What with climate change and the upcoming end of the interglacial period, our civilization will meet its end in due time. There will be no apocalypse, though. Apocalypses are the stuff of religion, as well as of pulp fiction. The best model of the demise is the fall of Rome. Although not global, the process took many a century. If Attila’s raids of Italy mark the beginning of the end and the fall of Constantinople to the Turks marks the end of the end, the whole process had taken an entire millennium. Our civilization may well take as long to reach a point where history as we know it will also meet its end. Literacy will diminish gradually, but it will vanish at some point. Slowly but surely, its place will be taken by oral accounts of times past, which will soon become enveloped in legend and myth. Books will become useless, let alone computers and electronic memory devices of all sorts. They will be used for other purposes, such as kindling. But there is one big difference between Rome and our civilization in this respect. Romans could not fathom what was to come in a thousand years, but we surely can. By comparison, we understand quite a bit not only about the end of history, but also about posthistory that awaits us. And the study of our civilization’s most likely demise may even become a scientific discipline in the foreseeable future. Endism, let us say. Many a clever student will be attracted to it any time soon. By and by, endism will become one of the favorite disciplines. Ah, who says the mother of all falls is an unhappy topic? Cut out his lying tongue!