I assure you, medieval people bathed (2019)
going-medieval.com
going-medieval.com
The modern shapes of this weekday name are still used in the scandinavian languages, and Icelandic, Finnish and Estonian.
The “laug” portion comes from Old High German “louga”, from PIE root leue- "to wash."
The “dagr” portion comes from the PIE root agh- "a day" with an initial “d” added as part of Old High German. OHG is the ancestor of Old Norse.
This is from Etymonline - a great resource for language information https://www.etymonline.com/search?q=laug
But it should give the broad strokes, just like talking about PIE is certainly a broad stroke.
> The name Raskolnikov derives from the Russian raskolnik meaning "schismatic" (traditionally referring to a member of the Old Believer movement). The name Rodion comes from Greek and indicates an inhabitant of Rhodes.
In Helsinki, only a handful of those old public saunas remain today, but they are now protected by UNESCO and there's been a revival with several fancy public saunas built downtown in the last years, and the wood-heated ones are still considered the best: https://www.myhelsinki.fi/en/see-and-do/activities/the-best-...
"As well as warming and cooking, Russian stoves were used for bathing. Once the stove became hot the burning wood was removed, and cast iron containers were put into the stove and filled with water. That allowed people to bathe inside of the stove. A grown man can easily fit inside, and during World War II some people escaped the Nazis by hiding in the stoves."
If I understand, the iron containers myst have been extremely hot, how do you walk in? Did the nazis dismiss the possibility of hiding there because it was already hot like an oven?
Pretty sure just filling a proper wooden tub with the hot water is a lot simpler.
For the context, back in my childhood I spent several summers in a house with a pechka (it's still there), and visited a couple others. Those could only fit a child at best, but the principle is the same: you shove the pots from the side into the tunnel above the fire.
Water in a tub gets cold pretty quickly; vessels with water inside a stove keep warm for much longer.
Old school Russian stoves have been hard to find in Russian villages now because they are too big and impractical, but a proper article, like one shown here https://zen.yandex.ru/media/1banya/kak-mylis-v-russkoi-pechi... , can easily fit a grown person.
As expected, it's pretty tight in there. I know that rural people of old were much more fit than I am, and I would get cramps in several muscles of each leg and in my sides after three minutes in there.
(Also Old Believers' bathing practices have a lot to do with notions of ritual purity, so they cannot be easily projected to the general population.)
So all these “don’t bath” nonsense promoted by pope was ignored (like, Pope Innocent IV passed the verdict against Frederick II of being a heathen. The first accusation on his list was the King bathed daily.)
In short, people did not wanted to smell bad but church considered an unwashed body a stinking badge of piety (as mentioned by Saint Francis of Assisi).
I could find nothing written in Italian about this.
Which is neither here, nor there, as Christian countries still bathed just fine.
>So all these “don’t bath” nonsense promoted by pope was ignored
They were ignored in Christian countries, include Rome and Byzantium, anyway.
Not to mention, they weren't meant that way anyway. From TFA:
"It’s true that we have medieval sources which warn against “excessive” bathing. But here’s the thing, that wasn’t really about being clean, it was about hanging out naked in bathhouses with the opposite sex. They didn’t want you to not be clean, they wanted you to not be going down the bath house and getting your fuck on. And yeah, some holy people didn’t bathe, notably saints who would forego bathing themselves but bathe sick or poor people. But if you bring that up you are missing the point. Medieval people thought that bathing and being clean was really nice, so giving it up and living with your stank was a sign that you had given up on the corporeal world and only thought of heaven. It was holy because it was uncomfortable, like wearing a hair shirt, or eating vegan, and hitting your chest with rocks and sitting in the desert trying not to wank. You know, standard saint stuff. It is mentioned because it is uncommon and uncomfortable."
In this particular instances he means in the practice of Christianity, which in the Catholic and Orthodox version (or the unified version before the schism) had strict lent period, with rules about abstaining from meat (and, for those following the stricter rules, dairy products two in most days (and in the traditional versions, a bread+water diet only on some important holy days). Regular christians followed (and follow) those at their own preference/faith/tolerance level, the clergy, monks, and saints, follow them strictly. And there are several stories of saints who followed them year round.
