From Pompeii To Today, We Are Still The Same

As you grow older it seems like events increasingly mark age.  They are like a highlighter illuminating a moment of our existence.  Today I opened an article that explained to me that on this day in 1967 the Beatles released Sgt. Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band.  I would have been 20 days old.  If you tried to explain this album to young people today it would be as mythical as the Iliad and the Odyssey.  Hell even people of my generation are often disconnected, post Beatle remnants.  

Technology is the most vulnerable to rapid change and a lack of understanding from one generation to the next.  Often words can become meaningless or non-sensical in just twenty years time.  I often make a joke when I hear a phone ringing that increasingly no one understands.  The ring sounds and I yell “I’ll get it.”  In the era of cellular telephones attached to everyone of this who understands.  When I was young we had a single telephone in the house we all shared.  When a phone call came in someone would announce their intent to answer alleviating all other’s from the need to move.  I will call you when I can get to a phone was a reoccurring refrain.  We were not tied to technology as we are today.  Pay phones were ever present, today they have ceased to exist.  

Media today is centered around .jpg and audio files.  The concept of re-winding is alien in nature.  The idea that an audio cassette or a video tape had to be forward winded or re-winded to find the spot you wished to access seems positively primitive.  With TV we only had four channels and you actually had to plan when you wanted to watch something.  VCRs were the only option and programming them was akin to algebra.  When I would travel anywhere it involved maps and atlases an exercise that closely resembled planning on invading a small country.  

This gap in technology can often make us feel like we are separated from those that came before us.  That they were in some way different people.  Those appearing in a black and white photo are bad enough with their different styles.  The world seems dark and drab.  We forget it was filled with color equal to what we see today.  That the people, while long since dead, are not so different.  Those in paintings seem even more distant.  Their faces and dress seem positively alien.  The truth however is that as humans they loved, lost, joked and lived almost identically as we do today.  It is simply their voices and their faces that have evaporated in the mists of time.  

The other day I came across an article that translated graffiti found in the ruins of Pompeii.  For those that don’t know, Pompeii was a Roman tourist town that ceased to exist in 79 AD when mount Vesuvius erupted and buried the place in ash.  It is a remarkable place because it exits as a time capsule.  Much of the city was not lost, it was simply buried and left to rediscovery in the modern age.  

The graffiti wall while not important in a traditional historical sense, has it’s own perhaps even more relevant message.  It tells us that the people that once scribbled on the walls and walked on the streets of this ancient town were as childish and human as we are today.  They drew pictures of penis’ and joked with each other.   The following comments have been recorded (Thanks to other web bloggers who have recorded them)

“Weep, you girls.  My penis has given you up.  Now it penetrates men’s behinds.  Goodbye, wondrous femininity!”  

“Restitutus says: “Restituta, take off your tunic, please, and show us your hairy privates.”

“At Nuceria, look for Novellia Primigenia near the Roman gate in the prostitute’s district.”

“I screwed a lot of girls here.”

“On June 15th, Hermeros screwed here with Phileterus and Caphisus.”

“Gaius Valerius Venustus, soldier of the 1st Praetorian Cohort, in the century of Rufus, screwer of women.”

“To the wine defecating here.  Beware of the curse.  If you look down on this curse, may you have an angry Jupiter for an enemy.”

“Theophilus, don’t perform oral sex on girls against the city wall like a dog.”

“Atimetus got me pregnant.”

https://sites.google.com/site/ad79eruption/the-writing-on-the-wall

As I grow older and know that with each passing day my time is growing shorter there is a certain comfort to knowing I am not much different than a guy that lived 2,000 years ago and probably won’t be that much different from a guy 2,000 years from now.  I might not recognize the toys he has but I bet you he is scribbling a penis somewhere.