If the subject heading is true, as I believe it is, then policy and management implications are wildly different from what is more often taken for granted or otherwise assumed today.
I
Let start with a lesser known example:
Once an artificial island, the ancient site of Soline was discovered in 2021 by archaeologist Mate Parica of the University of Zadar in Croatia while he was analyzing satellite images of the water area around Korčula [Island].
After spotting something he thought might be human-made on the ocean floor, Parica and a colleague dove to investigate.
At a depth of 4 to 5 meters (13 to 16 feet) in the Mediterranean’s Adriatic Sea, they found stone walls that may have once been part of an ancient settlement. The landmass it was built upon was separated from the main island by a narrow strip of land. . . .
Through radiocarbon analysis of preserved wood, the entire settlement was estimated to date back to approximately 4,900 BCE.
“People walked on this [road] almost 7,000 years ago,” the University of Zadar said in a Facebook statement on its most recent discovery. . .”Neolithic artifacts such as cream blades, stone [axes] and fragments of sacrifice were found at the site,” the University of Zadar adds.
accessed online at https://www.sciencealert.com/road-built-7000-years-ago-found-at-the-bottom-of-the-mediterranean-sea)
This discovery is also part of an on-going installation work by German filmmaker and moving image artist, Hito Steyerl, and described in a recent article as:
In The Artificial Island, the work traces a submerged Neolithic site off the coast of Korčula, discovered in 2021 by archaeologist Mate Parica. The site, originally connected to the mainland by an ancient road, now lies four to five metres beneath the Adriatic Sea, submerged by rising waters that speak both to geological deep time and contemporary climate upheaval.
accessed online at https://aestheticamagazine.com/flooded-worlds-parallel-realities/
After being primed by the two texts, take another look at the photo. You can see the submerged island, see its causeway to surface land, and imagine how the still-rising waters will submerge even more settlements ahead in the climate emergency.
II
The problem here arises when the preceding “imagine” becomes a prediction about what is to happen.
I wager that no reader primed as above asks first thing: “What about the presettlement template displaced by the Neolithic roadway and settlement?” Or from the other direction, “What about what’s been preserved from having been submerged for so long? What does this tell us about how the retreat from rising sea level was managed?”
Nor is it satisfactory to counter that Neolithic times had no concepts for presettlement template and rising sea levels. If so, why then do you think future generations, looking back, wouldn’t have their own (different) concepts to understand the submergence underway?
More, what if further research suggests the current understanding of these sites needs to be modified, say: “It turns out evidence is found that the roadway was actually an important runway for animals”–how would that change, if at all, what we are to do, now and in the next steps ahead?
III
So what? What now?
“What do we do now?” is precisely the question that should be first asked. No one, I also wager, reads the above text and looks at the photo and immediately asks: “What happens next?”
I mean that literally: “What happens next at and around these submerged sites? Are they to be protected (that is, why these sites and not other worthy candidates for protection in the face of the climate emergency)?”
More formally, you may think this example points to what to do with respect to the climate emergency elsewhere and over the longer haul. I am suggesting that accomplishments that happen next and here reframe that issue for real time. People already understand what are accomplishments in ways that progress and success are understood by others later on.
WHEN COMPLEX IS AS SIMPLE AS IT GETS 
One thought on “Progress is only understood retrospectively. This means progress ahead is predicted before it is understood.”