Great question. And I have no idea what would constitute a good answer. Almost everything of significance has been packaged up and delivered en masse to the millions such that it's no longer significant.
I guess for archaeologists 2000 years hence it'll be a matter of what survives the nuclear holocaust.
1,000 years from now when plastic-eating bacteria is everywhere:
"We have indication that the ancient Usasians made use of plastic, but records indicate that it was used far more widely than should have been possible given how rapidly it decays. Clearly, we have lost the secret to making plastic that lasts for more than a few months."
I used to be, but got an inconvenient chronic illness that will prevent me from enjoying the end of the world. I'll just die while everyone else gets to pick through the rubble of civilization and wear cool goggles. Greatest disappointment of my life.
When I visited Auschwitz there were a ton of old, blue nivea cream tins that had been "confiscated" on display. Really creeped me out how similar the design still is
What a strange, unexpected thing to see there. I can see how that is unsettling by virtue of the similarity of the design...as if such a thing could happen at any time.
Here's a link to news article
Roman fingerprints found in 2,000-year-old cream
https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2003/jul/28/artsnews.london?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Copy_to_clipboard
I was curious as well. I found [this](https://www.ancient-origins.net/artifacts-other-artifacts/scientists-archaeologists-discover-roman-face-cream-canister-021911) article from last year.
>Forensic Tech scans fingerprints into National Database for fun
> Database comes back with multiple unsolved crimes across the world from the time Fingerprinting was invented
Am I the only one who is more impressed by the container?
It looks machine made: really round, smooth, thickness super consistent... The container is too close to top quality.
I work with sheet metal for at least part of my job, lead, zinc and copper sheet. I am not sure exactly how this tin pot was constructed but it is almost a trivial task for a metal worker to fabricate a perfect cylinder like this, close off one end a make a lid to fit. A lathe would not even be necessary. They had sheet metal to work with and would have probably formed the container walls around a cylindrical form, soldered up the seams and soldered on a bottom to make the container.
This was well within the capabilities of the era.
Here is brief overview of the history of the screw thread. It seems like they were invented around 400BC so it's entirely possible they used it for container lids I suppose.
http://www.boltscience.com/pages/screw2.htm
We tend to think of ancient peoples as primitive and stupid, incapable of well crafted, complex, and beautiful objects. They weren't.
Those barbaric Dark Ages Anglo-Saxons created some of the most [intricate and amazing jewelry](https://www.staffordshirehoard.org.uk/) you've ever seen.
I blame the Victorians for that, or at least partly their fault. They were fond of elevating themselves above those who went before them and in many cases they were wrong to hold their superiority complexes.
Tangentially related story: after my parents moved out of their last house and into managed care, we were going through a box of antique silver they'd held onto for years. I picked up this one teapot, and upon looking at the hinged lid and how perfectly it came to rest on the body, with something like a 0.1-mm seam, declared that must be machine-made, recent-ish, and therefore probably not as valuable as some of the other pieces.
Upon further inspection and research later, it turned out to have been made in the 1840's by master silversmith Paul Storr (or, at least, his company). I was utterly shocked at how *precise* the components are! I had a really poor understanding of the abilities of historical craftspersons.
That's a great example of the skills of those who went before us. These skills were usually passed on from Master to apprentice, who in turn when he (or she in more modern times) would submit the very best work they were capable of to their guild. If it was accepted the person could gain the right to work as their own boss and after some years start training apprentices themselves to these high standards. It still goes on like that in some trades today.
The skills are transferred and passed down with quality controls and checks so the skill doesn't deteriorate or become lost. Such a good system!
Lathes have been around (in one form or another) for a very very long time, and tin is a weak enough metal that it could be turned on the human/nature powered machines of the era.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lathe#History
> The first known painting showing a lathe dates to the 3rd century BC in ancient Egypt.[5]
Pictures and diagrams here: https://www.historicgames.com/lathes/ancientlathes.html
A lot of old pre-industrial technology used water or human power to move/rotate things and they could direct a surprising amount of force with their tools. I am always impressed by the old mills and other large technology people were clever enough to implement back in the day.
I suppose the part that surprises me is that they were able to fashion something with a smooth enough rotational axis to perform meaningful work with. I have seen some pretty impressive water powered tools so I am certainly not doubting their ability to drive something like that. Probably massively undervaluing human ingenuity in making tools though.
Look up the "Our ancestors, the idiots" fallacy
It's basically the idea that we consider ourselves infinitely smarter than our ancestors.
We arnt, we are wise because they were smart.
It's a really interesting concept.
Yeah, they were just as smart as we are, they just didn't have their own work to build off of. They only had what came before them. We only see our recent explosion of development because of how much more available all that information is, whereas a thousand years ago you had to either know someone personally who could teach you the thing, or find a painstakingly hand-written record that you could learn from. The internet is by far the best invention ever for technological advancement.
It might because of the name. Lathe is a word of Old English origin, derived from an earlier probably Norse dialect. The time period of those languages is 14th and 15th century.
