You won't believe what the UK discovered beneath layers of ancient mud!

What initially appeared to be warped and filthy bits of wood, scratched and grooved with age, turned out to be hundreds of ancient Roman writing tablets.

LOS ANGELES, CA (Catholic Online) - The last things you expect to see in a museum are old wooden planks with scuffs, burns and scratches all over them - but that is exactly what you will find at the Museum of London Archaeology.

Over 400 tablets were discovered at the excavation site, some of which contained the first references to London.

According to CNN, the site was discovered in central London, which was going under construction in preparation for the erection of a new European headquarters. Since the discovery of the tablets, all construction has come to an immediate halt.

Archaeologists discovered 15,000 other Roman artifacts and over fifty buildings at the site, which will not commence construction for some time.

The earliest handwritten texts in the United Kingdom were discovered at the site, where tablets dating back to January 8, 57 A.D. were found.

The tablets were made of wood that was slightly hallowed and filled with beeswax so people could write in it.

Though the wax degraded over the years and eventually disintegrated entirely, the indentation of writings remained on the wood.

The tablets survived in what was once the Walbrook river, which encased the wooden tiles in wet mud and kept oxygen from destroying them.

The great value in the wooden tablets lies in the revelation of ancient times. How did people communicate, who was literate, what did they deem important enough to write about?

Dr. Roger Tomlin, a lecturer in Roman history at Oxford University used a raking light technology and microscopic analysis to decipher the messages.

"I'm so lucky to be the first person to read them again after more than 19 centuries, and to imagine what these people were like, who founded the new city of London," Tomlin enthused. "What a privilege to eavesdrop on them: when I decipher their handwriting, I think of my own heroes..."

Historians continue to recover fragments of ancient Roman life set to be displayed at the new Bloomberg building that will be complete by next year.

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