History Isn't Boring

fun fact about languages: a linguist who was studying aboriginal languages of Australia finally managed to track down a native speaker of the Mbabaram language in the 60s for his research. they talked a bit and he started by asking for the Mbabaram word for basic nouns. They went back and forth before he asked for the word for “dog” The man replied “dog” They had a bit of a “who’s on first” moment before realizing that, by complete coincidence,  Mbabaram and English both have the exact same word for dog.

on a similar note, a traditional Ojibwe greeting is “Nanaboozhoo” so when the French first landed in southern Canada they thought that they were saying “Bonjour!” Which is fucking wild to think about. Imagine crossing the ocean and the first people you meet in months somehow speak French. 

Given that we famously don’t know the origin of the English word “dog”, I have decided to adopt an utterly batshit folk etymology conspiracy theory. As a treat.

I love linguistics so much

A good one not on that list: Hawaiian kahuna ‘priest’, Hebrew kəhuna ‘priesthood’.

Imo Gąsiorowski’s etymology of “dog” (the argument for which is summarised below the cut, and linked immediately below) is pretty solid.

That said, time travelling Mbabaram-speakers are definitely more fun.

official linguistics post

Something that I get chills about is the fact that the oldest story told made by the oldest civilization opens with "In those days, in those distant days, in those ancient nights."

This confirms that there is a civilization older than the Sumerians that we have yet to find

Some people get existential dread from this

Me? I think it's fucking awesome it shows just how much of this world we have yet to discover and that is just fascinating

@makaeru peer review cos this made me check when the Sumerians happened and I forget how recent history is for every other continent. 7000 - 8000 years ago just isn't that long when you're in Australia, and the amount of detailed history we have access to here is wonderful and should be recognised more internationally

Source (non Aboriginal)

And a quote I picked out from a longer interview with an Aboriginal local elder about the area where he touched on the history

Source (the rest of the interview is really interesting and all transcribed, have a look if you're curious)

This is part of my Ancient Civilizations class that I teach, which does a whole week about Australia and the Torres Strait Islands because I was sick of never seeing them represented in USAmerican history contexts. With the help of @micewithknives and @acearchaeologist I've learned so many incredible things about Australia's past and it's been incredibly rewarding to share them with students.

My favorite fact about Aboriginal oral history is the fact that we pretty recently discovered that the Aboriginal myth of the 7 Sisters, an origin story for the Pleiades star cluster, accurately reflects a point TEN THOUSAND YEARS AGO when two stars in the constellation got close enough together to no longer be distinguishable by the naked eye.

The story? 6 sisters running from something that took their 7th sister.

as a gilgar gunditj woman, i was not expecting to see my culture on my dash.

thank you for spreading our words and treating our culture with respect.

Boosting signal.

the one thing thing funnier than this caption is that the only reason they stopped doing it was that the ferret shit in the tube

That photo makes Felicia’s work seem much more recent than it is. Here’s a picture of the world’s smallest particle physicist herself.

They didn’t stop because she shit in the tube - she had a diaper on because they knew poop would obstruct the particles as well. She eventually stopped running through the tubes because they became too long for her. At that point she was retired and became a pet!

I love her

working weasel

Women in stem

Listen if the study of ancient humans doesn’t make you at least a little bit emotional idk what to say.

I started crying today at the museum because they had reconstructed the shoes of Otzi the iceman.

Either he or someone he knew who cared about him made these shoes out of grass and bear skin and twine and he was wearing them when he died over five thousand years ago.

And a Czech researcher and his students did reconstructions of these shoes and wore them to the same place where he died to test them out and they were like yep! These shoes are really cozy and comfy and didn’t give us blisters while hiking!

Is that not just the coolest shit ever????

(Quietly, with love) We will remember your bread, we will remember your dog, we will remember your shoes

(Quietly, with anger) We will remember your copper

Polynesians did also rely on a form of a physical map called a stick chart, illustrating the specific wave and swell patterns surrounding different island chains. These were particularly helpful during cloudy conditions when the sun and stars were less useful. To navigate the Marshall Islands, the Marshallese represented ocean swell patterns using parts of coconut fronds and shells as islands. Like a subway map, they don’t so much represent distances as they do relationships. The complex and decorative stick charts were often only understood by the person who made them. They were memorised before a voyage by the pilot who would lie on the floor of a canoe to get a sense of swell movement and often lead a squadron of 15 or more boats.

sometimes I am just amazed at how my ancestors managed to navigate the entire Pacific Ocean with these. knowledge that was nearly lost and is being re-learned.

