BS: Oldest manmade thing you can see?

Subject: BS: Oldest manmade thing you can see?
From: skipy
Date: 22 Jun 07 - 06:14 AM

I have just been standing in the smoking shed (don't even think about going there!) at work, looking at the "White horse" on the hill at Uffington, map ref SU302 866, it carved out approx. 1000BC.
What is the oldest made made thing that you can see from your place of work or your home?
Skipy

Subject: RE: BS: Oldest manmade thing you can see?
From: Leadfingers
Date: 22 Jun 07 - 06:16 AM

A Boring Semi built post WW2 from my lounge window !

Subject: RE: BS: Oldest manmade thing you can see?
From: The PA
Date: 22 Jun 07 - 06:18 AM

My Husband!

Subject: RE: BS: Oldest manmade thing you can see?
From: Megan L
Date: 22 Jun 07 - 06:22 AM

I used to do First aid duties one of our main sites was a pony club venue that looked down on Skara Brae inhabited about 3200 BC.

Subject: RE: BS: Oldest manmade thing you can see?
From: Paco Rabanne
Date: 22 Jun 07 - 06:31 AM

Peasants!

Subject: RE: BS: Oldest manmade thing you can see?
From: skipy
Date: 22 Jun 07 - 06:43 AM

ML, that one does not count! you have to be able to see whatever it is, from where you are, right now.
Skipy

Subject: RE: BS: Oldest manmade thing you can see?
From: GUEST,PMB
Date: 22 Jun 07 - 06:47 AM

Looking outside the door at work, I can see the traces of the earthworks of a ditch and rampart round the top of a nearby hill. Probably an Iron Age fort, built sometime between 700BC and 50AD. But a year ago or so, we found a neolithic arrowhead in the garden at home, probably made before 2000BC.

Subject: RE: BS: Oldest manmade thing you can see?
From: Megan L
Date: 22 Jun 07 - 06:47 AM

ah in that case the Dwarfie Stane on a really clear day its only 5000 years old though so we don't count it much here.

Subject: RE: BS: Oldest manmade thing you can see?
From: Crane Driver
Date: 22 Jun 07 - 06:48 AM

From the back of our house we can see the ramparts of an Iron Age hillfort on the crest of Hardings Down, Gower - see the photo on our website.

The oldest manmade object I can see at work is probably my computer!

Andrew

Subject: RE: BS: Oldest manmade thing you can see?
From: skipy
Date: 22 Jun 07 - 06:50 AM

Can ye nae see the Partick Stane as weel?
Skipy

Subject: RE: BS: Oldest manmade thing you can see?
From: vectis
Date: 22 Jun 07 - 06:54 AM

Whats left of an iron age hill fort on the clifftop. Much of it has already been taken by the sea but not all of it.

Subject: RE: BS: Oldest manmade thing you can see?
From: George Papavgeris
Date: 22 Jun 07 - 07:00 AM

In Milton Keynes (work)? You must be joking!
And there's not that much that's left that's really old in Chesham (home) either.
I have some really old cheese in the fridge - does that count?

Subject: RE: BS: Oldest manmade thing you can see?
From: Doktor Doktor
Date: 22 Jun 07 - 07:12 AM

The London Stone ..(if I stand on the windowsill in the corner and lean sideways)

.. we got cheese that's old enough to count as well ;)

Subject: RE: BS: Oldest manmade thing you can see?
From: DMcG
Date: 22 Jun 07 - 07:43 AM

Nothing REALLY old, but there is some furniture made by my wife's great-great-grandfather ...

Subject: RE: BS: Oldest manmade thing you can see?
From: Bee
Date: 22 Jun 07 - 08:04 AM

The hundred year old forest other side of the lake: manmade because men cut the four hundred+ year old forest down a hundred years ago.

Subject: RE: BS: Oldest manmade thing you can see?
From: Mitch the Bass
Date: 22 Jun 07 - 08:19 AM

From my office window, the North Midland Railway roundhouse at Derby, England, built in 1839, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roundhouse

Soon to be renovated and made into a place of learning, part of Derby University.

Mitch

Subject: RE: BS: Oldest manmade thing you can see?
From: Dave Hanson
Date: 22 Jun 07 - 08:35 AM

A 2005 Vauxhaul Corsa.

eric

Subject: RE: BS: Oldest manmade thing you can see?
From: kendall
Date: 22 Jun 07 - 08:55 AM

My 1930 Ford.

Subject: RE: BS: Oldest manmade thing you can see?
From: Hawker
Date: 22 Jun 07 - 09:07 AM

My house is a cob cottage which is about 350ish years old in the oldest parts. From the garden I can see the trees which are sheltering an iron age settlement.On a good day you can see Exmoor to the east(ish) The Ash tree in the garden is pretty old too! From the front you can see Old Dartmoor and Bodmin moor - I think that they are pretty old places too!
Cheers, Lucy

Subject: RE: BS: Oldest manmade thing you can see?
From: Rapparee
Date: 22 Jun 07 - 09:10 AM

From work: petroglyphs, undated, but could be as old as 2,000 BCE or as recent as the 1750s.

