Brought to you by National Geographic – here’s 40,000 Years of London’s History, made of paper. Amazing! As National Geographic describes the city:
Peel back the pavement of a grand old city like London and you can find just about anything, from a first-century Roman fresco to a pair of medieval ice skates—even an elephant’s tooth. As one of Europe’s oldest capitals, London has been continuously lived in and built over by a succession of Romans, Saxons, Normans, Tudors, Georgians, Regency rakes, and Victorians, each of whom added to the pile. As a result the modern city sits atop a rich archaeological layer cake that’s as much as 30 feet high.
Created to celebrate London’s Big Dig, workers digging out the foundation for a new 38-storey building came across the ruins of an old Roman building dated to AD 60. Part of what was recovered was a huge fresco at nearly ten feet long and six feet high, one of the biggest and most complete first century frescoes found.
“These excavations have provided us with fascinating snapshots into the lives of Londoners through the ages,” says Don Walker, a human osteologist, or bone specialist, for MOLA. “It makes you realize that we all are just small, passing players in a very long-running story.”