[ WP ] Global warming is melting the ice caps , revealing a previously hidden archaeological evidence of ancient motor vehicles and industrialized society .

The things we found on the now barren Antarctic plains seemed so alien, but the unmistakable corpses left little doubt; these had been our distant ancestors. Their technology was unquestionably advanced, but we couldn ’ t understand it our make any use of it. 
 
 The teams that had been assembled were all the very best of their respective fields, and their labour was honest and without malice. But the race we found had simply taken a greatly different path in their advancement. Some things seemed familiar, such as furnaces and vehicles. They used the wheel with far greater efficiency than we had, and that at least was one gift we were able to take from their defrosted tombs. But they had a form of electrical transmission we couldn ’ t even begin to unravel, and what appeared to be their versions of computer systems and electronics was completely foreign to our attempts at understanding. 
 
 It wasn ’ t until after several years of meticulous excavation that we finally unearthed clear samples of their written language. Linguist toiled without rest to determine the nature of the ancestral language, and great debates arose regarding its origin and composition. Some believed it to be fully unique from our own long dead early dialects, while others believed they had found common links to our ancient tongues. The former advocated for independent study of the Antarctic scripts, while the latter continued in their quest of comparison. 
 
 Over many years, we continued to liberate our ancestors from their graves, and studied them in the minutest detail. As our own technology poisoned our world, we struggled in haste to find among the dead civilization any clue as to their fate, and the prevention of our own demise. 
 
 Finally after decades of study, as the skies choked at our lungs, and the oceans swallowed our cities, the ancient language was broken, and we could read the words of our ancestors. It had indeed been the first language from which our most ancient tongues had sprung forth, and it read almost as one of our own sacred texts. 
 
 Much of what our predecessors had written was much the same as our own. They recorded their histories, made glory of their wars, and revelled in the defeats of their enemies and the conquest of nature. They told stories of greatness, of kingdoms and of love. Little was of any true use for our decaying world, but we felt compelled to understand them before we too faded to the whims of our planet. 
 
 Then in what had been one of their great capitals, a team had found carvings carefully sealed within a hidden tomb. Many relics of the dead world had been encased there, preserving them for our future discovery. The carvings were not from their early days, nor were they the machine-hammered words most common in the latter time of their civilization. Rather these had been done by hand near the end of their existence, and in some great haste. The hand-carved nature made translation difficult, but eventually we could read the last testament of our fallen Mothers and Fathers, that they had tried to so carefully leave for us to find; 
 
 “ We have destroyed our world. Just as the ancient race we found buried beneath hills and sand had died before us, we too will now perish to our own vanity. Our machines are failing us, and the Star Flight has collapsed, stranding us on this dying globe. Any who survive to read this, heed our deaths as greatest warning, and care for your home. There are no other living worlds to seek within our Sun ’ s light, and we perish with the coming of the Ice, just as our ancestors perished in their Dust. ” 
 
 We read these words far too late, and as the world once again consumed the mechanisms and monuments of our race, we too perished. You too shall fall victim to the power of your own hands, but heed our deaths as greatest warning, as we perish beneath our Seas. 
 
 EDIT: spelling 

