(Image credit: Emesik)
We talk about animation going back to the turn of the 20th century, but that's just film animation. Before that, there were zoetropes that showed a sequence of drawings that appeared to move to the human eye. The concept behind those animations goes back much further than the delightful mechanical zoetropes. A vase unearthed from UNESCO World heritage site Shahr-e Sukhteh in Iran in 1967 dates back 5,200 years. It is decorated with a series of images showing a goat. If you see the images in sequence, it shows the goat jumping up to munch on some tree leaves.
(Animation credit: Nevit Dilmen)
Since the vase is round, we can imagine someone spinning it by its stem, while blinking to see the images move. It would be difficult to get the blinking speed right, but it could be done with some practice. If the ancient Perisans only had a strobe light or a zoetrope, they would have had their own cartoons! Read about this vase and its jumping goat at Open Culture. -via Nag on the Lake
