Related thought: The "Rosetta Project" (
http://rosettaproject.org/) aims to build a publicly accessible library of human languages. Besides the website, part of the original concept was to seed the world with "Rosetta Discs", metal spheres with an approximately 2,000-year lifespan, etched with optically readable samples of thousands of written languages. Future humans who found the discs would be able to review and understand the dead languages on it as long as at least one of the languages on the disk was still known. The website (
http://rosettaproject.org/disk/concept/) describes how it would work:
The Disk surface shown here, meant to be a guide to the contents, is etched with a central image of the earth and a message written in eight major world languages: “Languages of the World: This is an archive of over 1,500 human languages assembled in the year 02008 C.E. Magnify 1,000 times to find over 13,000 pages of language documentation.” The text begins at eye-readable scale and spirals down to nano-scale. This tapered ring of languages is intended to maximize the number of people that will be able to read something immediately upon picking up the Disk, as well as implying the directions for using it—‘get a magnifier and there is more.’
On the reverse side of the disk from the globe graphic are over 13,000 microetched pages of language documentation. Since each page is a physical rather than digital image, there is no platform or format dependency. Reading the Disk requires only optical magnification. Each page is .019 inches, or half a millimeter, across. This is about equal in width to 5 human hairs, and can be read with a 650X microscope (individual pages are clearly visible with 100X magnification).
The disk still seems to be a work in progress, but the Rosetta project is concentrating on many Internet and audio-based initiatives (see http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/29/us/29bcculture.html)