We like to think that we know it all, but in reality, we have a lot to learn.
I’m looking at you, friend. Actually, I’m looking at everyone, including myself.
Are you ready to get taken to school?
What things are older than we think they are?
Let’s see what people on AskReddit had to say about this…
1. Innovators.
“A lot of people don’t realize this, but Cadillac is responsible for a lot of the innovations we see in cars today.
- Component-part interchangeability in 1907, scoring Cadillac the prestigious Dewar Trophy (first US auto marque to do so)
- The first enclosed cabin on a vehicle – 1910
- The electric starter – invented by Cadillac’s founder after his friend died trying to start his car with a crank, also netting Cadillac it’s second Dewar Trophy (only marque to win twice) – 1912
- The first mass produced V8 engine – 1915
- First V-16 engine – 1930
- First sunroof – 1938
- Power steering becomes standard equipment on all Cadillac models – 1954
- Automatic headlight dimming – 1954
- First power seats with memory function – 1957
- Seatbelts become standard equipment in all Cadillac models – 1963
- Climate Control, first introduced in 1964
- First cars to offer stereo radios – 1966
- Electric seat warmers – 1966
I believe they were also the first to offer air bags in a lot of their models, can’t remember. There’s even more than what I listed going later into the 20th century, Cadillac has a pretty cool history and I don’t get to talk about it much.”
2. I thought this only dated to the 1980s.
“The name Tiffany.
It dates back to the 12th century, and has actually led to a thing in writing called “the Tiffany problem,” because you can have a well-researched historical novel that people just don’t buy into, because you named your 12th century peasant Tiffany.
It just sounds laughably anachronistic.”
3. Wow.
“Nintendo.
Nintendo was founded in 1889.
Van Gogh painted Starry Night in 1889.
Adolf Hitler was born in 1889.”
4. Drink up!
“Beer.
It’s one of the oldest prepared drinks in the world. It not only predates every civilization but actually contributed to their creation.”
5. Let’s get the dirt.
“Social media.
Wealthy ancient Romans had a system where they used slaves as scribes and messengers in order to share gossip and art/poetry and news updates with friends in their social circle.”
6. Kind of crazy.
“Netflix!
I feel like it is only a few years old but it was invented in 1997.”
7. I can see!
“Contact lenses.
Leonardo da Vinci had the idea of contact lenses in 1508 and the first successful contact lenses were made in 1888.”
8. Sturdy stuff.
“The use of concrete.
It’s use goes as far back as the Mayans, but more notably in Egyptian construction as well as in Rome. The Romans had an arguably greater concrete mix than we currently have, but that was never passed down.
Eventually the use of concrete fell out of popularity for centuries as we seemingly lost the information needed to create it, as if the recipe was thrown out and nobody wrote it down.”
9. Life is beautiful.
“Humans with our intelligence and empathy and rationality.
People in the past lacked education and our cumulative knowledge – but even cavemen thousands of years ago didn’t differ too much from us.
Cave of Forgotten Dreams, a documentary about cave paintings from 30,000 years ago really drove this home for me. The art there is so expertly rendered it really shows a thinking and curious mind.”
10. Music history.
“In my experience, a lot of people I know personally don’t realize that music cassettes were invented in the 60s.
Cassettes didn’t really take off in the states until the late 70’s, but the first albums released on cassettes hit shelves in 1966.”
11. The good old hockey game.
“The Stanley Cup.
It predates the NHL, and if you look at the history of teams that have won it, there is a year where it wasn’t awarded due to the Spanish Flu pandemic.
The top of it is the original trophy, but the rings on the bottom are replaced every couple of years when they fill up with names.”
12. A different America.
“A Native American empire nearly a third of the size of the present day United States (that’s 110 MILLION people) existed in the Great lakes region at the time the Old Testament of the Bible was thought to be written.
Whoa.”
13. Stargazing.
“The star HD 140283, also nicknamed the “Methuselah Star,” is about 200 light years away from us and looks nondescript.
However, if we take its composition and compare it to our standard models of stellar evolution for other, better-studied stars, the star’s age pops out as 14.46 ± 0.8 billion years old. Let me remind you, the universe is thought to be about 13.8 billion years old, and we don’t think we got the first stars until maybe 200 million years after that…
Obviously, we do not think the Methuselah star is literally older than the universe when it is more likely that we just don’t understand stellar evolution for stars like it super well. However, it is exciting because it is undoubtedly a very old star, and currently we do not have any observations of what the first stars were like in the universe.
Called Population III stars, it’s thought they were larger than stars are today because there were no metals from stellar fusion to contaminate the hydrogen gas, and they’d thus only live a few million years tops.) As such, it’s very interesting to have a very old star relatively next door to us in the Milky Way!
It will be really interesting in coming years if other very early stars are finally observed to figure out how old they are, and how they compare to this one.”
Now we want to hear from you.
In the comments, share more things that are older than people think.
Please and thank you!