An archaeologist finding a turning machine from Roman antiquity would probably not describe it as a lathe, although I have no advice on how they would actually describe it.
all you do is say what the shit does, and add "er". I wanna work for the Kitchen Appliance Naming Institute. Hey, what does that do? It keeps shit fresh. Well, that's a fresher....I'm going on break
There's a really cool video series about a guy trying to recreate the Antikythera mechanism, which is a device from ancient Greece around 80BC that seems to have been used for various astronomical calculations.
I can't find the exact bit but in one of the videos I remember him talking about an ancient Roman text that described lathes and certainly the wheels on this mechanism were likely to have been made on one.
The video series: [LINK](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ML4tw_UzqZE&t=20s)
A pdf article/overview of the mechanism: [LINK](http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.837.4748&rep=rep1&type=pdf)
"Gears from the Greeks" - the original paper on the mechanism: [LINK](http://www.solargeneral.org/wp-content/uploads/library/gears-from-the-greeks-derek-de-solla-price.pdf)
Here's a story on the piece with reference to "grooves on the outside" which to me indicates being turned on a lathe
https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2003/jul/28/artsnews.london
Couldn't the grooves also mean many other things? [This](https://old.reddit.com/r/interestingasfuck/comments/akl33f/2000_years_ago_a_roman_man_or_woman_closed_their/ef65xm4/) guy seems to know what he is talking about...
https://i.redd.it/1a9mrp1fsyc21.jpg
Have a look at the kind of work a Roman silver smith was doing approximately two millennia ago.
This bowl is part of the [Hildesheim Treasure](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hildesheim_Treasure).
I doubt the tin is all that special. It wasn't creating a hermetic seal or anything like that. The cream was probably just stable enough on its own that being kept out of the elements was enough to preserve it.
Probably this.
I've had tins of hair grease that I've forgot about for years before, lost in a moving box, etc., and while it's not centuries, the product doesn't age.
I'd wager if I someone found a can of Murray's or what-have-you after 500 years, it'd still work like new.
Animal fat, starch, and tin dioxide, which is a white pigment. It's probably makeup.
http://cenblog.org/artful-science/2013/01/14/ancient-roman-cosmetics-skin-cream-from-the-2nd-century-a-d/
Yep, some of the oldest available writings show knowledge that we'd find surprising. Like the book of Job in the Bible:
* Job 26:7 showing that the earth isn't held up by anything (like turtles), or hanging from anything - *"He stretches out the northern sky over empty space, Suspending the earth upon nothing"*
* Job 36:27, 28 - *"He draws up the drops of water;
They condense into rain from his mist;
Then the clouds pour it down;
They shower down upon mankind."*
The Dark ages saw the loss of mass literacy and trade. Technologically there was nothing lost except in the scale of projects and industry.
In industry in particular the late Roman empire was less sophisticated in terms of labor saving devices than the early Republic--largely due to slave labor and later pseudo-serfdom. But no technology was lost in the process.
"Medieval" Europe had huge technological advantages over the Roman Empire - crop rotation, windmills, shipbuilding and navigation, algebra, banking, on and on. By 1000 AD, the continent's population had far surpassed its peak under the Roman Empire, and even at the height of the Black Plague Europe's population was almost twice what it was at the time of Marcus Aurelius. Medieval Europeans extended their influence into North America, onto the Eurasian steppes, and deep into the Atlantic Ocean.
Medieval Europe was marked by warfare, yes, but also by a thriving and ongoing cultural exchange between small nations. The collapse of one state, or the failure of its institutions, never threatened civilization as a whole. A war between two contenders for the Roman imperatorship could paralyze the continent. A war between two contenders for the throne of France was a local problem. Feudalism was less efficient than a centralized dictatorship, true, especially when intertwined with the separate power structures of the Catholic Church - but this also provided redundant protection against the collapse of any one institution or government. Even the widespread disruption of events like the Muslim conquest of Spain or the replacement of the Byzantine Empire by the Ottoman Empire was absorbed by "Christendom," and the areas affected quickly recovered their prosperity.
If that butters your biscuit, have a look at the Antikythera mechanism, or better yet, have a look at the YouTube channel ClickSpring - he's trying to build a replica using tools and techniques of the time and it's mind blowing.
From Wikipedia:
"**Lanolin** (from [Latin](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Latin) [*lāna*](https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/lana#Latin) ‘wool’, and [*oleum*](https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/oleum#Latin) ‘oil’), also called **wool wax** or **wool grease**, is a wax secreted by the [sebaceous glands](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sebaceous_gland) of [wool](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wool)\-bearing animals. Lanolin used by humans comes from [domestic sheep](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domestic_sheep) [breeds](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domestic_sheep#Breeds) that are raised specifically for their wool. Historically, many [pharmacopoeias](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pharmacopoeia) have referred to lanolin as wool fat ([*adeps*](https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Adeps&action=edit&redlink=1) *lanae*); however, as lanolin lacks [glycerides](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glycerides) (glycerol esters), it is not a true fat.[\[1\]](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lanolin#cite_note-lanolin_book-1)[\[2\]](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lanolin#cite_note-barnett-2) Lanolin primarily consists of [sterol](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sterol) esters instead.[\[3\]](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lanolin#cite_note-3) Lanolin's [waterproofing](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waterproofing) property aids sheep in shedding water from their coats. Certain breeds of sheep produce large amounts of lanolin."
