Graffitti is as old as walls...

About 3 this morning I awakened hungry and thirsty. And although that's not too unusual, (As I get older it seems sleep is going to be a somewhat rare commodity.) I decided to use the time while eating a half of a peanut butter sandwich and some no fat milk, (Good lord, what have I come to.) to explore a little history. For some unknown reason a piece of graffiti I read once on a bathroom wall was bouncing around in my head. Written in a neat printed hand with magic marker were the words. "Time is natures way of keeping everything from happening at once." and underneath written hastily in black ball point, "Space is nature's way of keeping it from happening in the same place." I was pleased to find such mind expanding thoughts penned in such a lowly and dismal place. (A gas station restroom) But it got me thinking about graffiti in general. Wondering if there was any historical graffiti, and it appears there is, lots of it in fact. And it is pretty much the same sort of things found written on bathroom walls to this date. (Understand please that I don't see cave paintings as graffiti, to me graffiti requires that the artist does not have permission to write on the wall, where cave paintings are clearly ceremonial and were painted with permission from the entire clan.) The most famous Graffiti of all time is probably the one found all across Europe during world war II, which stated simply "Kilroy was here." No one knows who wrote it first but it seems obvious that many soldiers began writing it as the war raged on. The vikings had been scratching their names in walls a thousand years before kilroy. In a beautiful marble church in Istanbul (then Constantinople) a Viking traveler snuck into the church sometime in the 1st century and carved "Haldvan was here." into the marble banister. Earlier than that the people of Pompeii were carving onto bathroom and brothel walls up until 79 AD when Mount Vesuvius put an end to them, but also preserved that ancient graffiti so that we may read it today. One of my favorites is a piece of prose written by a frustrated man which says, "Whoever loves, go to hell. I want to break Venus's ribs with a club and deform her hips.If she can break my tender heart why can't I hit her over the head?"
We can only hope that carving that into the stone wall helped to vent his frustration so that vandalism was the only damage he did. A lot of the graffiti from Pompeii was of a sexual nature, such as, "One who buggers a fire burns his penis."
or "Virgula to her Tertius: You are one horny lad!" or "Celadus the Thracier makes the girls moan!" I've only included the PG carvings from Pompeii, there were many that were much more graphic and weren't suitable for a family friendly website. But if you are interested in reading them click here. So it seems that people are people no matter what century they lived in. That's about all, got work to do. Ciao for now.