Scientists Discover Oldest Legible Sentence and It Is About Head Lice

The world's best preserved ancient texts are usually historically significant records of religion or government. Sometimes, though, it turns out to be about a more mundane topic ... like head lice. At an archaeological site in southern Israel, scientists discovered an ivory comb with the following inscription: "May this tusk root out the lice of the hair and the beard." The comb is dated to be roughly 3700 years old. The reason this particular artifact was easier than others to translate is because they found "exoskeletons of dead lice" (yuck!) on it and because it's pretty clearly a comb.

All of which goes to prove some human problems have literally been around for millennia. In case this story made you wonder what modern humans might leave for our descendants, consider the TikTok user who decided to bury a bag of Flamin’ Hot Cheetos inside a 3,000 pound concrete sarcophagus for 10,000 years. While the concrete might crumble, the cheetos (and the plastic bag) will probably still be intact. But even with an inscription, I'm not sure any future civilization will have the tools to decode that one.