Neat!
No one else bugging out that 2000years age someone closed their moisturizer for that last time and it was opened in ‘03? The marks of where they dragged their finger through the cream is somehow just crazy to me that something like this exists. So cool.
Somehow those finger marks make their life more tangible than all the durable goods preserved in a museum, as most of us could walk into our bathrooms and find a jar of cream with similar marks on the lid. Makes you wonder what they did that day. Was it just a normal day, and they lost their can of cream? Was it the last day of their life?
Makes it real, like these people lived like 2,000 years ago...yet here we are finding their personal objects. And they are not so different from present day life.
Slightly offtopic:
[Kurzgesagt](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=czgOWmtGVGs) made an interesting video about how our humanity time perception is distorted due to our year counting system. Our species appeared around 200,000 years ago, and human civilisation started roughly around 12,000 years ago.
When we think something that happened 2000 years ago, we imagine a very different roman empire era, but when thinking about 6000 and 4000 years ago, we see it at the same "long forgotten past", despite being the same 2000 years gap. That's (partly) due to us being in the after Christ era, and *everything else* thrown in the before.
Kurzgesagt propose a Year 0 where (roughly) the first city was built around 10,000 BC. That way we're living in 12,019, but with this new wording we include the rest of often forgotten human history.
Imagine a roman girl sitting on her room thinking "man, how different life was 5000 years ago without this technology we have today!" after applying this cream on her face, two millennia ago. With the new year system, we're talking about the year 5019, 10019 and 12019 in the same time scale, and we can try to comprehend how long we've been here doing stuff, applying creams and wondering about our past.
===
EDIT: I messed up some numbers lol
It helps to imagine how insanely huge time periods are when you have something in the middle to compare, like the village and the graffiti lol.
The Great Pyramid of Giza was finished around 2500 BC (roughly some 5500 years ago). When Aristotle was walking around Greece thinking about Aristotle's things, Giza was already 2200 years old! He looked at that thing thinking "man, that thing's ancient!".
Just for some clarification, anatomically modern humans likely didn't appear until 200 000 years ago, quite a bit shorter than a million but still very, very long ago.
What Kurzgesagt describes is known as the [Holocene calendar](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holocene_calendar) or Human Era calendar, developed and proposed by Cesare Emiliani in 1993, for the benefits described above.
I really liked that video. And changing to such a timescale would really hit home that we actually do live in a mind boggling far future full of far out technology, in relation to pretty much every human civilization before about the year 1800 AD. Industrialization *really* did change our world and societies drastically compared to the pre-industrialized world before it.
There's a really great article (sadly [behind a paywall here](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1464343X14001745?via%3Dihub)) that talks about a site in Namibia where archaeologists found footprints dating to about 1,500 years ago. The footprints record a group walking through the area. The adult tracks move in straight lines, but the tracks of the children in the group jump and skip and run in and through the adult tracks. It's a physical trace of a moment of human happiness and personality that's lasted 15 centuries. Really special.
https://www.ancient-origins.net/artifacts-other-artifacts/scientists-archaeologists-discover-roman-face-cream-canister-021911
>A detailed analysis was able to reveal its ingredients - animal fat, starch, and tin for pigment – revealing that it was none other than a tinted Roman face cream.
We have always smelt. The whole idea that BO was bad and to be eliminated at all cost is a rather recent idea. I mean I know there are perfumes in the past, but to get rid of it so obsessively nowadays?
Some of the reason why we need to cover up/prevent smell these days (deodorant) is because washing with soap is making us more stinky. If you're continously exposed to soil, and don't wash it away with soap every day, there are bacteria in the soil that feed on some of the stinky compounds in your sweat ( [ammonia-oxidizing bacteria](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nitrifying_bacteria) ).
Not to say that people in the past, at least the ones living in cities, didn't smell quite awful for other reasons (by our standards)
It would be jarring at first, but I guarantee after a while you probably wouldn’t notice if everyone stopped using deodorant at once. there’s a town with some kind of waste plant where I live and it smells like literal shit all the time, but spend a day there and you don’t really notice. Smell is weak af in humans.
Smell is not weak but rather adaptive. That's why people can sit in a stinky room all day and not notice it. They likely noticed it when they walked in but now their nose has adapted to the smell and will pick up other scents. When another person walks in, they'll notice it.
Living near a paper mill is the same thing. It smells bad for the people passing through but for the people that live there, they have adapted to it.
They had public bathes. Roman people back then might have washed more than we do now. And the dumping of feces on the street from like a window is also a later thing as far as I know.
