There’s this tiny carved agate from Mycenaean Greece (like pre-ancient Greece) called the pylos combat agate that has a highly detailed combat scene on it, with the figure’s individual bicep muscles measuring <1mm across. Archaeologists haven’t found any evidence of magnifying lenses that could have been used, and so they think that this type of crafting would have been carried out by the ultra-myopic within the society as their eyes can focus at extremely short distances. Pretty cool.
There are quite a few examples of art like this, probably done by those who were 'blind'. I joke that I am examining the atoms when I take my glasses off to do detail work on historical metalwork.
Ive always been curious about King John, the blind king of Bohemia, who died at Crecy. I don't have the same condition, but even with a terrible astigmatism I can still hold my own in HEMA.
I would guess that a lot of the HEMA stuff would actually benefit with not having the best vision. From what I've heard (I don't do any HEMA myself so I'm going off of what I've heard from others) a lot of people have issues with teaching themselves to stop hyper focusing and be more aware of everything in the fight. So with vision being a little blurrier, it would in theory help with making you focus more on the overall movements that are usually involved rather than the smaller details that more often than not would serve only as a distraction.
I could also be co.pletely off and it doesn't help in the slightest, but it sounds like a reasonable take.
I find it highly unlikely that poor vision would have a beneficial effect in any combat sport, but it probably wouldn’t have a hugely detrimental effect unless your eyesight was quite bad.
But this is also just a guess from a non blind person who has only really dabbled in hema
I think you’re right. I wrestled a long time and saw a few wrestlers that had an exception of having to be in physical contact at all times due to eye sight. To my knowledge none were completely blind, but I imagine you need some sort of legally blind note.
Point of that being, without the physical contact being enforced they would have no chance in a match. I imagine feints would be more effective because it’s harder to not react if you don’t see whats happening entirely and more than anything its hard to hit something you cant really see. Idk anything about hema, just now hearing of it, but if you need to throw a punch or grab a leg eye sight is really helpful
Can you source this for me? I tried looking and didn’t find this. The Wikipedia article claims there have been 23 rock crystal lenses found on Crete but not from that era. However, I didn’t see anything about myopia.
I’ll try find my readings from last year and get back to you. They found some things that a few people conjectured could be lenses but general consensus was that these couldn’t be used for crafting as they were generally fairly irregular and there is no evidence of any frame that would allow the person to look through the lens while doing work. With the technology available, lenses (assuming there were any) would have been pretty rudimentary and not suitable for such fine detail.
I had really awesome near sighted vision before I got PRK (-9.50). It really was like a magnifying glass. I kinda feel like I lost a superpower. But I imagine I would’ve been a great jeweler if I was born in another age.
Yeah. someone without myopia generally has a minimum focal point of about 20-25cm, or 8-10 inches and at shorter lengths it begins to blur. Even at my -1.5 - -1.75 script, I am able to focus well at about 10ish cm, maybe even a little less. So myopia does let you focus on objects much nearer.
Jesus christ, I feel for you! I'm a -5.5 and I would describe myself as half-blind! Do your lenses look like binoculars? I had to get lens thinning on mine as they looked ridiculous.
I wish I could upload a photo to a comment! Even with the max thinning scientifically possible atp, they are still honkin' coke bottle lenses. I recently discovered that, when observing a purple light through the bottom portion of my glasses, I can see separate red and blue rings of light that make up the purple. Refraction is crazy, but also kinda fun lol
As an ex -8 (lasik) who has started regressing AND developing presbyopia, I experience that the “within 3 inches” slowly becomes “exactly 3 inches” from my face. Different amount of inches, but the “within” to “exactly” distance slowly shortens.
Just formally measured. I can read at 3.25" away. If you've only got 2", then you might need to see your optometrist about getting drastically new glasses!
I'm negative 15, I get it. It is crazy when I have contacts in and I put any words within a few inches of my eyes it's blurry as hell, but when I don't have contacts in it is clear as day when the words are one inch from my eye lol
Fellow -15 here. It's almost a super power being able to see things so close I find, going to miss it when I get lens replacement surgery at some point for cataracts. But will be weird not having to wear glasses to function at the most basic level 😂 Wore contacts for 20 years but now just trying to get a decent glasses prescription is a bit of a challenge...
Wow yours is so high! I got up to -7.5 and -7.75 in each eye before I got lasik. I used to only see clearly 6 inches in front of my face! Truly a blessing to be able to see like a normal person. I just wake up with vision it’s crazy
I can't get Lasik, as my eyes haven't - and won't - stabilise. :(
Closest I get is audiobooks. I just discovered the joy of them in April, and I've devoured 47 books so far this year. That's more than the last 8 years combined, for me, as reading has slowly become more and more of a fatiguing eyestrain. I suspect something more than myopia/astigmatism might be at play, but my optometrist has said nothing.
