Relevant only by virtue of also being about historical children’s drawings, but it reminds of another example of a child’s drawings preserved for us to see: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Onfim
> … Onfim, was a boy who lived in Novgorod (now Veliky Novgorod, Russia) in the 13th century, some time around 1220 or 1260. He left his notes and homework exercises scratched in soft birch bark, which was preserved in the clay soil of Novgorod.
I would wager that if you could travel back in time to the emergence of anatomically modern humans, you’d find they’re just like us. I don’t think that’s particularly controversial or surprising, but it’s easy to forget that people who came long before us were really no different from us (or put differently, were no different than them), and it helps to better understand history if you think of them that way.
Hi Ben! I'll email you a repost invite for the Onfim article (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43705174) - if you wait a week or so and then use it, the repost will go in the second-chance pool.
The reason for waiting is to give the hivemind cache time to clear. Normally we'd re-up the existing post, but we don't want two overly similar threads on the frontpage within a short time period.
> I would wager that if you could travel back in time to the emergence of anatomically modern humans, you’d find they’re just like us.
I find this viewpoint surprisingly underutilized in institutional history and archeology sometimes. I occasionally watch documentaries with distinguished talking heads on e.g. egyptology and what not, and they often bend over backwards to find complicated explanations that defy all "this is just not how humans or human organizations operate" logic. For example, analyzing an impressive building and then assuming that the same people capable of constructing it also made a basic mistake or in other ways assuming they were daft. Or requiring a complex lore/spiritual explanation for something that can be equally explained by classic big org fuckups.
The formal name for this kind of argument is "ethnographic analogy". It's widespread in archaeology and institutional history, but doesn't always show up so overtly because
1. It's not very interesting to say "they're just like us" and
2. "like us" is a huge statement hiding a lot of assumptions.
Analogy is also considered a fairly weak argument on its own. There are vanishingly few accepted "cultural universals" despite decades of argument on the subject (which I'll let the wiki article [0] summarize), so justifying them usually follows an argument like "X is related/similar to Y, and X has behavior Z, so Y's behavior is an evolution of Z". That's fine if you're talking Roman->Byzantines, maybe, but it's a bit of a stretch when your analogy is "modern US->Old Kingdom Egypt". It's also very, very easy to get wrong and make a bad analogies. Take basically the entire first couple centuries of American anthropology as an example.
For a long time, I also somehow thought that people from earlier eras were less intelligent—simply because, in retrospect, all those obvious mistakes are so apparent. It took considerable mental effort for me to accept that people back then were probably just like us today, only living under different circumstances.
My favorite part of wikipedia's article on Onfim is this absurdly understated sentence:
> One of the drawings features a knight on a horse, with Onfim's name written next to him, stabbing someone on the ground with a lance, with scholars speculating that Onfim pictured himself as the knight.
I guess we'll never truly be able to know what Onfim was thinking when he drew a knight named "Onfim" stabbing an enemy with a lance from horseback. The past is a foreign country, and the mind of a child can't be understood anyway.
The article suggests it's his teacher, and I'm inclined to believe this. Pretty consistent with the idea of a kid who doesn't want to do homework, and scorns the source of all homework (the teacher)
It's amazing to think about. I'm sure you could take one of more ancient human babies, teleport them to the present day, and they would be able to grow up like any other kid. It's remarkable. Part of our human-ness is our robust written and oral histories.
On the flip side, in the year 1200 the average person would likely not have considered the people living 800 years before them to be all that different from them (unlike many of us today).
Perhaps that's a way in which we're less educated than those who came before us
> I would wager that if you could travel back in time to the emergence of anatomically modern humans, you’d find they’re just like us. I don’t think that’s particularly controversial or surprising, but it’s easy to forget that people who came long before us were really no different from us (or put differently, were no different than them), and it helps to better understand history if you think of them that way.
In many ways no different to us, in other ways, knowledge, cultural norms, gender roles, morality, etc they are very different to us.
We're very tribal and very hostile to people outside of our tribe, and what we consider our tribe has slowly expanded over time.
Thankfully today we mostly don't form up into raiding parties to go kill, rape, and enslave people in the neighboring suburb - but that would have been historically a very normal and acceptable thing to do.
