Tag: #AncientHistory

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E is for Earthquake

Biblical illustration @1220 CE of a historical earthquake described in the book of Amos. National Museum of Portugal

I personally have felt several earthquakes, from big ones like Loma Prieta where the things fell off the shelves while I was shopping, to lots of small ones at home, because I live on the Hayward Fault. A month ago, a 3.9 twitch occurred less than 2 miles from my neighborhood, causing the house to “boom” and shake so hard that I thought we were going to get lifted off to Oz. My wife simply looked up and said, “Oh, earthquake,” which is usually what Californians do. You don’t know when earthquakes will happen, which is a blessing and a curse. I’ve not been through hurricanes, floods, or tornadoes, but I’m sure those are equally frightening. A reminder of our puniness in the face of Mother Nature.

Ancient people wrote about earthquakes, volcanoes, and other disasters. They were common enough that writers used them as metaphors as well as describing when they happened. This is why today’s post on Earthquakes isn’t precisely cheating in terms of Ancient Inventions. Clearly, earthquakes aren’t an invention. But history is.

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D is for Dish

Japanese “deep bowls” @11,000 ya, Tokyo National Museum, photo by Ismoon.

While I waxed lyrical about Bread a couple days ago, I must confess that, in comparison, ancient Pottery has seemed a little underwhelming. It’s been the part of the museum I slog through, wedged between those fascinating replicas of the Gate of Ishtar and the Egyptian mummies. Oh, look yet another brown glaze!

Yet if there ever was a thing that humans invented and re-invented, in one culture after another, it is cookware. Archaeologists can find buried treasure, in fact, treasure troves just by spotting an ancient “shard” in the trash heaps, among the cigarette butts and plastic bags. Dating the shards can be tricky, but technology has improved its precision. It was once thought that dishes to hold food were created after the invention of organized farming (@10,000 ya), but recent finds on digs have unearthed pots far earlier.

Personally, I can’t tell quartz from limestone, but I’ll bet Paleolithic and Neolithic people could look at the dirt in my neighborhood and explain it to me. Certainly, it makes sense that Stone Age people would have been experts in geology. If they could find the right kind of rocks to hone the points of other rocks and create sparks for fire, then they could make their own rocks, which is why today’s post is all about Dishes. Let’s explore three topics:

  1. A core definition of the “thing”
  2. Where and when it happened first “around the world”
  3. How it influenced human development
1790 fine bone china tea service, photo courtesy of the Met.
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C is for Calendar

Was it a calendar? photo by Kajmeister.

(May) maybe if I ask your dad and mom
(June) they’ll let me take you to the Junior Prom
(July) like a firecracker all aglow
(August) when you’re on the beach you steal the show
Yeah, yeah, my heart’s in a whirl
I love, I love, I love my little calendar girl

Neil Sedaka, “I Love My Calendar Girl”

We take the division of time for granted. How many minutes left on the test? What time do I get off? Is the next holiday on Monday, so I can have a three-day weekend? Some people even wear wrist devices which describe those divisions, linked to their health data, like their heart rate and whether they sleep. However did we manage before a wristwatch could describe our sleep?

The ancient people had to invent all those divisions from scratch. They did it repeatedly, across multiple cultures, using varying tracking systems. Their lives depended on observations–the rise of the river waters, the start of the dry season, the first bite of frost. I was well into middle age before I noticed how far north the sun set in the west in the summer vs. the winter. I think it was because I’d finally lived in one place for more than a decade. I bet even the Neanderthals figured that out before I did, since their lives depended on such things.

Today’s topic is the Calendar. How could they mark time, before writing was even invented? How did different societies integrate math with time? Were there different versions of calendars? Where did they stand on ending Daylight Savings Time?

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