To store the tablets, he looked to a
local salt mine, in a 4.5 metre-high
cavern about 1.6 kilometres deep in
the mountain. Geolog y dictates that
the archive will slowly rise up on salt
crystals through the mountain to
the surface. The owners of the mine
loved the idea.
They weren’t alone. Claudia
Theune, a professor of archaeolog y
at the University of Vienna, offered
input about what might make the
MOM archive most useful to future
generations. Thomas Grill, an Aus-
trian sound artist and researcher,
approached Martin to figure out
a way to schematically represent
sounds on a ceramic tablet.
Collaborative by nature, Martin
kept reaching out, to linguists, an-
thropologists, space experts, in an
attempt to broaden the scope of his
archive and increase the chances
of its success. Soon he was being
invited to conferences, delivering a
TED Talk in Linz and speaking at the
FutureFest Conference in London.
“I always have to emphasise that
this is not a doomsday project,” said
Martin.
ON A NOVEMBER AFTERNOON,
Martin and I drove to the Saltzwelten
(Salt Worlds) mine, located in a pic-
turesque village known as Hallstatt.
One of the oldest known salt mines in
the world, it dates back 7000 years or
more. In early times, salt provided the
region with unprecedented wealth,
given the centrality of the mineral as
a preservative, a spice and currency.
The people at the mine, which is
still active, seemed to know Mar-
tin and he got waved through to
the funicular. At the top of the lift,
we walked through a thick mist to
an opening in the mountain, and
climbed on a long piece of polished
wood with wooden seat backs – a
motorised, trolley-like vehicle. A
miner threw a switch, and we lurched
into the black, our heads nearly
brushing the ceiling. Eventually we
burst into a lit cavern.
The bosses at Saltzwelten have
given Martin his own corner, where
he’s stacked about 50 crates of tablets.
Tours of the mine run past the spot,
but it would be easy to miss the whole
thing but for a placard on the wall,
announcing that this is the Memo-
ry of Mankind Project. “A breath of
immortality for everyone,” it read.
It seemed impossible to think the
crates would ever be found. But why
not? As Martin was quick to point
out, history is littered with ceramics.
If not for some Martin in the past and
his tablets, we wouldn’t know how
much the Sumerians loved their beer,
nor much about the history of maths.
Martin lifted down a crate and
started rif ling through the tiles,
which made a clicking sound. Some
had images, some had pinched text
that was hard to read.
The process of making a tablet
is relatively simple. In his shop,64 Augus t 2019
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