One of my teaching duties (priveleges, really) at College of the Redwoods is teaching art history. I was trained as a studio artist, but I took a ton of art history courses. I had incredible art history professors who always exposed the seedy (and weird) underbelly of history to us, and I try to do the same for my students.
I've never felt so "plugged in" to art history as this moment. A recent article in Britain's Daily Mail told of an ancient Roman "Swiss Army knife" that is made out of silver. The utensil, which dates to between 200-300 AD, contains a spoon, fork, cutting blade, tiny spatula and a pick, which could have been used for getting snails out of their shells.
There's no way to prove the owner of this utensil was a man...but it has all of the hallmarks of a handy, but kind of unwieldy man gadget. How cool did the original owner of this baby feel when he whipped out his go-go gadget multitool around the campfire?
You can visit the tool for yourself at the newly revamped Roman and Greek galleries at the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge, England. Another place I can heartily recommend visiting is the Römisch-Germanisches (Roman-German) Museum in Cologne, Germany. The museum in Cologne is stuffed with everyday domestic items that the Romans left behind in the year they spent colonizing the area that is now Germany. You can see plenty of utensils, cooking pots, dice and other utilitarian objects that usually get left out of major museums.
To that end, one of my favorite examples of utilitarian art historical objects that I always show my students is the Ancient Greek potty training chair above. Ceramic geeks love to call ceramic toilets and urinals "after-dinnerware". You can find the original photo, which was taken at the Agora museum in Athens on BoingBoing.net.
SO. Rest assured, fellow humans that the ancient Greeks and Romans shared your struggles with such everyday issues as potty training, and the gadget geeks were probably awaiting each new version of the ancient Swiss Army knife with the same anticipation that accompanied Apple's recent iPad announcement.
