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Post your favourite things that help you reach into the past. Things that are surprisingly old to you or make you grasp how short the connections even into early history can be. If you ask the oldest person you know who the oldest person is they have ever witnessed you can already reach quite far into the past. It's totally possible that your great grandmother knew an old farmer who was born in the early 19th century. Such a person was alive when this photo was made:  The woman on the left with the headscarf is probably Constanze Weber, the widow of the famous composer Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart who died in 1791. This means we have photographies of people who were alive before the French Revolution and even earlier, like this one:  This is Conrad Heyer, born in 1749, American Revolutionary War veteran. The picture was taken only in 1852 but because of Heyer's age he is presumably the earliest-born person ever to be photographed.  Roughly at the same time as Heyer this tortoise named Adwaita was born. It died in 2006 at the age of approximately 255 years. But you can go even further into the past without losing a direct connection into the present.  This is the Stiftskeller restaurant in Salzburg, Austria. It already was a restaurant when Charlemagne was crowned emperor 1200 years ago.  The Proserpina Dam and aqueduct in southern Spain were built by the Romans about 1900 years ago and they are still used by local farmers and by the city of Emerita Augusta (today Mérida) as a water source.  Santi Cosma e Damiano in Rome, Italy was originally built as a Roman temple in 79 AD but it was later transformed into a catholic church and is still used as a sacred site today. Almost at the same time, Julius Caesar lived and one of the oldest things he knew about were the pyramids in Egypt. Actually, the Pyramid of Cheops was already more ancient to Caesar in his time than Caesar is to us nowadays.  When this pyramid was built there were Mammoths roaming around the tundra on Wrangel Island in the arctic ocean where they went extinct only in 1700 BC.
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Apr 14, 2015 14:34
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| # ? Apr 18, 2024 10:57 |
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That's a cool thread idea! I'm a historian, so hopefully people will post lots of neat old stuff  Off the top of my mind: - the wiki article on folk moemory has some cool examples on how events or creatures that in some cases happened or went extinct literally tens of thousands of years ago survive in stories and legends until today. Amazonian natives speak of the Mapinguari, for example, which seems to correspond with a giant sloth that roamed that area until 10,000 years ago, whereas the Aboriginal legendary creature of the bunyip shows some strong similarity to the Palorchestes (went extinct 11,000 years ago) or perhaps even the Zygomaturus (45,000 years ago); when they are shown fossil remains of those creatures, Aborigines will oftend identify them as bunyip bones. These correlations can't really be verified, of course, but its still super fascinating - it was long thought that the native American lanugages and those of Siberia had to be related, as the Americas were settled by Asian peoples; for the longest time, linguists rejected every proposal to connect these languages somehow, though, as the attested relationships always were more than a bit wonky, though. In 2008, a linguist called Edward Vajda published his findings that show a strong correlation between the Na-Dene languages of Canada and the Ket language of Central Siberia. If his findings are correct, than those similarities quite possibly originate from the time the Americas were settled, 10,000 or even more years ago. - in the same vein: the Finnish word for slave, lorja, comes from "Aryan". Why? Because the ancestors of today's Finns lived in close proximity to various Iranian (i.e. "Aryan") tribes, and would often wage war against them; "orja" would originally meand an Aryan who had been captured as a prisoner of war. This seems to date back many millenia as well. The same pattern gives us the English word "slave", which is just a new rendering of "Slav", as those would often be captured as slaves 1000-1200 years ago. - and a last lanugage bit: we often tend to think of Etruscan as a language that died out once the Romans took control of northern Italy. That is far from being true, however; it seems that the last Etruscan speaker died only in the 1st or even 2nd century AD. The Roman emperor Claudius was married to an Etruscan woman and wrote a massive ancyclopedia of the remaining Etruscans, their traditions an d their language. Sadly it is all lost now, though. And to have at least one picture in this post: Sardinia is absolutley litterd with "nuraghes", ancient stone structures that were built between 1,900 and 700 BC. There are still about 7,000 of them, though their number once was much greater. Their function remains unclear. 
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Apr 14, 2015 22:03
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This thread is awesome. That guy born in the 18th century is mind boggling, and the restaurant that's 1200 years old? Craziness. I love this poo poo. Thanks. The only way I know how to contribute is by sharing this photo, of my grandma Lydia, taken in Germany in the 1930's. A few years after this was taken, Germany took over the part of Poland my family was living in, and they effectively became refugees. My great Aunt wrote the story of my family out, and much of it is harrowing and disturbing. They crossed some mountains on foot and luckily my family had a chicken on a leash, and were able to get an egg every once in a while. They came across a family whose wagon had fallen over a cliff and that family was presumed dead, so my realtives took their horse. Crazy stuff. They lived under mattresses in a ditch for a few weeks, my great-grandmother was raped by Russians, it's insane, and once I learned of this story (only like two months ago), I'm so thankful for them for enduring that, so I could live in peace on the west coast of Canada.
