My daughter and I visited Oglethorpe University in Atlanta last week. Claire’s thinking of applying there. The tour included the Crypt. We got to stare at the door.
You want to read about this. Be sure to click on the inventory list at the end of this story:
Did they choose 8113 arbitrarily?
Either way, a nifty idea.
That’s so quaint, and weird, and…well, just kind of ironic from the viewpoint of early 21st. C.
I mean, there it is, so carefully and earnestly sealed for its unveiling in 6000 years, and now, a mere 70 years later, all that stuff seems so dated and arbitrary! '37-'40! What a funny little slice of 20th C. life to bother preserving so carefully, when we already barely use any of that stuff anymore. And yet, that is the manifesto of the project–to preserve that small segment of history. And I read, and kind of chuckle at the objects included, knowing that they’ll barely tell the 27th C. anything about technology as it stands now. But what if we threw in a digital camera, an ipod, and a 5 for Fighting cd? It would still be arbitrary and anachronistic in 50 years. So, good for them I guess.
BTW, the last item was a plastic flute. I saw nothing about whistles.
The target year for the crypt’s future opening– 8113 A.D.– was arrived at by considering 1936 to be the halfway point to the future. 6,177 years had passed since the Egyptian calendar had been established in 4241 B.C., so Dr. Jacobs projected forward the same number of years from the date of his idea’s birth.
Oops, missed that. Thanks!
6,000 years is so far away! I’m amazed that anyone has the faith to think what they are leaving will last or be found. Writing usually is said to have started around 3500 B.C. (I don’t know about Egyptian calendars and what symbols they had) so that is 5500 years ago. The Iliad they say was written between the 8th and 6th centuries, so that is roughly 2700 years ago. Maybe my numbers aren’t quite right, but in 6000 years things are going to be awfully different. I also think that if it is still there it would be opened in 1000 years at the latest. Think how interested we are in the everyday life of 1000 years ago. Would we really be so altruistic as to save a major find for the people 5000 years from now? I doubt it. The whole thing brings a lot of interesting thoughts to mind.
One thing I was puzzled by:
The Crypt, located under Phoebe Hearst Hall, is a room 20 feet long, 10 feet high and 10 feet wide (60 palms long, 30 palms wide and 30 palms high).
I’m not familiar with measuring in “palms”. I should google it, but is that some sort of archaeological method?
Sounds suspicously like “hands” - i.e. four inches. How they still measure horses.
Oh, I hadn’t thought of that at all. Well, I went and looked it up and all I can say is that we have a problem–there is an ancient controversy about “palms” 
—are these major or minor? I think actually their measurements have 10 ft=30 palms, which is 4"/palm, a “hand” as you said. Well, I just hope they left some notes about their measurements. It seems their use of “palm” is closest to the Dutch “palm”. Okay, sorry, I know this isn’t really the point of the thread. I just can’t help it sometimes. It just seems so odd somehow.
http://www.unc.edu/~rowlett/units/introd.html
hand
a traditional unit of distance, now used mostly to measure the height of horses. One hand equals 4 inches, 1/3 foot, or 10.16 centimeters.
palm [1]
a traditional unit of distance equal to the width of a person’s palm. The palm equals 4 digits or 1/6 cubit, which is about 3 inches or 7.5 centimeters. This unit was used very commonly in medieval and early modern Britain. Similar units, all equal to 1/4 the local “foot” unit, were used throughout northern Europe.
palm [2]
a traditional unit of distance equal to the length of a person’s hand, from the wrist to the end of the middle finger. In the English system this unit is equal to 9 inches (22.86 centimeters) and is usually called a span. The confusion between the two palm units is ancient. In Roman times, the longer unit was known as the palmus major and the shorter one as the palmus minor. In the nineteenth century, the 3-inch version was more common in Britain and the 9-inch version was more common in the U.S., perhaps because some Americans were familiar with the comparable Spanish palmo (see below).
palm [3]
a name sometimes used in Dutch for the decimeter (10 centimeters, or about 3.937 inches).
palmo
a traditional unit of distance in Spain and Portugal. The traditional Spanish palmo equals 9 pulgadas (see below) or 1/4 vara: this is about 20.9 centimeters in Spain and a little more than that in Spanish Latin America. In Texas, 1/4 vara comes to 8 1/3 inches (21.17 centimeters). Under the metric system in Spain, the palmo is an informal unit equal to 20 centimeters. The Portuguese palmo equals 0.1 braça or about 22.0 centimeters (8.66 inches). These units are based on the width of a person’s outstretched hand, from the tip of the thumb to the tip of the little finger, a definition identical to that of the English span.
sigh
Seems like the music of the times got rather short shrift, generally: (parenthetical comments mine) Suppose they may have included more sheet music on microfilm, but still…
5 phonograph records (transcriptions)
3 records in album
5 records (miscellaneous)
General Gannett and Acompo 8 records (? Is that supposed to be Gennett?)
phonograph records in 2 boxes - History of Mines (??) - 37 10" records, 2 12" records
11 miscellaneous recordings
6 recordings (Artie Shaw)
6 recordings (Richard Himber)
1 piece sheet music
I wonder what the other recordings were… seems like they could have done with a bit more music and fewer things like fake nails (who knew they had those back then?) “miniature panties and shirts” (?) and cleaning supplies. 
Yeah, that’s how it strikes me. In particular if you want hundreds of generations to come to respect the don’t-open policy for 6000 years–shouldn’t the items have covered a broader base of historical significance? Stuff that tells more, means more. Yes, you’d want to show objects that were commonly used by people, but that collection is almost like an expanded version of what some geeky kid would bury in a tin can.
An interesting concept . . . but future civilizations won’t be interested in time capsules. They can just dig up a landfill to better understand the 20th century. How long does it take to biodegrade plastic? A long, long time.
On the other hand, film goes poof pretty fast, think of all the old silent movies we’ve lost in a very short time.
The egyptians had the right combination of climate and technology to insure a long preservation. But they didn’t expect we’d be pawing at their dead pharoahs.
The crypt is known to us Atlantans. Oddly enough, less ahtn a mile away from Oglethorpe on the same road is a largely intact cotton plantation complete with plantation house and out buildings. Out of ignorance, most Atlantans are completely unaware of it. it is now a golfcourse and the plantation house was used by Sherman as a headquarters for a while as he and his troops destroyed the city and murdered over 12,000 of our largely innocent inhabitants.
The original plantation was 1000 acres as were the others that were granted here in the treaties of 1822. I am in contact with the descendants and current owners of the plantation just south of that one. They conduct tours of the original home on certain Sundays of every month, weather permitting, of course. most of their land has been sold off and there is only the house and a small piece of land left. it isn’t like Tara or anything like that. you need to go north about 18 miles to see one of those.
Best,
Paul
When they open it up 6000 years from now and look at what’s inside, will they call it “Tales From the Crypt?” 
They have a lot of records and transcriptions but they didn’t include a record player. That could be a bit of a problem. Of course the whole thing assumes there will be someone here to open it.
Ron