30 Things That Are Older Than Most People Think, As Shared In This Viral Online Thread

An often misunderstood statistic

Drives me mad, you even hear people who should know better talking about ancient Egypt etc and how accomplished they were 'considering the life expectancy was only 30' as if everyone died at 30. Who did they think raised the children and passed on knowledge to the next generation of young adults? So stupid. Basically if children made it through the first five years their life expectancy shot up. Women who survived child birth and men who avoided getting killed in a war, had very good life expectancies.

They tried to pull this on the show The Food that Built America. In the episode about Hinez they said the average life expectancy was 18. Really people??? You expect us to believe people were dropping like flies at 18?

Yeah, I learned this one a few years ago and was surprised. I think it came up, because some pointed out that Julius Caesar was 55, when he was assassinated.

Maybe. I walked through a graveyard in a part of the world where a lot of my ancestor lived and saw very few graves of 70+ year olds but many of adults in the 40-50 year old age range.

I wonder if the ancient Romans were as fascinated by their predecessors as we are?

Does anyone else find it insane that the GPS coordinates for the Great Pyramid of Giza: 29.9792458°N, is exactly the same right down to the 9th digit matching the Speed of light: 299,792,458 m/s. Coincidence?

Well Cleopatra and Julius Caesar were in a relationship, so there was definitely an overlap while both civilizations were at or close to their peaks.

But Anthony and Cleopatra...

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the egyptians didn't build the pyramids. fight me.

We need to protect them. They are becoming endangered; they are the oldest predators in the ocean, and if they die out, so will the oceans.

it's amazing and terrifying to look at something so polished (from an evolution standpoint)

My favourite creature 🦈

sharks are in every way fascinating

Along with the idea that "Youth today are spoiled/selfish/lazy/immoral ect." Sure there are generational social changes, but mostly old people have liked to complain about young people, while conveniently forgetting their own youthful follies, for the the entire history of time. I just saw this is actually the next entry. LOL

I mean...in a sense they were right? We look back on how people thought the world would end and laugh because what they were panicking about wasn't a big deal...thus proving that things HAVE gotten worse over the years since their greatest problems are minor inconveniences compared to what we are dealing with now. This also suggests that 100 years from now people are going to look back on our problems and go "eh no big deal" since they'll have bigger fish to fry.

You will always find pessimists

It's just easier to spread those ideas and find fellow believers now.

The end IS near for all we start dying When we are born ...

What is mndboggling here that while we often see illustrations of fights between Stegosaurus and Tyrannosaurus Rex those would have been impossible. A whopping 90 million years of time separates Stegosaurus and T-Rex while "only" c 70 million years separates us from T-Rex.

Shouldn't that be "Hominid ancestors" (Hominidae).

We run our world off of the backs of dinosaurs and ancient plants. From cars to plastic we never have been able to get rid of slave labour if it wasn't for them.

Also dinosaurs lived on the opposite side of the galaxy from us. Just like the Earth orbits the Sun, the Sun orbits the center of the Milky Way and it takes about 230 million years to complete one orbit.

Also, mammals were around the whole time the dinosaurs were, but they were tiny things about the size of mice.

When was it invented?

This might be a stupid question but it's genuine so hear me out... So, before this, how did people light things like candles, gas lamps, fires in fireplaces / for cooking etc? Poke a long stick in a big fire and use that to light candles and lamps? Cool. But how did they light the big fire in the first place? Does this mean people used flints and twigs to make fires from like, the Stone Age, all the way up until 1822?? Surely not.

and that lighter right there was made out of shrapnel of an artillery shell that was at the battle of Verdun. It's trench art. I've sold Verdun trench art a couple times.

I have a couple of these passed to me by my uncle, no idea if they work

wait a second.. really? that doesn’t even make sense

The first contact lenses (in 1888) were so rough the creator had to dowse his eyes with cocaine powder to numb them and that only lasted 30 minutes

My grandfather was born without irises. So his pupils were always fully dilated (ouch). He was one of the first people to use Bausch and Lomb hard contacts, with irises painted on them. Late 30s/early 40s I think. I always thought he had beautiful blue eyes!!! Nope. Painted. This was long before contacts were a common vision solution and long, long before the colored contacts we have now. I actually found the originals after he died. Totally freaked me out. We donated them back to B&L. Not sure what they did with them. Maybe a museum or something?

They must have hurt

Back to the old, out-of-focus drawing board!

I don't think I would have used them then...

Some things never change.