It's curious to consider that Onfim probably grew up, toiled, had a family, and died with an entire life behind him... yet we still think of him as "a boy who lived in Novgorod" because the only evidence of his existence is this set of random childhood scribbles.
Novgorod was the only major East Slavic settlement to avoid destruction or subjugation by the Golden Horde, so I think it is akin to a boy from a well-to-do family in medieval Avignon or Strasbourg learning to read and write. Meaning, not just any city or any family in the mid/late 13th century had the need or means for such schooling, but as pointed out in this thread it was more likely in Novgorod.
Well, probably not most children. I don’t really know anything about that particular region at that particular time, but based on history generally, literacy was - until recently - often reserved for higher social classes.
I had to look up the article to figure out if this was the intolerable downside of having kids (all this work raising them, and then they just fly out of the nest) or _not_ having them (with your scientific work the only great project of your life). I believe he meant the latter :)
In those those days though I'm not sure the calculus of working for the sake of the children was quite the same.
You might have kids, and then they work the farm, then you manage the farm and slowly the children take over the manual labor and hard work of it. In old age the investment in the children pays off and a reciprocal relationship is formed where you take care of the grandchildren and your own children take care of you.
Now that is flipped on its head. The parent makes the lions share of the investment in the child, but the benefits of the child is largely socialized. Want daycare, food, recreational, extra-cirricular activities -- basically anything other than public schooling you pay taxes for already? Go fuck yourself.
But once the children is grown up, well well well we are a society here! Tax the shit out of the kid, spread the social security benefits around to everyone including people that didn't raise any children. And if you directly want a piece of the investment from the children, as people got in the old days, well then go fuck yourself you greedy selfish bastard -- it is only morally right when all of society does the exact same thing to the kid.
There is every possible incentive in today's society to encourage others to have kids, ensuring your own retirement, but to reneg on doing it yourself because some other poor bastard can front most the costs and then you can tax the shit out of the kid for your retirement / social benefits. I think children were a rational decision in Darwin's day, now they are definitely not, because you are on the sucker end of a tragedy of the commons deal.
Children — (if it Please God) — Constant companion, (& friend in old age) who will feel interested in one, — object to be beloved & played with. — better than a dog anyhow.– Home, & someone to take care of house — Charms of music & female chit-chat. — These things good for one’s health. —
"""but terrible loss of time. —""" !!!!
So ruthless in his calculus. One wonders if he was on the spectrum?
Both Charles Darwin and Benjamin Franklin are quoted in informal Decision Theory. Both used pro-vs-cons tables to orient decision; Franklin also used weights.
> When those difficult cases occur, they are difficult, chiefly because while we have them under consideration, all the reasons pro and con are not present to the mind at the same time; but sometimes some set present themselves, and at other times another, the first being out of sight. Hence the various purposes or inclinations that alternately prevail, and the uncertainty that perplexes us. // To get over this, my way is to divide half a sheet of paper by a line into two columns; writing over the one pro, and over the other con. Then during three or four days consideration, I put down under the different heads short hits of the different motives, that at different times occur to me, for or against the measure. // When I have thus got them all together in one view, I endeavor to estimate their respective weights; and where I find two, one on each side, that seem equal, I strike them both out. If I find a reason pro equal to two reasons con, I strike out the three. If I judge some two reasons con, equal to some three reasons pro, I strike out the five; and thus proceeding I find at length where the balance lies, and if, after a day or two of further consideration, nothing new that is of importance occurs on either side, I come to a determination accordingly
This reminds me of the fascinating story of how Shakespeare's first folio was assembled, in that many of the plays were assembled from folks who had copies that were annotated - either as reading notes or with random family musings like todo lists.
This is one of the few things children still do even centuries later. In many aspects, we have changed so drastically that I think 100-year-ago people would find us weird and unsociable.
Not at all. Young children, in particular, do the same things they’ve been doing since modern humans evolved, if not even earlier than that. My three and six year old boys wake up in the morning and pretend to be puppies. I’m sure kids their age were doing that 30,000 years ago when humans domesticated dogs.
They were playing tic tac toe the other day, and asked my dad whether he played tic tac toe when he was a kid. My dad—who grew up in a village in Bangladesh—explained that he did, except they drew the game in the dirt with sticks.
