TIME CAPSULE

Time capsule

A time capsule is a historic cache of goods and/or information, usually intended as a method of communication with people in the future. Time capsules are sometimes created and buried with much hoopla during celebrations such as a World Fair, cornerstone laying for a building or other event. They can also be unintended caches such as at Pompeii. The phrase "time capsule" has been in use since about 1937, but the idea is as old as the earliest human civilizations in Mesopotamia.

Background

Time capsules can be classified into two types: intentional and unintentional. Intentional time capsules are placed on purpose and are usually intended to be opened at a particular future date, whether it's 10, 100, 1,000 or more years after interment. Unintentional time capsules are usually archaeological in nature. Discoveries of cultural significance are often found in standard archaeological digs as well as those from volcanic eruptions such as Pompeii and Vesuvius.
The concept of time capsules is not recent. In the Epic of Gilgamesh, among humanity's earliest literary works, it began with instructions on how to find a box of copper inside a foundation stone in the great walls of Uruk, and in the box was Gilgamesh's tale, written on a lapis tablet. There were other time capsules 5,000 years ago as vaults of artifacts hidden inside the walls of Mesopotamian cities.

Criticism

According to time capsule historian William Jarvis, most intentional time capsules usually do not provide much useful historical information. They are typically filled with "useless junk", new and pristine in condition, that tells little about the people of the time. By comparison, Pompeii contains a wealth of material about daily life, such as graffiti on walls, food in hearths and the remains of people trapped under volcanic ash. Many time capsules today contain only artifacts of limited value to future historians. Historians suggest that items which describe the daily lives of the people who created them, such as personal notes, pictures, and documents, would greatly increase the value of the time capsule to future historians.
If time capsules have a museum-like goal of preserving the culture of a particular time and place for study, they fulfill this goal very poorly in that they, by definition, are kept sealed for a particular length of time. Subsequent generations between the launch date and the target date will have no direct access to the artifacts and therefore these generations are prevented from learning from the contents directly. Therefore, time capsules can be seen, in respect to their usefulness to historians, as poorly implemented museums.
Historians also concede that there are many preservation issues surrounding the selection of the media to transmit this information to the future. Some of these issues include the obsolescence of technology and the deterioration of electronic and magnetic storage media, and possibly language problems if the capsule is dug up in the far future. Many buried time capsules are lost, as interest in them fades and the exact location is forgotten, or are destroyed within a few years by groundwater.