While we're on that, here's a thread about the British invasion of Tibet, looting all the way.
The label on this stunning sculpture in London's Victoria and Albert Museum notes it was "collected by the Ex Younghusband Expedition to Tibet, 1904." A short about the horrors this polite wording conceals. pic.twitter.com/beAYU4rcPr
The cobalt mine, at Alderley Edge, was sealed by the miners when the shaft was abandoned, at a date that can be pinpointed fairly accurately thanks to one man who used candle soot to write his initials “WS” and the date 20 August 1810 on the rock wall.
The resulting lack of oxygen in the two centuries since means the mine is in an exceptional state of preservation, according to the National Trust, which owns the land. While the items left behind are humble – clay pipes, a leather shoe, a small bowl – the context in which they were found is “really very unusual”, said Jamie Lund, an archaeologist with the trust.
“This mine hasn’t been disturbed by later mining, it’s not been broken into by kids in the 1960s, it’s not been filled with bottles or other rubbish. It literally is a time capsule in terms of giving a glimpse into the environment that these miners, who were extracting cobalt, encountered.”
Quote:
“We quickly agreed that the real significance of this site is the fact that it has that pristine nature of an environment that the miners might have left yesterday,” he said. As a result, it will shortly be sealed again with the artefacts inside, the oxygen allowed to run out “and the policy will be to stay out”.
Happily, however, a detailed 3D scan has been made of the mine, which can be navigated interactively. “That’s the benefit of living and working in the 21st century,” said Lund. “It feels like we timed this discovery really well.”
A truly remarkable find - 1,800 year old intact tub Roman face cream.
Found in London in a temple complex dedicated to Mars, it was made mostly of animal fat. The fingerprints of its owner can still be seen. pic.twitter.com/ZMjOTSwY17
A massive prehistoric horse carved into the side of an English hill has somehow received required continuous maintenance "through changes in religion, king, climate, and empire" for some 3000 years https://t.co/cSTASJplPv
I haven't read the thrad yet, only the question so far, but I was immediately reminded of the AOL disks you'd get in the mail. When they transitioned from floppies to CDs, it was the end of an era.
I worked as a temp at Borland in Scotts Valley, CA in about 1990, where I spent 8 hours a day answering a physical phone (with a bell ringer!) and taking orders for Turbo C++ and Quattro Pro which I would enter on a dumb terminal connected to a mainframe, and we would then ship the software to customers on 3.5" floppy discs w/ printed manuals.