Older Than They Think/Other Media: Difference between revisions

{{trope}}

* The gravelly voice used by [[The Muppet Show|Rowlf the Dog]] has been described as a [[Tom Waits]] impression -- although Waits was only 13 when Rowlf debuted.

** This is parodied in ''[[More Information Than You Require]]''.

* [[Punch and Judy]].{{context}}

* [[Stepford Suburbia]] is a subversion of [[The Fifties|1950s]] sitcoms, right? ''Trouble In Tahiti'' dates this cynical genre back to 1952.

* Troll dolls weren't introduced in [[The Nineties]], they were re-introduced. These toys actually date back to 1963.

** And this one has seem someone claim that "The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse" originate from [[Marvel Comics]].

*** One compilation of ''[[Warcraft]] 3'' [[Stop Poking Me|pissed-off quotes]] ended by mocking two people who had emailed him with those "citations".

** Similarly, the concept of evolution is also much older. [[Aristotle]] wrote down theories of natural selection. Charles Darwin's own grandfather also worked on evolution theories. Darwin was the first who clearly explained all the important elements of evolution, as well as a workable concept.

** The word "evolution" does not appear in ''On the Origin of Species'', and the word "evolve" only appears once at the very end ("[E]ndless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved."). Darwin avoided the word because, at the time, the word "evolution" referred to [[Lamarck Was Right|Lamarck]]'s ideas. Darwin preferred the phrase "descent with modification".

* [[In Soviet Russia, Trope Mocks You|"In Soviet Russia" jokes]] are literally older than Yakov Smirnoff.

* The concept of "X" as an abbreviation for Christ (e.g. "Xmas") is [[Older Than Feudalism]], dating from the Roman persecutions of early Christians who'd use the Greek letter χ (chi), the first letter of Christ written in Greek, as code.

* The traditional concern about Christmas becoming too "commercialized" is literally as old as the modern conception of the holiday itself. For instance, Harriet Beecher Stowe complained about as much in her 1850 book, ''The First Christmas in New England''.

** Also mentioned in a 1996 ''[[Father Ted]]'' episode; a man was allergic to cats, and inhaled kittens to punish himself for his sins.

* Many of the symbols, rituals and other aspects of Nazi Germany actually dated back from as far as thousands of years before Nazi Germany was even established. Unfortunately, this led to these symbols becoming taboo and (at least partially) falling out of use. The most famous example is the swastika, which is actually a major symbol in several cultures, including the religions of Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism and Christianity and until Hitler co-opted it, it didn't in fact have anything to do with racism -- and even though the swastika can "spiral" both clockwise and counterclockwise while the Nazi version only runs counterclockwise, both versions are now associated by many with the Nazis.

*** The word "Aryan" is very old. It appears in the oldest text in Indic, the ''[[Rigveda]]'', the oldest portions of which date from approximately 1500 BC, and in the oldest text in Iranian, the ''Avesta'', dating from around 1000 BC. [[Newer Than They Think|What is new]] is applying the word to non-Indo-Iranians, which started in the 19th century.

** Mussolini and Hitler were often openly saying that they imagine their countries as modern versions of, correspondingly, Roman Empire and Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation, which has made elements of both taboo. In Italy, the fasces (an ancient Roman symbol) have been removed from many emblems due to the fascist connotations, and the Roman salute has also suffered a similar fate.

** In the early 20th century, in the US, the swastika was widely used as a good luck sign (alongside the horseshoe, the four-leaf clover and the wishbone) on everything from playing cards to coins to souvenir spoons!

** Prior to the rise of Nazism, the US Pledge of Allegiance involved stretching out one's hand towards the flag, similar to the Ave salute. This gesture was dropped by WW2, for obvious reasons.

* The phrase "trick out" seems like an example of modern, urban slang. Actually, John Austin used it in ''The Province of Jurisprudence Determined'', first published in 1832, and the phrase is probably much older. It's even used in the modern sense of [http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=trick+ out "to adorn or decorate in an extravagant or gaudy manner"].

** And then there is Agobard of Lyons, who wrote about the peasants belief in flying ships coming from "Magonia, the land beyond the clouds inhabited by wizards" and how they ruined crops and kidnapped people only to return them to the same place after some time (maybe even years). All this ''right in Carolingian times'' (roughly 800AD to 1000AD).

** Crop circles are often considered a recent occurrence, and in fact many people assume they're all a hoax because two Englishmen admitted to faking a ton of them in the nineties. However, reports of crop circle-like phenomena go back at least to the [[wikipedia:Mowing-Devil|Mowing Devil]] in 1678.

