Do you ever think of us as people of ancient times?

[sharptoothlemonshark]

I love history and love picturing and imagining people hundreds or thousands of years ago, going about their lives, enjoying fun and love, and coping with fear and danger. I have some roman/ viking/tudor/victorian artifacts, and feel like these bring me really close to people of the past, touching what they touched and made, and knowing how the same we are really, in spite of the distances between us.

Then I think of us as ancient people, from the point of view of people hundreds or thousands of years in the future, and I can almost feel their curiosity and concern about us that they will almost certainly be sending our way in the future. I look at my keyboard I am on right now, for example, and wonder if maybe the f key, or similar might eventually find its way into the hand of a history lover in the year 3024, and they might hold it with the fascination and reverence that I feel for my viking comb, and use it to feel that he or she can almost form a connection to me.

Anyone else get these feelings?

Another book recommendation, Second Sleep by Robert Harris.

Is that the Jean M Auel series? It's many years since I read them and I don't think I got further than The Shelters of Stone. Even at the time I felt they were more allegorical than realistic, in that Ayla is a metaphor for human development rather than one woman literally inventing the first spear-thrower, taming the first horse etc, etc.

Also archaeology and anthropology have progressed so far in the last 30? years since Clan of the Cave Bear was published, particularly our understanding of Neanderthals. Auel's portrayal of them as ignorant and brutish has pretty much been debunked.

That said, the books are well written and great stories but they very much reflect the state of understanding in the 1980s-90s.

I do this! Not so much with artefacts though but with people. Sometimes when I'm out and about, I people watch and wonder they'd have all been up to if they'd lived a hundred years ago, for example. I find it quite mind-blowing that we're all here because our ancestors were the lucky ones who survived hard times in the past.

Ooh, I did this too and I've never seen anyone else say that!

I also thought that I'd be a housewife for while on maternity leave, but I'd base that on the Tudor notion of what a housewife was (which I think I actually got from Germaine Greer, though I've since done historical re-enactment).

@sharptoothlemonshark

How on earth,
🤔 do you possess such a wide range of ancient artifacts in the first place anyway ?

You could probably surmise the same by looking at some of the stuff that goes on nowadays tbf. I imagine people of the future hearing about the genocides of the 20th and 21st century and viewing our era as we today view that of Genghis Khan or the lions dens of the Romans.

There is a lot of artefacts that are dug up as they have been buried over with time. I wonder if that will ever happen with us - people digging through our rubbish?

It’s hard to imagine future archaeologists uncovering all our plastic tat in landfill in 1000 years and discussing earnestly with different theories as to what a fidget spinner toy or yoghurt container could have been for but I guess this will be the case!

I get that feeling too.

All the time. I think about who walked places before me. Almost like I can feel an echo of their presence.

It’s especially strong in very old buildings or ruins. But I also get it with jewellery.

I have a ring my great grandmother purchased it’s come down the generations to me. My Dad believes she got it from a jewellers and it was second hand.

I often think about the women I know who have worn is. But I would love to know he wore it before us. What would they think about it becoming such an important piece of jewellery in a family they don’t know. That it’s become something that gives a woman, they have no connection with, a little peace when she desperately misses her mother and her Nana.

Why don’t you think it will last?

Lots of digital media that people view as forever formats are very fallible and degrade over time

Some solid state and optical drives will survive and I imagine will be the pyramid grade finds of their time

well, if you have ever tried to open a photo or document that hasn't been opened for 10 years.....

@OneTC well indeed. The Roman Republican Cursus Honorum (minimum ages for holding various political offices) would have been a bit fucked is a lot of people died at 35.

They did not believe men were sufficiently mature and experienced enough to hold the highest office (Consul) until they were at least 43.

Funnily enough, I did this just recently… I found my old digital camera from the mid 2000s and ordered a reader for the compact flash card. It actually worked just fine, miraculously, and was mad to see all these pictures and memories I’d completely forgotten about. But see what you mean – would just take a bit of rust or whatever and the whole thing would be unusable.

I have found Richard Wrangham to be good on this subject, men would form coalitions to execute males who got out of control and started dominating everyone and making everyone's life miserable.

I feel like the modern equivalent is shunning or cancelling !

The thing about life expectancy ... yes it may have been the case that the average life expectancy was (say) 35 but this is the mean (rather than the mode or median) average.
In other words it was heavily skewed by high infant mortality rates.

I too am fascinated by social history but modern times are so well documented with writings, photos and videos it's hard to imagine the same curiosity being sparked about artefacts in the future.

Freeriders! The same behaviour can be witnessed in Monkey tribes. Monkeys that a violent or do not contribute (often young males) can be ganged up on and killed by the tribe.

yes, some are usabel and some are not, but if you extrapolate the increasing failure rate over several more decades..... I found a camera card with photos from around 10 years ago once. It was usable, but there was a strange colour balance. I have had difficulty opening documents on a 5 year old lap top though, after it had been gathering dust under my desk for a while. Suddenly realised there was something on it I now needed, but couldn't access it

I’m with you on getting the feels when I see/touch ancient stuff. Walking around somewhere like Rome gives me an overwhelming feeling of the people who have walked there before me.

However, I definitely don’t project this into the future. Your idea of there being humans in 3024 who would think of us is incredibly optimistic.

I seriously doubt the human race will survive more than 500 years.

I feel like this about the past, I live walking around places like Pompeii & trying to imagine what life was like for these people.

I just don't think everything we are documenting will be gone. There is so much that there'll be plenty that is transferred to the newest technology. I'm not saying it'll all survive, but enough.

Unless some kind of cataclysmic event that wipes out 99% of humanity and we're plunged back into the stone age.

A family member is a detectorist and has found loads of interesting things. She recently found a beautiful, gold ring with a family crest on it. I'd love to know more about it. She found a stash of 50 silver coins, who buried them and why?
It's fascinating for sure.

The footsteps of prehistoric man off the Kent coast give me the chills. Ordinary people who walked there thousands of years ago and whose footprints are captured for all eternity.

Where were they going, what could they see? The English Channel did not exist then and they may have been walking through a forest. What thoughts were going through their minds?

There were evidently two children with them identifiable by the small footprints. It is surmised that the children were skipping along by the way the footprints have fallen. Children skipping alongside their parents, just so relatetable and yet in a world so alien to us.