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Also, Constantine the Great created the Catholic Church. That an institution from Ancient Rome is still going strong today boggles my mind. If humanity is arou

Also, Constantine the Great created the Catholic Church. That an institution from Ancient Rome is still going strong today boggles my mind. If humanity is around ten or twenty thousand years from now, perhaps historians will just lump us together with the Ancient Romans, and consider it all part of the same era.

yongjik 5y ago
Well, we already do something similar with terms like "Antiquity", even though Julius Caesar lived closer to us than construction of the Pyramid of Giza.
- jackcosgrove 5y ago
  When the Romans conquered Egypt, their take on it was something like, "Wow, this place is old."
  - jbay808 5y ago
    "We thought we were ancient, but this is even older than us!" It's easy to lose sight of the fact that the ancients also had scholars and studying ancient-to-them history. They considered themselves modern...
    - pixl97 5y ago
      If you're writing this statement, you're modern. If you're reading this statement I may no longer be modern.
    - kibwen 5y ago
      The opening line of the 4,000 year-old Sumerian poem "Gilgamesh, Enkidu and the nether world": "In those days, in those distant days, in those nights, in those remote nights, in those years, in those distant years; in days of yore, when the necessary things had been brought into manifest existence, in days of yore, when the necessary things had been for the first time properly cared for, when bread had been tasted for the first time in the shrines of the Land, when the ovens of the Land had been made to work, when the heavens had been separated from the earth, when the earth had been delimited from the heavens, when the fame of mankind had been established, [...]" Even the people of 4,000 years ago were romanticizing the ancient past!
    - pjmlp 5y ago
      It is somehow fun to be able to read > 2000 years old letters from rich people complaining how their sons were wasting their money at the Athens university, by spending it all in parties and playing rich instead of attending classes. Or how Greek medicine students would do "erasmus" in Egypt, considered more advanced in medicine practices.
    - mncharity 5y ago
      > They considered themselves modern... Last week I was surfing google books. Was skimming The History of Modern Europe. Noticed it was from 1871. At least for me, there's something about human artifacts, that can change what feels old. View a museum exhibit, a clay tablet, prescribing interval training for horses, from 3 kya. Something that was held in hands, and could be held in yours. Then, medieval objects, feel like they're from just yesterday, not old at all. I wonder if you could structure an stepped experience, where users repeatedly experience an "oh my, that's old", a baseline shift, and then get hit again with something older, and again. And then walk back through, feeling it all compressed into a stretched now. I don't get the same effect from critters, or geology. Perhaps I'm not familiar enough with them, or thinking in genealogy. Lunch-time's inquisitive squirrel feels peer, but not "just yesterday" cousin. Enjoying the sea breeze, glad Boston is recently coastal, and that there's an ocean there to be coastal with. Despite flowering trees and chirping birds for context. On Gondwanan crust. I wonder if you could cultivate that feeling, and use it when teaching deep time? [fwiw, those are vaguely: 80 Mya, 12 kya, ~150 Mya, ~200 Mya, ~300 Mya, and ~~1 Gya] I've lately been thinking about transformatively improved science education content. For AR, in part. Current content, classrooms, practices, apps, even education research... they've been starting to feel to me... distant? Clustered with inkwells in wooden desks, student arithmetic on Roman wax diptych and drawn on Sumerian sand. The modern of the present, become the patinaed old, the before. The "oh my, people lived like that? How curiously odd."
  - nerdponx 5y ago
    What Roman and/or Eyptian source material do we have from this time? I'd love to read this stuff, it's really a trip.
B1FF_PSUVM 5y ago
Maybe they'll figure out that the USA republic is Rome 2.0, "the good bits, now with science added". (A remarkable feat, I might add, perhaps surpassing the first version in overcoming the "you're not in Asia" geopolitical handicap.)
regus 5y ago
Although Constantine legalized Christianity the claim that he created the Catholic Church is misleading. https://www.catholic.com/magazine/online-edition/constantine-has-been-beaten-to-death https://www.catholic.com/magazine/online-edition/constantine...

yongjik 5y ago

Well, we already do something similar with terms like "Antiquity", even though Julius Caesar lived closer to us than construction of the Pyramid of Giza.

jackcosgrove 5y ago
When the Romans conquered Egypt, their take on it was something like, "Wow, this place is old."
- jbay808 5y ago
  "We thought we were ancient, but this is even older than us!" It's easy to lose sight of the fact that the ancients also had scholars and studying ancient-to-them history. They considered themselves modern...
  - pixl97 5y ago
    If you're writing this statement, you're modern. If you're reading this statement I may no longer be modern.
  - kibwen 5y ago
    The opening line of the 4,000 year-old Sumerian poem "Gilgamesh, Enkidu and the nether world": "In those days, in those distant days, in those nights, in those remote nights, in those years, in those distant years; in days of yore, when the necessary things had been brought into manifest existence, in days of yore, when the necessary things had been for the first time properly cared for, when bread had been tasted for the first time in the shrines of the Land, when the ovens of the Land had been made to work, when the heavens had been separated from the earth, when the earth had been delimited from the heavens, when the fame of mankind had been established, [...]" Even the people of 4,000 years ago were romanticizing the ancient past!
  - pjmlp 5y ago
    It is somehow fun to be able to read > 2000 years old letters from rich people complaining how their sons were wasting their money at the Athens university, by spending it all in parties and playing rich instead of attending classes. Or how Greek medicine students would do "erasmus" in Egypt, considered more advanced in medicine practices.
  - mncharity 5y ago
    > They considered themselves modern... Last week I was surfing google books. Was skimming The History of Modern Europe. Noticed it was from 1871. At least for me, there's something about human artifacts, that can change what feels old. View a museum exhibit, a clay tablet, prescribing interval training for horses, from 3 kya. Something that was held in hands, and could be held in yours. Then, medieval objects, feel like they're from just yesterday, not old at all. I wonder if you could structure an stepped experience, where users repeatedly experience an "oh my, that's old", a baseline shift, and then get hit again with something older, and again. And then walk back through, feeling it all compressed into a stretched now. I don't get the same effect from critters, or geology. Perhaps I'm not familiar enough with them, or thinking in genealogy. Lunch-time's inquisitive squirrel feels peer, but not "just yesterday" cousin. Enjoying the sea breeze, glad Boston is recently coastal, and that there's an ocean there to be coastal with. Despite flowering trees and chirping birds for context. On Gondwanan crust. I wonder if you could cultivate that feeling, and use it when teaching deep time? [fwiw, those are vaguely: 80 Mya, 12 kya, ~150 Mya, ~200 Mya, ~300 Mya, and ~~1 Gya] I've lately been thinking about transformatively improved science education content. For AR, in part. Current content, classrooms, practices, apps, even education research... they've been starting to feel to me... distant? Clustered with inkwells in wooden desks, student arithmetic on Roman wax diptych and drawn on Sumerian sand. The modern of the present, become the patinaed old, the before. The "oh my, people lived like that? How curiously odd."
- nerdponx 5y ago
  What Roman and/or Eyptian source material do we have from this time? I'd love to read this stuff, it's really a trip.

B1FF_PSUVM 5y ago

Maybe they'll figure out that the USA republic is Rome 2.0, "the good bits, now with science added". (A remarkable feat, I might add, perhaps surpassing the first version in overcoming the "you're not in Asia" geopolitical handicap.)

regus 5y ago

Although Constantine legalized Christianity the claim that he created the Catholic Church is misleading. https://www.catholic.com/magazine/online-edition/constantine-has-been-beaten-to-death https://www.catholic.com/magazine/online-edition/constantine...