The discovery, defined as "incredible", took place in Israel, in the city of Yavne: archaeologists found a thousand-year-old egg (and broke it).
We will never know if the chicken or the egg was born first, but of course we know that there are very very old eggs. More surprising is the fact that some of these have been preserved intact to this day, as traces of a distant past.
The centuries have obviously made even more fragile an object whose delicacy is proverbial (breaking eggs in the basket, making an omelette, walking on eggs, etc. etc.). To the point that to break an egg, as will happen to everyone at least once while bringing home the groceries or cooking, this time were the archaeologists.
The discovery of the thousand-year-old egg in Israel
"We were amazed to find it," said Alla Nagorsky , an archaeologist from the Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA) to the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, "from time to time we find fragments of eggshells, but a whole egg is extraordinary."
The egg, which was in a sewage pit, was unearthed in Israel, in the industrial zone of the ancient city of Yavne, located in the country's central district, not far from the coast. The miracle of preservation was accomplished thanks to the fact that the object was wrapped in human waste, which created the anaerobic conditions (i.e., lack of oxygen) essential for its preservation over the very long term.
In a statement, Nagorsky notes how difficult it is nowadays to keep in good condition even the eggs that arrive in supermarkets, so, in the press note, the scientist does not hold back from describing as "incredible" the discovery ten centuries long.
What happened when the egg broke
Unfortunately, the sensational find, although having resisted the erosion of time, has not survived contact with humans. And despite the fact that archaeologists, under the supervision of environmental scholars, used "extreme caution" in unearthing the egg from the drainage well, the latter broke, leaving much of its contents leaking to the outside. Fortunately, the yolk remained in the shell, and now scientists are ready to analyze it.
The egg is not the only significant archaeological discovery of the week. In Italy, for example, the remains of the Neanderthal man have been found. For those who instead suffer the fascination of the depths of the sea, here is a list of the submerged cities to discover.
Giuseppe Giordano