How Fast Food Began: The History of This Thoroughly American (and Now Global) Form of Dining

What is the most Amer­i­can insti­tu­tion of all? The mind first goes in the direc­tions of church, of the mil­i­tary, of foot­ball. But if we con­sid­er only the sys­tems of mod­ern life devel­oped on Unit­ed States soil, the most influ­en­tial must sure­ly be fast food. That influ­ence man­i­fests in not just the home­land but the rest of the world as well, and like every robust Amer­i­can cre­ation, fast food both changes and adapts to the for­eign lands in which it takes root. Though unknown in the U.S., the yel­low motor­cy­cles of McDon­ald’s deliv­ery­men are an every­day sight in the cap­i­tal of South Korea, where I live. That could hard­ly have fig­ured in even the far­thest-reach­ing visions Richard and Mau­rice McDon­ald had for the entire­ly new mod­el of ham­burg­er stand they launched in San Bernardi­no, Cal­i­for­nia, in 1948.

Back in post­war Amer­i­ca, “car cul­ture reigns supreme. Dri­ve-in movies and dri­ve-in restau­rants become all the rage, tak­ing con­ve­nience to anoth­er lev­el.” So says the nar­ra­tor of the clip above, from the fast-food episode of the Net­flix series His­to­ry 101. But before long, dri­ve-ins would be rel­e­gat­ed to the sta­tus of his­tor­i­cal curios­i­ty, and fast food on the McDon­ald’s mod­el would become near­ly omnipresent.

As with much else in Amer­i­can indus­tri­al his­to­ry, the key was effi­cien­cy. Hav­ing pre­vi­ous­ly run a dri­ve-in, the McDon­ald broth­ers under­stood well how cum­ber­some such oper­a­tions could be, and how they encour­aged cus­tomers to linger rather than spend their mon­ey and be on their way. The stripped-down menu, the stream­lined cook­ing process: every ele­ment was now engi­neered for speed above all.

McDon­ald’s did not, how­ev­er, invent the dri­ve-through. That hon­or goes to a Texas estab­lish­ment called Pig Stand, which first erect­ed that pil­lar of the Amer­i­can way of life back in 1921. In Fast Food: The Fast Lane of Life, the His­to­ry Chanel doc­u­men­tary above, the pres­i­dent of Texas Pig Stands says that the chain’s founder Jessie G. Kir­by “was famous for his quote of say­ing that peo­ple with cars are so lazy that they don’t want to get out of them to go eat. That prophe­cy proved to be very true.” Even as the spread of car own­er­ship across Amer­i­ca and then the world made dri­ve-through fast food into a viable propo­si­tion, it put (and con­tin­ues to put) greater and greater pres­sure on the busi­ness­es to deliv­er their prod­uct in short­er and short­er times.

“Beyond the chal­lenges of tech­ni­cal hard­ware that deliv­ered things fast, the indus­try had to deliv­er a pipeline to deliv­er the food,” says the doc­u­men­tary’s nar­ra­tor. “Through­out the eight­ies, the burg­er giants set about design­ing a net­work of sup­pli­ers that could deliv­er mil­lions of tons of foods to thou­sands of restau­rants at exact­ing stan­dards of uni­for­mi­ty.” This uni­for­mi­ty — ham­burg­ers that cost and taste exact­ly the same, every­where — enchant­ed Andy Warhol, that maven of Amer­i­can mass cul­ture. It has also, arguably, done its part to triv­i­al­ize the rit­u­als of prepar­ing and con­sum­ing food, to say noth­ing of the health dan­gers posed by fre­quent indul­gence in salty, sug­ary, oily meals, espe­cial­ly in the con­text of a seden­tary auto­mo­tive lifestyle. But if you don’t under­stand fast food — and all the tech­no­log­i­cal, eco­nom­ic, and social fac­tors that have made it not just pos­si­ble but world-dom­i­nant — can you claim under­stand Amer­i­ca?

