Archeologists have dug an excavation pit,
And along with coins and jewelry, and trinkets of the past,
They found a bunch of letters with information vast...
The letters, well preserved, scratched on the bark of trees,
Were rolled into neat rolls, for everyone to see,
What the merry citizens of the medieval town
Wrote in their letters that now were finally found:
It turned out, like us, their lives to better strove,
They wrote of needing loans, of family, of love,
Of life's uncertainties, of incidents some happy and some stark,
They wrote – not on the Internet, but on the birches' bark.
Novgorod, a member of the Hanseatic League in ancient days,
Was no mere little hick town, a stop along the way:
It clearly on extensive trade with neighbors had been bent,
And maintained relations with London and with Ghent.
Like the old Greeks, it lived under democratic rules,
It cherished its fair laws, sent kids to public schools,
And communicated in a language that's no longer heard,
As witnessed what is found in the birchbark letters' words
But if you think that we are a unique race
That reached the pinnacle of wisdom in our frantic pace,
The birchbark letters of Novgorod say it is not so:
We're just the same as those folks of a thousand years ago...