Archaeologists found 800-year-old doodles by a 7-year-old — and they prove kids hated homework even then

It's not surprising that most kids hate homework, no matter what generation, and a 13th-century kid can vouch for that. Archaeologists have discovered an 800-year-old doodle by a Russian boy named Onfim, and it's enough to make you cry with laughter. The 7-year-old boy was so bored with his school homework that he shifted his focus to drawing instead, and one particular doodle drawn on the same birch-bark pages he used for writing lessons has become one of the most popular doodles in the world, according to a report by Live Science.

A warrior's sketch

The self-portrait, known as "Gramota No. 200," shows Onfim as a warrior riding a horse and fighting an enemy just below the alphabet exercises. To mark his masterpiece, the boy had even signed his name in Cyrillic: ОНѲИМЄ. Most of Onfim's drawings are very similar. As in, all figures have serious or intense expressions, round, simple bodies, and long, disproportionate limbs.

In fact, just as we would expect from a childish drawing, Onfim drew only a few fingers of the hands. Unfortunately, as of now, archaeologists don't have much information about the little artist. Notably, archeologists have only 12 manuscripts by Onfim. Among those, six (Nos. 199, 200, 202, 203, 206, and 210) have illustrations, and three feature his name, either as a signature or simply as text, according to a report by Literary. Moreover, the report confirms that one particular picture, No. 205 in Onfim's collection, is incomplete. 

Birch bark over paper

In medieval Novgorod, paper was rare, so people mostly used thin strips of birch bark for writing or drawing purposes. The first Russian birch-bark text was discovered in 1951, and archaeologists have found over 1,200 of them to date. Reports suggest that Novgorod was a famous trade center in those times and had a significant number of literate people. Interestingly, people used the birch-bark texts primarily to deal with commercial transactions or transcriptions of Bible passages. In fact, Valentin Yanin, a Russian historian, believed that over 20,000 texts are yet to be discovered.

Do kids really hate homework?

Several studies/surveys show that kids have a really strong hatred towards homework. In fact, a poll of 1000 kids cited by The Sun, aged six to 10, found that 34% would ban homework if given the authority. Similarly, Stanford researcher Denise Pope found that more than half (56%) of students say that homework is the primary source of stress. Moreover, many students who participated in the poll of 4,317 Californian students confessed to overwhelming homework, depriving them of sleep, and leading them to health problems.

"Both the survey data and student responses indicate that spending too much time on homework meant that students were 'not meeting their developmental needs or cultivating other critical life skills,'" the research found. Similarly, Onfim must have also experienced such fatigue, which is probably why he turned to drawing instead of focusing on schoolwork. 

Meanwhile, reacting to his doodles, @pk3188 said, "Imagine just randomly doodling while bored and then, 800 years later, people are fascinated by it." @sergior00 wrote, "Some things never change. If archeologists found my doodles from elementary school (10 and under), they would find a lot of stick figure war scenes, lol."

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