AH! I'd heard of these, but this is the first time I've come across pictures.

An extraordinary Acheulean handaxe knapped around a fossil shell circa 500,000-300,000 years ago.

The maker appears to have deliberately flaked around the shell to preserve and place it in a central position. As a result this handaxe has been described as an early example of artistic thought.

From West Tofts, Norfolk.

Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, University of Cambridge, Courtesy Alison Fisk

Half a million years ago. Whoa

i saw this bad boy in person

It's incredible

It was made by HOMO ERECTUS you guys

Like. We were making art before we were "human" in the generally accepted sense

It was almost certainly sacred then. And when you are close to it, it feels super sacred now

Arthur Conan Doyle drew a little picture of himself hopping in the air with his medical diploma and captioned it “licensed to kill”. 1881 (x)

Holy shit

Link in original post a dead end, here’s an update.

“The jiggling chair.”  From Popular Mechanics, 1927.

If you know film and/or photography, you probably know the name Muybridge, the man who effectively invented cinema by taking photos in rapid succession of a horse galloping in order to settle a bet. And then went on to film endless movement sequences, mostly walk cycles, of various animals and human subjects (to the enternal gratitude of animators everywhere).

Apparently this is what happened when he got to cats.

TeenVogue still kicking ass and taking names.

I’ve seen a lot of YouTube videos labeled “the most satisfying video ever”, but  this one might actually deserve it.

now imagine making that in 1877

As I understand it, the major difference is that in 1877, the prisms would have been cast in moulds rather than being machined out of prefabricated blocks. Not hugely more difficult in terms of technical skill, but much more time consuming owing to the need to manufacture the moulds and the higher risk of wasted prisms due to bubbling.

Man eating rice, China, 1901-1904

this is an extremely important picture

Ive never seen someone from 1904 having fun omg

He has a nice face

No but the history behind this picture is really interesting

The reason that everyone always looked miserable in old photos wasn’t that they took too long to take. Once photography became widespread it took only seconds to take a picture.

It was because getting your photo taken was treated the same as getting your portrait painted. A very serious occasion meant so thst your descendants would know that ypu existed and what you looked like.

But one time some British dudes went to china to go on an anthropological expedition, and they met some rural Chinese farmers and decided to take their pictures. Now, these people weren’t exposed to the weird culture of the time around getting your photo taken, so this guy just flashed a big grin during the photo because he was told to strike a pose and that’s the pose he wanted to strike.

I think painted portraits and old photos give us the idea that in general people were just really unhappy because those are the visuals we have. This is so refreshing.

Hey, look; “Man Laughing Alone With Rice” is back on my dash.

always reblog Happy Rice Guy. once upon a time, he really enjoyed his lunch, and that’s beautiful.

Ink stone in the form of a turtle, China, 6th-7th century

from The Metropolitan Museum of Art

@ilinit a little dude

all demographics and time periods and geography taken fully into consideration, some people were just born to lose

was thinking of this guy when i made this post. invented the two most environmentally damaging chemicals in history and then got polio and immediately killed himself with a contraption

"one-man environmental disaster"

they called that man an organism

as bad as your worst day has ever been, do you have a wikipedia article saying you "possess an instinct for the regrettable that is almost uncanny"

Dressmaking in Paris, 1907.

I would like to point out what these women are wearing themselves. Because "what did WORKING women wear?!" is a refrain I hear a lot re: recreations of even the most basic historical clothing that has any visual interest at all

the lady on the far right has a brooch and a necklace! and some insertion lace on her blouse! the center-right lady in the plaid shirtwaist seems to be wearing a decorative necktie of some sort! all of them have sleeve puffs that are maybe a few years out of date, but not by much!

and these are working seamstresses! literally At Work!

working-class people have always loved beauty just as much as the rich. and found ways to incorporate it into their lives

“The World According to Woz” in Wired (September 1998)

oh that's a beautiful bit of deduction.

Green Day solicit donations for HIV/AIDS organization, 1994

@notahorseindisguise