When We Were Young

That phrase started a lot of sentences, yes, when I was young. When my parents were young, they were nice to their siblings. When they were young, they never talked back to their parents. They didn’t have that many toys nor did they complain about it. They didn’t….they didn’t….they didn’t.

I’m exaggerating, of course, but that’s the kind of sage advice you try dredging up from your memory when you’re expecting your own kids and wondering what important things you’ll need to teach them.

So imagine my surprise when my kids, and a lot of others their age, seem to have a lot of things already figured out. Wanna know how to download an app? Ask my then-5-year-old, who had to teach me. Because I’d been writing a mystery novel, my then 8-year-old decided to try her hand at it. A few weeks later, she had about a whole series written plus several more outlined. “Mommy, it looks like I’m going to get published before you!” (Smirk.)

More recently, we had an enlightening coincidence. I was at work one day, stumped over how to use algorithms to check a colleague’s math. When I picked up my kids from summer camp afterwards, it turned out they had learned algorithms to solve the Rubik’s cube. Yes, algorithms. They also learned about robotics at a couple camps this summer, and surprisingly, it’s not a unique concept. The instructors themselves are getting younger in some cases.

Stab in the gut? Not at all.Totally impressive. I wanna be like these girls!

“How about we just pretend we’re sisters?” I ask them once in a while when I need to draw from the wisdom of their confident outlook.

“Sure,” they answer. “Do you want to be the middle one this time?”

“No, make me the youngest. You guys can take care of me.”

“No problem, Mom. It’s done.” They exchange a furtive glance, as if to ask, is she for real?

I am. For certain, today’s youth are inheriting a lot of our big scary problems—in technology, health, civil rights, the environment, the business world, ethics, you name it. No doubt about it—our generation and the one before us—have done some serious damage to the world. And yet something tells me my daughters’ generation will be the one that gets it right. They have the world at their fingertips, and all the know-how and confidence we may have lacked. This is the generation that will tackle these challenges, be courageous and do the right thing, and smart enough to find real solutions.

Remember Angela Zhang, and her awesome story from earlier this year? It still gives me shivers. In January, Angela was a 17-year-old high school student who had decided to use her free time to study, what else, cancer. She’d been reading the advanced medical literature since she was a high school freshman, and about the time she was a junior, she got the hang of it and was able to start working the puzzle out on her own. This past January, she won a $100,000 award from the national Siemens science contest for her research paper on the topic, which scientists say just may hold the cure to cancer! Check out her amazing story here. 

Closer to home, one of my neighbor’s kids, a 12-year-old also tackling the world’s problems in his spare time, invented a car sensor that sets off an alarm when it detects the car leaking carbon monoxide. Car makers are seriously looking into this technology, which oddly enough, has no counterpart in the car industry. Yet this amazing invention didn’t even take the top contest prizes, because despite its innovative safety function, it turns out other kids in this age group are making advances in more critical life sciences, in the study of diseases and cures, for example. Go figure. When I was 12, working on the yearbook at my junior high school was a pretty big deal. 

I’ve blogged about this little anecdote before a couple years ago, but I can’t help thinking about it again now. I once walked in on my daughters rapidly pounding the little pink keys on their toy laptops and asked them what they were up to. “Just reading up on all the ways we’re making the world a better place, Mom,” the little one immediately answered, not even pausing to look up or think about my question.

 
And no doubt, we’ll all be reading about their successes soon. Quite possibly in a field you and I have never heard of. Maybe one not yet invented. I, for one, can’t wait.

The Cutting Edge

By Patricia Winton

As a child, I was mesmerized by a pair of scissors in my great-great aunt’s handwork basket. They were shaped somewhat like a Great Blue Heron, with an elongated bill as the blades. She made lace by tatting, and she used these little scissors to clip the thread. She had a piece of red string tied to one of the finger holes, which she said helped her find the scissors in the bottom of her work basket.

She died when I was seven, but she gave me those scissors before she went. I have them still, tucked into my sewing basket in Rome.

This early fascination with scissors, I suppose, made it inevitable that by now I would own more than a dozen pairs. I have scissors in every room and a pair on the terrace. I hate struggling to open recalcitrant packaging, so I like to have scissors handy to do the job for me.

Folding Scissors

I carry them in my pencil case and my book bag. I even have a small pair with blades that retract into the handles, making them security friendly at airports because it’s impossible to stab someone with them. I also have a special pair for cutting buttonholes after making them with a sewing machine.

As I began thinking about inventions for this post, scissors seemed like the place to begin. Leonardo da Vinci has been erroneously credited with inventing them, but they’re much older than that.

