a transaction that reveals the inscription content on-chain. This content is
then inextricably linked to that satoshi, turning it into an immutable digital
artifact that can be tracked, transferred, hoarded, bought, sold, lost, and
rediscovered.

Archaeology
-----------

A lively community of archaeologists devoted to cataloging and collecting early
NFTs has sprung up. [Here's a great summary of historical NFTs by
Chainleft.](https://mirror.xyz/chainleft.eth/MzPWRsesC9mQflxlLo-N29oF4iwCgX3lacrvaG9Kjko)

A commonly accepted cut-off for early NFTs is March 19th, 2018, the date the
first ERC-721 contract, [SU SQUARES](https://tenthousandsu.com/), was deployed
on Ethereum.

Whether or not ordinals are of interest to NFT archaeologists is an open
question! In one sense, ordinals were created in early 2022, when the Ordinals
specification was finalized. In this sense, they are not of historical
interest.

In another sense though, ordinals were in fact created by Satoshi Nakamoto in
2009 when he mined the Bitcoin genesis block. In this sense, ordinals, and