or a series of stones piled up in a particular way to prevent other humans or animals from accessing caches of hidden food. These simple rock piles were subsequently replaced by more complex booby traps, woven tree branches, and ingeniously interlocking pieces of carved wood. By 3000 BC Egyptians were making wooden locks with moving parts. Metal smiths in China and Persia devised portable iron padlocks and combination locks. Romans fashioned metal keys to locked treasure chests into rings they wore on their fingers. 18th and 19th century inventors created an ever more complex series of locks with intricate combinations of wards, tumblers, pins, springs and screws. And this work continues today, as keypads, magnetic strips, advanced electronic and biomedical locks and keys continue to grow in sophistication, all for the purpose of stymying the tireless efforts of those who make it their business to outsmart locksmiths and break in. Thus the long history of locks and keys seems to testify to a basic truth about the human condition: that we inevitably find it necessary to hide and protect ourselves and our belongings from one another, and to contain and control what we deem to be ours. We shut thingsout – robbers, the weather, the scrutiny of others; and we hold things in, like prisoners, valuables, and secrets. In this light, locks and keys might seem to be witness to our failure to live in harmony, be a truly social animal, to share.
But there’s more to locks and keys than this dark imperative of ownership. The lock affords more than just hording goods and private property. Locks also serve to define the inside and outside of things, to help us set up useful delineations of private and public. Privacy, for the social animal, means the right to control our own bodies, and allows for the protection of the most interior landscape of our thoughts. And containment is more than just restraint of that which tends to wander, like livestock or children. Containment also conjures the idea of holding something close, cherishing, which is all about the human capacity for reverence and adoration. Think of a lockbox of love letters and photographs, a cedar chest full of family heirlooms, a child’s diary. When we give someone “the key” to our hearts it is the most profound of gifts.
Of course we cannot forget that the act of locking means limiting or preventing movement. What and who we imprison remains one of the most important questions facing contemporary societies. But just as lock and key have long been strong icons, symbolic of imprisonment and absolute power, the key when standing alone is a signifier of imprisonment’s opposite: the promise of escape, the soaring hope of freedom. In the end, locks and keys are those most human of inventions – exquisitely expressing our most oppressive, least noble tendencies as well as our most visionary and enduring aspirations.