Will future generations care about our Tamagotchis?
do not open this email until the year 3025
Happy Friday! Today’s post is a 10-minute read.
Humans have been burying stuff for a long time. It’s one of our proudest traditions as a species.
Garbage? Underground. Ritualistic offerings? Beneath so much dirt. Bodies? Say hello to the worms for me.
Usually when we bury stuff we’re not planning on digging it up anytime soon, unless it’s treasure and you are a pirate, or some other common, relatable scenario like that.
But sometimes, after adding the final layer of dirt, we say to ourselves, “ok, I’ll be back in 1,000 years with a shovel,” and most of the time, we actually forget about the time capsule right away (more on that later).
The formal concept of a time capsule is a relatively recent invention, but humans have been entombing mementos for future generations since time immemorial:
“What builder has ever begun construction on even the crudest hut without tossing a coin under the foundation or slipping a note into a bricked-up wall? If you could shine a light on earth and reflect nothing but the hidden messages and talismans we've stowed away to hail the future, you'd see a firmament to rival any starry night. “
Today, we’re going to explore some of the best and weirdest stuff that humans ever buried throughout history in the vain hope that our long-distant ancestors will someday give a shit.
GET OPENED BY FUTURE PEOPLE MUCH?
Wikipedia kicks off its 12,000-word list of time capsules by telling us that “[a]n estimated 95% of time capsules are lost track of by the fifth anniversary of their burial” and then immediately goes on to say that an organization called the “NotForgotten Digital Preservation Library” maintains an active list of all time capsules. Ummmm, sounds like they’re not doing a very good job then?
You wanna know my most controversial time capsule opinion? The ones that are buried for too long are kind of a crock of shit. Like, 5,000 years? Seriously? We shouldn’t have to wait that long. What about if it’s been 1,000 years? Can I look then? I want to see what’s inside, too.
I’m not even mad about it in a “no fair!” kind of way, I’m just salty that we’re denying future humans the opportunity to gain valuable anthropological1 insights unless they’re alive a very specific amount of time from now. Something tells me that humans 2,500 years from now would also benefit from looking inside our treasure chest of everyday items, no?
It’d be like modern humans finding a time capsule from the time of Socrates and the Buddha. You think if we found a time capsule from the Buddha, we’d just put it back in the ground?
“Eh, let’s re-bury it for another few millennia, we’ll let future peoples enrich their cultures immensely instead of opening it right now.”
Hell no! Hey, um, time capsule, have you ever considered that I am a student of history? If I find the Buddha’s memory box I am absolutely going to look inside it, I don’t give a shit what the instructions say.
Speaking of the ground, that’s my second most controversial time capsule opinion – there is absolutely no reason we should be burying them underground. Like, have you heard of worms??? Or perhaps water? You think water’s gonna care about your “do not open until the year 3000” inscription? No, water is taking every single one of those handwritten letters from the first graders of 1947 and gobbling them right up.
Have these time capsule people heard of closets? Or maybe plastic tote bins in the basement? SO MANY time capsules have been ruined by water damage. But you know what hasn’t been ruined by water damage? All the Christmas decorations in the plastic tote bins in my basement.
Whenever it rains real hard, water starts seeping through the walls in my basement, kind of like in horror movies if it was blood instead of water. The basement is unfinished so a little water isn’t catastrophic, but occasionally cardboard boxes near the wall get lightly waterlogged. The plastic tote bins, though, are immune, and that’s where I store all my Christmas decorations.
And none of my Christmas decorations have been destroyed by water because I’m smarter than every single person who has ever buried a time capsule underground. Christmas is awesome every year because I’m not a dumbass. When will the time capsule people learn?
I honestly think the only reason we bury them is because we’d be too tempted to open them early otherwise. If we just put time capsules in a different room, those things wouldn’t last a year. 2050? No chance in hell I’m waiting that long. All the gum I put in the time capsule isn’t gonna last that long anyway. I want my Hubba Bubba bubble tape now.
