7 ms·
How ancient people saw themselves
- 01HNNWZ0MV43FF 1y agoIt's about mirrors, it's about how they literally saw themselves in mirrors
- lurk2 1y agoCalled it.
- raldi 1y agoI'm surprised more museums don't have modern replicas demonstrating what the ancient artifacts would have looked like when pristine.
- Joel_Mckay 1y agoThere are stories of when near perfect mirrors entered trade. Some stories are sweet, and others rather macabre: https://www.japanpowered.com/folklore-and-urban-legends/mirror-matsuyama https://www.japanpowered.com/folklore-and-urban-legends/mirr... Technology tends to influence cultures in subtle ways few remember a generation later. =3 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Most_Dangerous_Animal_In_The_World https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Most_Dangerous_Animal_In_T...
- sanskarix 1y agoBritish Museum actually does this with their Greek statues - shows how they were painted. The gap between "marble perfection" and "gaudy colors" is wild. Makes you realize how much our idea of classical taste is just patina.
- 1000units 1y agoSo the sculptors had much better taste than the painters they allowed? Or are the reproductions not faithful?
- ljlolel 1y agosounds like partly they didn't have access to great pigments back then
- AnimalMuppet 1y agoWell, they didn't have pigments that would maintain their color and adhere to a surface for 2000 years. Do we?
- twelvechairs 1y agoOne view is that the western idea of "good taste" was informed by people looking at greek and roman statues and buildings and incorrectly assuming they were always intended to be plain.
- mock-possum 1y agoSort of explains a lot doesn’t it
- bcrosby95 1y agoThis is why I prefer my rust bucket of a car to something new. In 2,000 years the masses will view it as good taste.
- username332211 1y agoThere are frescoes of statues[1] and architecture[2] in Pompeii. Feel free to compare them with the reproductions. [1] https://www.worldhistory.org/image/2232/fresco-of-a-statue-of-mars-pompeii/ https://www.worldhistory.org/image/2232/fresco-of-a-statue-o...
- raldi 1y agoYou forgot link 2
- username332211 1y ago
- rkagerer 1y agoOr even polish up the corroded artifacts and mirrors they do have. Why don't they do this?
- jiehong 1y agoI think there is a tension between preserving artifacts as-is, vs restoring them. Restoring them would also cause repeated wear and tear, and potentially erasing clues we haven't recognised as important yet. Making replicas is more suitable: the public can also touch and use them as well.
- SoftTalker 1y agoEver seen a polished steel mirror in a gas station bathroom?
- llamasushi 1y agoAm I the only one who thought this was referring to how people felt about the general zeitgeist? Like, how Romans viewed everyone outside Rome as barbarian, etc. Not in the literal sense like, mirrors. Nice HN switcheroo.
- tonyhart7 1y agoYeah, I thought it was a more avant-garde question, like Greek philosophical literature. It turns out the title has a literal meaning."
- danwills 1y agoYeah that was my original interpretation of the title too! Perhaps something like: How did early humans understand their situation and what did they think the 'world' was like, and what did they think they should do with their lives?! I find it fascinating to think how that longing to know what it's all about has changed so much for humans over time. Mirrors are still heaps interesting though, as is reflection/refraction/light-transport in general I'd say! But it wasn't about what I expected when I read it.
- orly01 1y agoI didn't expect it to be about literally seeing.
- brap 1y agoAbout 3/4 into the article, “wait, it’s all about mirrors? ...Oh!”
- saispas 1y agoThe subtitle is "The Art of the Ancient Mirror", so perhaps not so surprising…
- lordnacho 1y agoI thought it would be about how much work went into different objects and how that made people behave, with the first example being mirrors. Ended up being about mirrors.
- ggm 1y agoThis is calling out for experimental archaeologists to make the best possible front surface reflections they can from polished copper, bronze, steel, obsidian, glass. The Romans had metallised glass. They knew how to roast glass. They may well have known how to vaporise metal onto glass. The state of the reflecting surface with 2ky of corrosion does not match even looking at your reflections in water.
