#children in history

[artifacts-and-arthropods]

Doodles Made by a 6-year-old Boy Named Onfim, from Russia, c. 1240-1260 CE: created nearly 800 years ago, these drawings were scrawled onto the homework/spelling exercises of a little boy in Novgorod

Over the last 75 years, excavations in and around Novgorod, in Russia, have led to the discovery of hundreds of documents dating back to the Middle Ages. These documents were made using pieces of bark from the local birch trees; they include letters, notes, spelling exercises, shopping lists, receipts, and legal documents, among other things.

The most famous examples are the panels that contain the writing exercises of a 6-7 year-old boy named Onfim, whose work was often accompanied by drawings of knights, fantastical beasts, battle scenes, and depictions of himself in various forms.

These are just a few examples:

Birch-Bark Document no.199: on the back of a panel that had been used for his spelling exercises, Onfim drew this picture of himself as a wild beast, writing "I am a wild beast" in the center of the drawing; the beast is also shown holding a sign that says "Greetings from Onfim to Danilo," likely referring to a friend or classmate.

Birch-Bark Document no.200: Onfim began writing the Cyrillic alphabet at the top of this panel, but he then stopped to draw a picture of himself as a warrior on horseback, labeling the figure with his name; the drawing shows him wielding a sword while he impales his enemy with a spear.

Birch-Bark Document no.202: the boy's mother and father are depicted in this drawing, which accompanies another writing exercise.

Birch-Bark Document no.206: Onfim began to copy a liturgical prayer (the Troparion of the Sixth Hour) onto this strip of bark, but he apparently got distracted after writing just the first few words, and started drawing a row of people along the bottom of the panel instead.

The examples above are just a few of the many documents that have been unearthed in Novgorod (now known as Veliky Novgorod) and its surrounding areas. More than a thousand birch-bark manuscripts and styli have been found throughout the region, suggesting that there was a high rate of literacy among the local inhabitants. Most of these documents were created during the 11th-15th centuries, when Novgorod served as the capital city of the Novgorod Republic; they had been buried in the thick, wet clay that permeates the local soil, in conditions that allowed them to remain almost perfectly preserved for hundreds of years.

I know that Onfim's drawings are pretty well-known already, but my most recent post involved a very similar writing exercise/doodle from a child in Medieval Egypt, so I just thought I'd post some of Onfim's work, as well.

Sources & More Info:

Institute of Slavic Studies at the Russian Academy of Sciences: Birch-Bark no.200, no.199, no.202, no.203, no.206, & no.210 (the site is in Russian, but can be translated)

Institute of Slavic Studies: Full Database of Birch-Bark Documents

The New York Times: Where Mud is Archaeological Gold, Russian History Grew on Trees

Russian Linguistics: Old East Slavic Birch-Bark Literacy - a history of linguistic emancipation?

[performing-personhood]

Someone on reddit bought a school book from 1854 and found inside it the doodles of some young ladies from 1900.

A person in the comments asked why it matters that they're girls' vs boys' drawings. And then I spent like forty minutes on an answer that I have no intention of posting just to have some chode rip me apart for bad faith incel reasons, but i can't bear to throw it out. So here Tumblr, you can have it:

It's a legitimate question. In lieu of an Official Actual Historian answering this, hi I'm an armchair hobbyist historian with zero schooling about it and i would like to speculate wildly for you. 

Our historical record has a serious lack of information about women and girls in general. Largely (probably) due to social patriarchal norms, women and girls' everyday lives weren't considered important enough to think about, much less keep detailed records - hell, even well into the 1950s we have a hard time knowing women's first fucking names even because being Mrs Husbandsname was all society cared about - so that sort of thing simply wasn't gathered nor kept and now it just doesn't exist. We have a handful of girls toys and clothes, of course those physical things remain and give us general clues about what it must have been like to live as a girl and/or woman in that time, but all the nuance about the lived experiences is lost.

So while they're just doodles, they're incredibly valuable for the simple reason that they're done by girls - and misbehaving girls at that, doodling in their schoolbooks is quite naughty - because its so vanishingly rare to have ANY record of any individual girl's/woman's life.

[blondebrainpowered]

Omo Valley, Ethiopia — The many tribes living along the Omo River are renowned for their unique, ecstatic ritual decoration. Their customs and awe inspiring appearance have been the subject of decades of research.

