Listen if the study of ancient humans doesn’t make you at least a little bit emotional idk what to say.

I started crying today at the museum because they had reconstructed the shoes of Otzi the iceman.

Either he or someone he knew who cared about him made these shoes out of grass and bear skin and twine and he was wearing them when he died over five thousand years ago.

And a Czech researcher and his students did reconstructions of these shoes and wore them to the same place where he died to test them out and they were like yep! These shoes are really cozy and comfy and didn’t give us blisters while hiking!

Is that not just the coolest shit ever????

glad to see that not only was "live, laugh, love" was a concept in ancient rome but they were also displaying the sentiment in forums for all to see

Stone cooking supports used to grill skewers of meat by Minoans on Santorini, circa 3600 years old. The line of holes in the base supplied coals with oxygen. Many consider modern "souvlaki" street kebabs a direct descendant of this portable food system. Museum of Prehistoric Thera, Greece. More: https://thetravelbible.com/museum-of-artifacts/

Some fanart of this ancient figurine! Also got commissioned to draw her hanging out with a friend!

i wish i could talk to the artists of cave paintings. do you know! do you know that your art lasted thousands of years! do you know that it's still beautiful! do you know that you've left us a view of creatures and cultures that have been gone since before our history starts! do you know how many people look at what you've made and think, "this is what it is to be human"! do you know i'm still in awe of your skill and elegance and stylization even now in a world that would probably be unrecognizable to you! aaaaa

I can’t tell you how much I love this artwork from ancient Egypt (the Middle Kingdom). People have been raising cattle and practicing animal husbandry for so long, that there is something almost inherently human about this scene.

Everyone in the field of veterinary medicine or agriculture knows the feeling of staying up late with a laboring animal trying to make sure both mom and baby are okay. Delivering a calf is often physically and emotionally exhausting work that takes enormous patience and learned skill. It requires a unique balance of physical strength and gentleness to do correctly. There is no feeling quite like getting that baby out and everyone is okay. I’m certain ancient people must have felt the same way, and I wonder if the artist knew this feeling firsthand. I wonder if those humans depicted were people the artist knew, if the cow and calf maybe were as well.

i love very very early sculpture pieces because they evoke such visceral truth about human nature in a way that modern art is just incapable of replicating

Ancestral Puebloan (Anasazi) Hand Prints pictograph Photographer: Susan Silberberg-Peirce San Juan River, near Bluff, Utah, United States

i love you ancient girls and women making things

~ Crab Vessel with Double Spout.

Place of origin: Colombia, Calima Region

Period: Ilama Period

Date: 1500 B.C.-A.D. 100

Medium: Ceramics

Dancing Muskoxen by Pitseolak Qimirpik (Inuit)

St. Edmund, decapitated, cries ("hic, hic, hic") in the margins of a 12th century Bible

MS 002III (The Bury Bible), f. 322r

Cambridge, Corpus Christi College, via red_loeb

3000 year old petroglyph of a man running away from a big snake. With erection. It is one of the many Rock carvings in Tanum, Sweden and was painted red so its easier for tourists to see.

Click for more artifacts

dancing female tomb figures, 618-906 c.e., tang dynasty, eartenware and pigment

Textile fragment, 500s-800s, Byzantine Empire, Syria.