Level 1 — Absolute Beginner

Workers in Paderborn, Germany find something amazing. They are building a new city office. They dig into the ground. They find an old toilet pit from long ago.

Inside the pit, they find a small notebook. The notebook is very old. It is about 700 years old. It has 10 pages. The pages are wood with wax on top. People wrote in Latin on the wax.

The notebook is inside a leather bag. Experts say this is the only complete notebook like this in that part of Germany. The old toilet pit had no air and lots of water. This kept the wood and leather safe for hundreds of years.

Near the notebook, workers also find small pieces of silk. Long ago, silk was very expensive. Rich people may have used old silk instead of toilet paper. This is a strange and interesting fact about life 700 years ago.

archaeologist

a person who studies old things from the past by digging in the ground

notebook

a small book for writing notes

wax

a soft, smooth material that can be written on

latrine

an old kind of toilet

silk

a smooth, expensive cloth made from silkworms

leather

material made from animal skin

century

a period of 100 years

expert

a person who knows a lot about one subject

Level 2 — Elementary

In Paderborn, Germany, workers were digging the ground to build a new city administration building. During the digging, they discovered a sealed medieval latrine, an old toilet pit that had been closed for a very long time.

Inside the pit, they found a small wooden notebook covered in wax. The notebook is about 700 years old, from the 13th century, and it has 10 pages. People had written Latin words on the wax with a pointed tool, and the writing is still easy to read today.

The notebook was kept inside a leather satchel, a kind of bag. The Regional Association of Westphalia-Lippe, a German heritage group, says this is the only complete wax notebook ever found in that entire region of Germany. That makes it a very rare and special discovery.

The reason the notebook survived so long is simple: the latrine was sealed and full of water for about 700 years. Without air, the wood, leather, and other soft materials did not rot away as they normally would. Near the notebook, archaeologists also found pieces of silk that had been cut into rectangles. Since silk was a very expensive and luxurious fabric back then, experts think wealthy people may have reused old, worn-out silk instead of toilet paper.

administration

the management or offices of a government or organization

sealed

closed tightly so nothing can get in or out

medieval

from the Middle Ages, a period roughly between 500 and 1500 AD

satchel

a bag, often carried over the shoulder

heritage

traditions, buildings, and objects passed down from the past

region

a large area of a country

rot

to slowly decay or break down over time

luxurious

very comfortable, expensive, or of high quality

Level 3 — Intermediate

On May 12, 2026, the Regional Association of Westphalia-Lippe, a German heritage organization, announced a remarkable archaeological find in Paderborn. While excavating a site intended for a new city administration building, workers uncovered a sealed medieval latrine that had, quite unexpectedly, preserved a piece of everyday medieval life almost perfectly.

Tucked inside the toilet pit was a wax-tablet notebook dating to the 13th century, roughly 700 years old. The notebook consists of 10 wooden pages coated in wax, on which someone once inscribed notes in Latin cursive script. Remarkably, that writing remains legible today, a detail that has surprised even seasoned archaeologists, since organic materials like wood and wax rarely endure for so long.

According to the association, this is the only complete wax-tablet notebook ever recovered in the entire region of North Rhine-Westphalia, which makes the find unusually significant for understanding medieval record-keeping and literacy. The notebook had been stored inside a leather satchel, which itself survived the centuries largely intact.

The explanation for this exceptional preservation lies in the conditions of the latrine itself. Once sealed, the pit remained waterlogged for approximately seven centuries, creating an oxygen-free environment in which the usual processes of decay simply could not take hold. Alongside the notebook, archaeologists also recovered scraps of finely woven silk, some of which had been deliberately cut into rectangular shapes. Given that silk was an extraordinarily costly, high-status textile in the medieval period, researchers now suspect that wealthy residents may have repurposed worn-out silk garments as a substitute for toilet paper, a detail that offers an unusually intimate glimpse into the private habits of the medieval elite.

excavate

to dig carefully in the ground to uncover buried objects or structures

preserve

to keep something in its original state, protected from damage or decay

inscribe

to write or carve words onto a surface

legible

clear enough to be read

literacy

the ability to read and write

waterlogged

completely soaked or saturated with water

textile

a type of woven cloth or fabric

repurpose

to use something for a new purpose different from its original one

Level 4 — Advanced

A discovery announced on May 12, 2026 by the Regional Association of Westphalia-Lippe (LWL) has offered historians an unusually vivid window into daily life in medieval Germany, arriving from the least glamorous of sources: a sealed, centuries-old latrine in Paderborn. The find emerged during routine excavation work ahead of construction on a new city administration building, a reminder that some of archaeology's most illuminating discoveries surface not from grand tombs or battlefields, but from the mundane infrastructure of ordinary urban life.

At the heart of the find is a wax-tablet notebook dating to the 13th century, comprising 10 wooden pages coated in wax and inscribed with Latin cursive text that remains, to the evident astonishment of the excavation team, still legible. The LWL has described it as the only complete wax-tablet notebook ever recovered in North Rhine-Westphalia, a claim that situates the object as a rare survival of a once-common but rarely preserved medium: wax tablets were the disposable notepads of their era, used for drafting, calculation, and correspondence, then typically smoothed over and reused, or simply discarded and lost to decay.

That this particular example endured is owed entirely to the peculiar chemistry of its resting place. Sealed and submerged for roughly seven centuries, the latrine's waterlogged, anaerobic conditions arrested the microbial decomposition that would ordinarily consume wood, leather, and other organic matter within decades, let alone centuries. The notebook's leather satchel survived alongside it, an object lesson in how the absence of oxygen, so often associated with spoilage and stagnation, can paradoxically become an agent of extraordinary preservation.

The latrine yielded a second, more provocative artifact: fragments of finely woven silk, several deliberately trimmed into rectangular shapes. Silk in the medieval period was an extravagantly expensive import, a marker of wealth and status rather than an everyday textile, which has led researchers to a striking inference: that affluent residents may have repurposed worn or damaged silk garments as an intimate, if extravagant, form of toilet paper. Whether apocryphal flourish or genuine social history, the detail complicates tidy assumptions about medieval austerity, suggesting that even the most private, unrecorded corners of daily life could be shaped by conspicuous consumption.

illuminating

helping to clarify or explain something, shedding light on a subject

mundane

ordinary, lacking excitement, related to everyday life

correspondence

written communication, such as letters

anaerobic

occurring in the absence of oxygen

arrest

to stop or halt a process

stagnation

a lack of movement, activity, or progress

affluent

having a great deal of money or wealth