Wait, When Were Candles Invented?

As I've spent a lot of the past two days deep in the Writing Zone (I wrote 9,776 words in 36 hours), I’ve reconnected with one of my favorite parts of writing fiction: accumulating a huge collection of very niche, small facts. If you’ve read my other blog posts or are staying up to date on Instagram, you know that I’m writing a fantasy novel. A lot of fantasy draws from medieval Europe, and relies on a lot of that era’s technology to set the practical laws of the world. Just think, how many fantasy movies have knights? Lots of them. And those knights wear armor that have lots of different names, lots of technical details, and lots of things to fact check. It’s not necessary for a writer to know all of the proper names for these things, and, honestly, its kind of a drag when fantasy reads like a history textbook. However, I like to fact check most of the elements that I include in my work. By doing this, I’ve stumbled upon a lot of fun facts! 

So, to highlight the crazy rabbit holes that I (and many writers go down), I’ve included some highlights of my recent google searches below: 

1. When were mirrors invented? 

I really don’t want my characters staring wistfully into a gazing pool. But, I do usually need them to look at themselves once or twice. As a result, I often come back to this question: can I get away with having a mirror? It turns out that mirrors are really old. While our modern mirrors were invented in 1835 by Justus von Liebig, a German chemist, the earliest mirrors date back all the way to 3000 BCE in Ancient Egypt. They fashioned mirrors out of polished bronze and copper, succeeding to create fairly reflective surfaces. The Romans figured out how to blow a circle of smooth glass, and back it with some sort of polished metal, which reduced the distortion present in the more rudimentary metal mirrors. The Aztecs, on the other hand, used obsidian to create mirrors. Pretty hardcore. 

2. Why do cats turn their head to the side? 

Cat people, please don’t hate me, but that head tilt they do when stalking predators can be really creepy. I wanted to incorporate that movement into one of my characters, but was worried that my pro-dog-bias was showing and that the feline head-tilt was the result of a playful, innocent curiosity–not spine chilling horror. According to the Cat Bandit, they turn their heads to the side to see better, which is innocent enough, but they will do it while hunting. Score. 

3. How do you refer to a duke? 

Not to get all American, but I don’t know much about aristocracy. I really had no idea whether or not to address the son of a duke (or its fantastical stand-in), which made me realize that I didn’t know how to address a duke, either. Fortunately, The English Manner has all the answers I need. It turns out that you address a duke as, “your grace,” unless they’re your peer, which means that you can address them as “Duke” or “Duchess.” Relevant, right? Apparently, a duke’s son can take on one of his lesser titles, and can be thus referred to as “Lord Blah of Blah.” I really don’t know how they kept track of all these rules, and I’m really grateful the only title I have to trip over nowadays is Miss, Ms., or Mrs.. 

4. When were candles invented? 

This was actually super interesting to read about. Besides the lightbulb, our technology for creating light has not changed much since the paleolithic era. It still revolves around the burning of fuel, typically animal or vegetable fat. According to Lighting the Ancient World, paleolithic humans carved depressions into soft stones, filled them with fat, and lit them on fire, creating early oil lamps. Cave art from La Monte in France even shows images of lamps made from ibex horns. Not to mention, as Judson Knight points out, many cave paintings would not even exist without “cavemen” developing the crucial technology of torches and lamps. Candles, however, came into fashion in ancient Rome. Made out of animal tallow, they became popular amongst the wealthy. The poor still used oil lamps, and, apparently, they preferred to fill those lamps with olive oil. 

So, these are some of the strange facts I’ve learned while writing. One of the biggest takeaways I’ve had from learning about firesteel, candles, mirrors, and even language, is that we are surrounded by technology that has taken tens of thousands of years to develop. The lightbulb might have only been made two hundred years ago, but the foundations of lighting technology were established in human prehistory. It makes me feel so much gratitude for those that came before us, who left us with these wonderful technologies, but also an immense amount of awe for the fact that our immensity of knowledge has built over a slow amount of time. It reminds me of rock, forever building on itself.