But of course, veganism is also associated with holy behavior in Hinduism, Buddhism, and such.
"Noon" is at lunchtime now because the ninth hour (Nones, Noon, 3pm) prayers, after which one could eat, got moved inexorably earlier to cater to the whims of impious monks.
And incidentally, because it's interesting, fasting and veganism without corresponding prayer was/is seen as Satanic, "The fast of the devils", because "fallen angels neither eat nor pray".
I hear western kids saying no one used to bathe in the ancient times.
As an Indian, it was practically mandatory for each and every individual to take a bath at-least two times a day. Additionally the following customs were very prevalent till recent times.
1. Washing legs after coming home from outside.
2. Washing hands, face and legs before sitting to eat food.
3. Washing whole body after sex.
4. Washing legs before entering others homes.
5. Leaving footwear outside the *gate* of any home before entering it.
6. A full bath in a river / lake / house tank *before* sunrise and once *before* sunset.
For shampoo, two traditional herbs are recommended. Kunkudukai and shikakai. Both are used as it is without any processing. Kunkudukai would be crushed and mixed with water to form a liquid and then applied on head. Amazingly, it would form a lather when rubbed on the head. I remember doing this type of head bath every sunday, until about 2005. Any shampoo was forbidden in our home. The items were dead cheap too.
[Edit]
Kinkudukai is also called soapnut.
https://www.stylecraze.com/articles/benefits-of-soapnuts-for...
The above site tends to exaggerate the benifits a bit, but it is believed that kunkudukai inhibhits dandruff and is anti-fungal and anti-bacterial.
By personal experience, it tastes absolutely vomit inducing bitter and will burn your eyes to high hell if as much as a diluted drop enters it.
Its a natural, safe and environmentally friendly way of taking a head bath.
Peasants may not maintain secure access to everything, but historically it doesn’t take wealth to have a sturdy shelter, water, warmth, and food, and even some luxuries. It’s a little different in modern times, but those basics were mostly available to everyone just through labor and time, of which peasants have quite a lot.
In India, Every village was in the vicinity of a water source. Every village had a temple, with a large pond.
Massaging with oil and flour based cleansing was the staple of almost every household.
Oils and Flours were cheap. Most of agricultural products were cheap in India. Portable water was not an issue, because industrialization did not yet happen and most water sources (and hundreds of wells dug around the country) would have clean, drinking water. Did you think a thousand years ago, people used water filters? The only filter that was used was a fine threaded cloth.
Fuel for cooking food, as with any country in those times was usually wood, husk or similar material.
> barely able to feed themselves
Yeah, no. Leaving aside a few famines here and there, India was mostly self sufficient and had plentiful of food.
In fact, selling food was considered the gravest sin. It was codified in societal practices that a householder should try to feed at-least one from outside before he has his food. Food donation was considered the highest ideal, even greater than money.
> barely a roof over their heads.
Most of the population lived in thatched huts or wood beam supported houses constructed from soil based cement like stuff. I assume this was true all over the world.
>You are the peasant. No lands for you, you aren't a lord or lady, you're a peon like 99.999% of people. Almost no middle class, and you aren't upper! You're lower class.
This is just an ignorant thing to say, without having any knowledge of world history, forget about Indian history. Also reeks of extreme contempt.
If you are not aware, this was how most of the world lived. Lower class was the norm. We are now living in an age of disproportionate luxury.
A book by a westerner.
> In ancient times, distinction was made between several different categories of farmers. There were those who cultivated their own land, those who had it cultivated by wage-earning laborers, and those who leased their land to 'metayers', farmers who paid rent in kind, in this case half the harvest and crop. There were few big landlords, and the largest estates nearly all belonged to the king, that is to say, the State in fact. The temples, too, recieved vast properties as gifts and had them developed by hired labourers and staff. But these were exceptions, and most of the land was parcelled out in small lots, sometimes only big enough to feed a single family. Many small farmers, however, chose to work the land on a 'united family' basis, under the direction of a head of the family, pooling fields, cattle, agricultural implements, harvests, crops, and grazing-grounds. Under this system, they avoided fragmentation of the family property, and to some extent, they guarded against risks and responsibilities.
