Sept. 24 (UPI) — Students working at an archaeological site in France make a surprising discovery: a message in a bottle from an archaeologist who worked at the same site 200 years earlier.
Guillaume Blondel, head of the Eu city’s Regional Archaeological Service, said student volunteers were carrying out an emergency excavation at the remains of a Gallic village threatened by cliff erosion when they found the small glass bottle inside an earthenware pot.
They brought the bottle to Blondel, who opened it and read the message inside.
The message reads: “P.J. Féret, born in Dieppe and a member of several intellectual societies, carried out excavations here in January 1825. He is continuing his research in this vast area known as the Cité de Limes or Caesar’s Camp.”
“It was an absolutely magical moment,” Blondel told BBC News. “We knew there had been excavations in the past, but to find this message from 200 years ago … was a total surprise.”
According to Blondel, local records show that Féret was a well-known archaeologist at the time and that he carried out his first excavations in the village 200 years ago.
“Sometimes you see these time capsules that carpenters leave behind when they build houses. But that’s very rare in archaeology. Most archaeologists like to think that no one comes after them, because they’ve done all the work,” he said.
