3d ago

My kids bored out of their minds with a house full of toys, don't know how good they got it

Lil Nabû-zēr-kitti-lišir woulda killed for better toys

3d ago

Here is the masterpiece Ishka built for the children of our ruler

113 20

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"We have done it, Assurnipal my friend. Now we sit back and wait until someone invents the internal combustion engine."
- Or maybe we just tie some horses on the thing.

A carriage without a horse? Kids and their stupid fantasy toys.
- Isn’t it a chariot?
  
  I think so. Our automotive-prone minds see it pointing this way and see a car, but that's probably the back.
- It was brand new, it came without batteries.

My favorite "kids have always been kids" moment in history is Iddin-Sin's letter to his mom, bitching about how he "has nothing decent to wear" and "whose fault is that really".
- Wow pretty much the equivalent of buy me this super expensive computer for school project.
- This is amazing

Lol these guys are so stupid! Clearly the rock wagon is being shown backwards! A clear indication that they people who found this is doesn't know what they got. I mean look at the driver's seat pocket.

Allow them to be bored, out of it comes creativity. We used to have one day a week without any tech and they build dens in the woods, built a raft for the river and came back soaking wet, they played D&D with pen and paper. You have to give them the freedom to be bored, get filthy, get lost, covered in art stuff. Also, that kid from Mesopotamia probably had chores anytime he looked bored.
- Paper is a technology
  
  By that logic so are clothes but let's not send kids out naked

Looking at the design of those wheels I feel like there was thought and probably iteration there. Those long thick hubs to provide durability and stability using a material not really suited to the use case. The whole thing was probably able to be made fairly quickly. Quite impressive really.
- I wonder if they were formed out of something cement-like or cut from stone. It's not really clear from the picture
  
  That's just clay. They pinched the wheels from a ball of clay. That's why the taper is so pronounced.

I was gonna say "the timeless need to keep the kids quiet"... but I bet there was some ancient Mesopotamian nerd who made dozens of these and built a little model city and was like: one day the the wagons will drive themselves and there'll be roads everywhere and the people will live in tall buildings and fly in the sky...
Ancient Mesopotamian nerd, I salute you!
- Or they had little clay horses as well
  
  Oh yeah good point! That ancient Mesopotamian nerd will also be like: "And they'll make up stories about talking ponies.... and they'll dress up like furry animals and have meetings together!" Oh, Mesopotamian nerd, you were born way too soon...

Looks like the wheels would come off pretty easily.
I wonder whether humans have evolved a fascination with vehicles. Like, thinking carts and chariots were cool made it more likely for your village to survive or for an individual specifically to reproduce.
- I would guess they used wood pegs either end to make it durable. Wood doesn't preserve as well and stone.
  There's also no sense of scale. To me it looks like a roller skate. Shaped like a sandal, wider wheel base at the front for stability and it could have have leather or twine round the back of the heal. I could be totally wrong but that was my thinking when looking at it.
- I bet they were attached with an organic based glue which degraded.

I wonder what the scale is, because to me it looks like it was some kind of scooter
- Looks like a roller skate sandal if you ask me.

Don’t show this to Hancock, he might start talking his ancient „aliens“ civilisation had cars

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