> Theirs was not an easy life. The vagaries of the climate often brought seasonal catastrophe: tornadoes devastated the fields, drought scorched the land, floods wiped out whole crops. Apart from these natural hazards, there was the problem of the laws of hospitality, which were rigorously applicable and cost the farmers dearly; the most onerous of these obligations involved the provision of food and fodder for the king and his suite during the course of their cross-country tours of inspection. On such occasions, the absolute right of the king and his dignitaries to provision and stores from the local peasants might well reduce these communities to penury during a bad year, with no hope of replenishing their empty granaries before the following harvest.
> To natural calamities and unavoidable obligations had to be added the burden of taxation. Taxes were numerous and were applied to collective enterprises as well as to individuals. The peasant had to pay not only a basic tax amounting to twenty-five or thirty per cent of the produce of his land at the moment when it was in full yield, but also a periodical (probably annual) contribution based on his income. He had to pay his share of the general tax levied by the State on his village, as well as special taxes that were set against the services rendered by the State to the rural population -- protection against theft in pasturages and fields, the cost of land-surveying, irrigation works, the upkeep and repair of canals. Fruit, herbage, honey and wood were all taxable. If the farmer was not the owner of the land he worked, he was liable to pay rentals or other concessionary fees in addition to the obligatory payment of communal dues and tolls. Under some reigns, tax and duty rates reached such heights that quite often villages would be abandoned by their entire peasant population, who preferred to risk bringing new land under cultivation in some other region rather than submit to such exorbitant demands.
Lest we think these ancient peasants ever actually had it good before the foreigners showed up.
And regarding your assertions about how plentiful water was before industrialization, Page 63-64:
> We are told that, in ancient times, these canals were kept full either 'by hand', that is with the aid of water-skins or a balance-pole (tula), or else by transporting water on the backs of animals, or by using a bucket-chain. An ingenious system, still used in present times, was worked by oxen climbing up a gently sloping artificial ridge and descending it time after time, in so doing hauling up from a well on each occasion a leather bucket filled with water which was emptied into a supply-canal. The canals were excavated communally and served sometimes as demarcation lines between two neighbouring properties. It seems that the use of this commonly owned water often gave rise to keen disputes, and that it was not uncommon for the course to be diverted in the direction of one village's fields at the expense of another's. In such a case, violent quarrels resulted which developed occasionally into pitched battles between rival villagers, and the disagreement had to be brought before the local council for adjudication.
Finally, a portrait of village life, Page 126:
> Village houses were lower and more modest than town ones; their outer walls were covered with a mixture of lime, earth and cow-dung, the last being considered a purifcative agent. The shops were more like street-stalls, and the crowd that passed by their displays were of more humble stock: farmers returning from the fields, pushing ahead of them a small flock of skinny sheep; ragged foragers, grey with chaff, a sickle stuck through their belt, carrying home trusses of hay tied around their hips; women balancing on their heads large bundles of forage rolled inside a mat, to be used as animal fodder; porters trotting along, laden with baskets suspended from each end of a pole carried across the shoulders. Then there were artisans in the process of delivering their merchandise, pedlars transporting their gimcrackery in a bag, strolling players looking for a suitable place to present their turns. Cattle mingled freely with the human throng. Heavy wagons drawn by bullocks (gramasakaia or go-ratha) rolled along the main streets; these were (as they still are today) massive wooden constructions built by the village carpenter, who followed time-honoured traditions in the matter of design. The body was relatively shallow, balanced on two large, heavy, creaking wheels with protruding hubs. A shaft with a yoke at its end was designed to harness a pair of hump-backed bullocks, the yoke resting on their necks between the nape and the dorsal hump; long wooden pegs, carefully carved and painted, were stuck through the yoke, one on each side of the beast's neck, enclosing it, with the additional means of a halter. In addition, their nostrils were pierced and a cord was passed through them, this being intended as a check on their fiery temperament. Their tails were carefully tied flat against their flanks, so that the swishing would not annoy the driver. The latter, squatting at the front of the wagon, his feet on the shaft, guided the team with the aid of a simple whip consisting of a stick and a plaited cord. These vehicles were surmounted by hooped ribs covered by matting, and were used particularly for transporting grain at harvest time; the peasant's entire family, out in the fields, sought respite from the hot sun by sitting under its awning.
