
Treasure in a Cornfield - aaron695
http://imgur.com/gallery/tj4Ef
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digibri
I've lived in Kansas City for years. The Steamboat Arabia museum is a great
experience. In the early days, one of the original guys would often be there
and tell the whole story to groups.

Interestingly, they had a lot to learn about saving the artifacts. Since
everything was submerged for so long in fresh water mud the wood artifacts
would shrivel up when they dried up. For many months, they stored all the wood
artifacts in one of the guy's backyard pool until they could learn how to
properly transition the wood artifacts to a restored state.

~~~
therealdrag0
Glad they knew to learn instead of being surprised by shriveled artifacts.

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jcromartie
This is a fantastic illustration of geological processes. Sometimes I look at
hillsides and geological layers and wonder how they could ever be built up so
much. How could hundreds of feet of rock be deposited little by little, to
make such thick layers? Well, here it is. A boat that sank in a river is 49
feet below a cornfield only a few human generations later. Amazing.

~~~
mapt
No geology here, just geomorphology. These are surface features, and the
movement of water and soil happens at a rapid clip when humanity doesn't lock
it in irons.

Natural rivers are usually not static features. The Mississippi is full of
sediment, and strongly inclined towards major floods. In a natural landscape,
those floods deposit mud every time the banks are breached, the banks are
constantly degrading, the surrounding areas are swampy, flattened areas that
get reshaped on a regular basis. A natural floodplain-river exists in a
dynamic equilibrium, constantly shifting a tiny to medium-sized trickle of
water around a vast, deep, soft bed of mud it deposited, only occasionally
bumping into the hills (geological or aeolian features usually) bordering the
floodplain.

What's strange and unnatural is that we could draw a line on a map, expect a
river to be confined to this line, and reinforce that line with rock walls and
soil levies; That we could dam major portions of the continental watershed in
order to regularize water distribution; That we could drain swamps the size of
states and turn them into cropland, or fill prairie or desert with canals to
do the same.

We have cut off this area from the natural cycles of sedimentation, all but
the most extreme "natural disasters" are prevented through intensive
engineering began sometime in the 20th century. Because we needed to make
spring planting. We replaced the silty mud that made the region such great
cropland with chemical fertilizers & pesticides, and specialized farm
equipment.

~~~
onesun
Either we feed our species, or we die. Granted, we as Americans eat too much
and waste too much, but even if we all stuck to 2000 calories a day and
cleaned our plates doing it, 19th century and prior farming techniques would
simply not support our current population. And I disagree with your last
sentence. Fertilizers and pesticides don't replace dirt, they make it more
effective at growing crops.

~~~
mapt
Of course.

I just feel the need to push back against the people who think about
agriculture as some kind of natural ecological outgrowth. Ag changes the
ecology of a landscape enormously, and the accomodations to ag end up
reshaping the physical character of things so much we forget what they
originally looked like or how they originally functioned.

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droithomme
It's really interesting that 45 vertical ft of silt can pile up on top of
something in 150 years.

~~~
themartorana
Makes you wonder what you walk over every day hidden beneath your feet.

~~~
pjc50
In Europe, that could be anything from Roman ruins to unexploded WW2 bombs.

Most suitably large construction digs will turn up something of archaeological
interest.

~~~
apaprocki
That's what happened during the dig for our (Bloomberg) new London HQ. A ton
of stuff was unearthed and will be featured in an exhibit on the site once the
office opens.

"'Entire streets' of Roman London uncovered in the City":
[http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-
london-22084384](http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-london-22084384)

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joshontheweb
I went to this museum on a road trip when I was a kid. It is truly amazing and
I have thought back on the experience a lot throughout the years. Go check it
out if you have the chance. You wont regret it.

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freshyill
I'm dying to know if they actually got the excavation done before the spring
planting.

~~~
ChuckMcM
Yes they did, and I can recommend the museum, they are down to the last 60
tons or so of material being restored.

One of the reasons they had to finish on time was that as soon as it got
reliably above freezing the sandy "walls" of the excavation would no longer
hold and the entire pit would subside into a depression. Fortunately they
avoided that.

Other interesting bits are that because the mud had locked out transpiration
of any additional air, once the oxygen was used up it stayed that way, so a
number of things which would not have normally survived, did. For example,
according to the museum, they have the only examples of rubber boots from that
era anywhere in the world.