Children of the Kwegu people, known for their intricate flower headdresses and face paint.

Photographer: Hans Sylvester

[if-you-fan-a-fire]

"The Soviet trade school student smiles happily after winning the school skiing championship. Sports are an important part of the youth training program and skiing has played a vital part in helping Soviet troops frustrate the Germans in winter fighting on the long front." - from the Toronto Star. September 24, 1943.

Toronto Star Photograph Archive, Toronto Public Library, TSPA_0118473F.

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

The dog days are over.

[First] Prev <–-> Next

[the-blueprint]

Sesame street makes it debut #forourculture #luthervandross appeared on the show in the earlier episodes

[sir-illmatic]

Nostalgia💚

We all we got

[reality-detective]

CPS is just a front for child trafficking. 🤔

[mohntilyet]

illario as the grandchild that is most like caterina is something i'm loving to chew on. the grandson that took her lessons to heart the most. kill anyone who sees your face and knows your name, "we are not revolutionaries", the first out of the two to prioritise the contract. power at any cost, and the only one to lean into the unnecessary abuse that their grandmother told them was tradition. why is anyone surprised he allied with the venatori? and then there's illario's considerable skill in infiltration and manipulating any mark, he has always had the charisma that lucanis lacked. illario isn't attached, he has/can/will use someone and immediately drop them; "that does free me from promises i don't intend to keep". he can lie about how much he cares so well that he fools a magister into believing he loves her. he kills zara without hesitation to cover his own tracks, meanwhile lucanis blindly promises a young girl in the middle of a siege that he will help her find her father. even the lessons about family stick with him, and in this entire messy power struggle, he never actually orders anyone to directly kill caterina or lucanis, not until he's backed into a corner.

and even after all that. despite even lucanis believing illario should be first talon, lucanis is still the better killer. illario is not strong enough to be the brutal assassin caterina needs him to be. so when lucanis seems to fill the role his mother left, grief and love for her dead heir apparent remains, and any of the other qualities caterina needs in her next talon doesn't matter. whatever his mother was, lucanis has to be. what illario does doesn't matter, because he will always be second best to caterina's memory of her favored daughter.

[chase-solidago]

Invasive Species and Xenophobia

Invasive species are complicated! People have a lot of feelings about them, positive and negative. Are plants that move "invaders" "colonizing", "immigrants", "citizens"? What does it mean to kill species that are from somewhere else? What if that species legitimately makes a poor neighbor and causes extinctions in other, native species? This complex, culturally-loaded issue is a foundational issue behind a lot of plant conservation and restoration.

This is a juicy and still actively disputed topic! The Guardian recently had a big article on colonialism in Botany, (tbh her views are dated and reductive, imo) and it’s come up again this week, to much hostility (cw: reddit). Yes, my region's native plant restoration came from literal nazis, but also, the impacts of some invasive species are real, not figments of a racist imagination. How do we balance these issues? What does ethical invasive management look like?

Since it’s such a juicy topic, I wanted to offer a few fun readings to share:

The Native Plant Enthusiasm: Ecological Panacea or Xenophobia?, Gert Gröning and Joachim Wolschke-Bulmahn, 2004, Arnoldia.

THE CLASSIC 20th century German nazis and native plants paper. Made a huge splash when it came out, and you will still encounter people who paint all native plant stuff with this brush. Summary: yeah the nazis loved their native plants and used them as part of their conquering process. Also, the first prairie plantings ever, located in Chicago, were done by a racist probable-nazi for racist reasons, full stop. I’ll let him speak for himself: “The gardens that I created myself shall… be in harmony with their landscape environment and the racial characteristics of its inhabitants. They shall express the spirit of America and therefore shall be free of foreign character as far as possible… the Latin and the Oriental crept and creeps more and more over our land, coming from the South, which is settled by Latin people, and also from other centers of mixed masses of immigrants. The Germanic character of our race, of our cities and settlements was overgrown by foreign character. The Latin spirit has spoiled a lot and still spoils things every day.” - Jens Jensen

Botanical decolonization: rethinking native plants, Tomaz Mastnak, 2014, Environment and Planning D: Society and Space

Rather than viewing native plant plantings as an act of racially-pure occupation, Mastnak positions native plants in California as a decolonization of the sub/urban lawn. Uses a lot of quotations from 16th century English philosopher Francis Bacon, and is heavy on the philosophical musings.

