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Food

A 300-Year-Old Turd Shows Us What People Ate in the 17th Century

The newly dubbed “bishop clump”—as the poop is being called—had helped scientists make history “through the back door.”
Photo via Flickr user sunnyUK

How would you like to be remembered?

If, several hundred years from now, the people of earth (should it still exist) invoke your name, how would you like them to think of you? By your good deeds? The art you created? The love you shared?

Or because they've found your shit? Like your actual, literal shit?

Now you feel the pain of Bishop Jens Bicherod. The man doesn't have a Wikipedia page, and a quick Google search suggests he has largely been forgotten. But recently, scientists rediscovered a remarkable piece of feces from way back when. They're pretty excited about it, as it reveals all kinds of facts about what the people of Denmark ate on a daily basis in the 17th century. What's more, they say the poop is Bicherod's.

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What a way to be remembered—but really, if you think about it, Bishop Bicherod is doing a favor to mankind. Through his excrement.

READ MORE: A Massive, 2,000-Year-Old Chunk of Butter Has Been Unearthed from a Bog

The story begins back in 1937, when researchers discovered a well-preserved piece of feces in the latrine of a bishop's palace that had been demolished in the city of Aalborg, Denmark. The nugget remained unexamined until recently, when someone got the bright idea that taking a closer look might help trace immigration into Denmark between the years 1450 and 1650—and also illuminate what the locals were eating on the regular.

The turd was dug out of storage and— voilà!—it turned out to provide a motherlode of information. Archaeobotanist Peter Mose Jensen of Moesgaard Museum said he closely examined the shit. "I have simply taken it apart, ever so carefully," he told local television. And what he found were traces of cloudberry, blackcurrant, and buckwheat—evidently the diet of the locals at the time.

Meanwhile, as they were examining the thing, the researchers also deduced that the poop probably came out of the body of Jens Bicherod. They figured this out because he was the bishop of Aalborg from 1693 until his death in 1708.

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The turd, the scientists say, "is totally unique." Jakob Ørnbjerg of Aarhus University told TV2 News, "As a historian, I am very, very pleased."

Ørnbjerg, for one, seems to be keeping his sense of humor about the study. He said that the newly dubbed "bishop clump"—as the poop is being called—had helped scientists make history "through the back door." He also said, "This little piece of crap is a little piece in the story of our shared history and how Denmark became what it became."

May we suggest that the next time you're in the bathroom, you imagine a nuclear holocaust occurring, right then and there? Then, picture the lizardmen of the future finding your excrement and tracing it back to you.

You could achieve immortality, too—just like the good Bishop Bicherod.