Relat­ed con­tent:

Watch Andy Warhol Eat an Entire Burg­er King Whop­per — While Wish­ing the Burg­er Came from McDonald’s (1981)

30,000 Peo­ple Line Up for the First McDonald’s in Moscow, While Gro­cery Store Shelves Run Emp­ty (1990)

How Eat­ing Ken­tucky Fried Chick­en Became a Christ­mas Tra­di­tion in Japan

The Hertel­la Cof­fee Machine Mount­ed on a Volk­swa­gen Dash­board (1959): The Most Euro­pean Car Acces­so­ry Ever Made

A Brief His­to­ry of the Great Amer­i­can Road Trip

McDonald’s Opens a Tiny Restau­rant — and It’s Only for Bees

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

American Gothic Explained: How Grant Wood Created His Iconic American Painting (1930)

“We should fear Grant Wood. Every artist and every school of artists should be afraid of him, for his dev­as­tat­ing satire.” Gertrude Stein wrote those words after see­ing Amer­i­can Goth­ic, the 1930 paint­ing that would become one of the most icon­ic images cre­at­ed in the Unit­ed States. Yet Wood him­self “said he paint­ed Amer­i­can Goth­ic to extol rur­al Amer­i­can val­ues, real peo­ple in their well-ordered world: an image of reas­sur­ance dur­ing the onset of the Great Depres­sion.” That’s how Art His­to­ry School host Paul Priest­ley puts it in the video above, which asks of the paint­ing, “Is it a satire, or a pos­i­tive state­ment of Amer­i­can rur­al life?”

It could be nei­ther; then again, it could be both. That very ambi­gu­i­ty goes some way to explain­ing Amer­i­can Goth­ic’s suc­cess — as well as its per­sis­tence in the cul­ture through fre­quent and unceas­ing par­o­dy. Yet in its day, the paint­ing also angered some of its view­ers: “An Iowan farmer’s wife who’d seen the pic­ture in the papers in 1930 tele­phoned Wood to express her anger,” says Priest­ly.

“She claimed she wished to come over and smash his head for depict­ing her coun­try­men as grim Bible-thumpers.” Wood main­tained that he was one of them, “dress­ing in rugged over­alls after the paint­ing was com­plet­ed and telling the press, ‘All the real­ly good ideas I’d ever had come to me while I was milk­ing a cow.’

Yet Wood was no farmer. A son of Cedar Rapids, he trav­eled exten­sive­ly to Europe to study Impres­sion­ism and post-Impres­sion­ism. There he first saw the work of Jan van Eyck, whose com­bi­na­tion of visu­al clar­i­ty and com­plex­i­ty inspired him to devel­op the sig­na­ture look and feel of the move­ment that would come to be known as Region­al­ism. He became “half Euro­pean artiste, half Iowan farm boy,” as Vox’s Phil Edwards puts it in the video just above, all the bet­ter to strad­dle his home­land’s widen­ing divide between town and coun­try. “In 1880, almost half of all Amer­i­cans were on the farm,” but by 1920 more than half the pop­u­la­tion lived in cities. Amer­i­can Goth­ic came a decade lat­er, and most of a cen­tu­ry there­after, it still makes Amer­i­cans ask them­selves — earnest­ly or sar­don­ical­ly — just what kind of peo­ple they are.

Relat­ed con­tent:

What’s the Key to Amer­i­can Goth­ic’s Endur­ing Fame? An Intro­duc­tion to the Icon­ic Amer­i­can Paint­ing

The Mod­els for “Amer­i­can Goth­ic” Pose in Front of the Icon­ic Paint­ing (1942)

The Art Insti­tute of Chica­go Puts 44,000+ Works of Art Online: View Them in High Res­o­lu­tion

Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence Brings to Life Fig­ures from 7 Famous Paint­ings: The Mona Lisa, Birth of Venus & More

Whit­ney Muse­um Puts Online 21,000 Works of Amer­i­can Art, By 3,000 Artists

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmar­shall or on Face­book.

How a Lavish 17th-Century Study of Fish Almost Prevented the Publication of Newton’s Principia, One of the Most Important Science Books Ever Written

The exalt­ed sta­tus of Isaac New­ton’s Philosophiæ Nat­u­ralis Prin­cip­ia Math­e­mat­i­ca is reflect­ed by the fact that every­body knows it as, sim­ply, the Prin­cip­ia. Very few of us, by con­trast, speak of the His­to­ria when we mean to refer to John Ray and Fran­cis Willugh­by’s De His­to­ria Pis­ci­um, which came out in 1686, the year before the Prin­cip­ia. Both books were pub­lished by the Roy­al Soci­ety, and as it hap­pens, the for­mi­da­ble cost of Willugh­by and Ray’s lav­ish work of ichthy­ol­o­gy near­ly kept New­ton’s ground­break­ing trea­tise on motion and grav­i­ta­tion from the print­ing press.