Oh, if you think that's bad, see Samuel Pepy's diary (conveniently syndicated in realtime here: https://bsky.app/profile/samuelpepys.bsky.social; think they're on the third run through, currently doing 1662). No detail of everyday life, no matter how objectionable, left uncovered.
This is a good snapshot and piece of history of a mindsets freshly tuned into a new way of thinking. Thanks for this, this article was a relaxing break in these politically tense times.
The other story here is incremental growth of camera technology. The daguerreotype came out after his voyage on the HMS Beagle, by the time Origin of Specices was published (with no photography) Cameras still had to many practical limitations to justify a worse image. By 1872 Darwin would publish a book full of photography despite his remarkable drawing skills.
Something gives me the feeling that a lot of people are going to follow Darwin's example in the near future
People talk about how hard it is to have kids these days without realizing that this sort of chaos was normal for the vast majority of humans throughout history and they still achieved great things. Part of it is the expectation of others. So what if your kids color your book, interrupt your meetings, or cause embarrassment in front of your boss. They need to get over it.
Like him or hate, the fact that the Vice President takes his kids everywhere is a good reminder of how un-child-friendly our societies have become. It's almost transgressive to exist with children these days.
Loved this! I took my child to work even when it wasn’t the specific holiday so she could see what a real exec review looked like or how boring work could seem to be. The experiment is still running, so I can’t tell you the outcome... yet! ;)
Curious if anyone reading this has explored the alternative theories to Darwinian evolution. I only recently started looking at it, so don't want to share links because I don't know what is believable. But it seems there are major flaws that even Darwin knew about. He considered Origin of Species an abstract, and was promising the full "big book" for the rest of his life, but never was able to pull it together.
> But it seems there are major flaws that even Darwin knew about.
Sure. He recognized the importance of inheritance, but didn't know the mechanism. We've learned a lot since Darwin's days about how it all works - genetics, in particular - but the basic concept has held up just fine.
Can you elaborate on this? My understanding is that evolution (to be precise, we're presumably referring to natural selection) has been proven again and again and that there is a clear scientific consensus around it, and I'm not familiar with any particular large gaps in the theory.
I'm guessing it's passages like this one regarding transitional forms:
Why then is not every geological formation and every stratum full of such intermediate links? Geology assuredly does not reveal any such finely graduated organic chain; and this, perhaps, is the most obvious and gravest objection which can be urged against my theory. The explanation lies, as I believe, in the extreme imperfection of the geological record.
Relevant only by virtue of also being about historical children’s drawings, but it reminds of another example of a child’s drawings preserved for us to see: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Onfim
> … Onfim, was a boy who lived in Novgorod (now Veliky Novgorod, Russia) in the 13th century, some time around 1220 or 1260. He left his notes and homework exercises scratched in soft birch bark, which was preserved in the clay soil of Novgorod.
I would wager that if you could travel back in time to the emergence of anatomically modern humans, you’d find they’re just like us. I don’t think that’s particularly controversial or surprising, but it’s easy to forget that people who came long before us were really no different from us (or put differently, were no different than them), and it helps to better understand history if you think of them that way.
Author of the original Appendix article here (the one about Darwin's kids) - I think it got on HN today because I linked to while discussing Onfim here: https://resobscura.substack.com/p/onfims-world-medieval-chil...
Hi Ben! I'll email you a repost invite for the Onfim article (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43705174) - if you wait a week or so and then use it, the repost will go in the second-chance pool.
The reason for waiting is to give the hivemind cache time to clear. Normally we'd re-up the existing post, but we don't want two overly similar threads on the frontpage within a short time period.
That's one of the most endearing article I have read in a long time. Thanks for the joy.
2014! Amazing.
> I would wager that if you could travel back in time to the emergence of anatomically modern humans, you’d find they’re just like us.
I find this viewpoint surprisingly underutilized in institutional history and archeology sometimes. I occasionally watch documentaries with distinguished talking heads on e.g. egyptology and what not, and they often bend over backwards to find complicated explanations that defy all "this is just not how humans or human organizations operate" logic. For example, analyzing an impressive building and then assuming that the same people capable of constructing it also made a basic mistake or in other ways assuming they were daft. Or requiring a complex lore/spiritual explanation for something that can be equally explained by classic big org fuckups.
