I went to see the Time Pyramid. It won't be finished until 3183AD

A rare chance to see the "Zeitpyramide" construction in Wemding, Germany

Richard Fisher

Sep 18, 2023

You’re reading The Long View: A Field Guide, a newsletter about long-term thinking. This edition features the very slow construction of the Time Pyramid in Germany, more places to access deep time, and an important fact-check of Busted’s ‘Year 3000’…

Hello there,

I recently travelled to the town of Wemding in southern Germany to report on a rare ceremony for the New York Times. It only happens once every 10 years.

Along with 300 other people – locals, international visitors, politicians, several film crews, and a Tiktokker – I watched a mobile crane-operator lower a single concrete block into place, 180cm tall and 120cm wide. It was the fourth piece of the “Time Pyramid”, a long-term artwork that will take almost 1,200 years to build, one block at a time.

Proposed by the local artist Manfred Laber in the early 1990s, the previous sections were added at ceremonies in 1993, 2003 and 2013. There will be 116 more, up until the year 3183AD. It’s an extraordinary exercise in patience and cross-generational collaboration.

As you might imagine, some were sceptical at first – not least because it is made of an unbeautiful material, concrete – but now town officials print tourist leaflets about the pyramid, and the locals I spoke with have embraced the bold oddness of the project. Wemding’s residents now date periods of their lives according to the blocks: one politician joked in his speech that for each new block, he’s had extra children. A designer from the area has even created an augmented reality version.

I was joined at the ceremony by the custodians of several other long-term art/symbolic projects, such as the Letters of Utrecht, the 600-year-plus concert Organ²/ASLSP, and the Long Now foundation. Recently, these projects have started to share knowledge and experience with one another in a network called Long-term Art Projects (LTAP) – I’ll be following how this group grows and develops.

The fourth block in place, with the 2013, 2003 and 1993 blocks behind

One additional detail I didn’t have space to include in the Times story is the Time Pyramid’s geological frame: it happens to sit inside an enormous 15-million-year-old meteorite impact crater. Nördlinger Ries, which contains Wemding and a few other towns, is around 24km wide, and from the Time Pyramid’s position on a hill, you can see the crater rim encircling it in the distance. In 1970, the Apollo 14 astronauts visited the region to study the geology and practise collecting rocks, because it mirrored the crater they were going to on the Moon.

Anyway, if you have a moment, please do read/share the article I wrote about the Time Pyramid ceremony last week. I was accompanied by the photographer Felix Schmitt, who took some terrific images - one with a drone. (My own favourite is the one of the crowd watching as the block descends.)

This link should hopefully avoid any paywall/read-limit:

Until 3183 A.D., This Public Sculpture Is a Work in Progress

Is Busted’s Year 3000 song accurate?

Last week, the BBC radio programme More or Less, presented by Tim Harford, asked a fun question about the song Year 3000, by the band Busted. (Bear with me, this is relevant to the long view…)

The song’s chorus goes like this:

He said, "I've been to the year 3000
Not much has changed but they lived underwater
And your great, great, great grand daughter
Is pretty fine"

More or Less is a numbers programme, so they wondered… is that actually the right number of ‘greats’ for a descendant living in the year 3000?

Turns out it depends on a few factors, like whether the descendants are male or female. But the conclusion? To be plausibly accurate, the song ought to be performed as follows:

He said, "I've been to the year 3000
Not much has changed but they lived underwater
And your great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great grand daughter
Is pretty fine"

They play it out in full on the programme - have a listen here. (You can thank me later for the earworm.)

New additions to the ‘A-Z of Temporal Windows’

In the last newsletter, Xander compiled a list of places where it’s possible to feel a greater connection to deep time. We asked readers of the newsletter for their own nominations. Here are a few you suggested:

Uluru at night. “Looking at so many distant distant stars in a dark sky surrounded by 60,000 years of people who have all done the same as you do now” – Steve Shrewsbury
“I’d nominate places where old Archean rocks are exposed on the Earth's surface, typically in the geologic shields of Canada, Australia and Africa. The Isua Greenstone Belt (3.7-3.8 Gy) on Greenland may be a good example … Myself, I grew up in Stockholm where the local rocks along my old school route are just 2.1 billion years old. They used to be part of the root system of a mountain range the size of the Andes on the western coast of the continent Nuna. Many have been polished smooth by the recent ice age, a mere blink in time from when they formed.” – Anders Sandberg
The Moon. “Technically this doesn't actually meet your definition of "the world's best places...", nonetheless, there is nothing quite as humbling to me as looking at that enormous, lifeless rock that has been continuously whirling about the Earth for the last 4.5 billion years!” – Ken Wood

News about The Long View:

My book The Long View should hopefully be more easily available in the US & Canada from 26 September. If you spot it in the wild, please do let me know. Every author loves to see their book on the shelf (and past newsletter readers will remember that my mum does too).
I did an interview with Psychology Today’s Ryan Prior about The Long View. Watch out for more podcast interviews publishing soon too…
I’m speaking at a number of events in the autumn/winter. Here’s some of the dates so far if you’d like come along:

Buy The Long View

For people in the UK, the book is available from a list of retailers are here.

I’m told that The Long View will be available to buy in the US & Canada from 26 September, eg Amazon (US) and Amazon (Canada).

I did hear from one reader that their US bookshop cancelled their pre-order without explanation… so, if you live in North America and can’t reliably find a copy, may I suggest the UK retailer Blackwell’s? As far as I know, they offer free international shipping to quite a few countries, including the US - plus they have signed copies!

thanks for reading,

best wishes,

Richard