Crypt of Civilization

The Crypt of Civilization is an impenetrable, airtight, room-sized time capsule, built between 1937 and 1940, at Oglethorpe University in Brookhaven, Georgia. The 2,000-cubic-foot (57 m³) repository is meant not to be opened before 8113 AD. It contains numerous artifacts and sound recordings that illustrate civilization and human development to the 20th century. Classic literature and religious texts were also deposited, as well as items showing the extent of scientific progress to 1939.

Thornwell Jacobs, the initiator of the project, was inspired by the opening of Egyptian pyramids and wanted to create a repository of everyday 1930s objects and a record of human knowledge over the preceding 6,000 years. The Guinness Book of Records declared the Crypt to be the first genuine attempt to permanently preserve a record of 20th century culture for people of thousands of years into the future.

Beginnings

Thornwell Jacobs (1877–1956), President of Oglethorpe University from 1915 to 1944, is considered the father of modern time capsules by historian Paul Stephen Hudson. Jacobs was engaged in research in the 1920s for one of his books when he was astounded by the meager amount of detailed information available about ancient Egyptian life. He realized that practically all the accumulated knowledge we had of the civilization was based on two incomplete sources. One being the items found in tombs of the Pharaohs of Egypt and the kings of Sumeria and Babylonia. The second was from rock inscriptions and tablets found in ancient Assyria. He determined that while the ancient items found gave some degree of life events from thousands of years ago there were no complete and accurate records on any single generation of how people lived.