Imagine how much historical knowledge wasn’t written down because our ancestors thought: “What idiot isn’t going to know this?”
So ancient Egypt’s best friend basically was called Punt. They traded all kinds of fun stuff with them; ebony, incense, gold, silver, myrrh, leopard skins, baboons for pets… and the Egyptians wrote a lot about the land, the people living there, what their houses looked like, records of trading expeditions to there (like, robust, oceangoing ships with thousands of men); they wrote down everything imaginable about this place… except for where it actually was.
We still to this day have no geographic fix on this ancient empire’s whereabouts, because what idiot wouldn’t know, right?
Until the 1850s British condiment sets came with bottles for oil and vinegar, and three spice containers for salt, pepper and…nobody knows. Potentially mustard, but it’s just a guess because no one ever wrote it down.
And this is why historians love, really love, those incredibly dull people who write in their diary every day about what they wore and what they had for dinner and how many miles away their friend Mr So-And-So’s house is in that one village. Because they are the only ones who *do* write down what was in the third spice jar, how many miles away this now-nonexistent village was and so on. Seriously, the diaries of really dull people are HISTORICAL TREASURES OF OTHERWISE LOST MINUTIAE.
Somewhere out there there is almost certainly a diary that would expose the true contents of that third spice jar because of the one time it was low and this person had to have a quiet word with the butler or something and it was the most interesting thing that happened all week so they wrote it down. And I hope that diary is found someday because now I really want to know.
That’s weirdly heart warming. Like, even if you are incredibly dull and live a normal boring life, you still might be the most interesting person to some historian some day
(for the record, we do know where Punt was! it was probably Eritrea! egypt mummified baboons from Punt, whose hairs matched with present day species in Eritrea!)
the secret ingredient to roman concrete was salt water because when they said water it was assumed salt unless specified otherwise.
Regardless of what you think of this tree… this comment was my favourite out of the collection of people who didn’t know deer shed their antlers every spring
lots of people seem to forget strikes are SUPPOSED TO negatively impact the economy and inconvenience people. that’s how you force the company to give into your demands. it’s hitting them where it hurts hardest–their profit.
ALT
