From the pyramids to cave paintings, ancient civilizations carved their presence into history through agriculture, ritual, and culture. Today, we like to imagine our own legacy will be towering skylines, vast digital archives, or even our most intimate journals, waiting to be uncovered by future explorers, or perhaps even by aliens. But according to a 2018 study in Royal Society Open Science, the most enduring trace of our existence may not be towers or machines at all. Instead, it could be something far more ordinary: the billions of chicken bones scattered across the planet!
Could it be that our true legacy isn’t the monuments we’ve built, but the overlooked remnants of everyday life? Click through this gallery to see what may really outlast us.