The formal name for this kind of argument is "ethnographic analogy". It's widespread in archaeology and institutional history, but doesn't always show up so overtly because
1. It's not very interesting to say "they're just like us" and
2. "like us" is a huge statement hiding a lot of assumptions.
Analogy is also considered a fairly weak argument on its own. There are vanishingly few accepted "cultural universals" despite decades of argument on the subject (which I'll let the wiki article [0] summarize), so justifying them usually follows an argument like "X is related/similar to Y, and X has behavior Z, so Y's behavior is an evolution of Z". That's fine if you're talking Roman->Byzantines, maybe, but it's a bit of a stretch when your analogy is "modern US->Old Kingdom Egypt". It's also very, very easy to get wrong and make a bad analogies. Take basically the entire first couple centuries of American anthropology as an example.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_universal
For a long time, I also somehow thought that people from earlier eras were less intelligent—simply because, in retrospect, all those obvious mistakes are so apparent. It took considerable mental effort for me to accept that people back then were probably just like us today, only living under different circumstances.
11 replies →
For pyramids, I think modern thinkers underestimate power of a lot of people working together in harmony for long time.
4 replies →
My favorite part of wikipedia's article on Onfim is this absurdly understated sentence:
> One of the drawings features a knight on a horse, with Onfim's name written next to him, stabbing someone on the ground with a lance, with scholars speculating that Onfim pictured himself as the knight.
I guess we'll never truly be able to know what Onfim was thinking when he drew a knight named "Onfim" stabbing an enemy with a lance from horseback. The past is a foreign country, and the mind of a child can't be understood anyway.
The article suggests it's his teacher, and I'm inclined to believe this. Pretty consistent with the idea of a kid who doesn't want to do homework, and scorns the source of all homework (the teacher)
It's amazing to think about. I'm sure you could take one of more ancient human babies, teleport them to the present day, and they would be able to grow up like any other kid. It's remarkable. Part of our human-ness is our robust written and oral histories.
On the flip side, in the year 1200 the average person would likely not have considered the people living 800 years before them to be all that different from them (unlike many of us today).
Perhaps that's a way in which we're less educated than those who came before us
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If you had a time machine and went back 10,000 years and adopted a baby from then, no one but geneticists would ever know.
Maybe even 100,000.
You could probably go tens of thousands of years back and have this still be the case.
Except for their immune systems or lactose tolerance.
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I think it is pretty controversial and surprising. As Wikipedia puts it:
"Debate continues as to whether anatomically modern humans were behaviorally modern as well."
Anatomically modern humans emerged 300,000 years ago but behaviourally modern humans only date back to 60,000-150,000 years ago.
> I would wager that if you could travel back in time to the emergence of anatomically modern humans, you’d find they’re just like us. I don’t think that’s particularly controversial or surprising, but it’s easy to forget that people who came long before us were really no different from us (or put differently, were no different than them), and it helps to better understand history if you think of them that way.
In many ways no different to us, in other ways, knowledge, cultural norms, gender roles, morality, etc they are very different to us.
We're very tribal and very hostile to people outside of our tribe, and what we consider our tribe has slowly expanded over time.
Thankfully today we mostly don't form up into raiding parties to go kill, rape, and enslave people in the neighboring suburb - but that would have been historically a very normal and acceptable thing to do.
It's curious to consider that Onfim probably grew up, toiled, had a family, and died with an entire life behind him... yet we still think of him as "a boy who lived in Novgorod" because the only evidence of his existence is this set of random childhood scribbles.
> you’d find they’re just like us.
Yep, and it's good to remember that "us" is still a pretty diverse bunch.
this is insane. 6 year olds 800 years ago went to school ?
Novgorod was the only major East Slavic settlement to avoid destruction or subjugation by the Golden Horde, so I think it is akin to a boy from a well-to-do family in medieval Avignon or Strasbourg learning to read and write. Meaning, not just any city or any family in the mid/late 13th century had the need or means for such schooling, but as pointed out in this thread it was more likely in Novgorod.
Well, probably not most children. I don’t really know anything about that particular region at that particular time, but based on history generally, literacy was - until recently - often reserved for higher social classes.
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It's not clear how old he was.
