People are curious and adventurous. And greedy, power-hungry, and short-sighted. It doesn't even work today to warn people of something dangerous.
As has been said many times, any warning sign, particularly pompous ones, may always be interpreted as a sign of worship instead. So just pile a few hundred thousand skelettons on top -- a literal sign of death. We probably cannot do better. If anyone in the future does not understand this when digging it up, then a few people will need to die until they do. I don't think there's a solution.
Except maybe not to produce dangerous material that lasts longer than human memory. But that's, well, you can read the first paragraph again.
Had a similar thought, but apparently skeletons decompose after just 20 years in fertile soil, or a few hundred in sand. I was thinking some kind of artificial replica of cadavers in the most gruesome state we can conjure, made from materials as durable as what you're storing. Or somehow fossilize your thousands of skeletons.
The article mentions culture as the most enduring thing humans have created, in cases having lasted millenia, but I think instinct is even more basic and has been around about as long as we have. Cater to that.
We have a literal profession whose sole purpose is to carefully dig dirt over extended periods of time to excavate skeletons and attempt to understand their lives and deaths.
I don't think skeletons is a deterrent, quite the opposite.
- Put a lock on it (make it hard to get to. Probably by just burying it very deep and destroying access to it)
- Make it boring to future people. Put household garbage on top of it.
People have to not want to get into it and any parent can tell you that saying 'no' to a toddler isn't nearly as effective as putting brussel sprouts in their path.
As has been said many times, any warning sign, particularly pompous ones, may always be interpreted as a sign of worship instead. So just pile a few hundred thousand skelettons on top -- a literal sign of death. We probably cannot do better. If anyone in the future does not understand this when digging it up, then a few people will need to die until they do. I don't think there's a solution.
Except maybe not to produce dangerous material that lasts longer than human memory. But that's, well, you can read the first paragraph again.