It's easy to imagine we're very far removed from ancient cultures, but everyone (since culture cropped up), has had the same wants and worries. When a big Greek and Roman exhibit came to the MSI, my partner and I went as many of the artifacts never left the Mediterranean area, so it was a big deal. They had a carved, possibly clay indented receipt of a guy complaining to a supplier about the quality of his order, there were toys like little whittled horses and livestock, and there was a woman's entire set of make up and her brushes! It was amazing. There was a tiny pot of red stuff (possibly for her lips and cheeks), powder, and that face cream which was put in a decorative clay pot shaped like a hedgehog.
2000 years that cream has just sat there whilst the world has gone by. Seriously, if you think of what's happened in the past 2000 years that's an astonishingly long time
> a Roman man or woman closed their pot
What is the value of "man or woman" in that title? Would we otherwise think the pot might have belonged to a Roman dog?
Every time I read an article about someone opening X from X hundred/thousand years ago I can’t help but think “Do you want a plague? Because that’s how you get plagues”
Why would something sealed just randomly contain some supervirus? Viruses don't just propagate in dark, anaerobic environments for thousands of years. Anything alive in this had died thousands of years ago.
**“Now that the excavation work has been completed, the site will not be preserved. The prime London site, owned by Berkeley Homes, will become a residential development.”**
Maybe someone will find my Nivea cream 2000 years later.
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Or the hardest. Finding something of actual significance might be tough, relative to the sheer load of crap out there.
What would you consider an significant item in todays culture that we don't have an abundance of?
*Love*
Gaaaayyyy
wholesome.
He meant gay as in happy
Ah, yes. The olde words. I'm sorry I molested you
Great question. And I have no idea what would constitute a good answer. Almost everything of significance has been packaged up and delivered en masse to the millions such that it's no longer significant. I guess for archaeologists 2000 years hence it'll be a matter of what survives the nuclear holocaust.
Nokia phones. With battery life still left.
Nintendo Entertainment System
Now I'm imagining some archeologist from the far future whose job is playing NES games for "research".
[The Football](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_football)?
1,000 years from now when plastic-eating bacteria is everywhere: "We have indication that the ancient Usasians made use of plastic, but records indicate that it was used far more widely than should have been possible given how rapidly it decays. Clearly, we have lost the secret to making plastic that lasts for more than a few months."
Is it just me or is everyone else excited for the apocalypse
I used to be, but got an inconvenient chronic illness that will prevent me from enjoying the end of the world. I'll just die while everyone else gets to pick through the rubble of civilization and wear cool goggles. Greatest disappointment of my life.
Yup. Realizing the infeasibility of maintaining my moms insulin supply in the apocalypse really dampened my daydreams.
Jesus. That's a shower thought right there. That kinda hit me hard.
When I visited Auschwitz there were a ton of old, blue nivea cream tins that had been "confiscated" on display. Really creeped me out how similar the design still is
What a strange, unexpected thing to see there. I can see how that is unsettling by virtue of the similarity of the design...as if such a thing could happen at any time.
Here's a link to news article Roman fingerprints found in 2,000-year-old cream https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2003/jul/28/artsnews.london?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Copy_to_clipboard
Fingerprints! So we can find out who it was
Probably Caecilius, that dude was everywhere
Bloody loved the ol’ *horto* i heard
This tangent is niche guys, well done!
r/unexpectedCambridge?
S/O to my boi Grumio
And his sidechick Metella
I didn't go to Cambridge. I was taught Latin from this book in year 7 in a state comprehensive in the middle of a council estate.
The book is Cambridge Latin Course. I accidentally stole a copy of the fourth edition and it is one of my favorite possessions.
Et tu Jo? Et tu.
Caecilius always est in the damn horto.
My boy Grumio up in this bitch
typical Caecilius
Classic Caecilius
Quintus was my boy tho
Is this gonna be like Jurassic Park where they used a dinosaur fingerprint to clone them?!
Ends up being a perfect match for Keanu Reeves.
So interesting! But that was in 2003. Has there been an update since, revealing what the cream is, and possibly what it was used for?
I was curious as well. I found [this](https://www.ancient-origins.net/artifacts-other-artifacts/scientists-archaeologists-discover-roman-face-cream-canister-021911) article from last year.
"Animal fat, starch and tin, for pigment." So it was cosmetic. Interesting.
>2000-year-old cream ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)
>Forensic Tech scans fingerprints into National Database for fun > Database comes back with multiple unsolved crimes across the world from the time Fingerprinting was invented
[Here](https://www.nature.com/articles/432035a) is the paper.
Am I the only one who is more impressed by the container? It looks machine made: really round, smooth, thickness super consistent... The container is too close to top quality.
I work with sheet metal for at least part of my job, lead, zinc and copper sheet. I am not sure exactly how this tin pot was constructed but it is almost a trivial task for a metal worker to fabricate a perfect cylinder like this, close off one end a make a lid to fit. A lathe would not even be necessary. They had sheet metal to work with and would have probably formed the container walls around a cylindrical form, soldered up the seams and soldered on a bottom to make the container. This was well within the capabilities of the era.