Accord­ing to the Roy­al Soci­ety’s web site, “Ray and Willughby’s His­to­ria did not prove to be the pub­lish­ing sen­sa­tion that the Fel­lows had hoped and the book near­ly bank­rupt­ed the Soci­ety. This meant that the Soci­ety was unable to meet its promise to sup­port the pub­li­ca­tion of Isaac New­ton’s mas­ter­piece.”

For­tu­nate­ly, “it was saved from obscu­ri­ty by Edmund Hal­ley, then Clerk at the Roy­al Soci­ety” — and now bet­ter known for his epony­mous comet — “who raised the funds to pub­lish the work, pro­vid­ing much of the mon­ey from his own pock­et. ”

Hal­ley’s great reward, in lieu of the salary the Roy­al Soci­ety could no longer pay, was a pile of unsold copies of De His­to­ria Pis­ci­um. That may not have been quite the insult it sounds like, giv­en that the book rep­re­sent­ed a tri­umph of pro­duc­tion and design in its day. You can see a copy in the episode of Adam Sav­age’s Test­ed at the top of the post, and you can close­ly exam­ine its imagery at your leisure in the dig­i­tal archive of the Roy­al Soci­ety. In the words of Jonathan Ash­more, Chair of the Roy­al Society’s Library Com­mit­tee, a brows­ing ses­sion should help us “appre­ci­ate why ear­ly Fel­lows of the Roy­al Soci­ety were so impressed by Willughby’s stun­ning illus­tra­tions of piscine nat­ur­al his­to­ry.”

Though Sav­age duly mar­vels at the Roy­al Soci­ety’s copy of the His­to­ria — a recon­struc­tion made up of pages long ago cut out and sold sep­a­rate­ly, as was once com­mon prac­tice with books with pic­tures  suit­able for fram­ing — it’s clear that much of the moti­va­tion for his vis­it came from the prospect of close prox­im­i­ty to New­to­ni­ana, up to and includ­ing the man’s death mask. But then, New­ton lays fair claim to being the most impor­tant sci­en­tist who ever lived, and the Prin­cip­ia to being the most impor­tant sci­ence book ever writ­ten. Almost three and a half cen­turies lat­er, physics still holds mys­ter­ies for gen­er­a­tions of New­ton’s suc­ces­sors to solve. But then, so do the depths of the ocean.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Sir Isaac Newton’s Papers & Anno­tat­ed Prin­cip­ia Go Dig­i­tal

Beau­ti­ful & Out­landish Col­or Illus­tra­tions Let Euro­peans See Exot­ic Fish for the First Time (1754)

The Bril­liant Col­ors of the Great Bar­ri­er Revealed in a His­toric Illus­trat­ed Book from 1893

How Isaac New­ton Lost $3 Mil­lion Dol­lars in the “South Sea Bub­ble” of 1720: Even Genius­es Can’t Pre­vail Against the Machi­na­tions of the Mar­kets

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

Behold! The Very First Christmas Card (1843)

Christ­mas cards aren’t just an anachro­nism.

They’re almost an endan­gered species, the vic­tim of the Inter­net, postal rate increas­es, and the jet­ti­son­ing of any time con­sum­ing tra­di­tion whose exe­cu­tion has been found to bring the oppo­site of joy.

Above, Vic­to­ria and Albert Muse­um cura­tors Alice Pow­er and Sarah Beat­tie take us on a back­wards trip to a time when the exchange of Christ­mas cards was a source of true social mer­ri­ment.

Christ­mas cards must hold a spe­cial place in both the V&A’s col­lec­tions and heart, giv­en that the museum’s founder, Hen­ry Cole, inad­ver­tent­ly invent­ed them in 1843.

As a well respect­ed man about town, he received a great many more hol­i­day let­ters than he had time or incli­na­tion to respond to, but nei­ther did he wish to appear rude.

So he enlist­ed his friend, painter J.C. Hors­ley, to cre­ate a fes­tive illus­tra­tion with a built-in hol­i­day greet­ing, leav­ing just enough space to per­son­al­ize with a recipient’s name and per­haps, a hand­writ­ten line or two.

He then had enough post­card-sized repro­duc­tions print­ed up to send to 1000 of his friends.

(It’s hell being pop­u­lar…)

Talk about zeit­geist: Charles Dick­ens’ A Christ­mas Car­ol was first pub­lished that very same hol­i­day sea­son.

No won­der every­one want­ed in on the fun.

Part of the rea­son the cards in the V&A’s col­lec­tion are so well pre­served is that their recip­i­ents prized them enough to keep them in sou­venir albums.

Under­stand­ably. They’re very appeal­ing lit­tle arti­facts.

