Reflecting Life Back: The Influence of Mirrors on Human World History

Ten thousand years ago, humans first created mirrors. They were developed simultaneously all over the world, reflecting the innate human desire to see something so close to us, yet so hard to view. Our own face. While this invention had a simple initial purpose, it quickly became tied to many of the more complicated developments of human life, including, but not limited to, religion, power, and technology. We see this reflected in everything from the polished obsidian mirrors of Mesoamerica, used to commune with the gods and revered for their reflectiveness, to the bronze mirrors of Greece used in early tales of morality and vanity, to the glass mirrors that became symbols of power all over early modern Europe and its empire. More recently mirrors have also become a crucial aspect in several major technological developments, ranging from the periscopes of WWI to the optical space telescopes of the modern day, an invention that is allowing humans to empirically understand the massive scope and origin of the universe. All of these mirror related developments, from the spiritual to the scientific, have grown out of a simple technology our ancient ancestors invented 10,000 years ago in order to see their own faces. By examining Mirrors, we can gain a deeper and more complex understanding of the history of humanity all around the world, where things came from, and how they came to be as they are. Part of the panel: Reflections of HumanityModerator: Professor Katrine Barber