Closed 'time tunnel' waiting to open after 6,000 years

In 1940, American researchers created a vault to store human artifacts, waiting to be opened and studied in the year 8113 .

When studying ancient Egypt, American Dr. Thornwell Jacobs (1877 - 1956) , who was president of Oglethorpe University, Georgia, was surprised to find that very little accurate information about the ancient civilizations had survived to this day. He found that most of human knowledge about life in ancient Egypt came from a few sources such as the pyramids and a few inscribed tablets discovered in ancient Assyria.

So Jacobs came up with the idea of ​​preserving artifacts of human lifestyles for future civilizations to study. He created the first modern "time capsule" - a box containing typical objects from a period, buried or hidden so that they could be dug up and studied later.

Inside the time vault in 1939, before it was sealed. (Photo: Wikimedia).

In Phoebe Hearst Hall at Oglethorpe University, Jacobs began building a time capsule called the Crypt of Civilization, a large room filled with artifacts from the 1930s and knowledge from 6,000 years earlier, located under a disused swimming pool.

The vault was designed to function as an Egyptian pharaoh's tomb. It contains recordings of clarinetist Artie Shaw, who rose to fame in the 1930s, films showing events photographed from 1898 onwards, and 100 books on microfilm. Everyday artifacts include a miniature Donald Duck figure, but no gold, jewelry, or other valuables.

There is a 'file book' in the vault that lists and describes all the objects and their uses. However, what Jacobs chooses to include in the time capsule is largely subjective and is not necessarily a true picture of America in the 1930s.

Paul Hudson, co-founder of the International Time Capsule Society at Oglethorpe University, describes the vault as a living, breathing organism. 'It's older than me and bigger than all of us. Imagine a cultural anthropologist opening the vault in the year 8113? It would be like a treasure trove. Even things like dental floss would be interesting,' he says.

Jacobs also thought that there might be a language barrier between the people of that time and the person who opened the time capsule in the future, making the books inside useless. To solve this, he developed a "language integrator ." This hand-cranked device displayed a picture of the object along with its name written in English. At the same time, a voice inside the device would read the name aloud.

The opening of the time capsule was set for the year 8113. The reason was that in 1936, when Jacobs came up with the idea of ​​creating the time capsule, 6,177 years had passed since the Egyptian calendar was created. He wanted future vault openers to see the midpoint between their time and ancient Egypt.

On May 28, 1940, about four years after Jacobs first conceived the idea, the time capsule was officially sealed. To date, more than 83 years have passed, and the vault will likely remain sealed for another 6,090 years.