> Apart from local and seasonal feast days (see pp. 144-8), rural existence offered only very rare distractions, and each day heralded the same repetitive rhythm of the farmer's routine. While the men worked in the fields, the housewives went about their daily chores and artisans followed their particular craft. Peace did not invariably reign between villagers, or even between villages, and Buddhist tales often mention the sometimes hilarious and bawdy quarrels which provided the only relief from the monotony of daily life.
They sure as hell had it much worse after the invaders, looters and religious fanatics wreaked havoc in the region for 1000 years.
Which is very different from your original absurd claim.
The caste system, as all similar systems that existed in all kinds of places throughout history, is one of the worst, inhuman and unjust social systems that currently exists. It is basically apartheid based on religion and history. It is carried over from centuries ago, and right now all progress that was made in abolishing it is rolled back by higher caste Indian nationalists to score political points. And the latter part has nothing to do with colonialism and all the shitty things the British did in India.
No country needs foreigners to screw things up, societies are quite at doing all of this themselves.
>>Most of the population lived in thatched huts or wood beam supported houses constructed from soil based cement like stuff. I assume this was true all over the world.
This is what extreme poverty (pervasive in pre-modern times, aand still present today in the poorest regions of the world) looks like:
"Official reports for Burgundy between the sixteenth and the eighteenth centuries are full of 'references to people [sleeping] on straw... with no bed or furniture' who were only separated 'from the pigs by a screen'."
- Civilization & Capitalism [3]
[1] https://ourworldindata.org/extreme-poverty
[2] https://theunbrokenwindow.com/Development/MADDISON%20The%20W...
[3] https://archive.org/stream/fernand-braudel-the-structure-of-...
I am suspicious of these reports.
Every country has a history of good times and bad times. However, the culture of India is unique in the sense that the most strongest unit was the collective society and cultural practices (food donation being held as the highest ideal, practical prohibition of sale of food, a multitude of rituals for householders wherein donation of money, clothes, grain, etc was part of the ritual, societal support for disabled persons, etc). This led to a fairly decent life and times.
Were there not people in extreme poverty, sure. Was the whole country in poverty, surely not.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medieval_bioarchaeology#
>>Anne L. Grauer, Professor of Anthropology at Loyola University Chicago, assessed the presence of porotic hyperostosis and periosteal reactions in the population (n=1,014) from St. Helen-on-the-Walls in York, England. She used porotic hyperostosis and periosteal reactions to examine health and disease in urban medieval England. Grauer discovered that 58% of the population displayed evidence of porotic hyperostosis and 21.5% displayed evidence of periosteal reactions.[6]
Without industrial civilization, the amount of labor people do is not sufficient for most of the comforts of modern life, like insulated and waterproof shelter, sanitary pads, diapers, vaccines, bandages, regular laundrying of clothing, etc etc.
Do you know that? Do you have that?
It's called anthropology, linguistics, geology, and history. They're legitimate fields with highly qualified and knowledgeable professionals. Through their efforts we have a decent idea of what various cultures and lives were like even a thousand years ago through carbon dating, archaeological digs, artefacts, and so forth.
So if you are bringing academic authorities to the question, at least namedrop some academics/books/papers, so people can have a constructive debate about this.
And also, how can you possibly start a conversation about anthropology (or anything generally academic) without bringing any written literature? The worst way for academics to start a conversation with people outside of the field is "We are the authority on this topic, and you are ignorant so you should stop talking". Give us something interesting to ponder about, that's all!