At home: other than what I see in the mirror, probably the two chairs my mother gave me -- they date from about 1856 or so.

Subject: RE: BS: Oldest manmade thing you can see?
From: John MacKenzie
Date: 22 Jun 07 - 09:24 AM

Does Marianne Faithfull count?

Subject: RE: BS: Oldest manmade thing you can see?
From: Trevor
Date: 22 Jun 07 - 09:27 AM

I can just see the iron age fort on top of Caer Caradoc in the south of Shropshire (I'm in Shrewsbury). Oh, and if I stand on tippytoe I can just see the top of The Long Mynd at the point where there is a Bronze Age tumulus.

Subject: RE: BS: Oldest manmade thing you can see?
From: Wolfgang
Date: 22 Jun 07 - 09:33 AM

Right now (at work) the oldest things in my room are some ca. 150 years old books, looking out of the window I see an 800 odd years old church. From home I can see a nearly 1000 years old church.

Wolfgang

Subject: RE: BS: Oldest manmade thing you can see?
From: Rapparee
Date: 22 Jun 07 - 09:41 AM

As far as I know, no work has been done on the rock art of Idaho. Folks in the American Southwest don't even seem to know it exists. That's why I can't give a better date for it.

Subject: RE: BS: Oldest manmade thing you can see?
From: Becca72
Date: 22 Jun 07 - 10:02 AM

The Stroudwater Baptist Church at the bottom of the hill...not sure when it was built, though.

Subject: RE: BS: Oldest manmade thing you can see?
From: Wyrd Sister
Date: 22 Jun 07 - 10:07 AM

The landscape!

Subject: RE: BS: Oldest manmade thing you can see?
From: Sandra in Sydney
Date: 22 Jun 07 - 10:09 AM

how about oldest WOMAN-made thing I can see?

I have a piece of Venetian Rose Point Needle-lace c. 1670, a present from one of my colleagues when I retired in February.

oldest MAN-made item would be a small 18th century coffee cup, according to the label it came from 'Bow of W. Duesbury 1760-1776'. William Duesbury was one of the founders of the Royal Crown Derby Porcelain Company.

sandra

Subject: RE: BS: Oldest manmade thing you can see?
From: TIA
Date: 22 Jun 07 - 10:49 AM

At work, on my wall right above this here monitor, I have an acoustic image of an indistinct blob in the center of a 2000 year old earthen mound (Adena?) in eastern Kentucky. Turns out that blob is a young girl (odd use of young in this context), buried apparently with high honors. So, I don't see the actual mound or burial, just the "picture" we took of it several years ago.

Subject: RE: BS: Oldest manmade thing you can see?
From: Scooby Doo
Date: 22 Jun 07 - 10:58 AM

Subject: RE: BS: Oldest manmade thing you can see?
From: Scooby Doo
Date: 22 Jun 07 - 11:00 AM

Sorry Skipy.

I can see brambles through my french doors and the front window i can see a private resident car park and another row of flats.



Scooby

Subject: RE: BS: Oldest manmade thing you can see?
From: wysiwyg
Date: 22 Jun 07 - 11:03 AM

Our rented farmhouse (1866), built from bricks fired up the road, made from clay dug out of what is now the farm pond out back. Lumber from trees cut here, porches floored in Pennsylvania bluestone quarried here.

~S~

Subject: RE: BS: Oldest manmade thing you can see?
From: goatfell
Date: 22 Jun 07 - 11:21 AM

looking out my window I can see the isle of Arran and from my study door my big sister but she's not that old she's only 17 years older than me, mind you I have another two big sisters and two big brothers.

So they are older than me, but the live in Australia.

Dr Wha

Subject: RE: BS: Oldest manmade thing you can see?
From: HouseCat
Date: 22 Jun 07 - 11:35 AM

Out my office window, the railroad tracks cutting through the woods that were laid about 1870 and still in use today.

Subject: RE: BS: Oldest manmade thing you can see?
From: cookster
Date: 22 Jun 07 - 11:40 AM

A toolbox that my great great great grandfather owned.

Subject: RE: BS: Oldest manmade thing you can see?
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 22 Jun 07 - 11:48 AM

This time of year nothing older than 1950s - but when the leaves are off the trees I can get a glimpse of a Norman Church, St Botolph's, Eastwick.

