To 6938

We get a lot of archaeology around Lancaster what with Roman remains and all. Someone unearthed an altar to Mars. In his introduction to Vault Of The Ages, Poul Anderson discusses the limitations of archaeology:

"...relics are usually few and in poor condition."

-Poul Anderson, Vault Of The Ages (New York, 1969), p. vii.

Anderson's Time Patrol solves this problem but their discoveries are of benefit only to dwellers in periods when it is known that time travel occurs - and only in their own timeline, of course.

Anderson presents a fascinating summary of the contents of the Time Capsule in New York which is meant to be opened in 6938. The novel features a larger "time vault" which is discovered and opened in a fictional future about five hundred years after Vault... was written. If this is going to be our only way to communicate directly with our descendants, then we should do more of it. 

See also a poem by James Elroy Flecker here.