It could be soil from a battlefield - the Wikipedia article on the subject of the statue says there "are monuments to him around the world ... bringing earth from the battlefields where he had fought"[0]
But I liked the anticlimactic way the BBC article on the subject[1] ended:
"'I am sure some in our audience have questions for our various experts up on stage?' Ms Voigtschild said after the mud was found.
My speculation: I'm no expert, but it looks like there are fragments of, at least, a bowl? Earlier in the feed they discuss damage to the capsule. I'd guess the capsule was not originally empty; the last 200 years just took its toll on the contents.
It's quite amazing how the panel and everyone is bending over backwards to justify the importance of this. Even after it had been clear that the box was empty they double down. Even after finding only dirt try triple down concluding something must have been in there previously and it just was lost. It only makes this prank funnier, showing the lunacy of people who want to believe. I'm fucking dying.
While an elaborate prank can not be ruled out, I think that is actually significantly less likely than the contents simply disintegrating due to external moisture and 200 years of time.
Sure, it is possible, but it does put quite the limitation on possible contents. Means there were no metal objects. People tend not to put paper documents in time capsules for explicitly this reason. Moreso, they tend to not put _exclusively_ paper or easily disintegratable materials. The materials would also have to be quite small to slip out of those areas (even accounting for elastic deformation). Or needed to be quite fragile to be reduced to such a size.
Just as another explanation, if materials can get out, it is also simple for materials to get in. In the case of flooding, it is not unlikely that water mixed with dirt getting in and drying. This isn't inconsistent with the material that they pulled out. It will likely be impossible to know which the real answer is, but I'm not holding my breath. The joke seems like the easier explanation. Let's make sure that what we want to believe doesn't prevent us from accepting reasonable alternatives (this applies to both of us).
If I’m not mistaken this dates back pretty far before the time when time capsules became “a thing” so to speak, which makes it very unlikely in my mind it’s a prank.
Because a prank like that only makes sense if a time capsule is already a common cultural phenomenon.
Also I think the effects of 200 years can not be understated. Clothes that have been sitting in a closet under certain conditions for 50 years can fall apart when tried on. I wouldn’t be so sure that only paper could have been in the box, but the people putting it in would not necessarily have realised paper doesn’t preserve well in a time capsule if they were among the first ones creating one.
People now tend not to put paper in time capsules because we now know that it will disintegrate if their is moisture.
200 years ago, they may have thought that the time capsule would protect any paper contents from moisture. After all, we have many paper documents that are hundreds and thousands of years old that survived in various libraries.
This one is more of a mystery though since it was clearly soldered shut. Maybe someone was going to do a time capsule and then decided against it? Or got drunk and forgot to put anything inside before sealing it up? We will probably never know.
> Such an odd thing to call it "silt". Did they measure the grain size?
I mean, I doubt many people will appreciate or care whether it was actually sand or clay instead. The only reason I even know that you're talking about the soil texture triangle is because of Dwarf Fortress.
I suspect it was already opened sometime in the last century. Either officially or as part of some student prank. Who knows what became of any original content.
I know how it sounds.
I genuinely mean it without trolling.
I'm referring to this:
> When Paul Hudson, the West Point archaeologist, reached his gloved hand into the unsealed lead box, he retrieved only dust and crumbling bits of dirt the color of pale ash.
There exist archeological finds of this kind and they do match material description.
West Point discovers time capsule from 1828 - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37289067 - Aug 2023 (152 comments)