The upper crust could afford such fan­cy design ele­ments as clever die-cut shapes, pop up ele­ments, and translu­cent win­dows that encour­aged the recip­i­ents to hold them up to actu­al win­dows.

Tech­no­log­i­cal advances in the print­ing indus­try, and the cre­ation of the cost-effec­tive Pen­ny Post allowed those whose bud­gets were more mod­est than Mr. Cole’s to par­tic­i­pate too.

Their cards tend­ed to be sim­pler in exe­cu­tion, though not nec­es­sar­i­ly con­cept.

In addi­tion to the views we’ve come to expect — win­ter, Father Christ­mas, hol­ly — the Vic­to­ri­ans had a thing for jol­ly anthro­po­mor­phized food and some tru­ly shame­less puns.

Enjoy these Ghosts of Christ­mas Past, dear read­ers. We’re almost inspired to revive the tra­di­tion!

Read more about the advent of this tra­di­tion, includ­ing how it jumped the pond, in Smith­son­ian Magazine’s His­to­ry of the Christ­mas Card.

Relat­ed Con­tent 

When Sal­vador Dalí Cre­at­ed Christ­mas Cards That Were Too Avant Garde for Hall­mark (1960)

J.R.R. Tolkien Sent Illus­trat­ed Let­ters from Father Christ­mas to His Kids Every Year (1920–1943)

Langston Hugh­es’ Home­made Christ­mas Cards From 1950

Watch Ter­ry Gilliam’s Ani­mat­ed Short, The Christ­mas Card (1968)

Hear Neil Gaiman Read A Christ­mas Car­ol Just Like Charles Dick­ens Read It

An Oscar-Win­ning Ani­ma­tion of Charles Dick­ens’ Clas­sic Tale, A Christ­mas Car­ol (1971)

- Ayun Hal­l­i­day is the Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine and author, most recent­ly, of Cre­ative, Not Famous: The Small Pota­to Man­i­festo.  Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

Mudlarking on the Thames: A Treasure Trove of History Washes Ashore Every Low Tide

If you’re look­ing for free out­door activ­i­ties to pull you from the dig­i­tal realm, may we rec­om­mend mud­lark­ing?

Lara Maik­lem, author of Mud­lark­ing: Lost and Found on the Riv­er Thames and A Field Guide to Lark­ing, has devel­oped a keen eye in the 20 years she’s been scav­eng­ing his­toric detri­tus from the fore­shore of the Thames at low tide.

 I nev­er use a met­al detec­tor and I often walk lit­tle more than a mile in 5 hours, yet I can trav­el 2,000 years back in time through the objects that are revealed by the tide. Pre­his­toric flint tools, medieval pil­grim badges, Tudor shoes, Geor­gian wig curlers and Vic­to­ri­an pot­tery, ordi­nary objects left behind by the ordi­nary peo­ple who made Lon­don what it is today. 

As she says in the short film above, her first find has become one of her most com­mon — a clay pipe frag­ment.

The term mud­lark was invent­ed to describe the pover­ty strick­en Vic­to­ri­ans who scoured the fore­shore for cop­per, wire, and oth­er items with resale val­ue, as well as things they could clean off and use them­selves.

Today’s mud­larks are pri­mar­i­ly his­to­ry buffs and ama­teur arche­ol­o­gists.

The hob­by has become so pop­u­lar that The Port of Lon­don Author­i­ty, which con­trols the Thames water­way along with the Crown Estate, has start­ed to require fore­shore per­mits of all prospec­tive debris hunters.

Per­mit­ted mud­larks can claim as sou­venirs how­ev­er many Vic­to­ri­an clay pipes and blue and white pot­tery shards they dig up, but are legal­ly oblig­ed by the Portable Antiq­ui­ties Scheme to report items of poten­tial­ly greater his­toric and mon­e­tary val­ue — i.e. Trea­sure — to a muse­um-trained Finds Lia­son Offi­cer:

  • Any metal­lic object, oth­er than a coin, pro­vid­ed that at least 10 per cent by weight of met­al is pre­cious met­al (that is, gold or sil­ver) and that it is at least 300 years old when found. If the object is of pre­his­toric date it will be Trea­sure pro­vid­ed any part of it is pre­cious met­al.
  • Any group of two or more metal­lic objects of any com­po­si­tion of pre­his­toric date that come from the same find (see note below).
  • Two or more coins from the same find pro­vid­ed they are at least 300 years old when found and con­tain 10 per cent gold or sil­ver (if the coins con­tain less than 10 per cent of gold or sil­ver there must be at least ten of them). Only the fol­low­ing groups of coins will nor­mal­ly be regard­ed as com­ing from the same find: Hoards that have been delib­er­ate­ly hid­den; Small­er groups of coins, such as the con­tents of purs­es, that may been dropped or lost; Votive or rit­u­al deposits.
  • Any object, what­ev­er it is made of, that is found in the same place as, or had pre­vi­ous­ly been togeth­er with, anoth­er object that is Trea­sure.

