16 SPRING 2020 / POPSCI.COM
HUMANITY’S LEGACY LIES IN
our garbage. Trash offers archae-
ologists insight into the day-to-day
lifestyles of people long past. Even
today, we’re leaving future ex-
cavators plenty of specimens to
ponder: Most Americans produce
around 4.5 pounds of waste each
day. This time- traveling dumpster
dive shows some of the most re-
vealing junk we’ve accumulated
over the past couple of millennia—
and the things we’re tossing now
that will exist long after we’re gone.
LAYER CAKEBYJESS ROMEO /
ILLUSTRATION BY ERIK SVETOFT1 /Egypt
2nd century BCE-6th CE
An arid desert dumpsite out-
side the city of Oxyrhynchus
preserved 500,000 papyrus
fragments— receipts, tax
forms, horoscopes, and for-
gotten works of Sappho and
Sophocles—that illuminate
what residents owned, who
they married, and which
sexy novels they read most.5 /United States
20th century
Plastics popularized during
World War II began to take
over our lives when soldiers
came home. The first Tup-
perware hit the market in
1946, followed by staples
like Lego bricks and grocery
bags. We’ve used and dis-
carded more than 8 billion
metric tons of plastic since.4 /Old England
19th century
The Industrial Revolution,
which began around 1760,
sparked an increase in con-
sumerism. Rubbish from
Victorian manors in East
Anglia is packed with single-
use glass bottles and metal
containers as a result. The
litter also includes the dis-
embodied heads of popular
porcelain dolls.6 /Worldwide
21st century
We toss more than 40 mil-
lion tons of cracked phone
carcasses and other e-waste
each year. Much is shipped to
developing countries, where
workers strip precious bits—
like rare-earth metals— and
chuck the rest. This “recy-
cling” will leave mountains
of petrified plastic, toxic
chemicals, and metal scraps.2 /Israel
5th century
Byzantine landfills like the
one in Elusa (in what is now
the Negev desert) served
as the final resting place for
ashes, shells, ceramic shards,
olive pits, and wine jars. Car-
bon dating of the trash links
the town’s sudden collapse
to the same time period as a
mini Ice Age brought on by
nearby volcanic eruptions.3 /New England
18th century
On Colonial farmsteads, people
literally pitched their refuse
out windows. Archaeologists
discovered one 18th- century
property strewn with bro-
ken bottles, snapped pipes,
and cracked earthenware.
The waste hints at frugality:
Everything they tossed was
irreparably broken.all man’s
trash
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