The first scissors were probably forged around 1500 B.C. in Egypt from a single piece of bronze. The metal was bent into an elongated U shape with the tips flattened into blades. To cut, the user had to squeeze the handle, forcing the two blades to cross each other.

Scissors from ancient Egypt

Examples of this type of scissors have been unearthed in archaeological sites in Egypt, Asia, and Roman settlements throughout Italy. A Grecian urn dated around 220 B.C. contains an image of scissors.

The modern type of scissors, with two blades held together with a rivet or screw were invented in ancient Rome around 100 A.D. Roman-era documents relating to guilds cite scissors as tools used by tailors, haberdashers, and smiths. The guilds for tailors, drapers, and leather workers also designed scissors into their crests.

By around 1000 A.D. there were even guilds for scissor makers. The scissors at that time were made by hand, and the maker who could produce a fine blade was very much in demand. And while Leonardo obviously didn’t invent scissors, he probably made some improvements to their design, thereby making them easier to use.

The real breakthrough in the evolution of scissors came in 1761, when Robert Hinchliffe of Sheffield, England, first used cast steel to manufacture them. The molten steel was poured into molds, creating a uniformity that ensured their faithful reproduction. From this period until late 19th century, scissors often had elaborately designed handles, but designs were simplified to better accommodate mass production later on.

Buttonhole Scissors

Now, there are many specialized scissors: blunt-tipped, blunt-bladed scissors for children; pinking shears for dressmakers; curved-bladed ones for clipping toenails; decorated blades for crafts; and indescribable ones for snipping nose hair.

So as I look at my little Great Blue Heron scissors, I’m amused to think that I live in the city where this type of scissors got their start.
 



I blog each Monday on Italian Intrigues. Please drop by.

Yakhchal - Persia's Ancient Icemakers

By Heidi Noroozy

Recently, I went shopping for a new refrigerator – a venture that quickly made my head swim. Double doors, top freezer, bottom freezer, pullout drawers, glass or wire shelves, with or without an icemaker that can deliver ice in multiple forms, from crushed to cube, in-door water dispenser, humidity sensors to prolong the life of perishables – refrigerators today can do everything except order groceries. It makes me yearn for simpler times.

Photo by Andreas Praefcke

What I’d really like is a plain old-fashioned icebox, a pretty wooden chest in my kitchen, lead-lined for insulation with a big slab of ice to keep things cold. Well, maybe I could do without lead in close proximity to my food. And I expect the interior might get a bit slushy as the ice melts. Besides, where can you find a reliable iceman these days? But at least I wouldn’t have to battle spoilage when the power goes out.

Or maybe I could just build an ancient Persian yakhchal in my back yard.

Invented around 400 B.C., a yakhchal is a kind of walk-in icebox that looks like a huge, conical beehive. In ancient times, they were built mainly near desert towns to store ice and keep food cold during the scorching summer months.

A yakhchal has two parts: one above ground and the other subterranean. The above-ground dome, which can be as high as 60 feet, is made of a special brick material called sarooj, a mixture of sand, clay, egg whites, lime, goat hair, and ash. The sarooj walls create a waterproof barrier and provide a kind of thermal insulation. Beneath the dome lies the ice pit, a deep cavern dug into the earth for storing ice.

Although “yakhchal” is the modern Farsi word for the contraption we call the fridge (and also a synonym for “glacier”), the ancient versions had a slightly different purpose. Sometimes they indeed stored food, but their main function was to make ice.

Yakhchal near Kerman, Iran

Yakhchals worked like this: a qanat, or underground irrigation trench (sort of like an upside-down aqueduct), transported water to the ice pit, where it would freeze during cold winter nights. The ice was then chopped into blocks and stored in separate chambers, where it could be easily removed as needed.

Some yakhchals operated according to a slightly different principle. Great slabs of ice would be hauled down from the mountains during the cold winter months and stored in the ice pit. As the ice slowly melted, trenches in the floor of the pit collected the runoff, where it refroze during the night and could be cut into blocks for easy transport. Pretty clever, don’t you think?

Most yakhchals had a wall built on the south side to block the searing rays of the sun and shade the ice pit. Tall towers, known as badgirs (wind catchers), were also added for ventilation. By circulating warm air from the surface and cold air from the ice pit, the badgirs acted as a kind of thermostat to better regulate the temperature inside the yakhchal.

I probably won’t build one of these practical ice houses in my small back yard. (Where would I put it?) But I am intrigued by the ingenuity of the ancients, who devised a way to meet the challenges of a harsh climate and enjoy the finer points of life: fresh food and cold drinks on hot summer days.