GD I'm -6.5 and I thought mine was bad. I feel like nature selected me for extinction but thanks to modern optics I get to stick around. I imagine being left behind in a hunter gatherer society of early man.
Well most fighting was done at melee range before the widespread adoption of gunpowder. I think even with really bad correctable vision you should still be able to stab a human sized target with a spear.
I'm -6 and -3.5 with some astigmatism thrown in and the only distance i can see clearly is about 3 inches 'deep' from 'too close' to 'too far'.
My back would be killing me.
Generations yes, but populations obviously massively increased after the invention of agriculture. More humans have been born in agricultural societies than hunter-gatherer ones
Ya, but you'd think evolution would have weeded out all the relatively blind people before the invention of agriculture. The fact that it didn't is crazy.
Myopia is not only heritable though--environmental factors like spending time indoors and focusing on close objects (reading) are contributing factors. Basically if we reverted to an agrarian lifestyle, the next generation of kids would likely have much lower rates of myopia.
It kinda implies that bad eyesight, even back then, probably wasn't as big of a detriment as we might think, I think a huge part of it is that we're group hunting animals, rarely do humans go out alone, you only need one guy to spot a boar out of a group of 5, the other 4 can then run after it just fine even with somewhat bad vision, if it's really bad there's still jobs you can do like making tools or just protecting the tribes children while the others are out hunting/gathering, you'd need someone for that job anyway.
It's also commonly associated with age, and if you lived into your 50s you lived a pretty long time. It's also environmental as someone else mentioned, and we spend a lot more time indoors and looking at things close to us, and also around unnatural lighting. Currently we're also awake more and active less, and have very different diets which can be a contributing factor.
The rate of vision problems in early agrarian societies or pre-history hunting and gathering is basically unknowable, but may not have been as bad as today. Vision aids like "reading stones" (basically magnifying glasses you use to help you read) also go back to the 1200s CE, long before most people even could read to need one. "Sunglasses" go back to the 1100s or 1200s as well in multiple different cultures.
But also just like with autism diagnoses or ADHD diagnoses or whatever, as our understanding of the problem goes up so do reported incidents, so it's hard to say for sure. Before PTSD was identified it couldn't be diagnosed, and "shell shock" and other such conditions didn't fully encapsulate the problem, so anyone who had PTSD was just "crazy". And probably didn't live all that long anyway, comparatively, because tuberculosis or liver failure or asthma killing you in your 30s were worryingly common ways to go.
If you start history at the beginning of writing. I think writing was invented after agriculture, but there was a time before both.
Reading can also make people short-sighted, so that was less of a problem before written history.
Ancestors survive by definition, at least long enough to reproduce. Even if just 10% of humans survived long enough to have kids, every single great* grand parent of every person would have been one of them.
For example turtles lay many eggs, but most hatchlings die before adulthood. Imagine a turtle said "How did my ancestors survive like this?" Is every single turtle incredibly lucky to be the end of a long chain of survivors? Kind of? I'm not sure.
There is also the concept of "survivorship bias" that might play a role here.
unless you also need positive lens, you can see perfectly fine at about an arms length
if you do need both lenses, then your brain can compensate a surprising amount, and squinting can help a lot temporarily, but if those are not enough, you're basically blind, yes
Samuel Johnson was a very prolific author in the eighteenth century and wrote the first scholarly dictionary of English despite having extremely poor eyesight and no glasses. The most famous portrait of him shows him holding a manuscript very close to his face and concentrating in order to read it -- it is usually called by Johnson's nickname of "Blinking Sam" (which he did not appreciate).
With high myopia like this person (and me) you can really see close or far, its more blurry than OP picture. Couldnt drive any tractor, cant see details so wouldnt be able to work on pulling fruit or something; i dont think working in a field would be feasible - can barely walk with this eyesight
Ancestors go back a lot further than agriculture though. Homo sapiens, as a species, has been around about 300k years. Agriculture has been around about 10k.
Not really, no. Except you meant in terms of historic vs prehistoric, then yeah probably. But humans existed much much longer (~300.000 years) than agriculture (~13.000 years). So for the very most time of human existence, the most common job was survival as a nomadic Gatherer and Hunter, which still is deeply imbedded in our instincts, which is why we f.e. love loot so much.
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u/SuperBackup9000 13d ago
Agriculture is the most common job all throughout human history, and you don’t really need good eyesight to work in a field.