How did all this his­toric refuse come to be in the Thames? Maik­lem told Col­lec­tors Week­ly that there are many rea­sons:

Obvi­ous­ly, it’s been used as a rub­bish dump. It was a use­ful place to chuck your house­hold waste. It was essen­tial­ly a busy high­way, so peo­ple acci­den­tal­ly dropped things and lost things as they trav­eled on it. Of course, peo­ple also lived right up against it. Lon­don was cen­tered on the Thames so hous­es were all along it, and there was all this stuff com­ing out of the hous­es and off the bridges. It was the biggest port in the world in the 18th cen­tu­ry, so there was all the ship­build­ing and indus­try going on.

And then of course, there’s the rub­bish that was used to build up the fore­shore and cre­ate barge beds. The riverbed in its nat­ur­al state is a V shape, so they had to build up the sides next to the riv­er wall to make them flat­ter so the flat-bot­tom barges could rest there at low tide. They did that by pour­ing rub­bish and build­ing spoil and kiln waste, any­thing they could find—industrial waste, domes­tic waste. When they dug into the ground fur­ther up, they’d bring the spoil down and use it to build up the fore­shore, and cap it off with a lay­er of chalk, which was soft and didn’t dam­age the bot­tom of the barges.

One of the rea­sons we’re find­ing so much in the riv­er now is because there’s so much ero­sion. While it was a “work­ing riv­er,” these barge beds were patched up and the revet­ments, or the wood­en walls that held them in, were repaired when they broke. But now, they’re being left to fall apart, and these barge beds are erod­ing as the riv­er is get­ting busier with riv­er traf­fic.

There are numer­ous social media groups where mod­ern mud­larks can proud­ly share their finds, and seek assis­tance in iden­ti­fy­ing strange or frag­ment­ed objects.

Maiklem’s Lon­don Mud­lark Face­book page is an edu­ca­tion in and of itself, a reflec­tion of her abid­ing inter­est in the his­toric sig­nif­i­cance of the items she truf­fles up.

Wit­ness the pewter buck­le plate dat­ing to the 14th or 15th-cen­tu­ry that she spot­ted on the fore­shore in late Novem­ber, turned over to her Finds Liai­son Offi­cer and researched with the help of his­toric pewter crafts­man Col­in Torode:

Pri­or to c.1350 pewter belt fit­tings seem to have been rather rare, although a Lon­don Girdlers’ Guild Char­ter of 1321 which banned the use of pewter belt fit­tings does show that the met­al was cer­tain­ly in use. In 1344 the Girdlers’ guild again reit­er­at­ed the ban on what they felt were infe­ri­or met­als such as pewter, tin and lead. In 1391 how­ev­er, a statute rec­og­nized that these met­als had been in use for some time and that their use could con­tin­ue with­out restric­tion

This ornate plate would have had a sep­a­rate buck­le frame attached to it and is prob­a­bly a cheap­er copy of the more upmar­ket cop­per alloy or sil­ver ver­sions that were pro­duced at the time.  Although the the open­work design is sim­i­lar to those found in in fur­ni­ture or church screens, it’s not reli­gious or pil­grim relat­ed.

Maik­lem also chal­lenges fans to play along from home with “spot the find” videos for such items as a Tudor clothes hook, Geor­gian cuf­flink, and a Ger­man salt glazed, stoneware bottle’s neck embossed with a human face.

She also reminds would be mud­larks to always wear gloves as it’s not all medieval thim­bles, WWI medals and 16th-cen­tu­ry box­wood combs, beau­ti­ful­ly pre­served by the Thames’ anaer­o­bic mud.

The riv­er also spews up plen­ty of drowned rats, flush­ing them out with the sewage after a heavy rain. Oth­er poten­tial haz­ards include hypo­der­mic nee­dles and bro­ken glass.

In addi­tion to such safe­ty pre­cau­tions as gloves, stur­dy footwear, and remain­ing mind­ful of incom­ing tides, Maik­lem advis­es novice mud­larks to look for straight lines and per­fect cir­cles — “the things that nature doesn’t make.”