**A lot of the graffiti found in Roman ruins looks suspiciously like political bumper stickers in America.

** In the show ''The Naked Archaeologist'', host Simcha Jacobovici once presented evidence that non-pictorial written language was first invented by Jewish rebels in Egypt as a code their enemies couldn't read, and part of his evidence was graffiti in an ancient Egyptian work camp reading "El [God] save me." So our alphabet could have been created ''specifically for'' graffiti.

** The theory that the alphabet was invented by the Jews in Egypt is also rather old - there is a [http://www.ozon.ru/context/detail/id/1932521/ 1903 Russian book] claiming that.

** Chaucer's Miller's Tale (d. 1400): "[[Middle English|But with his mouth he kiste hir naked ers]]" -- and this is not [[Ye Olde Butcherede Englishe]].

** Also, the self-same "Götz" had a iron prosthetic hand, which makes those [[Older Than They Think]] as well.

*** And in Rome before the birth of Christ.

* The internet would lead you to believe that the [[Furry Fandom]] is some new fad (or something of the [[The Nineties|90s]]), but really, it's actually older than the internet we know of today. The first furry convention was actually held in 1982, but, there were "furries" known back in the [[The Sixties|60s]], (and of course, you can't forget that a lot of old cartoons from the 20s to the 40s had mostly [[Funny Animal|Funny Animals]] as characters).

<!-- %% If anyone knows the history of that chair, it looks awesome. Example should be expanded, though. -->

* Quantum physics is often treated as ''[[Phlebotinum Du Jour|the next big thing]]'', while it actually [[wikipedia:History of quantum mechanics|‬dates back to the ''nineteenth century'']]. Justified as we still have a rather poor understanding of it and scientist believing in a major breakthrough being 'just around the corner' since the mid-eighties.

** Early products included cheese cutters, meat choppers, and scales.

** This is actually the case with many modern big companies specializing in modern hardware and software. For example Nokia is one of the biggest producers of cellphones in the world. It was founded in 1865. Or how about Nintendo? Surely the company that gave us the NES and Mario cannot be all that old? Perhaps from the 1970's? Nope, founded in 1889.

* Pythagorean Theorem was an already known fact long before Pythagoras' time.

* Not only was the true shape of the Earth known since ancient times, the actual ''size'' was known as well (about 25,000 miles), and not due to Columbus. In fact, Columbus' expedition was rejected several times because he had severely ''underestimated'' the distance to Asia, and his potential patrons knew it.

* Someone on the webite ''The Escapist'''s forums declared that [[Charlie Brooker]] was ripping off [[Zero Punctuation|Yahtzee's act]]. While they may not have known that Brooker had been doing the [[Deadpan Snarker|snarky]]-[[The Mean Brit|British]]-[[Accentuate the Negative|slating]] thing for a while, or that ''Screenburn'' and probably ''[[Screenwipe]]'' predate ''[[Zero Punctuation]]'', it just sounds dumb given that Yahtzee has credited Brooker as an influence on his ZP style.

* Cosplay. There are early examples of a large number of young men [[wikipedia:Sorrows of Young Werther#Cultural impact|dressing up as the title character]] from [[Johann Wolfgang von Goethe|Goethe]]'s ''[[The Sorrows of Young Werther]]''.

* [[The Internet]] itself is older than most people think. Most people would not have heard of it before the mid-1990s, and thus assume that was roughly the time it came about. The World Wide Web dates from 1991, but it is actually just one of many applications built on top of the actual Internet. Unfortunately, an exact date for the birth of the Internet cannot be given, since it was a continuous development over several decades. Some years which may be considered candidates for this include:

** 1968, When Arpanet was started

** 1981, When the Internet Protocol version 4, which is dominant to this day, was introduced

* Many people have started to use the term "A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush" jokingly in reference to some [[Geico]] commercials use of the term. The commercial shows the figure of speech being shown as literal for comedic effect. Most people however, think that the term came from the commercial and have to idea that it actually means anything.

* The word [http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/misunderestimate misunderestimate] has a pedigree that goes back long before the time of George W. Bush.

** The word "truthiness", though commonly believed to be a coinage of [[Stephen Colbert]], in fact dates back to 1824, albeit with a slightly different meaning.

** [[Cyrus the Great]] in the 6th Century BC enthusiastically encouraged multiculturalism throughout the empire he founded, the Achaemenid Persian Empire.

* The United States engaged in wars at a distant land against a Muslim faction. [[War On Terror]]? No, the [[wikipedia:Barbary Wars|Barbary Wars]] in the early 19th century.

