This Could Have Been a Meeting

Step into your favorite time machine shoes and journey all the way back to the Bronze Age, where workplace woes were already alive and well. According to shocking new research (unearthed in the literal sense), our ancestors didn’t just invent the wheel; they also invented the first groan-worthy meetings.

Back then, instead of muttering, “This meeting could have been an email,” the fashionably frustrated bronze executive would sigh, “This gathering could have been a tablet message!” or perhaps bemoan, “This assembly could have been a papyrus scroll!” All across ancient boardrooms, you’d spot puzzled scribes and exasperated elders exchanging synchronized eye rolls that echoed through stone corridors.

If you imagine scrolls flying across the table and clay tablets thudding onto desktops, you’re getting the right picture. Ancient scholars, buried under heaps of scrolls, would daydream about a world with fewer in-person debates and more efficient, snail-paced messaging. Legend has it that the very first “Reply All” papyrus threaded the walls of Alexandria.

Historians now agree that separating urgent chisel-etched memos from time-consuming ceremonial banter was a universal quest; one that transcended time and geography. Whether waiting for a Bronze Age PowerPoint or deciphering an urgent doodle from the Pharaoh’s assistant, the timeless struggle for productivity was real.

So next time you find yourself in one more meeting that could’ve easily been a text, take comfort in knowing you’re sharing a groan with thousands of years of ancestors. They, too, hoped for swift messages and less sandal-shuffling between chambers.

Perhaps, had someone invented the “Do Not Disturb” stone slab sooner, history’s first managers would have been a lot more relaxed, and a lot less dusty.