The best preserved civilization in history

I joke many times that we as a civilization will be the best preserved of all of them. Long after the old mummies of the Pharahohs are gone, whoever comes after will be watching our own  mummified corpses last and last and last. Why well its because of all the stuff that goes into us, all the preservatives, and other crud that goes into our bodies, well not only does it preserve our food, but it should preserve us as well.  All the antibacterial agents,the plastics in our system(yes we have plastics in us,  read the research), various exotic radionucleides(what just because its not harmful doesn't mean its not detectable), and other stuff that life will have some trouble devouring after we are gone. It will eventually devour us, but hey at least our corpses last longer than any other.

Other stuff that will remain long after we are gone, the various radio nucleides  in the atmoshphere. Remember the nuclear age,  nuclear testing, various nuclear materials, all that has half lives measured in thousands of  years, an imprint that will be easily detectable as us, many years after we are all gone. 

I read the book The World without us long before it came out  on T.V. It is true that most of our stuff would be devoured by time, but there would be some stuff that would last well longer anyway not forever nothing lasts forever. Generally that would be our imprint on the environment (I speak not just of our ecological footprint but our general footprint on everything). A enterprising archaelogist could measure the istopic abundance gases in the air, which would indicate intelligent disurption, the relative diversity of species would be another one(it would be down in other words), the depletion of various oil, metal and other deposits would be another clue. Conversely the concentration of said materials in areas where they would not be naturally would be another one. Of course our space borne probes, the Voyager series would be longest lived of all, but we want to talk about the planet here.

Genetic studies of whatever species, would indicate trait transferance that could not come about naturally. Looking at fossil records, you could measure the background rate of extinction and say that x species came about and lived x time, but something caused its extinction at some time without a identifiable natural cause.  Also you could measure the background amount of generalist species vs. specialists species. The higher abundance of generalist species would be a indicator of intelligence, and using that you could measure the time at which said extinction occurred, measuring the ratio of generalist to specialist.

Most of the stuff that we would consider important would be gone of course, but its interesting that long after we are gone, that we would have made such large footprint, that it would  be detectable if whoever was looking was smart enough to look in the right spots.