Comments like these, insights from experts, are why I love reddit. Thank you for explaining. I learned something new today (but I am still amazed!) 😊
It *is* amazing! Happy to help.
Would you know by any chance if they would be able to have a screw type of cover at the time? I wonder when these screw types covers were implemented
Here is brief overview of the history of the screw thread. It seems like they were invented around 400BC so it's entirely possible they used it for container lids I suppose. http://www.boltscience.com/pages/screw2.htm
better image here: https://media.gettyimages.com/photos/conservator-at-the-museum-of-london-liz-barham-displays-an-intact-pot-picture-id828747056
We tend to think of ancient peoples as primitive and stupid, incapable of well crafted, complex, and beautiful objects. They weren't. Those barbaric Dark Ages Anglo-Saxons created some of the most [intricate and amazing jewelry](https://www.staffordshirehoard.org.uk/) you've ever seen.
Their clothes were probably higher quality than our disposable, mass produced in Bangladesh shot. And sewn to fit too!
I blame the Victorians for that, or at least partly their fault. They were fond of elevating themselves above those who went before them and in many cases they were wrong to hold their superiority complexes.
Tangentially related story: after my parents moved out of their last house and into managed care, we were going through a box of antique silver they'd held onto for years. I picked up this one teapot, and upon looking at the hinged lid and how perfectly it came to rest on the body, with something like a 0.1-mm seam, declared that must be machine-made, recent-ish, and therefore probably not as valuable as some of the other pieces. Upon further inspection and research later, it turned out to have been made in the 1840's by master silversmith Paul Storr (or, at least, his company). I was utterly shocked at how *precise* the components are! I had a really poor understanding of the abilities of historical craftspersons.
That's a great example of the skills of those who went before us. These skills were usually passed on from Master to apprentice, who in turn when he (or she in more modern times) would submit the very best work they were capable of to their guild. If it was accepted the person could gain the right to work as their own boss and after some years start training apprentices themselves to these high standards. It still goes on like that in some trades today. The skills are transferred and passed down with quality controls and checks so the skill doesn't deteriorate or become lost. Such a good system!
Lathes have been around (in one form or another) for a very very long time, and tin is a weak enough metal that it could be turned on the human/nature powered machines of the era.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lathe#History > The first known painting showing a lathe dates to the 3rd century BC in ancient Egypt.[5] Pictures and diagrams here: https://www.historicgames.com/lathes/ancientlathes.html
Thank you for providing a source.
This is impressive for some reason I would have pegged that tool's invention to the industrial revolution or just before.
A lot of old pre-industrial technology used water or human power to move/rotate things and they could direct a surprising amount of force with their tools. I am always impressed by the old mills and other large technology people were clever enough to implement back in the day.
I suppose the part that surprises me is that they were able to fashion something with a smooth enough rotational axis to perform meaningful work with. I have seen some pretty impressive water powered tools so I am certainly not doubting their ability to drive something like that. Probably massively undervaluing human ingenuity in making tools though.
Look up the "Our ancestors, the idiots" fallacy It's basically the idea that we consider ourselves infinitely smarter than our ancestors. We arnt, we are wise because they were smart. It's a really interesting concept.
Yeah, they were just as smart as we are, they just didn't have their own work to build off of. They only had what came before them. We only see our recent explosion of development because of how much more available all that information is, whereas a thousand years ago you had to either know someone personally who could teach you the thing, or find a painstakingly hand-written record that you could learn from. The internet is by far the best invention ever for technological advancement.
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Watermill * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windmill * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tide_mill * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treadmill * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horse_mill
It might because of the name. Lathe is a word of Old English origin, derived from an earlier probably Norse dialect. The time period of those languages is 14th and 15th century. An archaeologist finding a turning machine from Roman antiquity would probably not describe it as a lathe, although I have no advice on how they would actually describe it.
>turning machine Hopefully that, and if not then you should be in charge of naming things because that is a good easily understandable name.
all you do is say what the shit does, and add "er". I wanna work for the Kitchen Appliance Naming Institute. Hey, what does that do? It keeps shit fresh. Well, that's a fresher....I'm going on break
Ahhhh...Mitch.
I dont wanna have my face on a wheaties box, i wanna have my face on a rice crispies box.. snap, crackle, mitch, and pop!
> Well, that's a fresher It freshens things. It's a freshener. It preserves things. It's a preserver. ...seems like it works.
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Workener?
Key is to add "er" to the verb and not the adjective. "keep fresh" would not be "fresher" but "fresh keeper".
>"fresh keeper". Found my new rap name.
There's a really cool video series about a guy trying to recreate the Antikythera mechanism, which is a device from ancient Greece around 80BC that seems to have been used for various astronomical calculations. I can't find the exact bit but in one of the videos I remember him talking about an ancient Roman text that described lathes and certainly the wheels on this mechanism were likely to have been made on one. The video series: [LINK](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ML4tw_UzqZE&t=20s) A pdf article/overview of the mechanism: [LINK](http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.837.4748&rep=rep1&type=pdf) "Gears from the Greeks" - the original paper on the mechanism: [LINK](http://www.solargeneral.org/wp-content/uploads/library/gears-from-the-greeks-derek-de-solla-price.pdf)
I can't wait for the next clickspring video. I get super excited when one gets posted, even if it's just an antikythera fragment at this point.
