1. Over 400 years before Facebook, German college students had a social network called the Book of Friends.
2. In the 18th century, people looked at the world through real-life Instagram filters.
3. These English aristocrats were sexting each other 250 years before Snapchat.
4. Rembrandt's selfie game was off the charts.
5. People were totally obsessed with GIFs in the 19th century.
Check out more of these phenakistocopes – an early animation technique – in the Richard Balzer Collection.
6. Cat pictures with hilarious captions also became popular.
7. Emoticons were first used in 1881.
8. Singles were hooking up online over a century before OKCupid.
9. Ancient Greeks were using tablets over 2000 years before the iPad.
10. The Roman emperor Severus built an early version of Google Maps on the side of a temple.
11. This guy was sending nasty tweets long before Twitter.
12. The ancient city of Pompeii had its own version of Grindr.
13. Sir Hans Sloane was collecting and sharing random-ass stuff over 300 years before Pinterest.
14. Tourists were giving hilariously bad reviews to everything long before Yelp and TripAdvisor.
15. In the Renaissance, an engineer called Ramelli invented the bookwheel – a sort of gigantic Kindle.
16. Norwegians were carving secrets onto these sticks 800 years before Yik Yak and Whisper.
17. 3D printing was invented in 1859.
18. Johann Zedler used crowdfunding to publish this encyclopedia 280 years before Kickstarter.
19. Thomas Jefferson used a pedometer to count his steps over 200 years before Fitbit.
20. 700 years before Google, philosopher Ramon Llull invented a gadget for finding the answer to almost anything.
21. And Japanese author Sei Shonagon was writing listicles 1000 years before BuzzFeed.