IF YOU WERE A TIME CAPSULE, WHERE WOULD YOU HIDE?
Anyway, time capsules are great, but it turns out we humans are really bad at them. It’s estimated that over 80% of all time capsules have been lost. I feel confident chalking up most of these cases to human error (i.e., we are a dumb and forgetful species), but sometimes time capsules disappear “simply because they sank and they’re lower down than people expected when they try to find them.”
The undisputed leader in the category of lost time capsules is the city of Corona, California. They’ve managed to misplace “a series of 17 time capsules dating back to the 1930s” and have been unable to find any of them, despite great effort. In 1985, they tore up a bunch of concrete around City Hall in an attempt to locate some of the capsules but they were unsuccessful. This failure garnered reactions from local residents like, “I don’t think they were digging in the right place,” and, “It would have been a lot better if they had found the capsules.” Thanks, local residents.
Sometimes, there are success stories where a long-lost time capsule is discovered again. There was that one time they found a time capsule inside of Jesus’s ass*. Or that time the cast of M*A*S*H buried a box of props in the 20th Century Fox parking lot and forgot about it until a construction worker found it in 2002. (When the worker contacted Alan Alda to try to return it, Alan Alda was like, “no thank you, please keep it.”)
* The Jesus ass article has a video of them extricating centuries-old letters from His posterior, and the video’s wildly unexpected music choice made me laugh out loud seven seconds in, so I just wanted to give you another opportunity to click this link.
Less often, a time capsule is not misplaced but the desire and/or ability to open it is. This is the case at MIT, where a time capsule buried since 1939 has remained unopened well beyond its intended opening date in 1989. Why? Well, one factor slightly complicating things is the 36,000-pound magnet that sits directly above the time capsule. Oops!
Sometimes, though, against the odds, people remember where they put a time capsule and they also remember not to put an 18-ton magnet on top of it. The prescient populace of Detroit smartly kept enormous magnets far away from their time capsule when it was buried in 1900, and magnets remained at bay for one hundred years before they opened it in 2000.
On New Year’s Eve, modern Detroiters were gifted with a vision of their present by people from the past predicting humanity’s future. Let’s rate the predictions they made.
In AD 2000, I think it not improbable that Detroit will enjoy a population of fully four millions.
Detroit’s population today is estimated to be around 633,000, but the metro area has 4.3 million people, so I say we ought to give this one to them.
I prophesy that a century hence the belt embraced between the 38th and 43rd degrees of north latitude and extending from the Atlantic sea board to the Mississippi will be the most densely populated region in the world.
And, um, I was surprised by this, but this prediction was actually spot-on? Take a look at this map:
No, Canada continues to be a sovereign nation.
We, the Police Commissioners of the City of Detroit prophesy that when this box is opened … prisoners instead of being conveyed to the several police stations in Automobile patrol wagons will be sent through pneumatic tubes, flying machines, or some similar process.
Ummmmmmmmmmmm ok so how should I put this? No. We’re not quite there yet.
I emailed the city of Detroit to ask if they’ve made any progress on this, but the generic public relations email I found inexplicably went directly to the fire department. They gave me the contact info for the cops (it was not 911) but the cops haven’t gotten back to me yet. I will keep you all posted on future developments.
One of the most interesting time capsules I got to learn about was The New York Times Capsule (not to be confused with the TimesMachine). This one is very fun, partially because the New York Times went to great lengths to document the philosophy and logistics behind the creation of the capsule.
In this absolute relic of a website that is about as “obviously from 1998” as it gets, you can learn everything you ever wanted to know (plus everything you didn’t) about the NYT’s efforts to bury something in the ground for one thousand years. The first order of business was figuring out where in New York they could actually bury it, which turned out to be more challenging than they anticipated.
Their first idea was Central Park, but the parks commissioner told them they’d need to get approval from a bunch of different city boards, plus Mayor Rudy Giuliani, and that Rudy might not sign off on it if the time capsule contained anything mentioning stuff that made him look bad, with the recent NYPD killing of an unarmed Guinean student cited as a specific example. So anyway, Central Park was nixed as an option.
