How Did Ancient Humans Survive Without Glasses?

For 300,000 years nobody wore glasses. Foragers tested today still have sharper distance vision than most of us - in one study of 791 people, only six had eyesight worse than 20/30. But every human eye stiffens at around forty, and the ancient world had no lens to fix it. So what did people actually do? They gave blurry eyes a different job. A seat by the fire, a story to tell, and a young pair of hands to do the threading. Then, slowly, they started building things: two slits carved in a strip of bone in the Arctic, a polished crystal in Assyria that historians still argue about, a Roman glass globe full of water, a bronze needle that pushed a clouded lens out of the way, and finally an anonymous workshop in northern Italy that put two pieces of glass in front of a face. Chapters 0:00 The morning your eyes fail 1:21 Forty, and the world moves out of reach 2:54 Bone, crystal and a jar of water 4:37 The workshop that gave people their eyes back Sources are listed in the pinned comment. New videos on how ancient humans actually lived. Subscribe if the old world interests you.