It’s easy to think that we’re already living in the future. After all, we live in an era where electric cars roam the streets, commercial space flight is possible, and people can get rich overnight by buying and selling digital currencies with a dog logo. It’s unsurprising that with the fast pace of technological change, we’ve come to believe that the best things about modern life are all recent inventions.
Except a number of them aren’t. In fact, you’d be surprised about how many of our “modern” luxuries and cultural trends are drastically older than you think. Here are a few of the “new” things we have that are actually centuries old, including a sea creature that’s older than the rings of Saturn.
1. Plastic Surgery
Ever thought of getting a Brazillian butt lift? How about a nose job or lip fillers? While it’s easy to think of plastic surgery as a recent trend that was designed to support an Instagram-conscious culture of vanity, it’s actually a practical branch of medicine that restores skin and facial features after the occurrence of burn injuries and trauma.
It’s been around for so long that records of plastic surgery and even instructions on how to perform operations have existed way before any of us had access to anesthesia.
Indian doctors have been performing nose jobs since the 6th century BCE. A physician named Sushruta wrote a treatise on medicine called the Sushruta Samhita where he lists the identification and treatment of over a thousand diseases. Among these treatments were instructions on how to do skin grafts and reconstruct noses. You read that right: a full-on reconstruction.
Sushruta specifically calls for a forehead flap rhinoplasty for patients who have lost their noses. Legal systems in the ancient world can get pretty harsh and people convicted of theft or adultery would often have their noses cut off to signal to other people that they were criminals. Sushruta took skin from the forehead and transferred it to the nose, resulting in what may have been a seamless transplant that looked like the guy never had his nose cut off.
How do we know this? Because the procedure is still used today and is seen as the golden standard for rhinoplasty. If you’re not afraid of a little medical gore, you can check it out for yourself here.
2. Electric Cars
Say what you will about Elon Musk’s labor law violations, but you can’t deny that the guy put electric cars on the map. Before his campaign to put Tesla in the public consciousness, electric cars were seen as a sci-fi invention that could only exist in comic books and movies, much like alien sex workers with three breasts and genetically engineered catgirls.
Except for one tiny detail: electric cars have existed before the Civil War and far before gasoline-powered cars.
The first electric motor was invented in 1834 by Thomas Davenport, an inventor based in Vermont, who used the motor to run a small carriage. Electric cars in the 1830s. Talk about steampunk.
That said, “working” doesn’t mean viable for mass-market production. It was Thomas Parker who creates the first electric car model that could be commercially produced. Problem is, his invention never gained traction.
It would take until the 1900s for electric cars to become more popular. Interestingly, electric cars were advertised to women as they were easier to operate compared to steam cars that could take up to 45 minutes to start. Basically, it was the automatic vs. manual of its day.
Next time you see a Tesla on the streets, remember: it’s a return to tradition.
3. The Nintendo Company
Let’s have a quick show of hands. Who among you has a Nintendo Switch? Or anyone who’s played a Nintendo game or used any of Nintendo’s consoles? With how long Nintendo has been in the video game business, it’s not uncommon for many of us to have been raised on Nintendo products.
If you happen to be Japanese, that may be true not just for you but also for your great-grandparents.
Before they made millions on Pokemon, Nintendo first made bank by producing playing cards. The company celebrated its 130th anniversary in 2019, making Nintendo 132 years old this year. How drastically old is that? It only means that Imperial army soldiers were playing with Nintendo cards in World War 2.
Hanafuda cards were Nintendo’s first products. The company began manufacturing these traditional Japanese playing cards in 1889 and they would later become the most popular brand for hanafuda cards. Fun fact: Nintendo’s name might be a reference to its ties with illegal gambling.
4. Beer and Wine
Okay, so maybe this one is less of a surprise. Wine and beer are both created through a process called fermentation. Fermentation is one of the oldest techniques for food preservation and it keeps your food edible by letting yeast and bacteria turn the carbs in food into acids or alcohol that then preserves it. Naturally, these drastically old drinks make appearances in the Bible and in folktales.
But what you might not realize is how old beer and wine actually are. We aren’t just talking about Biblical old or Roman Empire old. We’re talking “possibly older than writing” old.
Let’s start with beer. While your modern beer enthusiast gets their pick of IPA, the first enjoyers of beer were drinking a version so thick it may as well have been bread soup. The earliest evidence for the production of beer dates back to 10,000 BCE and it even gets a mention in the oldest literary text we know of, the Epic of Gilgamesh.
Now, depending on which historian you ask, they’ll either tell you that bread was a byproduct of beer or that beer was a byproduct of bread. It turns out that getting hammered is a hallowed human tradition that we’ve been partaking in since the Neolithic period.
