Ever drop your smartphone in the toilet while trying to add an important date to your calendar or a crucial reminder to your to-do list? Well, you’re not alone. Something similar seems to have happened in medieval Germany to an apparently wealthy resident of the city of Paderborn. Archaeologists working in coordination with construction crews preparing a new administrative building in modern-day Paderborn say they have unearthed “an exceptionally well-preserved notebook” from a roughly 700-to-800-year-old latrine. The book was even found alongside rectangular silk scraps that researchers believe were once used as toilet paper. The late Middle Ages notebook holds only ten pages within its tiny 4 x 3-inch (10 x 7.5 centimeter) leather binding and 3.4 x 2.2-inch (8.6 x 5.5 cm) wood backing. However, it was cleverly rewritable: 18 total sides of its double-sided pages were coated in a wax that could be etched onto and later smudged over to create a fresh page for another round of pressing notes or record-keeping.
“I only had to clean the outside of the book, as the inner pages were so tightly bound that there was no dirt on them,” archaeological conservator Susanne Bretzel of the Westphalia-Lippe Regional Association (Landschaftsverbandes Westfalen-Lippe, or LWL in German) said in a press statement, translated via Google. “The wood also hadn’t warped, so the wax is still intact and the writing itself is easily legible.”
