How Did Ancient Humans Survive Without Glasses?

How did ancient humans survive without glasses? Mostly, they didn't need them, at least not to see the horizon. Short sight is largely a modern, indoor problem: children who spend more time in daylight are far less likely to become short-sighted. The real enemies of ancient eyes were age, infection and glare. Here's how people fought back with Egyptian kohl, Roman eye doctors' stone stamps, carved snow goggles and Seneca's water globe, and why the first spectacles, around 1286, only helped old eyes. Lenses for short sight came about 160 years later, and a Pope took one hunting. Chapters 0:00 A world without glasses 0:50 The myth: was everyone half blind? 2:28 Enemy 1: Age 3:26 Enemy 2: Infection 4:37 Enemy 3: Glare, and the first magnifiers 5:55 The first glasses weren't for short sight 7:26 Case closed Sources Rose, K. A. et al. (2008). Myopia, lifestyle, and schooling in students of Chinese ethnicity in Singapore and Sydney. Archives of Ophthalmology, 126(4), 527–530. He, M. et al. (2015). Effect of time spent outdoors at school on the development of myopia among children in China: a randomized clinical trial. JAMA, 314(11), 1142–1148. Holden, B. A. et al. (2016). Global prevalence of myopia and high myopia and temporal trends from 2000 through 2050. Ophthalmology, 123(5), 1036–1042. Morgan, I. G., Ohno-Matsui, K. & Saw, S.-M. (2012). Myopia. The Lancet, 379(9827), 1739–1748. Gurven, M. & Kaplan, H. (2007). Longevity among hunter-gatherers: a cross-cultural examination. Population and Development Review, 33(2), 321–365. Tapsoba, I. et al. (2010). Finding out Egyptian gods' secret using analytical chemistry: biomedical properties of Egyptian black makeup revealed by amperometry at single cells. Analytical Chemistry, 82(2), 457–460. Baker, P. A. (2011). Collyrium stamps: an indicator of regional practices in Roman Gaul. European Journal of Archaeology, 14(1–2), 158–189. Roman Inscriptions of Britain II.4, 2446: Oculists' stamps. Seneca, Natural Questions, 1.6.5. Ibn al-Haytham, Book of Optics (Kitāb al-Manāẓir), c. 1011–1021. Ilardi, V. (2007). Renaissance Vision from Spectacles to Telescopes. American Philosophical Society. Tommaso da Modena (1352). Hugh of Provence, chapter house of San Nicolò, Treviso. Raphael (1518). Portrait of Pope Leo X with Two Cardinals. Uffizi Gallery, Florence. Narration is AI-generated. Illustrations are AI-generated from our own prompts. #AncientHumans #HumanHistory #Prehistory