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Consider how serious you take the curses that are on the outside of tombs and sarcophagi in Egypt. No matter what kind of things they said, even if we perfectly understood them, would we believe. Every single kind of imagery which might imagine might frighten or scare or inform future civilizations would probably just be viewed as a quaint relic of a forgotten era.

[AnotherGoodName]

I do remember a sci fi short story with this plot but can't remember the name. It poked fun at a lot of sci fi tropes.

An away team discovers a big glowing orb that attempts communication and soon after this communication members of the team die due to an unknown cause. They then go to huge efforts and great risk to interact with the big glowing orb (the bulk of the story). Then after many deaths when they finally study the retrieved big glowing orb under controlled conditions back at base they realise it's a fairly simple machine trying to communicate the equivalent of 'stay away'. It was a warning sign, the same as a skull and crossbones. The real danger was the area around it.

[kaz-inc]

The sounds a bit like the book Sphere by Michael Crichton.

[amenhotep]

Egyptian tombs and sarcophagi are a apposite example, considering the fate of huge numbers of mummies - we dug them up, ground them down to make paint or medicine, shipped them across the world to unwrap as curiosities at dinner parties.

It is tempting to think that human civilisation shows basically the same characteristics as human babies - it will literally put anything it finds in its mouth unless you stop it!