It takes prac­tice and patience to devel­op a skilled eye, but don’t get dis­cour­aged if your first out­ings don’t yield the sort of jaw drop­ping dis­cov­er­ies Maik­lem has made — an intact glass Vic­to­ri­an sug­ar crush­er, a 16th-cen­tu­ry child’s leather shoe and Roman era pot­tery shards galore.

Some­times even plas­tic comes with a com­pelling sto­ry.

I’m still feel­ing quite gid­dy over this bit of plas­tic. I came to Corn­wall this week to write and to beach­comb. I hoped I might find a small piece of Lost Lego, but I wasn’t hold­ing out much hope. Calm weath­er means less plas­tic: good for the beach, bad for the Lego look­er. Then I found this wedged between two boul­ders. It’s one of the black octo­pus­es from the Lego spill of 1997 when, 20 miles from Land’s End, a huge wave hit the car­go ship Tokio Express. It tilt­ed 45 degrees and 62 con­tain­ers slid into the water. One con­tain­er was filled with near­ly 5 mil­lion pieces of Lego, much of which was sea themed. Lit­tle scu­ba tanks, flip­pers, octo­pus­es, cut­lass­es, life rafts, spear guns, drag­ons and octo­pus­es like this still wash up on the beach­es of Corn­wall and fur­ther afield.

Stay abreast of Lara Maiklem’s mud­lark­ing finds here.

Try your hand at mud­lark­ing the Thames in per­son, dur­ing a guid­ed tour with the Thames Explor­er Trust.

Relat­ed Con­tent 

Prize-Win­ning Ani­ma­tion Lets You Fly Through 17th Cen­tu­ry Lon­don

The Growth of Lon­don, from the Romans to the 21st Cen­tu­ry, Visu­al­ized in a Time-Lapse Ani­mat­ed Map

Watch the Sex Pis­tols Play a Gig on a Thames Riv­er Barge Dur­ing the Queen’s Sil­ver Jubilee, and Get Shut Down by the Cops (1977)

- Ayun Hal­l­i­day is a mud­lark­ing new­bie, the Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine and author, most recent­ly, of Cre­ative, Not Famous: The Small Pota­to Man­i­festo.  Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

The Roman Roads and Bridges You Can Still Travel Today

Rare indeed is the ancient-his­to­ry buff who has nev­er dreamed of walk­ing the roads of the Roman Empire. But unlike many long­ings stoked by inter­est in the dis­tant past, that one can actu­al­ly be ful­filled. As explained in the video above from Youtube chan­nel Intrigued Mind, a fair few Roman roads remain in exis­tence today, albeit only in sec­tions, and most­ly ruined ones at that. “Like oth­er incred­i­ble mon­u­ments that still stand, as if to prove the pow­er of the Roman Empire, there are a sur­pris­ing num­ber of Roman roads still in use today,” some con­vert­ed into mod­ern high­ways, but “many still paved with their orig­i­nal cob­ble­stones.”

Of all such roads, none has more impor­tance than the Via Appia, or Appi­an Way, whose con­struc­tion began back in 312 BC. “The first long road out­side of the greater city of Rome that was­n’t Etr­uscan,” it “allowed Romans to make their first major con­quest” and begin their mighty empire’s “con­quest of the world.” With­out under­stand­ing the sto­ried Via Appia, none of us can tru­ly under­stand Roman his­to­ry. But to grasp the con­text of the Roman Empire, we can hard­ly ignore the even old­er roads like the Via Domi­tia, which was “the road Han­ni­bal used to invade Italy, 100 years before the Romans claimed it” — not to men­tion an impor­tant set­ting in the Greek myth of Her­a­cles.

You can still cross one of the Via Domi­ti­a’s bridges, the Pont Julien in the south of France. In that same coun­try stand the more-or-less intact Pont Fla­vian, orig­i­nal­ly built along the Via Julia Augus­ta, and the Pont du Gard, the most famous and ele­gant Roman aque­duct of them all. Nor should enthu­si­asts of Roman infra­struc­ture miss the Alcan­tara Bridge in Spain, the Man­fred Bridge in Ger­many, or the ruins of Tra­jan’s Bridge — made into ruins delib­er­ate­ly, by Tra­jan’s suc­ces­sor Hadri­an — in Roma­nia. The most seri­ous among them will also want to go as far as the Mid­dle East and trav­el the Via Maris, which con­nect­ed Egypt to Syr­ia, and the remains of the bridge across Cae­sar’s Dam in Iran.

