People like history so much because they weren't there.

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History is full all kinds of yuck, like wooden false teeth and out houses. Everytime I see some show about it, I am so happy I am not living back then.

How anyone can be in awe of it is beyond me. Seems like it is something in which to gratefully and gladly escape, go the opposite direction.

I used to be in this phase an thought living in ancient times was better because nothing was secure so people could whatever they want, there weren't any rule you could do what you want and I also love the image of ancient markets, I like imagining what its like

There are some aspects of the past which are nice.

However, in the "olden" days there were many MORE rules to follow than there are at present.

I'm in total agreement with the OP. I really don't get it either.

I dont know about wooden false teeth but I have use a few outhouses. They are not as bad as it sounds as long as it's not too cold or too hot. It's usually better than just sh*****g in the woods.
A grosser thing from back then was the disregard for personal hygiene. In the winter people would go for over a month or more without bathing. I could not stand that.


I'm in awe of people's self sufficiency back then and how they made do with so little in terms of resources that we take for granted now.

We still have outhouses and use them a lot. We just call them Porta-Potties these days and only use them sometimes.

But I get your point. People do look back at "The Good Old Days" with a selective view to the things they wish were still current, ignoring the things they would have hated.

Infectious disease was more prevalent and less treatable.

Slavery was commonplace rather than a sinister exception to what we have otherwise wiped out.

Sexism at Saudi Arabian levels was the norm, rather than a worst-case example.

Wooden teeth would be annoying but pretty far down on the list of improvements. I'm putting slavery abolition and vaccination higher on the list of improvements.

That's very true. With every advance in production, resource self sufficiency is lost (would we be able to stomach literally being on the brink of starvation every winter?) With every advance in technology, skills are lost. The latest skill to be dwindling seems to be navigation because of GPS. But that's just one on a very long list of disappearing or disappeared skills.

It's been about twenty years since the last time I used a true outhouse.

It was a fairly decent outhouse, though.

For some purposes, a fencepost does quite nicely.

We're headed that way again with the irresponsible use of antibiotics that is so common.

About twenty years ago, I was talking to one woman one day who had been taking an antibiotic for a few days. I asked her how many days she had left on it and she said that she was feeling better so she stopped taking them and would use the rest later if she got sick.

I told her that if she wasn't going to take the whole course of antibiotics as prescribed, the doctor should never prescribe antibiotics for her again. She seemed to feel like that was an insult.

That is a head banger for sure.

But when all is said and done, people who prematurely stop their course of antibiotics probably contribute thne least to the growing rtesistance problem. Agricultural use and appropriate but still problematic clinical use are likely far greater contributors. (By appropriate but still problematic clinical use I mean doctors who necessarily use a broad spectrum antibiotic when they don't yet know exactly what they're dealing with and so can't use a targeted one.) And then there's unregulated, non-prescription antibiotic use in countries where people can just buy antiiotics in the market.

She still should have finished them though.

But we did defeat smallpox. So there's that.

I live in a house that was built around the time America signed it's Decaration of Independence.
I've even got an outside toilet too. It serves as my potting shed
I grew up in a town I used to think of as a living museum. It got it's 'city charter' couple of hundred years before Colombus was even born.

There's an 800yr old hospital I had my teeth pulled at as a 12-yr old. I didn't mind because I had already seen the museum and knew that all the old stuff wasn't being used no more. I don't remember wooden teeth. Only enormous syringes.
I always felt priveleged in a kind of way to have grown up being part of history as it were.

Little of what is built now will last to even become history.
Modern society will leave few wonders for the generations to come.
All that will be left to be dug up in couple of 1000 years time will be heaps of used car tyres and Tupperware pots.
The tarmac will long have disappeared...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_roads

What would be very interesting would be to be able to jump ahead to the next interglacial warm period and see if there is anything at all to see of todays northern cities after they spend tens of thousands of years underneath glaciers.

"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." -- George Santayana

"Those who can remember the past are condemned to watch those who can't remember the past repeat it." -- Author Unknown

In about a billion years, the rotation of the Earth should slow down to match the moon.

This won't be a nice place to be.

Any movement of the ice would obliterate anything it covered long before it thawed again. And moving is exactly what glaciers do best innit now?

Add a few more billon years and history itself will be history.
Serves us right