A general view of Herculaneum site (Pic:Herculaneum Conservation Project)
If I were born some 2000 years ago in Herculaneum, my name would probably be Hilarius. I would have been eating sea urchins sprinkled with fennel seeds partly to justify my name. In 2011, excavators would have found my excrement lodged in tons of human waste in a cesspit under what is now called Ercolano in modern day Italy.
I would have been a contemporary of Pliny the Elder, the great Roman naturalist, author and philosopher. I may even have helped him research his seminal work Naturalis Historia. I would have been partying on the night of August 23, 79 AD, blissfully unaware that a few kilometers away Mount Vesuvius was getting terribly restless.
A few hours into the night, Herculanians would have been buried under ash and pumice spewed by Vesuvius. Also among the dead would be Pliny the Elder at Stabiae near Pompeii, the city with much greater historical allure.
As historians and experts study the fecal and other garbage left behind by the residents of Herculaneum, they are compelled to conclude that ordinary citizens like me were generally happy. They can tell from the kind of food we consumed. It included chicken, mutton, fish, fig, fennel, olive, sea urchins and mollusk. If we were not generally well-to-do, we would not have had access to such food. Hence our excrement would have told a different story.
When I read this National Geographic report about the excavation of the largest collection of Roman garbage ever found, I could not but wonder about what generations of humans would think of us in 4011 based on our excrement. One conclusion could be, “These people sure ate a lot of crap.” That is presuming that 2000 years from now they would still be speaking English and using expressions such as “a lot crap.”
As an aside, it is obvious to me that history as something you come upon serendipitously is now well and truly over. There are so many of us, so widely spread and so widely documented and so extensively chronicled that there will not be any need for history in 4011.
