'Technically, Moses Was the First Person to Download Files From the Cloud to a Tablet…': 20 Classical Art Memes That Are Timelessly Relatable

A time when tablets were made of stone. Antiquities, relics, and much more

Have you ever gone to a museum or a cathedral and seen something very old in person? It might feel normal, like any other object at first, but the more you observe it through the protective glass, the more you realize that it's been there much longer than you can even fathom.

After I saw something very old like that, my perception of relics changed completely, and I don't mean only the historical relics you can find in many places in the world; I mean my family relics as well. I possess a few objects that were my great-great-grandma's, and after that, I always stop and think: how is it that some objects stay with us for so long and through so many changes?

People walk long distances every year just to see and reflect on old things. Who knows if that 2,000-year-old tooth really belonged to that Saint; still, we choose to believe, and if we were archeologists, we would choose to study it, because as humans, we've always been obsessed with the past and its many mysteries.

Objects often acquire significance well beyond their material qualities, and we can end up worshipping an otherwise cheap watch or piece of clothing that belonged to one of our favourite ancestors. Our relationship to the past is embodied in our relationship to objects that survive the passage of time. By preserving these objects, we construct our identities and deepen the narrative we add to the many identifications that make us who we are.

Don't get me wrong, I don't think these identifications are vapid or wrong; I don't even think they're wrong even if they're fundamentally based on something false. In fact, I don't think truth matters at all in things like this. The symbolic aspect of identity is just as important as the material one.

I'm not sure I believe the past is as different from us as we think. The more I look into it, the more I feel we were always worried and/or interested in pretty much the same things throughout History. We mostly alter the way in which we interact with the same things, but the things themselves remain the same.

I feel like we're at a very interesting point in human history, as there have been many before, in which things are about to change dramatically. It's just like the Industrial Revolution or the invention of writing.

There is a clear before and after those events, and I think we're at that point with the invention of AI. Our sons and daughters will look at us in disbelief when they find out we used to read and write without an agent doing summaries for us.

So, whether your grandpa's relics you keep in your house are very expensive or not, keep in mind how much they've survived because you reinvent their value every time you pass their story on to someone else.

And while you do that, enjoy these ancient memes that still survive!