Someone's lunch box, once.Archaeological Service of the Canton of Berne, Badri Redha
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 ...
Someone's lunch box, once.Archaeological Service of the Canton of Berne, Badri Redha
What would lunchboxes have from that time. The Flintstones?
Lost in Space and a thermos with a glass insert that shattered when dropped.
This was found at an Aztec dig site...:)
Mine were UFO and Space:1999. Not quite 4000 years ago.
We had “Kelloggs’ Characters” (Tony the Tiger; Snap, Crackle, Pop; etc.), “Laugh-In”, “Campus Queen” (includes game on back). Thermos was too expensive. We bought subsidized school milk.
I think I see both Joe Namath and Evil Knievel in the pattern.
Any Twinkies in it?
Whoa!!!!!!!!!!!
That’s funny as hell
I’ll bet the thermos was broken.
You made out better, I still have glass shards stuck in my throat to this day.
They can also be used for brewing beer.
“Lunch box? Who invited that kid?”
Big Mac would make it, too. /s
Is that Ötzi’s?
I used to get bullied by an older kid when I walked to school, and I had one of those lunchboxes with the plaid thermos inside.
I always wondered why bullies seemed to pick me out, and when I grew up, I realized it was my black, plastic Navy-issued glasses and my larger frame for my age which must have triggered some predatory instinct in them. I wasn’t fat, just a bit bigger for a eight year old kid and clumsy, to boot. But mainly the glasses.. I got them again when I joined the Navy, where they were called “BCD”s which stands for “Birth Control Devices” as in, if you wore them, you weren’t going to attract any girls with them!
However, looking back now, on my eight year old face, they are “Bully Magnets”.
So, as I walked to school, I could see the kid waiting for me up ahead. There was no detour or alternate route I could take, so I had to go right past him.
The first thing he would do was to knock the lunchbox out of my hand, then my books (all covered with brown grocery bag paper) then he would start slapping me around.
When my lunchbox hit the ground, it always opened, and the contents would spill onto the ground.
When he had his fun, it was never enough to draw blood, merely a diversion for him, I guess. Putting me in a headlock, shoving me to the ground, that kind of thing. But he waited for me every day.
I hated school, and that just made it worse.
When he was done with his daily amusement and walked away, I would gather up my lunch and put it back into the box. When I put the thermos in, I would raise it close to my ear and gently shake it, and every time without fail, I would hear the gentle swishing of the pulverized glass fragments inside.
When I got home, my mother was always infuriated with me. We had six kids in our family, and I was the only one who came home with my thermos broken.
When she asked why, I told her about the kid and she would say “You’re bigger than him-just sit on him!”
I wasn’t bigger, and “sitting on him” was a far more difficult proposition than she seemed to understand.
But a few years later after my family moved to Japan, I did finally fight back and attack a kid who was bullying me in the same fashion, and it all changed. I didn’t get seriously bullied again after that.
But...I always remembered that depressing moment, picking up that plaid thermos, knowing it was going to make that swishing sound that were shards of fragile, mirrored glass sloshing around in my Campbell’s Beef and Barley Soup, and knowing there would be no soup today!
It was on my mind-I just watched Mel Gibson’s “Apocalypto” recently!
Oh, so that’s why they killed him, for his lunch!
Hat box
was the thermos in the lunchbox filled with hot coffees still?
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.