Iran belonged, of course, not to the Roman Empire but the Per­sian one. But “leg­end has it that the Per­sian emper­or cap­tured the Roman emper­or and forced him to use his army to build the dam and the beau­ti­ful bridge to cross it.” All was fair, it seems, in the expan­sion and con­flict of ancient empires, and the ruins scat­tered across their vast for­mer ter­ri­to­ries tes­ti­fy to that. Though much less tech­no­log­i­cal­ly advanced than, say, mod­ern free­way sys­tems, the Roman roads that sur­vive have proven sur­pris­ing­ly robust, a phe­nom­e­non exam­ined in the video just above by his­to­ry Youtu­ber Told in Stone — a Chicagoan, inci­den­tal­ly, who acknowl­edges that the Via Appia has nev­er had to take a Windy City win­ter.

Relat­ed con­tent:

The First Tran­sit Map: a Close Look at the Sub­way-Style Tab­u­la Peutin­ge­ri­ana of the 5th-Cen­tu­ry Roman Empire

How Did the Romans Make Con­crete That Lasts Longer Than Mod­ern Con­crete? The Mys­tery Final­ly Solved

How Did Roman Aque­ducts Work?: The Most Impres­sive Achieve­ment of Ancient Rome’s Infra­struc­ture, Explained

The Roads of Ancient Rome Visu­al­ized in the Style of Mod­ern Sub­way Maps

The Roman Roads of Britain Visu­al­ized as a Sub­way Map

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

The History of Western Art in 23 Minutes: From the Prehistoric to the Contemporary

Among the ranks of Open Cul­ture read­ers, there are no doubt more than a few art-his­to­ry majors. Per­haps you’ve stud­ied the sub­ject your­self, at one time or anoth­er — and per­haps you find that by now, you remem­ber only cer­tain scat­tered artists, works, and move­ments. What you need is a grand nar­ra­tive, a broad sto­ry of art itself, and that’s just what you’ll find in the video above from Youtube chan­nel Behind the Mas­ter­piece. True to its title, “A Brief His­to­ry of Art Move­ments” briefly describes, and pro­vides a host of visu­al exam­ples to illus­trate, 22 phas­es in the devel­op­ment of art in just 23 min­utes.

The jour­ney begins in pre­his­to­ry, with cave paint­ings from 40,000 years ago appar­ent­ly cre­at­ed “as a way to share infor­ma­tion.” Then comes the art of antiq­ui­ty, when increas­ing­ly lit­er­ate soci­eties “start­ed cre­at­ing the ear­li­est nat­u­ral­is­tic images of human beings,” not least to enforce “reli­gious and polit­i­cal ide­olo­gies.” The reli­gios­i­ty inten­si­fied in the Mid­dle Ages, when artists “depict­ed clear, icon­ic images of reli­gious fig­ures” — as well as their odd­ly aged-look­ing babies — “and dec­o­rat­ed them with exten­sive use of gold and jew­els as a way to attract more peo­ple to the church.”

When many us think of art his­to­ry — whether we stud­ied it or not — our minds go straight to the sub­se­quent peri­od, the Renais­sance, dur­ing which “artists start­ed to appre­ci­ate cul­tur­al sub­jects like art, music, and the­ater” as well. They cre­at­ed “por­trait paint­ings, anatom­i­cal­ly cor­rect sculp­tures, and sym­met­ri­cal archi­tec­ture,” and the inven­tion of the print­ing press great­ly expand­ed the pool of poten­tial appre­ci­a­tors. Then, in the Baroque move­ment, enor­mous­ly skilled artists like Berni­ni and Car­avag­gio “empha­sized extrav­a­gance and emo­tion,” and oth­er forms fol­lowed suit with more intense embell­ish­ments of their own.

From eigh­teenth-cen­tu­ry France emerged the “play­ful and utopi­an” Roco­co peri­od, which was fol­lowed by the back­ward-look­ing “inter­est in renewed sim­plic­i­ty” that char­ac­ter­ized Neo­clas­si­cism, which was fol­lowed by Roman­ti­cism, a move­ment whose artists “looked with­in and found inspi­ra­tion in their own imag­i­na­tions, and the nature around them.” It was the lev­el­ing French Rev­o­lu­tion that brought about the con­di­tions for the rise of Real­ism, with its focus on “depict­ing real peo­ple in every­day life,” the kind of sub­jects to that point over­looked in major works of art.