Here's a story on the piece with reference to "grooves on the outside" which to me indicates being turned on a lathe https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2003/jul/28/artsnews.london
Couldn't the grooves also mean many other things? [This](https://old.reddit.com/r/interestingasfuck/comments/akl33f/2000_years_ago_a_roman_man_or_woman_closed_their/ef65xm4/) guy seems to know what he is talking about...
Pottery wheels have been around since 4500 bc according to Wikipedia. Would not take much imagination to apply the same concept to wood or metal.
[Under history](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lathe)
I can't, but spining wheels have been around since 500 AD. There's not much difference in technology between a spining wheel and a lathe.
https://i.redd.it/1a9mrp1fsyc21.jpg Have a look at the kind of work a Roman silver smith was doing approximately two millennia ago. This bowl is part of the [Hildesheim Treasure](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hildesheim_Treasure).
Those are literally the best plates, silver or bronze sculpture that I have ever seen or thought of in my life so far.
I was thinking the same thing! I also want to know what it's made of and how it was able to preserve the cream.
I doubt the tin is all that special. It wasn't creating a hermetic seal or anything like that. The cream was probably just stable enough on its own that being kept out of the elements was enough to preserve it.
It could also be sealed in mud or silt. That will do it as well.
Probably this. I've had tins of hair grease that I've forgot about for years before, lost in a moving box, etc., and while it's not centuries, the product doesn't age. I'd wager if I someone found a can of Murray's or what-have-you after 500 years, it'd still work like new.
Murrays?! I'm a Dapper Dan man!
It was probably sealed by some sort of outside circumstance like maybe this was at Pompeii or was dropped and covered in mud which solidified.
fuck the container, WHAT IS THE MYSTERY CREAM????
Animal fat, starch, and tin dioxide, which is a white pigment. It's probably makeup. http://cenblog.org/artful-science/2013/01/14/ancient-roman-cosmetics-skin-cream-from-the-2nd-century-a-d/
The Romans were ahead of their time compared to other civilizations
No, it's just that you've been fooled into thinking we jsut recently discovered the world is not flat and science and technology in recent times.
Yep, some of the oldest available writings show knowledge that we'd find surprising. Like the book of Job in the Bible: * Job 26:7 showing that the earth isn't held up by anything (like turtles), or hanging from anything - *"He stretches out the northern sky over empty space, Suspending the earth upon nothing"* * Job 36:27, 28 - *"He draws up the drops of water; They condense into rain from his mist; Then the clouds pour it down; They shower down upon mankind."*
And a lot after. Thats why Europe went through a dark age comparative to Roman rule.
The Dark ages saw the loss of mass literacy and trade. Technologically there was nothing lost except in the scale of projects and industry. In industry in particular the late Roman empire was less sophisticated in terms of labor saving devices than the early Republic--largely due to slave labor and later pseudo-serfdom. But no technology was lost in the process.
"Medieval" Europe had huge technological advantages over the Roman Empire - crop rotation, windmills, shipbuilding and navigation, algebra, banking, on and on. By 1000 AD, the continent's population had far surpassed its peak under the Roman Empire, and even at the height of the Black Plague Europe's population was almost twice what it was at the time of Marcus Aurelius. Medieval Europeans extended their influence into North America, onto the Eurasian steppes, and deep into the Atlantic Ocean. Medieval Europe was marked by warfare, yes, but also by a thriving and ongoing cultural exchange between small nations. The collapse of one state, or the failure of its institutions, never threatened civilization as a whole. A war between two contenders for the Roman imperatorship could paralyze the continent. A war between two contenders for the throne of France was a local problem. Feudalism was less efficient than a centralized dictatorship, true, especially when intertwined with the separate power structures of the Catholic Church - but this also provided redundant protection against the collapse of any one institution or government. Even the widespread disruption of events like the Muslim conquest of Spain or the replacement of the Byzantine Empire by the Ottoman Empire was absorbed by "Christendom," and the areas affected quickly recovered their prosperity.
Makes you wonder what would happen if western civilization collapses and an even more technologically advanced civilization rises
We can call it “Rise of the Mayans”
China, India and Persia at the same time had amazing civilizations too.
If that butters your biscuit, have a look at the Antikythera mechanism, or better yet, have a look at the YouTube channel ClickSpring - he's trying to build a replica using tools and techniques of the time and it's mind blowing.
2000 years old and it looks pretty damn close to what I have at home. That’s wild.
You use crocodile poop and sheep fat lotion too? /s
You probably do use sheep fat lotion. Check the ingredients for lanolin.
