notsobuffhistorybuff

[notsobuffhistorybuff]

Working on inventing a new type of northern irish guy who thinks that the united irishmen failed because they didn't have enough catholic guilt and the provos failed because they didn't have enough protestant work ethic

[notsobuffhistorybuff]

when i first adopted my roman senator from the shelter he was so traumatized from being attacked by an angry mob in the forum that he would just curl up in a ball with his toga and whimper all day. but with careful support now he will eat olives from my hand without growling or biting or filibustering. it's amazing to see what love can do for senators<3

[notsobuffhistorybuff]

dog with a pipe, 1875.

[notsobuffhistorybuff]

My friend found this tablecloth with most of the script of the Shrek movie printed onto it.

Found in Delta BC.

[notsobuffhistorybuff]

The first rule of studying history is to always try to look for primary sources to check your information, and remember that even those have to be examined critically

The second rule of studying history is that a person can be both one of the worst people to ever walk the earth and a babygirl

Hope this helps!

[notsobuffhistorybuff]

I know ingredients and formulas change and it's never exact (in my own lifetime two favorites were redone and no longer the same at all) but historical perfumes just!!!!

100, 200, 300 years ago someone walked into a shop and smelled a bottle of this fragrance and decided they liked it enough to buy it, they wore it, might have had a signature scent or a collection or just wore it the once. It's such a real, physical connection to the past, as much as an antique object would be.

[notsobuffhistorybuff]

realizing that being skinny has no value was the best thing i ever did for myself. hey! all your ancestors since time immemorial called and they want you to get fat

[notsobuffhistorybuff]

The fact that the free presbyterian church of ulster formed in the 1950s and immediately they got into the horrors over something suspiciously new light-like is actually sooo funny though despite everything I have only the greatest respect for the protestant urge to enact this specific heresy all the time constantly for the past four to five centuries

[notsobuffhistorybuff]

Both of them

[notsobuffhistorybuff]

I got to hold a 500,000 year old hand axe at the museum today.

It's right-handed

I am right-handed

There are grooves for the thumb and knuckle to grip that fit my hand perfectly

I have calluses there from holding my stylus and pencils and the gardening tools.

There are sharper and blunter parts of the edge, for different types of cutting, as well as a point for piercing.

I know exactly how to use this to butcher a carcass.

A homo erectus made it

Some ancestor of mine, three species ago, made a tool that fits my hand perfectly, and that I still know how to use.

Who were you

A man? A woman? Did you even use those words?

Did you craft alone or were you with friends? Did you sing while you worked?

Did you find this stone yourself, or did you trade for it? Was it a gift?

Did you make it for yourself, or someone else, or does the distinction of personal property not really apply here?

Who were you?

What would you think today, seeing your descendant hold your tool and sob because it fits her hands as well?

What about your other descendant, the docent and caretaker of your tool, holding her hands under it the way you hold your hands under your baby's head when a stranger holds them.

Is it bizarre to you, that your most utilitarian object is now revered as holy?

Or has it always been divine?

Or is the divine in how I am watching videos on how to knap stone made by your other descendants, learning by example the way you did?

Tomorrow morning I am going to the local riverbed in search of the appropriate stones, and I will follow your example.

The first blood spilled on it will almost certainly be my own, as I learn the textures and rhythm of how it's done.

Did you have cuss words back then? Gods to blaspheme when the rock slips and you almost take your thumbnail off instead? Or did you just scream?

I'm not religious.

But if spilling my own blood to connect with a stranger who shared it isn't partaking in the divine

I don't know what is.

[notsobuffhistorybuff]

God I fucking love being a monk at the Monastery of Lindisfarne on this fine morning of June 8th, 793. I love looking at all the gold and silver objects and alive monks that live here.

[notsobuffhistorybuff]

Crazy to think that seagulls existed before french fries.

[notsobuffhistorybuff]

i love my gothic literature menaces and they love me

+bonus

he’s not gonna pretend he’s on the phone because he meant every word and wants him to hear it

[notsobuffhistorybuff]

For the first time EVER in gymnastics, all black women on podium. LETS GO!!!!!!!

[notsobuffhistorybuff]

god forbid 5000 year old girls do anything

[notsobuffhistorybuff]

i spent a few months working with shakespeare’s globe in london, which is a reconstruction of a theatre built in 1599, which itself is a reconstruction of a theatre built in 1576. obviously this was before they had the ability to put microphones on actors, so one of the big questions scholars had was ‘how did people hear the play?’ turns out, as ppl discovered when they rebuilt the globe, the circular shape of the walls (combined with the springy oak-and-plaster they were made of) create a huge amplifying effect on all sounds emanating from the stage, meaning—even today—everyone can hear just fine. and i was like. why are you surprised by this. why are people shocked that humans of the past actually Knew What They Were Doing. why are people amazed that machu picchu is architecturally genius or surprised that the iliad is devastatingly powerful or stunned that ppl were solving sinusoidal trigonometric equations possibly as early as 350 CE. history is not one long linear march leading up to Today, The Zenith Of Everything & just bc somethings newer doesnt make it better & i am not smarter than the guy who wrote gilgamesh. actually this post is about people who were introduced to star trek by the flashy new stuff and then watched the original series and were, for some reason, shocked that so much of it was “actually good”