Meanwhile, the oldest evidence we have of humans making wine is roughly 8,000 years old, which is old but still much more recent compared to beer. Makes you wonder if Jesus was born a little earlier, we might be reading about him turning water into beer instead.
5. Aux Cords
Apple may be leading the campaign against aux cords, but it’s going to take a while to kill this institution of a connector.
That isn’t an exaggeration: aux cords have been around since the 19th century. It began with its drastically older ancestor, the quarter-inch jack. While modern aux cords feature 3.5mm jacks, the classic version came in at 6.35mm and dates back to 1878.
The classic jack first saw widespread use in telephone switchboards back in the days when you needed to call a telephone operator who would then connect you to the person you actually wanted to talk to.
When personal headsets became a thing in the 1950s, the humble aux cord adapted to have a smaller, 3.5mm version that has kept it in use for listening to everything from radios to Walkmans to smartphones. How has it managed to survive for so long? The aux cord is able to deliver amazing sound quality that Bluetooth still can’t quite match. That said, only time will tell whether the aux cord can survive the 2020s.
6. Sharks
Before you continue reading, make a guess. Really, just any wild guess will do. Are you thinking a few thousand years? How about a couple million? You’re probably not thinking of a drastically big enough number because sharks are actually 450 million years old.
Admittedly, it’s not modern sharks themselves that are 450 million years old but the whole of sharks as a species. That’s a massive number so let me help you wrap your head around that. Sharks? 450 million years old. Trees? 350 million years old. The rings of Saturn? 100 million years old.
Sharks first make their debut in the fossil record during the Late Ordovician Period. Natural History Museum curator Emma Bernard says that the first sharks were likely toothless, unlike their modern-day descendants who are capable of biting with up to 18,000 Newtons of force. If you want to visualize how that would pan out for you, just think of your organs floating in the open sea.
7. Indoor Plumbing
I know what you’re thinking and no, it isn’t ancient Rome.
The very first water pipes were laid in the town of Mohenjo-daro which stands on the right bank of the Indus River. It’s currently located in what is known today as Pakistan but in its heyday, it would have been under the Harappan Civilization which dominated the Indus River valley around 3,500 B.C.
Compared to ancient Rome, whose modern luxuries and comforts were largely only found among the upper classes, the town had indoor plumbing even for the tiniest homes belonging to humble citizens.
All of the pipes connected to the public drainage system and allowed wastewater to be safely transported out of homes and into covered drains that ran along main streets. The pipes were nothing like the plastic ones we use today or the lead pipes that came before them. Instead, a system of masonry conduits was used.
The Harappan people themselves were pretty cool. In fact, plumbing was just one of their many engineering feats. The civilization was one of the first to develop standardized weights and measures.
Their urban sanitation system still holds up today as it manages to outclass those of urban areas in the Middle East and contemporary Indian and Pakistani ones thousands of years after the people who used them died.
8. Complaining About Young People
Whether you belong to Gen X, Millenials, or Gen Z, you know you’ve listened to more than a few gray-haired seniors whine about how the youth today are degenerate, reckless, disrespectful, and every other negative adjective under the sun followed by a “back in my day.” Heck, if you’re one of the first two, you may have even complained about Gen Z being degenerate.
Congratulations, you’re part of a time-honored tradition stretching back to the 4th century B.C.
In Rhetoric, the Greek philosopher Aristotle writes of youngsters, “They think they know everything and are always quite sure about it.” In the same text, he says, “[Young people] are high-minded because they have not yet been humbled by life, nor have they experienced the force of circumstances.”
In simple English, he’s saying young people think they’re always right and are overconfident. Hmm, now where have we heard that before?
9. The Name “Tiffany”
Imagine you’re playing a game of D&D or, if you don’t play, that you’re watching a fantasy movie.
The rag-tag group of valiant protagonists comes back from killing the big bad and enters a gleaming throne room made of marble and gold. Trumpets blare, the crowd throws flowers at their feet, and an ethereal glow surrounds them. At the end of the hallway is a beautiful woman in an elegant gown, the queen of the elves who has made a rare public appearance to thank you all.
She introduces herself in a Valley Girl accent and tells you her name is Tiffany. Record scratch. End scene.
Tiffany? In your fantasy media? Absolutely! The name has been around since the 12th century, making it a perfect fit for medieval-inspired settings. It was originally given to baby girls born during the feast of Epiphany in the form of “Theophania“. One notable Tiffany was Tiphaine Raguenuel, an astrologer who lived during the 1330s.
So if you’re looking for a name with a drastically long history that doesn’t make your kid sound like he walked out of a history book, Tiffany might be your best bet.