A lot of people nowadays are talking about how plastic takes thousands of years to decompose and our landfills will therefore still be full of plastic thousands of years from now. It is, however, important to note that massive landfills filled with waste that takes thousands of years to decompose is not an exclusively modern problem. People in the ancient world commonly used ceramics for storing, transporting, cooking, and eating.
Like plastic, ceramic takes many thousands of years to decompose. As a result, pieces of ceramic dating back thousands of years are present at pretty much any ancient site. In fact, one of the most common methods used to archaeologists to determine the date of a particular site is analysis of the style of the pottery found at that site. Ancient people used and threw away so much pottery that there is at least one mountain made entirely of ancient pottery.
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