What are some of the earliest "firsts" that we have a definite date for?
We only know about when humans mastered fire or started using metal. But we know the exact date when the first powered flight took place. What are some really early "first ____" we know the date of for sure?
Skimming some material online, it looks like the best mechanism to get day-level dating for very old historical times are going to be celestial events, like eclipses, because we can run motions of those bodies backwards to compute precisely when the event occurred.
I searched for "first recorded eclipse":
https://www.livescience.com/59686-first-records-solar-eclipses.html
That isn't a first (well, other than in being the first known recorded eclipse to us), but my bet is that it'll be some event on the same day or within a specified number of days of an eclipse or similar.
So that probably places an outer bound on when such an event would have been known to have occurred, unless there's some other form of celestial event recorded way, way back when.
EDIT: Though it sounds like there is some controversy as to whether that is in fact what is being depicted.
https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/oldest-eclipse-art-loughcrew-ireland
EDIT2: and also according to the article, our accuracy in running those back that far starts to fall off:
It sounds like one complexity is that while eclipses can be run accurately (maybe not where they are visible), the problem is that when the day occurred is not, and you want to know the day. Apparently, there are some unknown factors affecting the rate of Earth's rotation a bit, and the error is enough that it becomes significant across millennia.
https://theconversation.com/archeoastronomy-uses-the-rare-times-and-places-of-previous-total-solar-eclipses-to-help-us-measure-history-222709
So if you had an event that was recorded happening in conjunction with an eclipse, we could maybe tell you pretty precisely how long ago it was in units of seconds. But we wouldn't know how many days ago it was, because the day is not a fixed unit of time and we don't know sufficiently-accurately how the length of a day has changed over that period.
Big Bang, T=0.
Well.... Maybe.
Time probably predates the big bang
I kind of wonder if time might be infinite in both directions, just because having a definitive beginning or end would seem to violate the conservation of matter and energy.
Why? Conversation of energy doesn't include time in any way. I'd love to hear your thoughts!
If we know that time precisely and accurately, then we don't know any other times more precisely than millions or billions of years ballpark
There is no definite date, but I do love the circa 1750 BCE "oldest customer complaint," so please forgive me.
Wow, I never really thought about how long Ur has stood. The city was already 2000 years old in 1750 BCE
Shout-out to my man Ea-Nasir over at !reallyshittycopper@lemmy.world !
Do you think Ea-Nasir would be ashamed that people over 3 millennia later are learning about how shitty his copper was, or would he be proud that people still speak his name?
That's a tough one! He clearly didn't care much about the reputation of his business, and in fact the only reason we know of him at all is that he saved the complaints he got! Most of us will have our names spoken for the last time when our children die; being remembered at all beyond, say, 100 years after your death is a heck of an accomplishment.
I dunno, we're just assuming he kept them for the sick pleasure of it. Maybe he was collecting evidence before he lodged a formal complaint with his material supplier?
Or he could have had an excellent product and kept the complaints in the same way people nowadays with excellent products show off the idiot one star reviews.
That's a possibility!
And people say there's no niche communities on Lemmy.
It's low-volume, but one of my favorites.
Low volume and high quality, unlike ea nasir's copper
Bazinga!
Fuck Ea-Nasir. All my homies hate Ea-Nasir
How can we know there weren't earlier consumer complaints that didn't survive tho?
Yeah, that's just the earliest known written complaint. And since the city was already two thousand years old at the time, the odds of there having been more are very high.
It's relatively easy for recent things related to big technological advances (first phone call, first man in space...); but it's nearly impossible for really old thing, because while you can find out one really old thing existed at one time, it's always merely the oldest known occurence. An earlier one might've not left surviving traces, or it's traces might've not been found yet...
April 16th, 1178 B.C. : the day Odysseus returns in the Odyssey.
https://www.universetoday.com/15253/homers-odyssey-may-chronicle-ancient-eclipse/.
Pretty neat
Probably November 30, 3340 B.C - this solar eclipse
When was the first artist signed work? There's some pottery that has artist emblems in it, but signing art doesn't seem to be a thing until the Renaissance. Who did it first?
If the artist didn't sign something, maybe a buyer or a patron left a mark.
Some dated statue or completed building?