Nine Things That Are Much Older Than You Think
Sharks are older than trees, Oxford was teaching before the Aztecs existed, and the fax machine was patented before the telephone. A list that quietly rearranges history.
Most of these are true for the same reason: we file history by story rather than by date, and the stories are not in order.
1. Sharks are older than trees
Sharks appear in the fossil record about 450 million years ago. The first things we would call trees arrived about 385 million years ago. Sharks have been swimming for over 60 million years longer than anything has had a trunk.
2. Oxford was teaching before the Aztec Empire existed
There is evidence of teaching at Oxford from 1096. Tenochtitlan, the Aztec capital, was founded in 1325. By the time the Aztecs laid their first stone, Oxford had been handing out degrees for two centuries.
3. Cleopatra lived closer to us than to the pyramids
The Great Pyramid was finished around 2560 BC. Cleopatra died in 30 BC — about 2,530 years later. From her death to the Moon landing is roughly 2,000 years. She was closer in time to Apollo 11 than to the pyramid she could see from her own country.
4. T. rex is closer to us than to Stegosaurus
Stegosaurus died out around 150 million years ago. Tyrannosaurus appeared about 68 million years ago. The gap between the two famous dinosaurs is bigger than the gap between T. rex and us, which is why the two never met and every toy box lies to you.
5. The fax machine came before the telephone
Alexander Bain patented a working facsimile device in 1843. Alexander Graham Bell patented the telephone in 1876. A commercial fax line ran between Paris and Lyon from 1865, eleven years before anyone could ring anyone up.
6. Woolly mammoths were still alive when the pyramids were built
Mainland mammoths died out around 10,000 years ago, but a population survived on Wrangel Island in the Arctic Ocean until roughly 4,000 years ago. The Great Pyramid was already standing, and Egypt was already an old country.
7. France was still using the guillotine when Star Wars was in cinemas
Star Wars opened in May 1977. France carried out its last execution by guillotine in September of the same year, and only abolished the death penalty in 1981.
8. Nintendo is older than sliced bread
Nintendo was founded in 1889, making playing cards in Kyoto. Commercially sliced bread went on sale in 1928. The company behind Mario predates the loaf by nearly forty years.
9. Harvard was founded before calculus
Harvard was established in 1636. Newton and Leibniz developed calculus independently in the 1660s and 1670s. America's oldest university is older than the maths every one of its engineering students now has to pass.