In the sec­ond half of the nine­teenth cen­tu­ry the devel­op­ment of art hit the gas, bring­ing on the imper­fect vital­i­ty of Impres­sion­ism, the dar­ing sub­jec­tiv­i­ty of Post-Impres­sion­ism, the extreme sub­jec­tiv­i­ty of Expres­sion­ism, and the sin­u­ous lux­u­ry of Art Nou­veau. Tech­nol­o­gy had always been a fac­tor in how art changes, but in the twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry — as Cubism gave way to Futur­ism, Dadaism, Sur­re­al­ism, and the Bauhaus — it came to the fore. This brings us up to liv­ing mem­o­ry: move­ments like Abstract Expres­sion­ism, Pop Art, Min­i­mal­ism, and the incli­na­tion of today’s artists to deal in “ideas rather than aes­thet­ics,” all on dis­play in most any muse­um you care to vis­it. Or at least they are in the muse­ums of the West, there being, after all, a whole world of oth­er art his­to­ries out there to under­stand besides.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Free Art & Art His­to­ry Cours­es

An Online Guide to 350 Inter­na­tion­al Art Styles & Move­ments: An Invalu­able Resource for Stu­dents & Enthu­si­asts of Art His­to­ry

100,000 Free Art His­to­ry Texts Now Avail­able Online Thanks to the Get­ty Research Por­tal

An Intro­duc­tion to 100 Impor­tant Paint­ings with Videos Cre­at­ed by Smarthis­to­ry

One Minute Art His­to­ry: Cen­turies of Artis­tic Styles Get Packed Into a Short Exper­i­men­tal Ani­ma­tion

Tate Kids Presents Intro­duc­tions to Art Move­ments: Cubism, Impres­sion­ism, Sur­re­al­ism & More

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

How to Get Dressed & Fight in 14th Century Armor: A Reenactment

For a medieval knight, phys­i­cal com­bat in a full suit of armor could hard­ly have been a sim­ple mat­ter — but then, nor could the task of putting it on in the first place. You can see the lat­ter depict­ed in the video above from Nor­we­gian his­to­ry buff Ola Onsrud. He describes the armor as a “detailed recon­struc­tion based on the effi­gy of the Black Prince (1330–1376) in the Can­ter­bury Cathe­dral, oth­er rel­e­vant effi­gies, paint­ings in four­teenth-cen­tu­ry man­u­scripts and late four­teenth-cen­tu­ry armor dis­played in The Roy­al Armories in Leeds.” If you’ve so much as glanced at such imagery, Onsrud’s armor should strike you as look­ing quite like the real deal.

But this is func­tion­al cloth­ing, after all, and as such must be put to the test. Onsrud does so in the video just below, a demon­stra­tion of how the wear­er of such armor would actu­al­ly do hand-to-hand com­bat. “To make com­ments, the visor of my hel­met is open through most of the video,” he notes.

“This will of course make my face an inter­est­ing tar­get for my adver­sary.” In a real medieval bat­tle, of course, the hel­met would be closed, and thus the com­bat­ants would­n’t sim­ply aim for the face. As Onsrud explains, the idea is to use one’s sword “against the weak spots of the armor. After find­ing a weak spot, I can put all my body weight behind it and dri­ve it in.”

Medieval suits of armor turn out not to be as impen­e­tra­ble as they look. Onsrud runs down a few of their major weak points, includ­ing the insides of the gloves, the armpits, and — most wince-induc­ing­ly of all — the groin. The defense capa­bil­i­ty of armor also var­ied depend­ing upon the weapons used; even the best-suit­ed-up had rea­son to fear an ene­my with a poleaxe. “But the absolute best way to take down an armored knight is by using a lance from a horse,” espe­cial­ly a horse “gal­lop­ing up to 40 kilo­me­ters an hour” whose com­bined weight with its rid­er could reach 700 kilo­grams. Sure­ly even the most com­mit­ted reen­ac­tor won’t do that on Youtube.

Relat­ed con­tent:

How to Make and Wear Medieval Armor: An In-Depth Primer

What It’s Like to Actu­al­ly Fight in Medieval Armor

How Well Can You Move in Medieval Armor?: Medieval­ist Daniel Jaquet Gives It a Try in Real Life

What’s It Like to Fight in 15th Cen­tu­ry Armor?: A Sur­pris­ing Demon­stra­tion

How Women Got Dressed in the 14th & 18th Cen­turies: Watch the Very Painstak­ing Process Get Cin­e­mat­i­cal­ly Recre­at­ed

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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