A century or more into the future, when your great, great grandchildren take their great grandchildren to Europe on holiday, there will be one cultural institute that's an absolute must-see.

The Museum of Ancient Values will be described as “a thought-provoking beacon in an era of Idiocracy” and “well worth the $300 entry fee” (inflation’s been rough over the last 100 years), a special space set up to showcase what has really been lost in Europe.

A word of warning though: Some of the exhibits may be difficult to understand.

That's because when the museum was being built, the exhibition's curators weren't really sure how to exhibit some of the ancient artefacts. After all, they complained among themselves, it's not like you can just put "human dignity" in a glass case and light it nicely.

Germany did once have human dignity as part of their constitution. "Human dignity shall be inviolable," the old German constitution said. "To respect and protect it shall be the duty of all state authority." So that was an easy one: Now a thin, brown book — a genuine, ancient German constitution! — sits in a glass case, nicely lit.

Nearby, a large case holds a miniature model of an international criminal court that used to stand in the Netherlands. It's made entirely out of Lego and visitors are always impressed by how detailed and lifelike it is.

There are several tiny, Lego figures dressed in black plastic judge's robes, standing outside the court. They seem to be staring at their phones. If you take a guided tour, your escort will tell you the miniature judges are pondering how to use the international banking system after being sanctioned by the US government for attempting to bring war criminals to justice.

A small girl holding her mother's hand stands in front of the rather charming display. "What's a rule of law, Mummy?," she asks.

Now here’s a bit of behind-the-scenes gossip a lot of visitors don’t know. When the Museum of Ancient Values was being built, the most controversial feature wasn't any one exhibit, it was the so-called "time line" the exhibits were supposed to follow, the same way you might go from amoeba to dinosaurs to monkeys and men at a natural history museum.

But, as any historian will tell you, it's always hard to trace the beginning of the end.

Some folks argued that European values began disappearing when our now-deceased Biggly Emperor of the Universe, Donald Trump (may he rest in peace) said, way back in 2016, "I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody, and I wouldn't lose any voters." And it turned out he was right.

Your great-grandchildren may argue it was when the last convoy of refugees finally left Greater Israel - formerly known as the Middle East - while European politicians looked away, pretending they had better things to do.

But others will tell you the beginning of the end arrived elsewhere. They point to a wild range of villains, including the manosphere, tech bros, climate change deniers, anti-vaxxers, artificial intelligence, tax-dodging billionaires, social media, "might is right" politics, hyper-capitalism, and a variety of other nasty -isms, including sexism, racism, colonialism and antisemitism.

Basically the time line was so controversial, the curators decided to ask one of humankind’s oracles.

“It was only after generations that people realized that, although democratic institutions still existed, democratic values had vanished,” ChatGPT (Version 1.538) answered. “The abandonment occurred gradually rather than through any dramatic coup. Next time,” the algorithmic sage scolded, using one of its popular parental voices, “stop fiddling with your bloody phone and pay attention.”

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A visit to Europe's Museum of Ancient Values