greedy-little-boots asked: Three historical artefacts you wish that had survived?

Oh gosh. *Mindblank*

-It’s rather cheating to say ‘every pamphlet ever’, but I really wish that we had more sources of the disposable literatures that must have passed through people during the beginning of printing. For example, in my dissertation I’m having to use ballard pamphlets on monstrous births as my primary source base, but the problem is that there are so few of them because generally speaking these were some of the cheaper pamphlets, that people collected mainly for the images (though they attempted to shoehorn in religious messages) and they (and most pamphlets) were largely viewed as trash and so not treasured and looked after. It’d be awesome if they had survived - you’d know more than ever about early modern social culture.

-Also, as a personal thing, I wish that there were more abbeys and the like in one piece. The dissolution of the monasteries - while a fantastically interesting historical event in itself - was a cultural disaster. i’d especially like to see the weird saints’ artifacts that every abbey had loads of  - Jesus’s foreskin and the like - because they’re both funny and really interesting.

-I also wish that the Roman steam-machines survived. The way the ancients used steam in such little levels to do things like power automated little toys to show off at palaces and to, in theory, open up doors would have been fantastic to see.