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My favorite Darwin fun fact is his detailed pros and cons list on whether to get married.
https://www.themarginalian.org/2012/08/14/darwin-list-pros-a...
For such a giant of the scientific community, he was after all human.
My two favorite journal entries:
"But I am very poorly today & very stupid & hate everybody & everything."
"I am going to write a little Book for Murray on orchids and today I hate them worse than everything."
He had chronic nausea (possibly abdominal migraine), so I'm not surprised he was feeling poorly.
"I cannot brain today, I have the dumb"
Me too Charles, me too.
Huh, I feel much closer to Darwin now
"I hate a Barnacle as no man ever did before"
Well, this hit harder than I thought it would
I try to remember Vonnegut: "We are here on Earth to fart around. Don't let anybody tell you any different."
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I had to look up the article to figure out if this was the intolerable downside of having kids (all this work raising them, and then they just fly out of the nest) or _not_ having them (with your scientific work the only great project of your life). I believe he meant the latter :)
3 replies →
In those those days though I'm not sure the calculus of working for the sake of the children was quite the same.
You might have kids, and then they work the farm, then you manage the farm and slowly the children take over the manual labor and hard work of it. In old age the investment in the children pays off and a reciprocal relationship is formed where you take care of the grandchildren and your own children take care of you.
Now that is flipped on its head. The parent makes the lions share of the investment in the child, but the benefits of the child is largely socialized. Want daycare, food, recreational, extra-cirricular activities -- basically anything other than public schooling you pay taxes for already? Go fuck yourself.
But once the children is grown up, well well well we are a society here! Tax the shit out of the kid, spread the social security benefits around to everyone including people that didn't raise any children. And if you directly want a piece of the investment from the children, as people got in the old days, well then go fuck yourself you greedy selfish bastard -- it is only morally right when all of society does the exact same thing to the kid.
There is every possible incentive in today's society to encourage others to have kids, ensuring your own retirement, but to reneg on doing it yourself because some other poor bastard can front most the costs and then you can tax the shit out of the kid for your retirement / social benefits. I think children were a rational decision in Darwin's day, now they are definitely not, because you are on the sucker end of a tragedy of the commons deal.
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On marriage and partner - "These things good for one’s health."
Proven by modern science now. At least longer life.
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Children — (if it Please God) — Constant companion, (& friend in old age) who will feel interested in one, — object to be beloved & played with. — better than a dog anyhow.– Home, & someone to take care of house — Charms of music & female chit-chat. — These things good for one’s health. —
"""but terrible loss of time. —""" !!!!
So ruthless in his calculus. One wonders if he was on the spectrum?
> calculus
It is calculus, it is performed like calculus - it has to.
“better than a dog anyhow”
Darwin was a real catch.
It always blows my mind how many people, historically, married their cousins. I guess smaller towns had shallower gene pools.
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Brits are well-known romantics even today but 19th century society was on a whole different level.
I could have sworn that was Ben Franklin that wrote that
Both Charles Darwin and Benjamin Franklin are quoted in informal Decision Theory. Both used pro-vs-cons tables to orient decision; Franklin also used weights.
> When those difficult cases occur, they are difficult, chiefly because while we have them under consideration, all the reasons pro and con are not present to the mind at the same time; but sometimes some set present themselves, and at other times another, the first being out of sight. Hence the various purposes or inclinations that alternately prevail, and the uncertainty that perplexes us. // To get over this, my way is to divide half a sheet of paper by a line into two columns; writing over the one pro, and over the other con. Then during three or four days consideration, I put down under the different heads short hits of the different motives, that at different times occur to me, for or against the measure. // When I have thus got them all together in one view, I endeavor to estimate their respective weights; and where I find two, one on each side, that seem equal, I strike them both out. If I find a reason pro equal to two reasons con, I strike out the three. If I judge some two reasons con, equal to some three reasons pro, I strike out the five; and thus proceeding I find at length where the balance lies, and if, after a day or two of further consideration, nothing new that is of importance occurs on either side, I come to a determination accordingly
This reminds me of the fascinating story of how Shakespeare's first folio was assembled, in that many of the plays were assembled from folks who had copies that were annotated - either as reading notes or with random family musings like todo lists.