EDIT: Since maybe I'm being a hypocrite by not providing any interesting links/sources myself, I'll have a try. The whole sub-field of developmental anthropology (some Wikipedia links below) seems to have close relations to the current modern concept of poverty (and to a broader extent global neoliberal politics) and is surely interesting. I'm also seeing many criticism towards their approaches from other anthropologists (Arturo Escobar is one prominent example), and taking a close look at this debate seems much more interesting than just claiming "Anthropologists are experts and we should let them just do their research" (which is a dead end to any interesting discussion on HN). And no, don't get started with "These people are fake anthropologists, real anthropologists use carbon dating and 3D scanning all that scientific jazz..." Anthropology has historically been intertwined with politics and ideology from the start, since it doesn't just end with obtaining the facts, but extrapolating and interpreting from the facts to infer what kinds of human societies were there in the past. And it is in that interpretation that all kinds of disagreements come in to play.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Development_anthropology
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Culture_of_poverty
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthropology_of_development
Potable water hasn't been an issue strictly introduced by industrialization, it was exacerbated by increased population density in areas where water sources were more likely to be contaminated. There are plenty of nasty biological contaminates out there that make water non-potable: various bacteria, viruses, parasites, etc. as well as inorganics like lead leaching that led to bad water sources (not to mention droughts). Potable water has always been an issue (to this day), industrialization agreeably added new issues although it also introduced water processing science to make non-potable waters potable in many places.
We should celebrate modern industrialized water processing, not shun it.
Feeding people is a cultural norm in India, rooted in the scriptures that ones hunger should not be a cause for doing business.
The highest ideal in Hinduism is "Sarve jana, sukhino bhavanthu" (All living things should be happy)
The reverse logic in your statement is also pertinent, in that if there was a lot of feeding going on, then there was a lot of food available.
Indian norms and culture emphasizes on moving away from materialism and advocates for distribution of wealth. Greed is frowned upon and actively discouraged in a society. Wealthy are encouraged to perform rituals and festivals and distribute their wealth.
India is the only civilization in the world where there are written references to kings of large sections of the country, leaving aside all their pomp and glory and going off into forests for meditation and penance. Mind you, they were not failures or banished. They voluntarily gave up their luxuries in search of the ultimate meaning of life.
Indian civilization is a complex layered society where philosophy of life is seeped permanently in daily language, customs, cultures, practices, rituals and history.
That the ultimate goal of life is not wealth, but of discovering the true nature of ourselves, the true nature of this world, the illusion that it is, is emphasized in every aspect of life.
Take the example of the word "punyatma". It is an adjective used for someone who is pious and does good deeds. Similar to "Good samaritan". However, the word is a combination of two words "Punya" (Fruits of good deeds) and "Aatma" (Soul). The implication, and our philosophical belief is that the soul is eternal and is bound to re-births. And the fruits of our actions are tied to our soul, and that there is no escape from getting the results of your actions (good or bad alike).
This is also a bog standard description of Christianity and a bunch of other religions. There isn’t anything special about India here.
> India is the only civilization in the world where there are written references to kings of large sections of the country, leaving aside all their pomp and glory and going off into forests for meditation and penance. Mind you, they were not failures or banished. They voluntarily gave up their luxuries in search of the ultimate meaning of life.
Bullshit. Just the history of England and France alone are packed full of wealthy and privileged people focusing their life on the pursuit of enlightenment (spiritual, artistic, and/or scientific) and giving up pre-arranged lives of power and wealth.
> That the ultimate goal of life is not wealth, but of discovering the true nature of ourselves, the true nature of this world, the illusion that it is, is emphasized in every aspect of life.
Again, this is standard guidance you’ll find in all of the major religions. One of the most common criticisms of materialists in America is how they are not following Christianity. Wealth and the eye of a needle, etc.
India was not special. It was just as poor as any other pre-industrialized nation. You’re just looking back on it with rose colored glasses because we haven’t internalized the misery of dying from simple infections, dysentery, famines from floods, etc.
I never said India is special in this regard.
>Bullshit. Just the history of England and France alone are packed full of wealthy and privileged people focusing their life on the pursuit of enlightenment (spiritual, artistic, and/or scientific) and giving up pre-arranged lives of power and wealth.