- KolibriFly 1y agoThere's this tendency to assume ancient = primitive, but these were skilled artisans with deep material knowledge
- MayeulC 1y agoAgreed. I imagine that obsidian surface must have been as polished as my smartphone screen in its prime, and probably as useful as a mirror (screen turned off). I am not sure of the flatness they were able to achieve though, so the reflection might not have been perfect. In theory a perfectly flat surface is achievable if they used the same tool to polish multiple mirrors at the same time!
- kennyloginz 1y agoThis person never actually reflected on the article they generated.
- rkagerer 1y agoI'm not sure if it was AI generated, but I see what you did there with "reflected".
- suprjami 1y agoNow you've duped everyone with the wrong headline, let's discuss what we thought it was about. I bet ancient people saw themselves as the pinnacle of civilisation, much like we do now. I'm sure Romans were sitting there with their cities and aqueducts and street vendors and Colosseum and huge empire thinking this is as good as society had ever been. Nobody was sitting there saying "we don't even have electricity" or "of course light doesn't come out of our eyes to see, that easily fails the scientific method" because they didn't know those things existed.
- krysp 1y agoAt the time, they were right; it was as good as society had ever been. I think they were much like us in many ways. They probably imagined that things could get better (even if they didn't imagine electricity or computers).
- wkrsz 1y ago> At the time, they were right; it was as good as society had ever been. Debatable. Proponents of "original affluent society" argue that agricultural civilization was a major step back in terms of quality of life. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Original_affluent_society https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Original_affluent_society
- KolibriFly 1y agoEvery era probably feels like the apex of human progress because people can only measure against what they know
- KolibriFly 1y agoWild how mirrors across cultures weren't just tools but often spiritual objects, tied to gods, beauty, protection, or truth
- intrasight 1y agoI often find it very spiritual to look deeply into my own eyes. It's like a viewport into my soul. Other times I'm just removing a bit of spinach from my teeth. I assume that it was the same for ancient mirror users.
- metalman 1y agoancient, and some current peoples, view themselves through the lense of truth, verrifiable, self evidentiary truth starting with physical existance and that this is shared, and a complete understanding of what it is to be human, which may or may not, be shared
- wkjagt 1y agoIt's weird to think that we need a mirror (or other means of imaging) to see our own face. We can see a large part of our own body directly, but we will never be able to directly see our own face like other people do (unless, I guess, you have an eye pop out in some kind of accident, but I guess at that point this is not the kind of thing you would consider).
- GuB-42 1y agoYou also can't hear your own voice like other people do, because what you hear when you are speaking mostly come from the vibrations in your bones rather than from sound waves going through the air. And unlike with mirrors, something we always had, be it just a pond of water, the ability to hear your own voice like others hear it came with recording devices, and is therefore very recent (19th century).
- aspenmayer 1y agoYou can hear your own voice as an echo, though it is somewhat distorted in a similar way as one's reflection is warped in a pool of water. Amphitheaters are an ancient building technique which utilize acoustic properties to reflect sound toward distant listeners, but I'm not familiar with structures built to reflect sound back toward the speaker specifically, though I imagine that such a structure could be built. Naturally occurring echo chambers exist in the environment, as well.
- kryptokommunist 1y agoThats so cool. I have built a mirror with some added technology for science exhibitions and now seeing that this has been an ancient endeavour going back to the greeks is awesome: https://kryptokommun.ist/portfolio/projects/tech/2024/07/01/annata.html https://kryptokommun.ist/portfolio/projects/tech/2024/07/01/...
- andblac 1y agoAnd now we’ve built LLMs - the biggest mirror of them all. The Internet and smartphones gave us countless ways to look at ourselves and see how others see us. And then LLMs helped us gaze at the sum of all that and even confront reflections of our own thoughts. Yeah, TFA ended just before it got to the really interesting part of how self-reflection itself is fundamental to the development of concisousness. Mirror-like technologies don't just show us our own appearance. They help us understand how we relate to the world around us. It reminds me of Kieślowski's movie Camera Buff (1979), where the main character in iconic scene points the camera at himself and realizes that the act of making movies reflects not only his subjects, but also on who he is in relation them. Yeah, I'd would love to read article on all that.
