In a dry cave environment with constant low temperature and very low humidity, microorganisms cannot function at the rate they do outside.

Organic material placed in those conditions essentially stops decomposing.

This is why the gourd bowls and the sandals and the torch fragments and the rope cordage found in Mammoth Cave’s dry passages are intact after thousands of years.

The organisms that would have reduced them to dust over a few decades in a humid outdoor environment have not been able to do so in the cave.

The material has been frozen in time.