As I read more and more, this book, even more so than GR layers itself. Each of the chapters and sections seem to be a certain delta-t taken out and individually examined (but not necessarily in order) reveal a history of individuals and ultimately of a society. In the same way, the landfill that Nick visits with Sims and Detwiler seems to represent layers of history put together that also give birth to a history and age. Conventional history has more often than not followed the aristocrats and the wars of those in power. The landfill, the accumulation of everyone's waste, seems to me a very plebeian but unified representation of society's history. The passage on page 287 suggests that "garbage rose first, inciting people to build a civilization in response, in self-defense. We had to find ways to discard our waste, to use what we couldn't discard, to reprocess what we couldn't use." Litter's last stop is the landfill, a place it goes to be forgotten. At the same time, a slice, a layer of waste, from the landfill could tell a story of individuals that continues to impact the world. The landfill both holds our history but also makes possible the modern disposable consumption based society where burying the past is so easy even if it will come to haunt us later.