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Comment by Octokiddie | Hacker News Reader

> The capsule was found in 2023 when the monument's base was removed from the site.

This is a reminder of how quickly things are forgotten. In this case, the presence of the time capsule was forgotten within the span of less than 200 years. I suppose those who placed the capsule could have done so under complete secrecy. More likely a few people knew about it, but that knowledge just disappeared with those who knew it.

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The school that I went to buried a time capsule that was supposed to be opened in 25 years. When that time came around, some of the students present at the burial contacted the school the enquire about the opening, but no one at the school knew anything about it (the staff had all changed within that time) and the burial spot had been built on.

Isn't that the point of time capsules? The quicker we forget about them, the better. Then some event happens and they surface to everybody's excitement.

Lesson learned here is to make sure to add things which won't decay :)

If they are completely forgotten, they are probably more often than not, never found again.

I like to think that, unless there's a plan to open it, forgetting about it is just fine, if not the intent of a time capsule. Makes opening it up all the more exciting.

Putting it in the base of a statue was also smart, instead of burying it somewhere or encasing it in the foundations. Somewhere public and obvious, but still hidden.

200 years is about 8 generations...I don't know if I'd consider that "quick" to be forgotten

humanity is 10k+ years old and the world is billions of years old.

Quick is subjective.

“+” is doing a lot of work there… https://www.nature.com/articles/nature22335

depends on what you define as humanity. Primordial ooze? Bipetal animals? The current cut of ape? civilization? Of course the + is doing a lot of work because it's a fuzzy concept and doesn't change the fact that "quick" is just as relative.

Yeah you can certainly make the case for Humanity being at least 100,000 years old, and even make a case for it being 500,000 years old or even a million years old.

Homo was controlling fire probably half a million years ago and crafting stone tools 2 million years ago or more

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