The song is about more gracefully accepting the eventual extinction of humanity.
"We were here" is past tense. "We" can only refer to all of humanity, given how the whole album discusses evolution, not fantasy, relationships, etc. Ergo, humanity is extinct by the time of the song.
It's a "love song" to humanity in that it celebrates what humanity achieved during its limited time.
Also, the song never says why humanity goes extinct, because why isn't the topic being discussed. I suppose transhumanists would envision us being replaced by some post-human successor here. We know however that roughly modern humans existed for 300k years before the abnormally stable holocene 11k years go enabled civilization, so I think the best simplest verrsion would be that climat change makes civilization no longer viable, and then evolutionary drif turns us into something else, not necessarily something smarter. This interpretation meshes best with everything else on the album.
The song is about more gracefully accepting the eventual extinction of humanity.
"We were here" is past tense. "We" can only refer to all of humanity, given how the whole album discusses evolution, not fantasy, relationships, etc. Ergo, humanity is extinct by the time of the song.
It's a "love song" to humanity in that it celebrates what humanity achieved during its limited time.
Also, the song never says why humanity goes extinct, because why isn't the topic being discussed. I suppose transhumanists would envision us being replaced by some post-human successor here. We know however that roughly modern humans existed for 300k years before the abnormally stable holocene 11k years go enabled civilization, so I think the best simplest verrsion would be that climat change makes civilization no longer viable, and then evolutionary drif turns us into something else, not necessarily something smarter. This interpretation meshes best with everything else on the album.