The other really fascinating thing for me was that the steamship was supplying
stores along the river, and because of that it had pretty much one of
everything you could buy at a store, and as a result you get to see the
_entire_ contents of what would have been a hardware store on display. And
that gives you a really good idea of what you could build/make with the tools
that you could buy, and what tools you would have to make if you wanted to
make something that those tools couldn't build. That sort of defines an
interesting set for "preppers" if you imagine you are trying to "reboot" the
US from scratch :-).

~~~
freshyill
Yeah, this got better and better as it went on and I kept seeing more and more
interesting items. I don't know when I'll end up in Kansas City, but this will
be on my itinerary when I do get there.

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neonscribe
Here's an entire Roman city that was well-preserved thanks to silting and
river meandering:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ostia_Antica](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ostia_Antica)

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camperman
America, I so love your craftsmanship as exemplified by many of these items.
Always the practical with a touch of elegance.

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netcraft
Great minute-earth video about river meandering
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8a3r-cG8Wic](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8a3r-cG8Wic)

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schoen
Wow, what a great discovery!

Some other amazing shipwrecks I saw in museums on a recent trip:

* The Vasa, a Swedish warship that sank in 1628 (in the Vasa Museum in Stockholm)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vasa_Museum](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vasa_Museum)

* The "Tang dynasty shipwreck" or Belitung shipwreck, an Arab ship that sank off the coast of Indonesia while sailing from China to Africa about 1190 years ago (in the Asian Civilisations Museum in Singapore -- just the artifacts onboard, not the ship).

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belitung_shipwreck](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belitung_shipwreck)

I wonder if there's a list of shipwrecks that are now in museums. It seems
that there must be dozens or hundreds of them around the world.

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smpetrey
> Jars of preserved food that are still edible, tested by one of the
> excavators themselves, who ate a pickle from the Arabia finding it to be
> still perfectly fresh.

So that happened.

~~~
valarauca1
The process of canning was developed to preserve food almost indefinitely. Its
a sterilized air tight container. The term is _non-perishable food_ for a
reason. When the process is followed correctly, there shouldn't be a
biological process that can take place to cause spoiling.

~~~
themodelplumber
Are the "don't eat me" signs of an incorrectly-followed process pretty
obvious? Just wondering for next time I come across...err...out of curiosity

~~~
valarauca1
On modern cans the lid will be depressed inward from air pressure. If this lid
is popped upwards (while still sealed) this shows that biological activity has
change the air pressure within the jar... so it wasn't properly
sterilized/seal on production.

I'm assuming these are Mason Jars. Which have been in use since 1858 (the
patent has long expired so they're almost universal).

When dealing with something like pickles the seal isn't as important as the
pickle _juice_ itself is incredibly hostile to bacterial life. The seal is
more important to prevent evaporation.

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scoj
It is really amazing, but I'm left to wonder about something.

Now that we've dug it all up, and are exposing it to air, the items won't last
nearly as long. It seems like some items should be left in an inert
environment. Do they do things like that?

~~~
kbenson
The museum is likely a controlled environment. The artifacts may not last
quite as long as if buried in mud, but what use is them lasting longer if they
are useless?

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onesun
Definitely a gem of a museum if you're ever in KC.

~~~
ashark
The Liberty Memorial WWI museum's also excellent. Better in some ways than
what they've got at Les Invalides in Paris. One of a handful of things in the
city worth adjusting an itinerary or travel route to see/experience.

Incidentally, the Middle Eastern restaurant (Habashi House, I think it's
called) on the City Market square where the Steamboat Arabia museum's located
is pretty damn good. Coffee shop in the corner's got good sandwiches. Avoid
the Indian place—not good.

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paulajohnson
Now that is what I call _industrial_ archaeology!

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Shivetya
Amazing how well the mud preserved all those items. I would like to find a
source for recreating some of the bottled food items, I wonder how much of
that has changed. It is still one of the long term storage methods when done
right.

With so many artifacts I wonder how many were sent to other museums if any?
Time capsules, if any, from that time period would not have had such a
treasure

~~~
barrkel
If it's anaerobic, things can be preserved for a very long time. Check out bog
bodies:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_bog_bodies](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_bog_bodies)

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empressplay
Excavated in 1988 but still awesome!

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graycat
For some music for how it could _sound_ to take a keel boat up the Missouri
River in the early 1800s from Saint Louis all the way to the Grand Tetons:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y6_Jr_Y5FrA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y6_Jr_Y5FrA)

that is, the music from the movie _The Big Sky_. So, right, the music is by
Dimitri Tiomkin.

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graycat
How the heck did the boat get buried 45 feet deep under mud in a now level
corn field?

~~~
Avshalom
Wikipedia on the Mississippi river:

Before 1900, the Mississippi River transported an estimated 400 million metric
tons of sediment per year from the interior of the United States to coastal
Louisiana and the Gulf of Mexico. During the last two decades, this number was
only 145 million metric tons per year.

It's not called big muddy for nothing.

~~~
helb
It's Missouri River, not Mississippi.

Place of sinking at Google Maps:
[https://goo.gl/maps/Mwvbn9KiyUQ2](https://goo.gl/maps/Mwvbn9KiyUQ2)

~~~
Avshalom
The Missouri is one of the major tributaries (accounting for about half the
volume once it meets up), it's where the a large portion of that 400 Mt comes
from

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its2complicated
It's cool and all, but I was hoping they would find a bunch of gold bars or
something. It's kind of a bummer to go through all that and just find some
shoes and canned goods... :( Actually, I'd be pretty pissed off.

~~~
cpach
Why would gold bars be cooler? Gold can be bought on the regular market. 150
years old pickles are rarer.

