I was thinking about doors tonight.
 

Y'know, doors weren't always around. At some point, someone invented a door, and that had to be a huge advance.

Cavemen probably didn't have doors, but I bet they wanted them. The cavewomen were probably always complaining about sabertooth tigers and dire wolves wandering into the caves, and they'd say, "Hey! Og! Another sabertooth got in today and I had to chase it out with a stick. Can't you do something to put a thing in front of this opening so that doesn't happen? And by the way, all the air conditioning is getting out."

Maybe the caveman dragged some branches across the opening. Maybe not. I don't know. I'm not sure if it counts as a door if there's no hinge and no knob.

And if it wasn't invented for caves, at some point civilization started. Was the door ahead of civilization? Was it behind civilization? Perhaps the invention of the door is really a sign that civilization has occurred. Once you have a door, all sorts of good stuff happens. Vandals and visigoths can't get in. Flies can't get in. You can score with your cavewife or babyloniwife in relative privacy. It doesn't rain on your floor when the wind blows. Doors are really a key to the whole concept of home and hearth.

Maybe you have to have an actual house before doors can be invented. Maybe it doesn't work with caves. Maybe some babyloniwife said to her husband, "Y'know, if we could put some sort of thing in front of this doorway, we wouldn't get attacked by visigoths so easily. Make it so it's easy to move and we can go in and out whenever we went, but the visigoths can't."

Of course, she wouldn't have called it a doorway, because that would be premature. It would just be called a "way", or "that hole in the wall over there".

Maybe a door has to have a hinge. If the babylonians built screens and set them in their doorways (or screenways) and then picked them up and moved them to go in and out, are those really doors? Or do they have to be attached or moveable or both? It seems like there are lots of ways to define a door.

Anyway, just pondering.

I had a similar train of thought the other day.. but on door knobs. So I looked up the history of door fasteners and it's pretty interesting. Apparently before door knobs, latch strings were all the rage. You put an interior latch on the door then drilled a hole in the door and left the string hanging outside. You could then pull the string in when you were inside to "lock" the door.

http://bookdome.com/outdoors/Camping...-and-latch.jpg

Fascinating. Now that you mention it, latches are an important part of a door. Once you invented the door and the hinge, the latch is necessary to keep wind, animals, and barbarians from just pushing it open.

I'm a fan of 20th Century Fox but Crystal Ship also a good song.

Apparently before we had latch strings, poor people simply would bar the door when inside but rich people would have an actual lock.

If you were a rich Egyptian 4000 years ago.. you could have had one of these bad boys.

http://www.onlinelocksmithcourse.com...y/manolim5.jpg

Apparently your giant ass "key" could also be used to club off any would be intruders.

I'd like to have a dire wolf.

I don't think I'll get one by leaving my door open tonight however.

First time you've smoked legal dope in Colorado got you thinking Mr. Rain Man?

These guys would not have been so cool if they were called The Openings

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Fun!
I love doors, especially old ones.
At my favorite pub they have these cool old Fire Doors. I loved them so much I found one at an Architectural Salvage place and put it in my bedroom.
You cut the rope and it slides shut and saves you from FIRE!

http://media-cache-ec0.pinimg.com/23...ed0267f2a1.jpg

I believe it's accepted as fact that cavemen used boulders in front of their caves. Boulders don't need latches either. You just roll them back-and-forth.

That's how music was invented, you know? When the caveman rolled the boulder over his toes.

Something like this...

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Waking up and seeing this thread reminded me that pot is now legal in Colorado.

But if they didn't have latches, couldn't they just roll back? Maybe the first latches were just small rocks that chocked the boulders in place.