Ghosts of the past.

I'm busy reading Peter Heather's Empires and Barbarians: The Fall of Rome and the Birth of Europe, and in it he describes an interesting archaeological dig.

The Romans patrolled their river frontiers with vessels called lusoriae. A lusoria was like a brown-water patrol boat; a miniature version of the seagoing warships of the period, down to the ram on the prow. In an archaeological dig along the Rhine near what was the Roman town of Civitas Nemetum (modern-day Speyer in Germany) archaeologists came across the wreckage of some Germanic rafts that had apparently been caught by a squadron of lusoriae in the late Third Century while bringing some wagonloads of booty back across the Rhine.

Now, bear in mind that the Rhine river during the first half of the First Millenium was a microcosm of modern globalization: On one side of the river was a wealthy and sophisticated civilization, complete with plumbing, coinage, literature, the rule of law, and what-have-you. On the other side of the river were the have-nots: clans and tribes run by strongmen, whose primary industries were amber, raw materials, slaves, and plots for how to get across the river and get a slice of la dolce vita waiting on the other side.

The booty the archaeologists uncovered contained the contents of a wealthy Roman villa of the late Third Century. And by "the contents", I mean the entire contents: silverware, cooking pots, gardening equipment, the works. Everything but the hinges from the doors.

For some reason, the image that sprang to mind was that of scientists in the year 3700 AD digging up a sand bar on the Rio Grande and uncovering some john boats with the entire contents of a ranch house: Not just the 52" flatscreen TV and the good silverware, but the coffee maker, vacuum cleaner, and the weed-whacker, too...