Looking Good in Ancient Egypt

The ancient Egyptians invented a whole host of useful products that we continue to use today – from locks and clocks, to plows, paper, and perfume. But because a few months back, I told you about how the ancient Indians invented plastic surgery, I thought this month it was only apropos to tell you about one of our seemingly modern inventions that actually hails from ancient Egypt – eye makeup.

Not just eye makeup but cosmetics in general. Even deodorant.

Personal hygiene and appearance were of supreme importance in ancient Egypt, as much to an individual’s social standing as to what was considered important for good health and good luck. Wearing makeup was also considered necessary to please the gods.

Priests, the servants of the gods, had to bathe and shave several times a day and constantly ensure they didn’t catch parasites or lice from the hair of the mummies they came in contact with. Even after death, one had to present themselves well for Judgment Day. Cosmetics were some of the offerings left in tombs for the dead to use in the afterworld. After death, some ladies of the court were buried with makeup such as body scrubs and cleansing cream, among other royal treasures.

But it wasn’t just the royals, the priests, and, okay, the dead who wore makeup. Even the common man, right down to the poor people, were expected to wear it. The culture practically required it, for both men and women. In fact, the word for makeup also means “protection,” as in protection from the evil eye. Most makeup was made from extracted galena, a bluish-gray mineral that is the principal ore of lead, and applied with sticks. You could tell class distinctions from the kinds of applicator sticks people used.

And while these days, we want our makeup and colognes to smell healthy and natural, not too overpowering, the opposite was true in ancient Egypt, where more was always better. Skin lightening, for example, was popular but it didn’t have to look natural. The whiter or paler the application, the better the look. Many women, not just in Egypt but in lots of cultures, used lead, even mercury, to make their skin appear whiter and brighter. (Obviously, they didn’t know then just how bad those ingredients really were for their health.)

Makeup was also used as a sunblock as well as a disinfectant. Razors, tweezers, and creams were used to remove unwanted hair. Oils and ointments were applied to protect the skin from the hot air. Fingernails were dyed with henna.

Using thin brushes, ancient Egyptians applied black kohl or else green malachite to the upper and lower eyelids, painted on thin lines reaching from the corner of each eye to the edge of the face, and darkened the eyebrows. It was thought eye makeup had magical, even healing, powers, helping to both prevent and heal eye diseases. An eye without makeup was considered the evil eye itself.

Lip gloss made from either animal fat or plant dye and rouge or blush made from red plant dye were also popular items – again, for both genders.

How you smelled was also of great importance. 

The ancient Egyptians rubbed pellets of ground carob into their skin and placed little balls of incense and even porridge to neutralize body odor. 

The first perfumes were Egyptian, and they were famous and in high demand across the Mediterranean in those days, some four thousand years ago. Most of these perfumes were plant based; the Egyptians soaked the roots, leaves, or blossoms of plants such as frankincense, myrrh, roses, almonds, lilies, henna, or cinnamon, in oil, sometimes cooked them, then extracted their oils to produce liquid perfumes, adding wax or fat to make creams and ointments. 

For soaps, the Egyptians used something called swabu (from which the English word “swab” derives), a paste made from clay or ash, mixed with oils and salts, scented, and which could be rubbed in and possibly worked into a lather.

Egyptians walked barefoot so they used clay or wooden foot baths to soak their feet in when they got home.

They produced different kinds of hair lotions using beeswax and resin. These lotions were thought to help prevent, even cure, balding and graying hair.

We may live in a society that places too much emphasis on our appearance, but think how far we’ve come in four thousand years.

Pony Express On The Silk Road

James Farley Building in New York

Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds.

The above sentence is inscribed on the James Farley Post Office building in New York City, which opened its doors in 1914 and is now a registered historic site. Considering the inscription’s location, one might be forgiven for thinking it is a tribute to the diligence of American postal workers. But it’s not. The words were written 2,500 years ago by the Greek historian, Herodotus, who was expressing his admiration for the Persian empire’s mail couriers in the sixth century B.C.

The practice of sending messages through couriers probably began as soon as people started writing their thoughts down on physical media, but it was Cyrus the Great (600–530 B.C.), the founder of Persia’s Achaemenid dynasty, who invented the world’s first regular postal system. He’d organized his empire in the form of satrapies, provinces that were granted a certain amount of autonomy and could practice their own religions and customs, but always under Cyrus’s central authority.

To maintain this authority, Cyrus needed a way to exchange information with his satraps (governors), so he came up with a system of relay couriers (chapars) who could cross the empire swiftly and deliver important messages.

He calculated how far a chapar could ride in a day without stopping to feed or water his horse. At each point, Cyrus built a chapar-khaneh (courier house), a posting station where the courier could swap his exhausted mount for a fresh horse and continue on the next leg of the journey or hand his packet of letters on to another courier, relay-style.