From killing lists to healthy country: Aboriginal approaches to weed control in the Kimberley, Western Australia by Bach et al., 2019, Journal of Environmental Management.

This paper talks through some of the native vs invasive debate, and offers a different perspective on how to approach to plant invasive management based on cultural relations, rather than country of origin or behavior.

Beyond ‘Native V. Alien’: Critiques of the Native/alien Paradigm in the Anthropocene, and Their Implications, Charles R. Warren, 2021, Ethics, Policy, & Environment

DENSE but thorough, if you want to follow the entire history of the native/invasive debate, this has you covered. The most interesting stuff, in my opinion, is the discussion of invasive denialism, IE: the impasse of “You’re just being racist!” Vs “You know nothing about ecology!” I recommend the Discussion, which starts on page 13.

[artifacts-and-arthropods]

Child's Writing Exercises and Doodles, from Egypt, c. 1000-1200 CE: this was made by a child who was practicing Hebrew, creating doodles and scribbles on the page as they worked

This writing fragment is nearly 1,000 years old, and it was made by a child who lived in Egypt during the Middle Ages. Several letters of the Hebrew alphabet are written on the page, probably as part of a writing exercise, but the child apparently got a little bored/distracted, as they also left a drawing of a camel (or possibly a person), a doodle that resembles a menorah, and an assortment of other scribbles on the page.

This is the work of a Jewish child from Fustat (Old Cairo), and it was preserved in the collection known as the Cairo Genizah Manuscripts. As the University of Cambridge Library explains:

For a thousand years, the Jewish community of Fustat placed their worn-out books and other writings in a storeroom (genizah) of the Ben Ezra Synagogue ... According to rabbinic law, once a holy book can no longer be used (because it is too old, or because its text is no longer relevant) it cannot be destroyed or casually discarded: texts containing the name of God should be buried or, if burial is not possible, placed in a genizah.

At least from the early 11th century, the Jews of Fustat ... reverently placed their old texts in the Genizah. Remarkably, however, they placed not only the expected religious works, such as Bibles, prayer books and compendia of Jewish law, but also what we would regard as secular works and everyday documents: shopping lists, marriage contracts, divorce deeds, pages from Arabic fables, works of Sufi and Shi'ite philosophy, medical books, magical amulets, business letters and accounts, and hundreds of letters: examples of practically every kind of written text produced by the Jewish communities of the Near East can now be found in the Genizah Collection, and it presents an unparalleled insight into the medieval Jewish world.

Sources & More Info:

Cambridge Digital Library: Writing Exercises with Child's Drawings

Cambridge Digital Library: More About the Cairo Genizah Manuscripts

[szczekaczz]

Puc, Bursztyn i goście – a children's book written by Jan Grabowski in 1933. It tells the story of the adventures of two rural mutts, whose peaceful lives are disrupted by the arrival of pedigree dogs from the city. Illustrated by Konstanty Sopoćko.

[abdquffa9]

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This is my little niece 🫂

An indescribable scene, this little girl is trying to get food to feed her younger siblings,❗️❗️ and she is sad because she did not provide them with the appropriate amount, is it the fault of these children that this happens to them? And can the world watch these scenes and remain silent?

Can you stand by us and support🍉 us? Please 🙏🙏do not ignore this appeal🙏🙏🙏🙏🍉🍉🍉🍉🇵🇸

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[if-you-fan-a-fire]

""ON YOUR MARK" AT R. H. McGREGOR SCHOOL FIELD DAY," Toronto Star. June 23, 1942. Page 8. ---- Tensely awaiting the starting gun for a field day race at R. H. McGregor school. East York, are LEFT to RIGHT: Beverley Barkey, Marilyn Cosby, Joan Hughes, Dawn Willard and Isabel Webster. One the sidelines with a ball almost as big as herself is little Jacqueline Hammond RIGHT. She put all she had into the ball-tossing contest when her turn came. The field day, complete with refreshments and entertainment, wound up a successful term of activities at the school.

[cavalierzee]

Baby and Children's Zip Ties

Inside the mass Graves that were uncovered at Nasser Hospital, Khan Younis, Gaza, they found children and babies who had their hands bound with zip ties.