The Story of Onfim (a Medieval Child)

You have a very calming voice

I like how the drawings still look very distinctively Slavic. The hands especially betray how he was used to writing in Glagolictic so much.

i study in Russia on history faculty. once, we were talking about birch letters in Novgorod, and when i got home, i decided to check some of them by myself. there's a very good site for it, actually. so, when i found about Onfim's drawing i was so surprised and yet happy, i think it's more interesting and exiciting than economical letters of Novgorod (there's also a lot of love letters and a letter that i like very much can be translated either as some religious text, either as "i'm a puppy"). one of my favourite archelogical findings.

gaius and aulus are in a very big but extremely select group of people who wanted their names to be remembered by being written, and who’s names were remembered for only being written

NOVGOROD MENTIONED 🗣️🗣️🗣️🗣️

It's pretty beautiful how such a small, mundane activity like a child doodling in the margins of their homework, can through a series of unlikely circumstances survive as a striking snapshot viscerally demonstrating the complete humanity and normalcy of those who lived and died long before us. There are many reasons why we teach and study history in the shape of large patterns and significant events, not least of which the facts that just like now all of our lives form these patterns that may only be visible fully in retrospect or the practical consideration that it's impossible to know or teach the full story of everyone that ever existed. The lack of information we receive about the realities of living in the past along with our tendency to feel like we (both as in ourselves as indivuduals, as groups, and as those who experience reality in our present) are essentially different in all fundamental aspects of our beings and experiences make it fascinating when we get a glimpse of things we know from our own lived experience evident in artifacts like these. It's difficult to fully internalise on an instinctual level that those who lived long ago or even those who live right now in very different situations from ourselves share the vast majority of our own inner lives. There's something very fascinating in the fact that we have so much more in common with every person alive or dead than we assume. "I think, therefore I am" - we can only truly know for certain that we ourselves exist, and maybe that is why we so often default to assuming others' lives are any less full of meaning and life than ours. History is conceptualised as a series of events and patterns, but these patterns and events are all the sum of a continuous existence of humans just living their lives, and events that people experienced just as we experience what happens around us now.

Oohh my name is antique

my favourite found paper is that of the mesopotamian teenager writing to his mom complaining about not having enough/new clothes. super relatable to me when i was a teen

Chances were Onfim became an average soldier or died in childhood.

If someone told Onfin he would be remebered centuries later, he would probably think he was a great warrior

every skull had a dream

this reminds me of a similar artifact in the cairo gezina from around 1000-1200. a jewish kid from cairo was practicing hebrew letters on a piece of paper, then got bored and started doodling. he drew a camel (or possibly a person), a menorah, some animals, and other scribbles.

i cant believe onfim was the bay harbor butcher

The comment about comparing Venus to the beauty of his girlfriend completely changed what I believed about the idea of belief.

“Big new city” Veliky Novgorod

Imagine 1000 years in the future where scientists find a childs drawing from today

Dear Onfim. Long gone but not forgotten.

This is my favourite video if I had to make a list.

I'd sooner say Joy than Sondor because it's truly the greatest sight into children in the medieval ages especially one that like you said earlier was imaginative. We all know people live different life's

This made me really sad

I love humans so much, man....

King onfim

I hope he lived a long and lovely life…

Sonder is really a thing

behold, the guy who invented that tiktok trend of drawing blackbeard writing and goku with glasses on a homework paper

Lesson: draw the most permanent graffiti u can everywhere

God i hope they find a birch bark manuscript with that S thing

The "historians will look back at this and be so confused" meme is literally true

i think its more fun to believe he fought in that battle

why seeing an old child's drawings make me teary eyes????

This is the only video that’s ever made me consistently cry

It’s really both endearing and both sad to hear about how past humans were just like us individuals with dreams and imagination it’s really sad we will never get to know them

God speed Onfim

726,000 people know your name

The dates of his arts makes me kinda sad, I wonder if Onfim survived or died during mongol invasions on Russia. Rip, Onfim. Hope you be remembered and had a nice life

Halfdan is my man

Onfim wants to be a warrior

Ohhhh so THIS is what Ralph was talking about.

what i like most about these drawings is the universal nature of rake-hands

this makes me so sad

oh onfim, you little rascal. doodle in the skies kiddo.

I prefer this kind of history. It's something we can all relate to.

I would have loved to hug Onfim and taught him how to count: My Little Man, it's 5 fingers on each hand, not 3 on one and 5 on the other!😊❤