Motel of the mysteries /
David Macaulay.
- Boston : Houghton Mifflin, 1979.
- 95 pages : illustrations ; 29 cm.
"It is the year 4022; all of the ancient country of Usa has been buried under many feet of detritus from a catastrophe that occurred back in 1985. Imagine, then, the excitement that Howard Carson, an amateur archaeologist at best, experienced when in crossing the perimeter of an abandoned excavation site he felt the ground give way beneath him and found himself at the bottom of a shaft, which, judging from the DO NOT DISTURB sign hanging from an archaic doorknob, was clearly the entrance to a still-sealed burial chamber. Carson's incredible discoveries, including the actual remains of two bodies, one of them on a ceremonial bed facing an altar that appeared to be a means of communicating with the Gods and the other lying in a porcelain sarcophagus in the Inner Chamber, permitted him to piece together the whole fabric of that extraordinary civilization. In David Macaulay's depictions of this dramatic discovery, the fact that Carson's conclusions are wholly erroneous only adds to the wonderment of the find thte insights that we are given that peculiar age." Back cover.