Subject: RE: BS: Oldest manmade thing you can see?
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 22 Jun 07 - 12:04 PM

In the books here I have one that goes back to 1776. Of the antiques in the house the one that is clearly visible and can be dated is the tall case clock with the wooden works, ca. 1815-1830. Built during the War of 1812 when brass was used for weapons so U.S. clocks were made with wooden gears.

SRS

Subject: RE: BS: Oldest manmade thing you can see?
From: mack/misophist
Date: 22 Jun 07 - 12:18 PM

Hanging by the door is a Dutch naval cutlass issued in 1816. I detest intruders.

Subject: RE: BS: Oldest manmade thing you can see?
From: JennyO
Date: 22 Jun 07 - 12:19 PM

Australia itself is very old, but it isn't man made.

Sitting here, probably the oldest thing I can see is the Edwardian (what we'd call Federation) period fireplace surround that we found in a recycling co-op called "The Bower" It would probably be circa 1910. It's a lovely thing, with an oval mirror set in it.

To my left is the family piano. Not sure how old it is, but it's older than me. The actual house I'm in was probably built around the 30's or 40's. That's about as old as things get around here - except when John comes home tired after a hard day at the Child Care Centre, you would think he was several hundred years old to look at him!

Subject: RE: BS: Oldest manmade thing you can see?
From: Ebbie
Date: 22 Jun 07 - 12:29 PM

Juneau, Alaska isn't all that old; gold was discovered here in 1881. The Native community didn't live here (because of its bad weather!); they used this location as a fish camp.

So the oldest manmade things I can see from my window are St. Nicholas Russian Orthodox Church (1894) and a small apartment house, of which the oldest part was built in 1886.

Subject: RE: BS: Oldest manmade thing you can see?
From: Bill D
Date: 22 Jun 07 - 12:35 PM

People in The UK and Europe have a lot more choices...

My house only dates to the 60s. (though I once lived in one built in 1893) I can see my grandmother's hutch cabinet, which was old when I first saw it in the 1950s, and the album of old postcards she saved starting about 1902....and if I walk into the bedroom, I can the shoes my father wore as a baby in 1907-08...and downstairs are my grandfathers pocket watch from the 1890s and medals he got for sharpshooting in some quasi-military unit in 1889 or so.

Since I am near Wash DC, I 'could' drive a ways and see old houses & monuments back to the 1790s, etc...but as I sit at the computer, my grandmother's album is it.

Subject: RE: BS: Oldest manmade thing you can see?
From: GUEST,Phot, just off Punta Arranus, Chilie
Date: 22 Jun 07 - 01:15 PM

The inside of the hull of HMS Southampton! And a 115 volt dimmer switch made in 1978! There are no windows here as I'm below the waterline!

Wassail! Chris.

Subject: RE: BS: Oldest manmade thing you can see?
From: Little Hawk
Date: 22 Jun 07 - 01:19 PM

I see a big cast iron machine tool that was probably made some time in the 1800's...for what purpose I do not know. It's painted blue and it is now serving as a curiosity piece in the front yard. Someone asked me what it was, and I said it was a nuclear-powered block heater, but I don't think they believed it.

Subject: RE: BS: Oldest manmade thing you can see?
From: fretless
Date: 22 Jun 07 - 01:26 PM

My office building dates back to the 1890s, so if walls count, that's it. I can't identify any contents that go back further than the 1970s, if that. At home, in the right room, I can spot human products dating back about 7,000 years and natural products that go back a few hundred million.

And beautiful as the Uffington horse certainly is, I wouldn't date it later than ate La Tene, around 100 BCE or so.

Subject: RE: BS: Oldest manmade thing you can see?
From: cookster
Date: 22 Jun 07 - 01:34 PM

A camera from 1932.

Subject: RE: BS: Oldest manmade thing you can see?
From: gnu
Date: 22 Jun 07 - 01:38 PM

Jeepers, Phot. You sure get around!

Wassail!

Subject: RE: BS: Oldest manmade thing you can see?
From: Ebbie
Date: 22 Jun 07 - 02:11 PM

lol Bill D, talk about 'misread threads'- I first saw your 'sharpshooting' as 'shoplifting'. Sorry!

Subject: RE: BS: Oldest manmade thing you can see?
From: beardedbruce
Date: 22 Jun 07 - 02:21 PM

Not looking at it now, but I have a book published in 1596.

Subject: RE: BS: Oldest manmade thing you can see?
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 22 Jun 07 - 02:28 PM

Ebbie,

Alaska Offocie of History and Archaeology.

There are many manmade things in Alaska that are very old. They just weren't produced by colonizers. . .

SRS

Subject: RE: BS: Oldest manmade thing you can see?
From: beardedbruce
Date: 22 Jun 07 - 02:29 PM

Oh, and I have some coins that are about 1900 years old.

Subject: RE: BS: Oldest manmade thing you can see?
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 22 Jun 07 - 02:31 PM

Pardon my typing. "Office"