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Apr 15, 2015 03:01
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cats boxing in 1894. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iFQWlA-xhbM
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Apr 15, 2015 03:50
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No photo, and pretty small time compared to some of the stuff in this thread already, but when I was in Nagasaki I bought some Castella from a cake shop that had been operating continuously from the same location for nearly 450 years. The area around it had grown up into a seedy mix of love motels and Karaoke bars, but there was this awesome little building in the middle of it that sold Portugese cake. The cake was delicious, and more than a little expensive.
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Apr 15, 2015 04:55
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 This is the Hubble Ultra-Deep Field. Those galaxy- and star-looking things are what was found in the part of space the telescope could look the farthest into. The light from them left them 13 billion years ago. What we're seeing would absolutely, certainly not exist anymore as we're seeing it. What we're seeing is whatever that region of space looked like 13 billion years ago. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hubble_Ultra-Deep_Field
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Apr 15, 2015 05:26
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Well if you want to play that game, I've got to throw the Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation into the mix. It is light which comes from the universe when it first became optically transparent, ~377,000 years after the big bang. If you remember analog TVs, the CMB made up some part of the static signal on empty channels. It was discovered in this radio telescope, and was at first thought to be a useless source of noise before scientists realized that it was actually one of the most important scientific discoveries in cosmology. 
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Apr 15, 2015 06:13
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The ultra-deep space field is legitimately my favorite picture of a thing that is old.  Seemed appropriate.
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Apr 15, 2015 06:54
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 A hotel, named Nishiyama Onsen Keiunkan, in Japan that has existed since 705 AD. Like that is just incredible to me.
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Apr 15, 2015 07:25
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As an American from the West Coast I grew up with the idea that something 100 years old was old. Then I moved to the Netherlands, and the city I live in, Utrecht used to be the end of the Roman Empire-  The line there represents the border wall. And now you park your bikes there -lost the mid part of it's massive church in a hurricane in the 16th century-  And all sorts of other stuff. In just one city, never mind all the stuff that happened in my other commonly visited cities like The Hague and Delft and Arnhem. It boggles me that not many natives I know here give a poo poo, whereas in the US if something is a century old we nod solemnly and congratulate ourselves on having made it this far.
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Apr 15, 2015 07:47
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BrigadierSensible posted:No photo, and pretty small time compared to some of the stuff in this thread already, but when I was in Nagasaki I bought some Castella from a cake shop that had been operating continuously from the same location for nearly 450 years. The area around it had grown up into a seedy mix of love motels and Karaoke bars, but there was this awesome little building in the middle of it that sold Portugese cake. The world's oldest company used to be Kongō Gumi in Osaka, Japan; it specialised in constructing Buddhist temples and was founded in 578 AD. Sadly it fell on hard times and was absorbed by a larger company a couple of years ago 
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Apr 15, 2015 08:09
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These are nowhere near as old as other things in this thread, but here's a picture of my Grandma on her wedding day, just before my Granddad shipped off to Germany in WW2: I believe this was the engagement announcement photo:  And this is a bracelet that belonged to her grandmother back in Lithuania, and which I inherited a few years back along with a lot of other awesome pieces.  I wear it regularly, and every time I do, people ask me where they can buy one. Not bad for something well over a hundred years old.
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Apr 15, 2015 17:59
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kith_groupie posted:As an American from the West Coast I grew up with the idea that something 100 years old was old. Then I moved to the Netherlands, and the city I live in, Utrecht Utrecht, what a great (old) city! I think one of the best examples of the old living almost parasitically with the new is the "city castle" Oudaen.  It's an almost 800 year-old building, originally built as a home for some rich merchant or knights but it's still in use and it even features a lot of the original masonry and such! It's a nifty little bar that brews its own (absolutely great) beers and it even has this little dock where you can sit and drink outside, if you want. It's a shame it's so expensive for my tastes, or I'd go there more often!
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Apr 15, 2015 18:12
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Oh man I love old things! Folks have already posted awesome old buildings and remnants of the Roman Empire and such (and I thought the inn I stayed that had been in continuous operation since the Revolutionary War was old...), so here's a different type of old: I own one of these awesome Art Deco toasters:  It's a Toastmaster model 1B5, produced 1934-1935. My particular specimen was manufactured in June of 1934, according to its serial number, making it 80 years old. The level of technological ingenuity put into this toaster is kind of insane. The best part? It's self-calibrating. There's a bi-metal strip inside (much like one in an analog thermostat) that's connected to the clock piece's regulator (yep, it's an actual clock that makes this toaster (literally) tick) that speeds it up just so if the toaster is already hot, so subsequent batches of toast are at the exact same level of toastedness as the first batch. My grandma had the 1950 model, which she received as a wedding present. She made toast with it pretty much every day until her passing. It lives at my aunt's house now. These old toasters were designed to make your toast every day for the rest of your life, and they do (and still do) what they were designed to do. No one thinks of a toaster or other counter top appliance as something to be cherished and passed down to your grandchildren, or as something that will outlast you, at least not anymore. Probably because they just don't make them like they used to. --- And here's an especially remarkable piece of old technology from the early 20th century: The Reproducing Piano I've had the pleasure and privilege of seeing one of these in action. The recording process captured every nuance of every keystroke of whoever played the piece, and the piano, via punch-card roll and intricate system of pneumatics, plays it back with stunning accuracy. Rachmaninov himself recorded a bunch of his own pieces, so if you stick a Rachmaninov roll in the piano and turn it on, it's like his ghost sat down and started playing (the keys move and everything), because it it is literally what he played how he played it, with all his keystrokes precisely recorded and stored in a punch-card roll. One thing I find particularly fascinating about this era of technology was that the mechanisms of recording and playing back the highly nuanced motion of a piano keystroke were way more advanced than recording/playing back sound waves.
