Posted on 09/16/2025 4:27:19 PM PDT by SunkenCiv
Someone's lunch was full of whole grains.Up in the high passes of the Bernese Alps, a team of researchers found a box. It was about 8 inches in diameter and made of pine, willow, and larch. It was 4,000 years old.
Now, the scientists report in a new paper, published in Scientific Reports, they have discovered traces of what was once held in the box -- someone's lunch (or dinner or breakfast).
The team thought that the box might have held porridge and looked for traces of milk. But they found nothing. Instead, using a newly developed technique, they were able to find traces of spelt, emmer, and barley inside the box.
As The Local reports, there's no way of knowing exactly why the box was carried up high in the mountains, but it might have belonged to a farmer grazing cattle on a mountain plateau or a traveller crossing the mountains. It's not a stretch -- there's probably a trail mix on the market right now that features spelt, emmer, and barley. A good lunch is a good lunch, at any time in history.
(Excerpt) Read more at atlasobscura.com ...
The coal miners in Yorkshire called lunch “snap” from the sound their lunchboxes would make.
“””Big Mac would make it, too. /s”””””””””
In 1921 they made the first batch of Spam. Next week they will make the second batch.
did it have a fresh twinkies snack cake in it?
Heh, I was a kid, and a bit of an overly excitable and active kid, so my parents knew better than to give me coffee. (I hear parents give young kids coffee now...I don’t know if that is true, but my parents would let me have coffee or tea until I was a teenager.)
No, just filled with Campbells Chicken Noodle, Beef Barley, or Tomato soup!
In the Marines, we called them BCGs (Birth Control Glasses).I still have mine, but am happy to wear Oakleys these days.
Were the Twinkies still good?
I had a Detroit Tigers lunchbox during the late 60s. It came with a spinner "baseball game" and pieces. I had no interest in playing so the other kids used my lunchbox while I ate.
Hahahaha...one of the greatest days of my life was when my mother took me at the age of 16 (my dad had retired and we moved back to his hometown) to a nearby Army base to get a pair of wire-rimmed glasses! (I asked for them as a birthday present)
I was going to a new high school as a junior that fall, and she took pity on me. She even spent the money to get the stuff in them that made the lens dark when you went in the sun. It was pretty new technology at that time.
However, as I had done so many times before, I shattered one of the lens, and when they ground me a new lens, they didn’t put the right amount of the stuff in, so when I went out in the sun, one lens became very dark and the other one, not so much.
It made me look much like Dr. Strangelove!
When I went to the AAFEES Station in downtown Boston after enlisting in the Navy, they weren’t going to let me in with those glasses, but since I had enlisted in the Buddy System with my best friend, I didn’t want him to go on without me, and the doctor let me in.
Then, when I was in boot camp at Great Lakes, we were getting fitted for uniforms, and the rule was to sit silently with no talking. Of course, my buddy began talking to me, and when I snapped at him in a hoarse whisper “Shut up! We aren’t supposed to talk!” the sailor giving out uniforms saw me and said:
“YOU! SPOT DOG! GET UP HERE.”
I went to the front, he grabbed my new utility hat off my head, stuck the brim in my mouth and for the rest of that hour, I stood motionless at attention while the sailors handing out uniforms threw crumpled up paper, candy wrappers, you name it, into the hat. Boy, was I mad at my buddy that day!
Soon after they took away my glasses and gave me the infamous BCD glasses...and that was that!
Scooby Doo or Josie and the pussycats?
CC
Wore them on the Rifle Range, but that was about it.
The owner of that lunch box worked in our school cafeteria.
Dang, I am envious. I had to wear mine, I was blind as a bat without them.
I had a bully who always picked on me when we were talking through the city streets to go to a park for PE. That was in 7th or 8th grade. One day I had had enough of it. I turned on him in a rage, surprised the hell out of him, took him down, and pummeled him. He cried like a baby. That was the end of the bullying for me. Fortunately, we didn’t have to move to Japan.
Good post
LOL! But I know exactly what you mean.
A kid a year older than me used to pick at me, flicking my ear, throwing things at me. One day, I got on the bus and he tripped me. I just boiled over and leaped on him, swinging wildly with both fists simultaneously.
Kid never bothered me after that...it was a lesson learned, for sure.
I figure that is a pretty common experience for a lot of guys. Of course, it must be different nowadays. You could get knifed or shot.
Sad.
“it was a lesson learned, for sure”
Yep!
“Someone’s lunch box, once.”
What did the note from mom say?
“Watch out for mammoths on the way home from school.”
Mammoth told him there’d be day like this.
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