I highly recommend the Chris Laoutaris' book on the topic: https://www.amazon.com/Shakespeares-Book-Behind-Making-Shake...
My brothers and I and all our friends were allowed to draw on the walls when we were kids as long as it was in our bedrooms.
My friends thought it was the coolest thing ever.
We painted it over when we got older.
This is one of the few things children still do even centuries later. In many aspects, we have changed so drastically that I think 100-year-ago people would find us weird and unsociable.
Not at all. Young children, in particular, do the same things they’ve been doing since modern humans evolved, if not even earlier than that. My three and six year old boys wake up in the morning and pretend to be puppies. I’m sure kids their age were doing that 30,000 years ago when humans domesticated dogs.
They were playing tic tac toe the other day, and asked my dad whether he played tic tac toe when he was a kid. My dad—who grew up in a village in Bangladesh—explained that he did, except they drew the game in the dirt with sticks.
The article makes no mention of the name "Babbage" in Emma's diary. Could that relate to Charles Babbage, who was a contemporary?
I'm wondering about Wednesday April 15, 1840 -- "Much flatulence"
Sometimes history provides too much information to future generations.
Oh, if you think that's bad, see Samuel Pepy's diary (conveniently syndicated in realtime here: https://bsky.app/profile/samuelpepys.bsky.social; think they're on the third run through, currently doing 1662). No detail of everyday life, no matter how objectionable, left uncovered.
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It's TMI only because he lived for a long time after. If he had died on April 16th, it might point to some type of illness or mariticide.
Royal Armouries Ms. I.33[0] was also used for colouring practice by children, e.g., in folii 2r - 8v as shown on Wiktenauer[1].
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_Armouries_Ms._I.33
[1] https://wiktenauer.com/wiki/Walpurgis_Fechtbuch_(MS_I.33)
This is a good snapshot and piece of history of a mindsets freshly tuned into a new way of thinking. Thanks for this, this article was a relaxing break in these politically tense times.
The other story here is incremental growth of camera technology. The daguerreotype came out after his voyage on the HMS Beagle, by the time Origin of Specices was published (with no photography) Cameras still had to many practical limitations to justify a worse image. By 1872 Darwin would publish a book full of photography despite his remarkable drawing skills.
Something gives me the feeling that a lot of people are going to follow Darwin's example in the near future
"from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved."
Apparently less so in the case of his offspring.
People talk about how hard it is to have kids these days without realizing that this sort of chaos was normal for the vast majority of humans throughout history and they still achieved great things. Part of it is the expectation of others. So what if your kids color your book, interrupt your meetings, or cause embarrassment in front of your boss. They need to get over it.
Like him or hate, the fact that the Vice President takes his kids everywhere is a good reminder of how un-child-friendly our societies have become. It's almost transgressive to exist with children these days.
Loved this! I took my child to work even when it wasn’t the specific holiday so she could see what a real exec review looked like or how boring work could seem to be. The experiment is still running, so I can’t tell you the outcome... yet! ;)
I guess he figured it out after all that.
"If I catch you rascals, I will give you the Darwin award in fine arts!"
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Curious if anyone reading this has explored the alternative theories to Darwinian evolution. I only recently started looking at it, so don't want to share links because I don't know what is believable. But it seems there are major flaws that even Darwin knew about. He considered Origin of Species an abstract, and was promising the full "big book" for the rest of his life, but never was able to pull it together.
> But it seems there are major flaws that even Darwin knew about.
Sure. He recognized the importance of inheritance, but didn't know the mechanism. We've learned a lot since Darwin's days about how it all works - genetics, in particular - but the basic concept has held up just fine.
We can even demonstrate it in lab conditions: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E._coli_long-term_evolution_ex...
Can you elaborate on this? My understanding is that evolution (to be precise, we're presumably referring to natural selection) has been proven again and again and that there is a clear scientific consensus around it, and I'm not familiar with any particular large gaps in the theory.
I'm guessing it's passages like this one regarding transitional forms:
Why then is not every geological formation and every stratum full of such intermediate links? Geology assuredly does not reveal any such finely graduated organic chain; and this, perhaps, is the most obvious and gravest objection which can be urged against my theory. The explanation lies, as I believe, in the extreme imperfection of the geological record.
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