The first celebrity?

[Talysia]

It's a given that modern society has it's fair share of celebrities, and you can't flick through a newspaper without seeing famous people adorning the pages, along with stories about them. Still, I was wondering exactly who could be considered as the first celebrity.

Every society has its giants, the people who stand out for whatever reason, and this must be the same for every country. The populace would have also had their favourite figures - especially with the rise of the media - and they would have followed their exploits in the same way that we do today.

I didn't know whether the first celebrity would be a writer - either a playwright or a novelist - or a composer/musician. Whether it would be a politician or a General, an explorer or a monarch. Any ideas?

 

[Azathoth]

The first celebrity probably would've been a clan leader from the earliest days of mankind. (It would have been a limited celebrity, mind you, recognized only by people in the geographic vicinity of the person.) The first *civilized* celebrity probably would have been a monarch of some kind (maybe an Egyptian Pharoah?). Anyways, up until rather recently, people gained celebrity primarily through martial and leadership talents. EDIT: Oh, or for religious reasons. So, maybe the first celebrity was a mystic or shaman or oracle or what-have-you.

It definitely wouldn't have been an artist of any kind - artists are only valued in societies with an overabundance of food, wealth and population, and none of the earliest civilizations had any of those things. And it certainly wouldn't have been an explorer - explorers weren't ever really national heroes up until about the 1500's in Europe.

 

[that old guy]

I'd guess some of the athletes in first or second century Rome. As in gladiators and charioteers. The problem is that without even printing presses I'm not sure how you could have something even remotely analogous to what we have today. However, they were cheered on by thousands, probably tens or even hundreds of thousands through their career. Short a career as they inevitably had.

Marcus Aurelius kind of fulminates against some of the "celebrities" from prior generations who had been forgotten by his time.

 

[carrie221]

I think the 1st one would be a king or warrier from the first civilizations like in the Tigurius region...

 

[j d worthington]

As said, it depends on how you define celebrity. Probably some of the earliest known would indeed be from the region of Mesopotamia or Egypt; someone like Hammurabi of Babylon (ca. 1810?-1750? B.C.E.), who had such an impact that (as with the set of laws he established) it was felt beyond the immediate region and well beyond his own time -- some of the thinking behind the Code of Hammurabi is with us today, as it is one of the (if not the) earliest known cases of a presumption of innocence in the eyes of the law (innocent until proven guilty)....

 

[Esioul]

An eye for an eye... (one of Hammurabi's laws I think, if a doctor messed up an eye oepration, he got his own eye put out...).

I suppose there could have been celebereties of a kind before there was any way of really recording them (i.e writing), but unless there were realy good communications networks I doubt they were much mroe than local celebrities.

Maybe Gilgamesh or someone like that? Proabbly one of the earliest 'historical'/'mythological' figures to be written about in legend form? Or maybe not,I don't know.

But yes Big Mespotamian kings probably. By the time of Hammurabi the Egyptians were also pretty prominant and had plenty of legends..

Hmm, a tricky one.

 

[gigantes]

the first clan leaders as mentioned above is good.

i'd also say the person who figured out which rocks you could flake to hold a sharp edge, the person who made the first spear, the person who figured out that you could trap animals by digging a big hole and putting some brush over it, the person who figured out you could drape animal hides across tall sticks and branches to make a shelter, etc etc..

also, the first medicine men.