

So, what will happen to the world we have left behind when we land on spaceships and collectively abandon our world? What kind of a place will the world be after us if the world population is suddenly reduced to null?

It is estimated that the first visible change after extinction will be the finalization of the light pollution we created on earth. When the first year of life with no men has ended, animals shall return to the lands they had owned many years ago. They will be able to roam the streets and avenues comfortably, to live in desolate buildings. In the long term, nothing will remain behind of men. However, many man-made things around us today will be able to resume their existence for hundreds of years, some of them thousands. For example, all the suspended bridges that are today’s engineering marvels will have collapsed due to lack of maintenance and to corrosion on the 300th year of un-manned world, yet, the arched stone bridges which have stood erect for hundreds of years as relics from our ancestors will still continue to exist.

The rate of carbon-dioxide that increased with the industrial revolution which took place in the 18th century about 300 years ago shall be reduced to the level before the industrial revolution only 100 thousands years later. Namely, the pollution we created in 300 years will be able to be cleansed off by the world in 100 thousand years. One of the most durable ones among man-made materials will be plastics. The plastics we have been using in every field of our life have been manufactured for the past 50 years. The fact that approximately 1 billion tons of plastic manufactured since then up to now still exist in an undistorted way indicates that the future of plastic materials will also be long. It is estimated that plastics of which the duration of endurance is not exactly known today will still exist on earth even 1 million years later. It is forecast that only bronze statutes will remain as pertaining to us 10 million years after man. After millions of years, our world will have eliminated whatever there was that belonged to man. It will not be possible to understand that a species called ‘man’ lived in the world. The findings like fossils of thousands of years that are uncovered only thanks to today’s archeological studies will also be able to be obtained as a result of archeological studies if there are some who actualize them. Durable materials like building remains, plastic, jewelry will be able to be found inside glaciers or several meters under the ground. As a result, a world where no mankind exists will eventually obliterate all records belonging to us and be cleansed off all the effects created by mankind. It shall forget us.