- nachox999 1y ago"we can understand what they valued so much that they were willing to sacrifice long hours or scarce resources to get it." well, those long hours must have been boring as hell. I don't think they felt it was a great sacrifice
- Brendinooo 1y agoThis is a good piece to consider in light of some stuff I've been thinking about with LLMs - new technology, that is. I've been reflecting on how some tech changes our relationship with the world, and can do so with such thoroughness that we forget that other ways of thinking even existed. Plato didn't like books. Trithemius stood up for the scriptorium against the onslaught of the printing press. Baudelaire lamented photography as a refuge for lazy painters. And on it goes. Mirrors are so commoditized now that they are a mere utility, but there was a time when they were miraculous...mirror..aculous...never mind. Special. That's fun to think about. Especially thinking about something like Snow White, a story that people still understand but probably has a link or two to the past with the "mirror on the wall who's the fairest of them all" stuff.
- falcor84 1y agoI was actually talking with some small children recently about the snow white story, and I found it amazing how for them there was nothing magical about the mirror on the wall - it's just a different form factor of a google home device. Edit: on a separate note, this got me thinking - why does the story make it a mirror? I don't recall it ever being used for its reflective property. Is there supposed to be some deeper meaning to the mirror being a reflection of the queen? Because otherwise, it could have just been a magic talking picture.
- coliveira 1y ago> why does the story make it a mirror? This is what's called a metaphor.
- bryanrasmussen 1y agook what's it a metaphor for?
- coliveira 1y agoA mirror is a metaphor for yourself, your interior world. The image she saw in the mirror was her own.
- harryday 1y ago> In the myth of Narcissus, a beautiful young demigod who saw his own reflection in a pool of water became so enamored with it that he refused to move. He rejected the advances of beautiful young women and eventually wasted away, unable to break the spell of his own image. Alternative, deeper understanding — https://thelastpsychiatrist.com/2012/10/the_story_of_narcissus.html https://thelastpsychiatrist.com/2012/10/the_story_of_narciss...
- nathan_douglas 1y agoThank you; I enjoyed this quite a bit.
- OJFord 1y ago> These mirrors were valuable — they’ve been found with other luxury grave goods — but only somewhat useful. They were reflective to an extent, but aren’t capable of reflecting much detail or color [image] Still, the people of ancient Anatolia thought it was worth hours of labor to see even a dim reflection of their own faces. I can't help but wonder if there's something we've lost, some stropping material or process capable of making them significantly more reflective than we image.
- tiahura 1y agoI need to get to the Met.
- christudor 1y agoVaguely relevant: the biological symbol for female (the circle with a cross below it) is a stylisation of a hand holding a hand mirror.
- rawgabbit 1y agoLol. I had always assumed it was a stylized womb.
- MrsPeaches 1y agoHigh recommended book which looks at the histroy of ideas, which gives you a good idea of what people thought of themselves through history: Ideas: A History of Thought and Invention, from Fire to Freud https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/408204.Ideas https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/408204.Ideas
- Razengan 1y agoIn the water? Since they didn't have mirrors..
- mathgeek 1y ago> I have no idea how difficult it is to manufacture these items, or how it’s done; the work associated with their creation is purposefully obscured from view. On the contrary, often these processes are easy to find via youtube or the ever reliable How It’s Made series. I’d argue that for most common items, folks just prefer to not know or at least not seek. What _is_ obscured is the process of acquiring the resources.
- underlipton 1y agosigh https://www.penn.museum/sites/journal/8987/ https://www.penn.museum/sites/journal/8987/ https://archive.is/DkRLv https://archive.is/DkRLv
- alsetmusic 1y agoAccording to the Fall of Civilizations Podcast, the Sumerians considered themselves to be on the forefront of humanity and technology (which was true). I believe the reason was a mythological-religious understanding of a more ancient people to whom the gods or a god had given gifts like reason and technology (which is not new theme any of the many times it has been told), thus becoming the then-contemporary Sumerians.