* Based on comments on [[YouTube]] on the Max Headroom Incident, you'd think that the idea of trolling on the internet is only about 15 years old and that the internet was invented around 1994 (see above for details). Truth is, it dates back to the late 80s at the very least, but back then it was an initiation process for newbies where someone would ask a question everyone knew the answer to for purpose of weeding out the newbies and only the newbies would answer, it was called "trolling for newbies". [[Snopes]] is someone who participated in this early form of trolling. However, the direct ancestor to what's known as trolling today dates back even further, to at least the late 70s, but until the term "trolling" evolved, these people were known as "griefers". Evidence of this behaviour can be found as early as 1981 on Google Groups archives of Usenet.

* A couple of examples from the automotive industry:

* The [[Totally Radical]] adjective "groovy" is most commonly associated with [[The Sixties]], but it dates back to the 1940s.

* The slang term "phat" is often thought to have been created recently, some time in [[The Nineties]]. In reality, the term has been in use since at least 1963 and was already being used to describe something desirable back then.

* The concept of a backronym is much older than most people think. As early as the second century A.D., Christians were using the Greek word "ichthys", meaning fish, as a backronym for "Iesous Christos Theou Huios Soter" which translates to "Jesus Christ, Son of God, Savior".

* [[Dude in Distress]] is not a result of feminism. Many a [[Fairy Tale]] features an heroine rescuing one -- or several.

* Most people think [[Abraham Lincoln]] coined, "A house divided can't stand," but actually [[Jesus]] did.

* If you ask someone when was color photography invented, a typical answer would be something like "I don't know, maybe in the 50's?" The answer would be correct, except that it refers to the wrong century. Color photography was first developed in the 1850's.

* The word "earthling" was first used in 1595.

* [[LEGO]] has had specialized parts and sets devoted to building one particular thing (as opposed to big boxes of random generic bricks) since the early fifties, no matter what that guy in his late twenties who just walked into a toy aisle for the first time in years and thinks [[They Changed It, Now It Sucks]] says.

* [[Knight in Shining Armor|Cataphracts]] were sporting shiny armor waaay before anyone in Europe had the idea and most certainly [[Follow the Leader|copied it.]]

* Many people thought that the accusations that [[Barack Obama]] was born in Kenya/Indonesia was pretty much the first time a US president accused of being not constitutionally eligible on the grounds of not being a "natural-born citizen". However, the first president with that dubious honor is actually [[Chester A. Arthur]] who was rumored to have been born in a certain British colony we now call Canada.

* The surge in education about the health risks of tobacco in the last two decades? [[The House of Stuart|King James VI]] [http://www.laits.utexas.edu/poltheory/james/blaste/ tried to beat them to it by a few hundred years].

* ''Young Stalin'' by Simon Sebag Montefiore mentions that the Tsarist secret police were worried about people flying planes full of explosives into public buildings, and started to keep an eye on flying schools. ''90 years before 9/11''

* The Sturgeon's Photograph, taken in 1934, is widely cited as the origin of the Loch Ness Monster myth, when in fact the Loch Ness Monster stories started in the 6th century C.E.

* The term "wormhole" first appeared in Shakespeare's works, referring to a hole made by a worm.

* The beginning of Barack Obama's "Forward"-themed 2012 presidential campaign was accused by detractors of being based in Socialism (the word "forward" allegedly having Socialist leanings), coupled with an appearance in Milwaukee's Master Lock factory in front of a blue flag reading "Wisconsin 1898" supposedly represented a labor union, made controversial by labor unions falling out of favor in U.S. conservative circles - "Forward" has been Wisconsin's official motto since 1851, and while the state flag was edited to include "Wisconsin" and "1898" for clarity in 1979, the coat of arms as a central part of the representation of Wisconsin dates back to 1881, with 1898 as the year Wisconsin became a state.

* Animal welfare laws are [[Older Than Dirt]] as [http://www.ancientegyptonline.co.uk/cat Ancient Egypt] had such law to protect sanctified animals, including dogs and cats.

* There was once a long period of struggle between Leftists and Rightists all around the world featuring propaganda, ideology, subversion, espionage, terrorism and all the rest of it. It took place between 1790 and 1815.

* Back in the ninth century, Arabic scholar Al-Jahiz discussed the theory of evolution. That was a millennium before [[Charles Darwin]]'s theory. See an article about the author [http://gulfnews.com/culture/people/the-father-of-the-theory-of-evolution-1.1079209 here].

{{quote|''"Animals engage in a struggle for existence; for resources, to avoid being eaten and to breed. Environmental factors influence organisms to develop new characteristics to ensure survival, thus transforming into new species. Animals that survive to breed can pass on their successful characteristics to offspring."''|'''Al-Jahiz'''}}