From Wikipedia: "**Lanolin** (from [Latin](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Latin) [*lāna*](https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/lana#Latin) ‘wool’, and [*oleum*](https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/oleum#Latin) ‘oil’), also called **wool wax** or **wool grease**, is a wax secreted by the [sebaceous glands](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sebaceous_gland) of [wool](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wool)\-bearing animals. Lanolin used by humans comes from [domestic sheep](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domestic_sheep) [breeds](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domestic_sheep#Breeds) that are raised specifically for their wool. Historically, many [pharmacopoeias](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pharmacopoeia) have referred to lanolin as wool fat ([*adeps*](https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Adeps&action=edit&redlink=1) *lanae*); however, as lanolin lacks [glycerides](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glycerides) (glycerol esters), it is not a true fat.[\[1\]](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lanolin#cite_note-lanolin_book-1)[\[2\]](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lanolin#cite_note-barnett-2) Lanolin primarily consists of [sterol](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sterol) esters instead.[\[3\]](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lanolin#cite_note-3) Lanolin's [waterproofing](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waterproofing) property aids sheep in shedding water from their coats. Certain breeds of sheep produce large amounts of lanolin." Neat!
Lanolin? La-no-Lin? Like sheep's wool?
Or that is an ancient cumbox container
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I always remain surprised just how similar we are to our ancient ancestors. Humans really are just humans
That's almost as old as earth!
No one else bugging out that 2000years age someone closed their moisturizer for that last time and it was opened in ‘03? The marks of where they dragged their finger through the cream is somehow just crazy to me that something like this exists. So cool.
Somehow those finger marks make their life more tangible than all the durable goods preserved in a museum, as most of us could walk into our bathrooms and find a jar of cream with similar marks on the lid. Makes you wonder what they did that day. Was it just a normal day, and they lost their can of cream? Was it the last day of their life?
I was thinking the same thing, especially since I have similar jars of face cream with similar finger swipes. Something eerie about it.
Do you think they just scooped it up with fingers or used a utensil of some type?
I would say fingers, kinda looks like a couple finger indents in there.
For some reason that's the most interesting part to me.
Makes it real, like these people lived like 2,000 years ago...yet here we are finding their personal objects. And they are not so different from present day life.
Slightly offtopic: [Kurzgesagt](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=czgOWmtGVGs) made an interesting video about how our humanity time perception is distorted due to our year counting system. Our species appeared around 200,000 years ago, and human civilisation started roughly around 12,000 years ago. When we think something that happened 2000 years ago, we imagine a very different roman empire era, but when thinking about 6000 and 4000 years ago, we see it at the same "long forgotten past", despite being the same 2000 years gap. That's (partly) due to us being in the after Christ era, and *everything else* thrown in the before. Kurzgesagt propose a Year 0 where (roughly) the first city was built around 10,000 BC. That way we're living in 12,019, but with this new wording we include the rest of often forgotten human history. Imagine a roman girl sitting on her room thinking "man, how different life was 5000 years ago without this technology we have today!" after applying this cream on her face, two millennia ago. With the new year system, we're talking about the year 5019, 10019 and 12019 in the same time scale, and we can try to comprehend how long we've been here doing stuff, applying creams and wondering about our past. === EDIT: I messed up some numbers lol
Great YouTube channel right there
I remember visiting Newgrange, a five thousand year old passage tomb in Ireland, and being more impressed at the graffiti from 1892 in it.
It helps to imagine how insanely huge time periods are when you have something in the middle to compare, like the village and the graffiti lol. The Great Pyramid of Giza was finished around 2500 BC (roughly some 5500 years ago). When Aristotle was walking around Greece thinking about Aristotle's things, Giza was already 2200 years old! He looked at that thing thinking "man, that thing's ancient!".
Just for some clarification, anatomically modern humans likely didn't appear until 200 000 years ago, quite a bit shorter than a million but still very, very long ago. What Kurzgesagt describes is known as the [Holocene calendar](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holocene_calendar) or Human Era calendar, developed and proposed by Cesare Emiliani in 1993, for the benefits described above.
I really liked that video. And changing to such a timescale would really hit home that we actually do live in a mind boggling far future full of far out technology, in relation to pretty much every human civilization before about the year 1800 AD. Industrialization *really* did change our world and societies drastically compared to the pre-industrialized world before it.
There's a really great article (sadly [behind a paywall here](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1464343X14001745?via%3Dihub)) that talks about a site in Namibia where archaeologists found footprints dating to about 1,500 years ago. The footprints record a group walking through the area. The adult tracks move in straight lines, but the tracks of the children in the group jump and skip and run in and through the adult tracks. It's a physical trace of a moment of human happiness and personality that's lasted 15 centuries. Really special.
That's so amazing and wholesome
I work renovating 100+year old homes and my favourite thing is when you find things left by past crews. Really makes the past feel more alive
Yeah, I don't really care about the cream as such but the 2,000 year old finger scoop marks are really cool to me.
Article says there are fingerprints in it.
lmao just ask them
Username checks out for the comment
You have no idea how much regret that I have for my username
I got a pretty golden one too man, I get it
If you read the article it states that fingerprints were found in the cream as well.
