Inventions and ideas have come along way since the beginning of time. Technology seems to have taken over the world, but some inventions I am grateful for. Below is a list of 16 of the oldest inventions of all time, pretty crazy how much they have changed.
1. Oldest Flushing Toilet – Glad they’ve made improvements since the stone doesn’t look that comfortable.
2. Oldest Board Game – Senet, an Egyptian board game dating back to 3100 BC. It’s name means “Game of Passing”. The actual rules of the game are unknown.
3. Oldest Prosthetic – Another Egyptian find, this prosthetic toe made from leather and wood was found on a female mummy dating back to 950 BC.
4. Oldest Bra – Dating back to 1390 AD, this linen bra was found during the restoration of Lengberg Castle in Austria. Referred to as “breastbags” in medieval times, the word “brassiere” wouldn’t be coined until the 20th century.
5. Oldest Socks – Made for wearing with sandals back in 400 AD.
6. Oldest Recipe – Sumerian Beer recipe dating back to 3000 BC. The result beer is very strong and would contain chunks of bread floating around in it.
7. Oldest Shoe – This shoe is 5,500 years old and was found in Armenia. It’s made from a single piece of oiled cow leather and bound with leather laces. The other shoe wasn’t found.
8. Oldest Statue – “The Lion Man”, dating back to 40,000 BC, was found in Southern Germany. It was carved from a single piece of mammoth tusk.
9. Oldest Instrument – A vulture-bone flute dating back 35,000 years, also discovered in Germany.
10. High Heel Shoes – The earliest known invention was back in Hellenic times.
11. Oldest Condom – Condoms were invented in 3000 B.C. in Egypt. Ancient drawings clearly depict men wearing condoms, sometimes made of material that may have been animal hide.
12. Oldest Plastic Surgery – Plastic surgery is one of the oldest forms of surgery practiced. Nose-reconstruction operations were probably performed in ancient India as early as 2000 BC.
13. Oldest Dentist’s Drill – The Indus Valley Civilization has yielded evidence of dentistry being practiced as far back as 7000 BC. This earliest form of dentistry involved curing tooth related disorders with bow drills operated, perhaps by skilled bead craftsmen.
14. Oldest Central Heating – Cities in the northern Ancient Roman civilization used central heating systems from around 1,000 BC, conducting air heated by furnaces through empty spaces under the floors and out of pipes in the walls — a system known as a hypocaust.
15. Oldest Perfume – The world’s first recorded chemist is considered to be a woman named Tapputi, a perfume maker who was mentioned in a cuneiform tablet from the second millennium BC in Mesopotamia.
16. Oldest Ice Skates – According to a study done by Federico Formenti, University of Oxford, and Alberto Minetti, University of Milan, Finns were the first to develop ice skates some 5,000 years ago from animal bones.
Aren’t you glad things have evolved into better things? I know I sure am! Some of these things, like the dentist drill, look just down right painful! I’m very glad things have evolved.