Name 2 kings or monarchs who did this voluntarily.
>Again, this is standard guidance you’ll find in all of the major religions.
Where does it say in Christianity or Islam that this world is an illusion, that there is one god, that all paths lead to the same god, or that the soul inside you is the very same god you pray to ?
>India was not special.
Spiritually, It is special, in the sense that Hinduism is not a religion but a philosophical way of life, that encourages debate, discussion, logical analysis and introspection. Historically, the only gift for questioning ones religion was a beheading in the case of Christianity and Islam.
Christians roam around the world converting people. Its so annoying. I never understand this obsession of "my god is the only path, your god is false, and if you don't follow my god and don't accept my god, you will go to hell and are not even fit to be considered a human being". Christianity has lost its soul. The history of the church is the history of Christianity and how low it has fallen from the true path of Christ.
> Where does it say in Christianity or Islam that this world is an illusion, that there is one god, that all paths lead to the same god, or that the soul inside you is the very same god you pray to ?
But that's not what you were replying to. The original context was feeding the hungry and giving charity. Which is something found in a lot of religions (albeit often convinently forgotten when it comes time to actually do it)
> >Bullshit. Just the history of England and France alone are packed full of wealthy and privileged people focusing their life on the pursuit of enlightenment (spiritual, artistic, and/or scientific) and giving up pre-arranged lives of power and wealth.
> Name 2 kings or monarchs who did this voluntarily.
You can be wealthy/privleged without being a king.
Marcus Aurelius is well known for his philosophy, although i suppose he didn't give up his position. A quick google also finds James of Aragon.
Christianity is very obviously all about eternal live in heaven with god. That's the main selling point: Your suffering on earth is not actually the real thing and you do not have to be afraid of death. You do not have to worry. Also something, something, love is good. That is how it gets sold.
> that there is one god, that all paths lead to the same god,
That's the main thing that unites the three abrahamic religions.
> or that the soul inside you is the very same god you pray to ?
Literally in Genesis. And god created men in his own image.
I had to comment on this thread, because what you and others are writing here just seems like some Indian exceptionalism. Seems like you are trying to defend something and overshooting quite a bit.
Above the state of India 1000 years ago got mentioned. As a European I give you this perspective: I feel like I can be a bit more relaxed regarding other nations, because everybody was invading each other all the time, so most certainly I would not exist genetically if my (proto-)nation would have won all these conflicts. I have nothing to do with my nation 1000 years ago. We are all the result of history.
> > or that the soul inside you is the very same god you pray to ?
> Literally in Genesis. And god created men in his own image.
An "image of God" is not "God" itself, just as a JPG photo of you is not the "real" you. In Christian traditions the only person who is simultaneously human and "God" is Jesus, and he's the only one so far. The average Christian is encouraged to pray to external deities (Jesus, God, Mary, Saints, etc.) instead of recognizing the deity within. My understanding is that the eastern philosophies that the GP refers to consider the soul of every human literally equivalent to god, or at least an integral part of such. I think there's a substantial difference here, even if some concepts overlap at the edges.
Still the teaching can be great but what about practice and where is it going now? Are Hindus becoming less tolerant of other religions? See for example: https://www.latimes.com/world-nation/story/2022-02-16/india-...
In fact, it's definitely not local culture in any big city i've visited, and on the countryside it varies not by region but from one village to the next. From what i could see it it's really not correlated with local productivity.
My assumption, when applied to India, would be that it would be an issue for the untouchables caste?
>If you are not aware, this was how most of the world lived. Lower class was the norm. We are now living in an age of disproportionate luxury.
Even so it still seems unlikely that every member of the society would be able to enjoy these amenities, the question really becomes at which cutoff point is one too poor to do so, and how much of the society was that poor?
> My assumption, when applied to India, would be that it would be an issue for the untouchables caste?
(happy to be corrected on this if i misunderstand)
This is revisionist nonsense. Ancient texts, both sacred and secular both describe a extant caste system.
