Yesterday, our family went to see the Pompeii exhibit at the Museum of Science. In an ironic twist, the ruins of Pompeii are in their condition because a disaster nearly two thousand years ago buried the city and preserved it until the eighteenth century.
My wife and I were amazed by the treasures. We were also pleasantly surprised that our two boys displayed remarkable patience and allowed us to linger as a family for over 90 minutes in the exhibit hall.
The picture above is from the exhibit. As I studied the details, I thought that this frescoe reminded me of some of the sketches of Leonardo DaVinci. Then I realized that he would not be born for about 1,400 years. I had always thought of the Romans as being relatively primitive (at least from an art perspective). I thought that the use of the vanishing point to give the illusion of depth wasn't invented until the Renaissance. You can clearly see that at least some artists over a millenia prior to that were well on the way.
There were other aspects of the exhibit that clearly reminded the viewer that these people were quite sophisticated and ingenious in their own ways. At Pompeii, there were fruits and vegetables from the Far East that passed through the thriving port city. Elaborate marble tables looked as if they were recently made and could be found in a regional antique store. There was even evidence of the doctors of the day splinting broken bones and suturing wounds.
Perhaps it is not so much that people have changed as much as our tools. It is difficult to imagine what our world would be like if we lacked the technology that undergirds much of our present economy. If those things were stripped away, we might actually be far less capable than these citizens of a long forgotten past.
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