Sound familiar? The Pony Express of the 1860s American West used the same principle of speedy horses and relay posts. It was certainly a practical way to get messages to their destinations in a world that lacked proper roads.

The third Achaemenid emperor, Darius I (550–486 BC), expanded Persia’s postal system, adding new routes as the empire grew. He built the Royal Road between his administrative seat at Susa (in present-day Iran) and Sardis, the capital of the ancient kingdom of Lydia (in eastern Turkey).  The road enabled Darius to add horse-drawn carts, known as barids, to the chapar couriers and transport larger amounts of mail than a single horseman could carry.

Persia's Royal Road

A good chapar could cover the 1,600 miles of the Royal Road in seven to nine days, a journey that took three months on foot. As Herodotus wrote, “nothing mortal travels as fast as these Persian messengers.”

I doubt that the life of a chapar was as glamorous or heroic as Herodotus makes it sound. There had to be many hazards along the way as the couriers rode through treacherous mountain passes in the Zagros range, evaded bandits, and passed across desolate plains in Asia Minor. And what did they do if a horse went lame in the middle of nowhere, half a day’s journey to the next posting station? I hope Cyrus paid his couriers well. After all, these men risked their lives to deliver the empire’s precious mail.

Ancient Games, Modern Twists

We’ve played Chutes and Ladders with our young daughters for years without ever realizing how good it was for our karma.

Turns out our Sesame Street-inspired Chutes and Ladders, the Americanized name for what the British called Snakes and Ladders, was originally a morality game from ancient India, one of a variety of family board games, in fact, that started with the invention of dice. 

Archaeologists once excavated the oldest known dice from a 5,000-year-old backgammon set in Shahr-i-Sukhta (Burnt City) in Southeastern Iran. But more recent excavations in the Indus Valley suggest a possible South Asian origin. Possibly corroborating this discovery is that dice were mentioned in the ancient Indian tomes, the Rig Veda and Mahabharata, as a means for gambling. It was even listed as one of the games the Buddha would not play. (He kept a list? Apparently, he also didn’t approve of board games, pick up sticks, hopscotch, playing with toys or balls, charades, or the olden-day version of Pictionary. There are also lists of things he would not watch [dancing and animal fights, among them] and things he wouldn’t wear [mainly anything ornamental or decorative]).

But the ancient Indians loved dice, even creating a number of popular board games with them, games the world continues to play today. The modern forms of Parcheesee and Ludo, for example came from an old game called pachisi (from pachis, which means twenty-five, the largest score that could be thrown in one shot). 

Before Milton Bradley brought Snakes and Ladders from England to the States and changed its name, it was Moksha Patam, which literally means the path to salvation (or the ladder to salvation). The original version was based on the ideas of luck, chance, and destiny. The ladders represented the attainment of higher virtues, such as humility, faith, and knowledge, and the snakes represented vices such as greed, rage, theft, and murder. In the original game, there were more snakes than ladders, to signify how much more difficult the righteous path is than its alternative.

Another game that’s weathered the travel through time and place is chess. The Gupta dynasty in India created it sometime between the 5^th and 6^th century AD and called it chatrang or chaturanga, meaning “having four limbs,” which in turn was thought to represent the four divisions of the military (in those days, elephants, chariots, foot soldiers, and horsemen). Originally, the Indian military played it as a battle simulation game to work out strategy—with 100 or more squares on the original chess boards compared to 64 in our most common modern form. Scholars from those days noted that one of the main reasons ancient Indians used ivory was to produce the pieces for chess and backgammon sets.

An illustration from an old Persian
manuscript shows Indian ambassadors
presenting the chatrang to the king
of Persia, Khosrow I Anushirwan.
(Photo by Firdausi)

From India, chatrang spread to Persia, which changed its name to shatranj. When attacking the piece we now know as the king, the Persians would call out “Shah!” (the Persian word for king, typically the military ruler) and shah mat for checkmate. (Hear the similarity with the current form?) From there, the game spread throughout the Arab and Greek empires then to the Byzantine empire through Spain. Once it made its way through Europe, the game took on its current form around the 15^th century, with ornamental pieces shaped as kings, queens, bishops, knights, and rooks, before making its way to East Asia via the Silk Road.

Much of the world derived its names for chess from the Persian one: in Latin, shatranj became scacchi, thus influencing the names in languages derived from Latin, such as echecs in French, or inspired by the Germanic, Russian, or Slavic, such as schack in Swedish or szacyhy in Polish. Mongols call the game shatar; Ethiopians, senterej; and the Russians as shakhmaty. In German, Schachmatt means checkmate.

Plenty of food for thought next time I sit down with our beat-up board games, cluttered with pictures of Big Bird and Elmo, right?