Those who know me well know of my passion for silent films and in particular, the 1927 German expressionist film Metropolis. The film was trimmed beyond recognition after its initial premier and the cut content has been presumed lost, despite several incremental efforts to restore the complete piece. A tantalisingly near-complete print has recently been rediscovered, however, tucked inside a film canister stored in the archives of the Museo del Cine in Buenos Aires, Argentina.

It strikes me how fragile history can be.

How many other beaten, depraved time capsules exist out there?

They're not all buried in the ground, either.

I grew up listening to stories told by my grandfather; stories of his life, experiences and words of wisdom. He continued to tell these stories, even as he lay dying of cancer. I would listen intently to stories of him being shot as a young child, going to work cutting clothes and the general minutia that constitutes a life lived. Everybody who has had the good fortune to make it past early childhood have held these kinds of stories. Most stay with them as they become a time capsule never to be unearthed, fewer become part of the evolving tapestry of family legends and fewer still become local folk law. I'm humbled to hear of the American nonprofit StoryCorps that allows anyone to record their personal story and have them archived in the Library of Congress in Washington D.C. A small subset are broadcast on NPR or placed online.

There's one more time capsule that comes to mind: DNA. I await the delivery of a specimen kit from the company 23andme  that through genotyping, should allow me to peer within the time capsule that is my own genetic code and the unbroken lineage that this unique culmination represents. Although genotyping is an imperfect analysis mechanism, complete genomic sequencing will remain financially unfeasible for the next couple of years.

The one problem with history is its perishability. Although, I must admit, history owes this for much of its allure.