Lacuna

“All gone as if it never was.”

Log 12-345-FGV

Additional artifacts were found on a frozen landmass near the planet’s equator. These indicate a high degree of technological advancement compared to much simpler items found; but as elsewhere on the planet, there is an unexplainable inverse relationship between the degree of advancement and any sort of permanent record of history, daily activities, commercial transactions, or other events. 

For example, much older and much newer records have been regularly found associated with markedly less advanced civilizations. The materials used for these records are diverse and include heavy and light plant materials, clay tablets, carved stone, and drawings on cave walls. Massive drawings on a desert surface were also found, but these do not appear to represent a means of communication within a time period or from one time period to another.  

Most human-built structures are gone or have been reduced to tantalizing footprints. Notable exceptions are several large pyramids located in a once arid area north of the equator. Increased rainfall over the last thousand years has accelerated the erosion of these structures, but their unnatural origin remains quite evident. 

Log 13-348-FGV

At this week’s briefing, a half-hearted hypothesis was proffered by Professor Qigly, which is as follows: The sentient inhabitants fled the planet, perhaps because of war, disease, or an “all-in” extra-planetary colonization effort, and they did not want any evidence to remain by which they could be tracked to their new home(s). He admits there is no evidence found of war or pestilence at a level that might compel such a migration, but he does not rule out that the motivation for leaving may have been religious or purely intellectual in nature. There is ample evidence among other time periods that this species practiced a variety of religions. 

Professor Sharz suggested a fantastic idea, which he himself admitted was essentially a scientific stream-of-consciousness, not to be taken seriously absent additional evidence: mass suicide with an anti-suicide note (i.e., they destroyed all their documentation). 

General Xhan attended today’s briefing, and with a warrior’s perspective suggested that perhaps the inhabitants engaged in a particularly odd type of global warfare in which the destruction of each side’s information was the goal or perhaps merely collateral damage. A “mutually assured deletion” he called it. 

Log 27-346-FGV

An unusual find was made at a dig near a silted-in bay in sector 13-3B3: A small silicon wafer, obviously of unnatural origin, covered with intricate, microscopic writing that has resisted all efforts at deciphering. Analysis of the wafer indicates that the writing may have been damaged by a high-energy burst of some unknown type. This wafer was found inside of what appears to be an unusual ear decoration. What is unusual about this ear decoration is that it appears to have been worn inserted directly into the ear canals rather than attached externally into the fleshy protrusions characteristically found bilaterally on the sides of the skull of this species—at least as far as can be discerned from various artworks found.    

Log 11-121-FGV

Tomorrow we leave this world and return home for a period of leave prior to our next assignment. Despite a thorough search, no trace of writing or other documentation was found for the Xhinthon Period of the apex species on this planet, which we estimate to have lasted 150 years, a very brief length of time compared to, earlier and later, less technologically advanced periods (for example, the Xhenthon Period is estimated at 2,000 years). 

The only remaining evidence we have of writing for the Xhinthon period is the unusual spacecraft intercepted by one of our scout vessels, and which led to the current investigation. As with our culture, the element gold was the substrate used, a rarer element on this planet certainly compared to our own (which lends credence to the theory they took all their documentation with them), but no further examples of such written documentation related to the Xhinthon Period were found using gold or any other substrate.