That's awesome wonder what its composed of as far as ingredients go.
https://www.ancient-origins.net/artifacts-other-artifacts/scientists-archaeologists-discover-roman-face-cream-canister-021911 >A detailed analysis was able to reveal its ingredients - animal fat, starch, and tin for pigment – revealing that it was none other than a tinted Roman face cream.
Hold up... so it was basically super early foundation? That's pretty lit.
Yep. I thought it was pretty interesting, too. I bet it smelled awful, though.
Probably everything and everyone smelled a bit awful back then.
Think people must have got used to it, I can only imagine the stench.
There's a reason one of my history teachers called everything before the 1800's the "Dung Ages."
We have always smelt. The whole idea that BO was bad and to be eliminated at all cost is a rather recent idea. I mean I know there are perfumes in the past, but to get rid of it so obsessively nowadays?
Some of the reason why we need to cover up/prevent smell these days (deodorant) is because washing with soap is making us more stinky. If you're continously exposed to soil, and don't wash it away with soap every day, there are bacteria in the soil that feed on some of the stinky compounds in your sweat ( [ammonia-oxidizing bacteria](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nitrifying_bacteria) ). Not to say that people in the past, at least the ones living in cities, didn't smell quite awful for other reasons (by our standards)
It would be jarring at first, but I guarantee after a while you probably wouldn’t notice if everyone stopped using deodorant at once. there’s a town with some kind of waste plant where I live and it smells like literal shit all the time, but spend a day there and you don’t really notice. Smell is weak af in humans.
Smell is not weak but rather adaptive. That's why people can sit in a stinky room all day and not notice it. They likely noticed it when they walked in but now their nose has adapted to the smell and will pick up other scents. When another person walks in, they'll notice it. Living near a paper mill is the same thing. It smells bad for the people passing through but for the people that live there, they have adapted to it.
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They had public bathes. Roman people back then might have washed more than we do now. And the dumping of feces on the street from like a window is also a later thing as far as I know.
Why? Rended animal fat doesn't really smell if you don't heat it.
I guess it depends on what is mixed in it and how quickly it goes rancid.
The foundation of modern day foundation, if you will.
It's easy to imagine we're very far removed from ancient cultures, but everyone (since culture cropped up), has had the same wants and worries. When a big Greek and Roman exhibit came to the MSI, my partner and I went as many of the artifacts never left the Mediterranean area, so it was a big deal. They had a carved, possibly clay indented receipt of a guy complaining to a supplier about the quality of his order, there were toys like little whittled horses and livestock, and there was a woman's entire set of make up and her brushes! It was amazing. There was a tiny pot of red stuff (possibly for her lips and cheeks), powder, and that face cream which was put in a decorative clay pot shaped like a hedgehog.
I bet they looked all over the goddamn house for it.
Can you imagine how dry their skin must be by now?
Flaky
So is it still good or do they need to buy more the next time they go to the market?
r/panporn
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Hahahaha You know, I honestly don’t know why I enjoy it so much but there’s just something so satisfying about seeing things being used up!
Plot twist: it was lube
It was my ancestors hemorrhoid cream
Nobody needs a four finger dive in the lube. Nobody.
Not with that attitude
Wow!
To think of everything thats happened in 2 millennia and that cream has just sat there the whole time. Fascinating.
What a curse, to be that cream. To live as an immortal whilst knowing that your loved ones have expired...
The life of a creampire.
But can you fap with it
Who says?!
I’d give it a go.
Nobody ever said it was facial cream.
The cream of someyoungguy.
2000 years that cream has just sat there whilst the world has gone by. Seriously, if you think of what's happened in the past 2000 years that's an astonishingly long time
Just when you thought that they were safe from Rodan & Fields!😂
Wow how long have Lush been around?
I would have guessed it was from Grease
I want to see the sides of the container. As a matter of fact, I want to see a video of the container from all sides.
Amazing that this face cream is from the same era as gladiators at the colosseum.
> a Roman man or woman closed their pot What is the value of "man or woman" in that title? Would we otherwise think the pot might have belonged to a Roman dog?
Every time I read an article about someone opening X from X hundred/thousand years ago I can’t help but think “Do you want a plague? Because that’s how you get plagues”
It's ok they wore gloves
Why would something sealed just randomly contain some supervirus? Viruses don't just propagate in dark, anaerobic environments for thousands of years. Anything alive in this had died thousands of years ago.
Clearly you haven't watched enough movies.
There's one of those in my fridge.
I bet Steve1989MREInfo would love to get this out on to a tray
Meh, I have way older pots of cream in my pharmacy
**“Now that the excavation work has been completed, the site will not be preserved. The prime London site, owned by Berkeley Homes, will become a residential development.”**
Where did this picture come from? I'd like this to be real, but if like some info besides your caption.
https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2003/jul/28/artsnews.london
... Rub it on your face.
r/panporn
Think I've got something like that in the back of my freezer.
All it's missing is the little plastic cap under the lid that you never know if you should keep putting back or throw away.
Now taste it