ABSTRACT
It is not unreasonable to suppose that early humans were aware of the concept of resolution. As soon as they had acquired the power of speech, they would have realised that the ability to resolve visual detail at long distances differed significantly from one individual to the next. One might speculate that those with the keenest long sight would have been deployed in watching for prey or an imminent attack from a neighbouring tribe. The Romans considered short-sightedness a permanent defect that reduced the market value of a slave, relative to that of keen-sighted and literate ones, and older people would be read to by younger ones.
