Volunteers conducting archaeological digs this week at the cliff-top ruins of an ancient Gallic village in northern France discovered a small glass vial containing a neatly rolled up 200-year-old message from a colleague from another era.
The note was written by archaeologist PJ Ferré, who carried out excavations at the Cité de Limes site in January 1825, the town of Eu, which is supporting the excavations, said in a Facebook post.
Ferré, perhaps to inspire the budding archaeologists who would follow in his footsteps nearly two centuries later, wrote that he was a member of several scientific societies and “continues to work throughout this vast site.”
“It was a truly magical moment,” Guillaume Blondel, head of Eu’s archaeology department, told the BBC. “We knew that excavations had been carried out here in the past, but to find this 200-year-old message was a complete surprise.”
“You sometimes see time capsules left by builders when they’re building a house, but that’s very unusual in archaeology,” Blondel says. “Most archaeologists tend to think that they’ve done all the work and that no one will come along later!”
City records confirm that Ferré conducted the original excavations at the site 200 years ago.
The oldest message in a bottle ever found was 131 years and 223 days old when it was discovered, Guinness World Records said in a statement. Australians Tonya and Kim Illman found it on Wedge Island, Australia, on January 21, 2018.
According to the Guinness World Records, on June 12, 1886, the captain of a German ship threw a gin bottle overboard with details of the ship’s coordinates and departure and arrival times written on it in ink. The note, published by the Deutsche Maritime Zeitung in Hamburg, asked whoever found it to deliver it to the nearest German embassy.
If proven authentic, Ferre’s 200-year-old message in a bottle would be the oldest ever discovered.