Mirrors were Invented in 1835. So What Did We Do Before?

At its most primitive, the first ‘mirror’ was nothing more than a puddle in nature. The most infamous story is arguably that of the Greek god Narcissus, whose obsession with his watery reflection led to his own doom. Personally, we think he gets a bad wrap and wouldn’t blame a guy for being so fascinated with reflective surfaces in a world where mirrors didn’t yet exist. The earliest manmade mirrors were polished disks of metal or stone such as shards of volcanic glass in Turkey circa 6200 BCE, sheets of bronze for the Ancient Egyptians and pieces of iron ore and copper for the Mayans.

Mosaic mirrors of pyrite (aka “fool’s gold”), were crafted across large parts of Mesoamerica in the Classic period, but because Pyrite degrades with time and loses its reflective qualities, they were often mistaken for paint palettes or pot lids when excavated centuries later. Still, ancient mirrors no doubt would have provided pretty poor image and colour quality, requiring frequent and rigorous polishing to achieve any kind of decent reflection.