I like the adorable animal shaped sippy cups for babies:

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/25/science/prehistoric-baby-...

Wow, haven't seen this before, thank you. Amazing that the writing can still be read by a modern reader (that said, really helps to know what it's supposed to say though). The note I found most relatable is the one with greetings to his classmate.

Do some eyebrows convey emotion or coincidence? (near bottom of page)

Edit: I'm also curious how much time (thousands of years) for there to be noticeable difference in the capability of the brain like abstract thinking. Language may be the real problem.

> I'm also curious how much time (thousands of years) for there to be noticeable difference in the capability of the brain like abstract thinking.

It's not thousands of years. French Canadians are enriched for some of the same brain-related defects that Ashkenazi Jews can get; we assume for the same reasons.

Which defects? What reasons? Who is assuming?

You know, you can just look these things up. This isn't some piece of obscure trivia.

> Which defects?

Ashkenazi Jews are prone to a whole host of genetic defects that affect the brain, of which the most famous is Tay-Sachs.

> What reasons?

A lifestyle focused on commerce as opposed to foraging or agriculture.

> Who is assuming?

Everyone, basically.

In the case of the Ashkenazi Jews, as far as we can tell they've been like that for as long as records of the group have existed. But the French Canadian specialization in commerce postdates the discovery of North America.

Uhhhh what?

I’ve had similar feeling when realizing that the bells that we sometimes hear in old cities of Europe are exact same bells producing exact same sound as 1000 years ago

Similarly, when I read Meditations by Marcus Aurelius I was struck by how normal everything seemed. While he was an Emperor the everyday banality of what he talked about going through 2,000 years ago was amazing.

Humans really haven't changed that much at all.

  > Humans really haven't changed that much at all.

I guess you are quoting Woland from The Master and Margarita [1], the words he said in a show at the Variety theater.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Master_and_Margarita

Woland is the Satan in the novel. What he said has a deeper meaning, but superficial one is most probably wrong.

I think they’re just saying that humans haven’t really changed much at all, if I had to guess they weren’t referencing any one quote. The only thing that’s really changed is the tools we can use, but we’ve made little (some would say backwards compared to certain reference points) progress in why and what we use them for.

I don't know that OP was quoting a Russian satire but I'm glad you turned me onto the book, I never would have heard of it but sounds intriguing. There's a wealth of covers to choose from on eBay, Goodreads lists over 1,200 editions. I got the one with the cat holding the playing cards smoking a cigar while a topless woman sails past the moon on a flying pig. at least I think it's a pig. Published in '97 by Picador.

It's such a great book, both hilarious and sad at times. I also went to eBay to search for a copy before realizing I already own the book.

Where is ChatGPT when you need it smh think of the time wasted instead of diving deep into a masterpiece

The one translated by O’Connor and Burgin? That's a good translation.

I'm sure it's been said at many points by many people, fictional or real. It's not a particularly unique insight (especially amongst historians and archeologists), though one I think that bears repeating often as it's easy to lose sight of it.

For as well read as I am, I am not so clever to quote the works that have influenced me.

No, I am afraid that I was being more of a follower of Wallace here, I was being sincere with my words. I truly do marvel that humans really haven't changed that much at all.

We come mentally of age when we discover that the great minds of the past, whom we have patronized, are not less intelligent than we are because they happen to be dead -- Cyril Connolly, The Unquiet Grave

Does that(the patronization) happen frequently? I far more frequently witness people lionizing people of the past in all sorts of benign and malign ways.

I wonder how often this happens and we _don't_ recognize it.

One of the things which really brought that into focus for me was when I was old enough to look past the flowery language of Shakespeare and understand the meaning of what the characters were going through. It first hit me when I realized that Hamlet's famous "to be or not to be" speech was really about him wanting to commit suicide, but being afraid that he might go to hell. It's not really an earth shattering insight, but as a young man it blew my mind. I had never really thought about the fact that humans living in the past might have had the same psychological struggles and problems we still have to confront to this day.

Honestly, learning about how little humans have changed throughout history has been both one of the most delightful and sad things I have learned. It's wonderful to think about the real kinship we have with people long since dead, but it's also sobering to realize we still make a lot of the same mistakes despite their example. But regardless of whether it's good or bad, I find the relatable humanity of historical people to be endlessly fascinating.

> has been both one of the most delightful and sad things I have learned

Reminds me of this exchange between an adoptive maternal figure and a troubled youth with low self-esteem.

> "[He] is a great man. [...] I don’t confuse greatness with perfection. To be great anyhow is... the higher achievement." She gave him a crooked smile. "It should give you hope, eh?”

"Huh. Block me from escape, you mean. Are you saying that no matter how screwed up I was, you’d still expect me to work wonders?" Appalling.

She considered this. "Yes," she said serenely. "In fact, since no one is perfect, it follows that all great deeds have been accomplished out of imperfection. Yet they were accomplished, somehow, all the same."

-- Mirror Dance by Lois McMaster Bujold

Vorkosigan Saga is one of the most underrated sci fi universes. It should be way more popular.

I like the extreme modesty in the wikipedia article:

> One of the drawings features a knight on a horse, with Onfim's name written next to him, stabbing someone on the ground with a lance, with scholars speculating that Onfim pictured himself as the knight.

Not as old, but I loved reading about this:

350 year old paper cuttings found under Sutton House floorboards go on display [0]

It really feels immediate

[0] https://museumsandheritage.com/advisor/posts/350-year-old-pa...

Kids had school 800 years ago? If he didn't work in the fields musta been rich

insert David Lynch quote about red ants

It seems like that region had a particularly high literacy rate. Texts from all classes and genders were found. The kid could have been a peasant.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Novgorod_Republic#Literature_a...

How likely is that vs works written by the rich folk survive? A cursory GPT search implies not a lot of medieval works written by poor people in general

The point is that it's not your average medieval polity. Novgorod was a merchant republic in which literacy was seemingly held in high esteem in and of itself, resulting in a social pressure to acquire it. And then on top of that they had access to plenty of birch bark, which happens to be a very convenient and cheap writing material where it's available, and does not require any ink or fancy tools to use; just a sharp stylus.

As far as survival, because of how common birch bark notes were in Novgorod, they were used for mundane everyday matters like instructions to servants to purchase such and such goods, or even just a one-liner greeting, and a lot of those were then discarded and ended up buried underground. So, again, a very different slice compared to the more typical story of expensive manuscripts in libraries, or personal correspondence of nobility.

It would be cool to study if the social pressure was applicable to servants or just the elite ruling class

Do you have any idea where to get photos of collections?

If you can deal with Russian, this is listed as a "full database" on ru-wiki:

http://gramoty.ru/birchbark/

I don't know if something similar exists in English.

There are plenty of notes written by peasants and servants, so it clearly wasn't just an elite thing. But IIRC the vast majority of those letters are from the city proper, and Novgorod Republic was a city-state governing a large territory outside of its walls, so we're talking mostly about the urban population.

Keep in mind also that this is an actual republic with all male citizens voting in a public assembly on important matters, so it would make sense for the culture to appreciate the trivium more universally.

Or the rune-rods which were "the medieval snapchat" https://www.nrk.no/vestland/gamle_-norske-ord-for-kjonnsorga... (google translate isn't half bad on this article)

or a more PG version https://sprakprat.no/2017/06/22/middelalderkvinner-og-runeku... where a rune-rod simply says "Gyda says you have to come home" (I guess hubby had been out too late with his no-good friends?)

Wonderful, here's another similar example I saw recently, 14000 year old cave art doodling by kids: https://www.science.org/content/article/enigmatic-cave-art-w...