This isn’t a major find, but I still love it when diggers find hidden stuff:
Rome (CNN)Thirty-three feet underground, at the bottom of a concrete-lined pit, archeologist Gilberto Pagani patiently scrapes dirt from a charred beam of wood that has laid undisturbed for around 1800 years.
It’s part of a house, perhaps once belonging to a senior Roman army officer, destroyed by fire. Last year construction workers discovered the site near the Colosseum as they were digging a shaft to the tunnel of Rome’s new metro Line C.
It was only this week that archaeologists revealed what they’ve found during the ensuing excavation.
This discovery is particularly interesting because the fire that destroyed the house left some things intact, including wooden beams that, under normal circumstances, would have decayed ages ago.
“It’s an extraordinary situation,” says Rome’s archaeological superintendent Francesco Prospetti. “The collapse of the ceiling sealed everything inside. It was carbonized without being burned.”
Rome began to decline the day Julius Caesar declared himself the emperor (48BC) and destroyed the republic.
Rome went into slow decline for a few hundred years until the bottom finally fell out and brought us the Dark Ages (476 AD) and the ascendance of the Middle East with Mohammad and Islam.
A group of Roman senators had the courage, patriotism, and decisiveness to quickly neutralize the egomaniacal man whose rash actions set off the eventual destruction of their republic.
In a similar situation, what will our governing entities do?