With the destruction of the World Trade Center, nearly a million archaeological pieces have disappeared

The museum dedicated to the disaster and the large memorial park that surrounds it have already made

Ground Zero

, the site of the September 11, 2001 attacks, an archaeological site.

What is less known is that one of the old towers of the business district, the

Six World Trade Center

, already housed a rich archaeological collection.

Read also September 11: the trial of the alleged mastermind of the attacks resumed at Guantanamo

National Geographic unearths the crazy history of these millions of pieces essential to the history of Manhattan, an island that in less than 400 years has become the epicenter of the world's first power.

From 1991 until 1998, two major archaeological sites in the history of the Big Apple were unearthed during construction work on a federal building in the south of the island.

A "swept away" story

The first is an African cemetery, in which around 15,000 souls were buried. All the artefacts found - pieces of coffin, fragments of soil and bones - bear witness to a history of New York which has long been put aside. That of a ferocious slavery, where the infant mortality rate peaked at 40% and where the average life expectancy did not exceed 26 years.

In the basement of tower six, Sherrill Wilson, the city's eminent archaeologist, then launched the research center for

the African Burial Ground

in 1992. The artefacts were listed and classified there.

After registration, the bones are sent to Howard University.

This transfer will save hundreds.

The remaining pieces are destroyed along with

Six World Trade Center

, under the weight of the collapsing Twin Towers.

Read the dossier September 11, 2001: the attack that shook the world

"

We have to remember that September 11 really wiped out the memory of this part of town,

" the archaeologist told National Geographic.

“

A lost past is always dramatic.

Obviously it is not comparable to human lives.

But it's a loss of understanding of who we are and where we come from

. ”

But the discoveries don't stop there.

A stone's throw from the African cemetery, archaeologists unearth the remains of a more recent district that carries all the fantasies.

Crumbs of Five Points

“

Everything that is disgusting, falling and rotten is here.

In these

American Notes

, Charles Dickens paints a gruesome portrait of Five Points, the neighborhood where the first Irish and German immigrants settled in the mid-nineteenth century. Black populations still heavily populate the neighborhood, which is becoming one of the first examples of an American

melting pot

. Immortalized at the cinema in

Gangs Of New York

by Martin Scorsese, Five Points is located a stone's throw north of the World Trade Center site, at the current location of the Civic Center district.

Despite the image of a neighborhood rife with insecurity and crime, excavations have established that the residents of Five Points do not live in total misery. Stored with the pieces of the

African Burial Ground

, only a tiny part of the artefacts of the district survived the collapse of the towers. But the porcelain tea cups, clay pipes and other luxury preserved marbles are proof that the inhabitants had the means for quality drinks, sometimes ostentatious for the time. These pieces, the only remembrance crumbs from one of the most densely populated neighborhoods in the city's history, are on display at the Museum of the City of New York.

To read also "Our work tool has become a weapon": September 11 of a cabin attendant on a stopover in New York

Inestimable works have also disappeared in the rubble of this attack which killed 2,977 people.

Become a global financial center, the towers of the World Trade Center hosted some of the most prestigious works in the world.

Several originals by Picasso, Rodin, Miro or Roy Lichtenstein, as well as all the archives of novelist Helen Keller.