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Apr 15, 2015 19:00
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 Monks Mound quote:Unlike Egyptian pyramids which were built of stone, the platform mound was constructed almost entirely of layers of basket-transported soil and clay.
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Apr 15, 2015 21:16
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Here's a short Wikipedia article on Onfim, a boy from medieval Novgorod whose classroom doodles have been preserved.
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Apr 16, 2015 03:40
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Achernar posted:Here's a short Wikipedia article on Onfim, a boy from medieval Novgorod whose classroom doodles have been preserved. I love the battle scenes, it makes me think we've not really changed that much in 800 years.
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Apr 16, 2015 04:02
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I do some blacksmithing, and I really really enjoy hanging out with different smiths and getting to use their ancient tools. There's something seriously neat about using an anvil that's older than the USA, or a hammer that's been around longer than your great grandparents None of these pictures are mine, I just grabbed them off google    
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Apr 16, 2015 04:11
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Achernar posted:Here's a short Wikipedia article on Onfim, a boy from medieval Novgorod whose classroom doodles have been preserved. Onfim's drawings are the best thing ever. My favorite old things are ones that remind you that people have always been.. well, people. You always see the frowning subjects of Victorian photos and stoic portraits, and written records that you know were for historic events and not everyday life, paper (and writing) being so scarce. History books in school only seem to form two-dimensional people, who you know by their accomplishments and not much else. They might as well have existed only for the length of time it took to become famous, and then disappeared. History is history, now is now, and the two could not possibly be more different. And then you find out that a kid in the 13th century daydreamed and drew silly pictures when he should've been studying, just like you did. 
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Apr 16, 2015 04:13
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the monowheel car https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R4Nebneh4sk
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Apr 16, 2015 05:13
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Achernar posted:Here's a short Wikipedia article on Onfim, a boy from medieval Novgorod whose classroom doodles have been preserved. Looking at this just blows my mind. Even mundane things like homework exercises existing back in 13th century somehow fascinates me, although I'm sure stuff like that has existed for thousands of years. I love how all the faces are basically comprised of fragments of the Old Novgorod alphabet.
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Apr 18, 2015 07:51
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kith_groupie posted:As an American from the West Coast I grew up with the idea that something 100 years old was old. Awww man you missed out on some awesome old stuff much closer to home:  This is Taos Pueblo in New Mexico. It's been continually inhabited for about 1000 years. It must be the coolest poo poo ever to live in the same building your ancestors lived in a millennium ago. Achernar posted:Here's a short Wikipedia article on Onfim, a boy from medieval Novgorod whose classroom doodles have been preserved. This is the most adorable thing. I love the "I am a beast" drawings. Kids have always been kids!
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Apr 18, 2015 09:08
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Not very original, but for me it's Pompeii. I get such a massive kick out of so many things there, especially the snack bars. I can just imagine those things full of olives and otter noses. I've only visited once before, but luckily I'm back in Rome later this year so I'll hop a train and visit again for sure.  Also, not as old, but the house I grew up in is over 400 years old and as a kid it never occurred to me that it was old, I assumed all kids lived in houses like that. It has all sorts of wonky bits and bobs going on, servants passages, deep wells and stables and secrets doors and so on. Mum and Dad have the coolest pad.
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Apr 18, 2015 13:17
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Drawings by Charles Darwin's children on the first manuscript of On the Origin of Species (1840s-50s)   
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Apr 18, 2015 13:34
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Parasol Prophet posted:Onfim's drawings are the best thing ever. My favorite old things are ones that remind you that people have always been.. well, people. You always see the frowning subjects of Victorian photos and stoic portraits Enjoy some smiling Victorians http://www.buzzfeed.com/lukelewis/18-photos-of-victorians-smiling#.rtEGDB9Vyl And if you want more, Google 'smiling Victorians' and you'll get loads of tumblr and Facebook albums where others have contributed!
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Apr 18, 2015 13:55
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One of my favourite things about the late Victorian/Edwardian period was that people used to fangasm over Sherlock Holmes the way we fangasm over, well, Sherlock Holmes. Also, Peter Pan was one of the most commonly found books in British trenches. Which is kind of fitting in a  way.
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Apr 23, 2015 18:32
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