Next, they approached the curators at the American Museum of Natural History, who were like “yeah that would be awesome, and we’ll just put it on display right there for the next 1,000 years” and the NYT was like “ummmm but it’s supposed to be underground?” Or, as the article put it, “This flustered several of the editors, who clung to their subterranean prejudices.”
Eventually, the curators decided to make it “the permanent centerpiece in the [above-ground] plaza at the museum's new west entrance,” but if you head to the American Museum of Natural History today, you will not find it there. Why?
An article from September 2024 notes that the capsule was removed from public view in 2018 to make way for a construction project, but seven years later, it has still not been returned to public view. Did they lose it already? Oh my god, the people of the year 3000 are gonna be so pissed.
Turns out, no, they still know where it is. Construction was delayed by COVID, and it’s expected to be back on display in early 2026. For now, it’s being stored with “Mariano Brothers Specialty Moving of Bethel, [Connecticut],” and don’t worry, I checked out their Google reviews and they seem legit.
So what are the future humans gonna find in the NYT time capsule anyway? For starters, it’s got some typical ‘90s stuff, like a beeper, a Beanie Baby, and a Top Ten List from David Letterman. (Yes, really.) Letterman warns his third-millennium audience: “Many of the items on the list may not make you laugh. Believe me, this is nothing new.”
Presenting, Top 10 things people in the year 3000 should know about us:
Other items included a piece of barbed wire, a parking ticket from France, and some Alcoholics Anonymous literature.
My favorite part of this time capsule is that the NYT put out a call for submissions, asking readers what they would include in the capsule, including sounds, images, and written words. Here are some of the suggestions they received:
Written Words
Not afraid to admit this one made me tear up a bit:
Images
Sounds
Where in New York would you bury it?
Feel free to read through all the submissions here.
I want to close by telling you about the world’s largest time capsule, which is set to be opened next Friday, July 4, 2025. (I’m so tempted to drive all the way to Nebraska to see it)
This enormous concrete vault is filled with 5,000 items from the year 1975, including:
a brand-new Chevy Vega (“the cheapest car he could find” according to the daughter of the time capsule’s creator)
“piles and piles of telephone books”
a pet rock
a sack of corn
When this time capsule’s record-breaking status was certified by Guinness in 1977, the caretakers of another awesome time capsule (which I’ll tell you more about in a future post) got pissed and said “mine’s bigger.”
This, in turn, pissed off the Nebraska time capsule guy, so eight years later, he built a second time capsule directly on top of the first one, housed inside of an enormous concrete pyramid. This cemented (sorry) his status as the proprietor of the world’s largest time capsule.
The pyramid portion was opened last year “because we can’t figure out how to get the capsule open with the pyramid on top.”
And I just gotta say, they’re gonna need to put up a very effective gate to that pyramid entrance because as a former teen, I can confidently say that will be a very sought-after spot for high schoolers to smoke weed. Seward, Nebraska – you have been warned.
Okay, that’s it for time capsules this week. In researching for this post, I only made it a quarter of the way through Wikipedia’s aforementioned enormous list of time capsules, so there will be much more to discuss in the future.
Thanks for reading! Bye!
Comment below: what would you put in a time capsule to be opened in the year 2125?
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When I was in college I had a roommate whose boyfriend was in a frat, and one of the first things she ever told me when we first met was that she could get me into his frat parties if I wanted. And I decided to take her up on it, not because I wanted to go to a frat party, but because — and this is exactly how I put it when I was in college — "I thought it would be an interesting anthropological experience." So, I went to one of their apartment building pool parties and guess what? It was terrible! Lesson learned, our culture has no academic value.
I forgot time capsules exist!!! No wonder 80% go missing!
With the way things are going, putting a copy of the United States constitution in one would be good. It will be a historic document within 4 years, let alone 100.