The Road from Rome
aeon.co
aeon.co
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.
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...
"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!
Or how Greek medicine students would do "erasmus" in Egypt, considered more advanced in medicine practices.
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."
https://www.catholic.com/magazine/online-edition/constantine...
(A remarkable feat, I might add, perhaps surpassing the first version in overcoming the "you're not in Asia" geopolitical handicap.)
> It’s true that Rome’s collapse reverberated widely, at least in the western – mostly European – half of its empire. (A shrinking portion of the eastern half, later known as Byzantium, survived for another millennium.)
> (A shrinking portion of the eastern half, later known as Byzantium, survived for another millennium.)
The latter are more compelling in a shallow analysis. The former are based on a lot of extrapolation, so I think the immediate impression many have is that they're based on wishful thinking / ideological fundamentalism.
The fall of Constantinople was more a matter that a variety of more advanced societies (Venice, the Turks, etc) were rising and the Byzantines were there, so why not loot them, as far as I understand the situation.
https://web.archive.org/web/20030930225420/http://www.the-or...
Personally I credit the printing press as the dividing line (yes I know the fall of Constantinople was at the same time).
Sometimes I idly think what would I invent if I was transported via mcguffin to ancient Rome. I'd invent paper and the printing press.
Nōn longa via est Rōmam, ubi habitat amīca mea pulchra. Nōn longa via est Rōmam, ubi habitat amīca mea pulchra. Per ātrium, ex ōstiō, ex vīllā, in templum, Tūsculō Rōmam, per agrōs et silvās, Viā Latīnā, per Portam Capēnam, cum rosīs et liliīs, cum nummīs sine dominō. Cantat Mēdus apud ōstium amīcae suae Lȳdiae.
Nōn longa via est Rōmam, ubi habitat amīca mea pulchra. Nōn longa via est Rōmam, ubi habitat amīca mea pulchra.
This is also a fine example of the classic Trimurti, the cycle of creation, maintaining, & collapse that defines existence. Rome flourished & became, but the world had been "stuck" with Rome for so long, had maintained it for so long, & it's presence was not leaving room for other acts of creation. This article largely asserts that destruction was necessary: Rome was facing a millennia+ old version of "The End of History" hypothesis. Which, to double back to the Trimurti, is against the cycle of creation & existence.
> Why don't I see down arrows?
> There are no down arrows on stories. They appear on comments after users reach a certain karma threshold, but never on direct replies.
but don't worry, the people who did have the karma to downvote also didn't decide to meet this bar either. still, would have been nice to hear from them. would be nice to hear from you. what makes you want to downvote?