The jaati system was a system of hereditary professional guilds - so you'd have different jaatis for accountants (Kulkarnis for example), farmers (Vokkaligas), teachers (Upaadhyayas), etc. The professional skill was jealously guarded and generally not open to outsiders.
And then you had the varna system which literally means category. This categorized people into 4 categories - Brahmanas, Kshatriyas, Vaishyas, and Shudras based on their nature and actions, NOT profession. This was not hereditary.
The british had zero idea of this, conflated jaati and varna into "caste" and made it rigid by bringing out voluminous reports that classified each jaati into a varna!
For example, from jaati and varna, what follows from that? Admittedly, a vague question but wanting to learn a bit more.
Just saying this is the first perspective on HN I have read about caste being inaccurate, and wanting to understand this fresh context.
Varna has always been hereditary. Anyone claiming otherwise is mistaken or making stuff up.
Duryodhana said, “O preceptor! It is stated in the sacred texts that there are three ways to become a king—through noblebirth, through valour and through leading an army. If Phalguni is unwilling to fight with someone who is not a king, I install him as king in the land of Anga.”
Right there you have it. Different ways to become a King. None based on caste.
Our history has had several, several, instances where "Kshatriyas" have not been kings. There are umpteen people who are regarded as Gods and among the greatest, who do not belong to the "upper castes." The author of the Ramayana, Valmiki, was a hunter - which is also regarded as a "lower caste." The author of the Mahabharata was the son of a fisherwoman, also regarded as a "lower-caste." Shabari, from whom Rama accepted half-eaten berries was a tribal inhabitant from a hunting clan - also deemed to be "low-caste." All these people have been looked upon as great beings, almost equivalent to Gods, and have been worshiped.
So no, if there have been revisionists, it is the ones who have used distorted british translations, and mutilated our history.
Nowhere in the Ramayana does it say that Shabari offered half eaten fruits to Rama. Because that is not good conduct. These are stories that evolved from poetry based on Ramayana.
However, it is pertinent to note that Rama is a Kshatriya and Shabari was the disciple of Matanga Muni and Rama respected her due to her devotion and service to Matanga muni, and not for her caste or lineage.
"Rama angrily spoke these words to Karna. ‘O foolish one! No one who has been born as a brahmana can endure such great suffering. Your patience is like that of a kshatriya. I wish to hear the truth.’ Karna was frightened of being cursed. He sought his favours and said, ‘O Bhargava! Know me to be between a brahmana and a kshatriya, born as a suta."
> You should read the Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute's (BORI) Critical Edition of the Mahabharata - which is the definitive edition
Please read the original Sanskrit or an edition that isn't watered down by wishy washy translation. For instance, in Sanskrit, the charactersitics of each varna are described as 'स्वभावजम्'. Bibek Debroy translates it to nature, focussing on the 'स्वभाव' and entirelly omitting the 'जम्' part. Dr. Sarvapalli Radhakrishnan preserves the full implications of the term and translates it as born of their nature.
> Shabari, from whom Rama accepted half-eaten berries
And which critical edition of the Ramayana did you read that story in? The irony of reaching for apocrypha to argue against perceived revisionism!
Seems like the British systems formed and formalized it, but that that itself was an amalgam of the cultural stratification that was sometimes already there. Multiculturalism turned monstrous... sad.
Here is an extremely harsh critique of that perspective, from an upper-caste scholar of Indian history
[1] https://hms.harvard.edu/news/genetic-study-finds-caste-syste...
Wow, that is less intermingling than I would have guessed. I knew that caste had been there for ages, but it is still a bit astonishing to read that.
Your statements reek of nationalism and revisionist history, viewing the past through black-and-white-and-rose tinted glasses, and passing blame onto 'evil foreigners' for current problems. It's mind boggling that you think anyone would lap these statements up.
> passing blame for current problems
Humans think we're special but we're still slightly more complicated networked state machines. This means the issue of metastability, where a pathological state is entered and maintains even with the triggering stimulus removed, due to sustaining effects such as fitness criteria given rampant corruption, is real. Control and dynamical systems theory is as applicable to human systems as it is to traffic networks or distributed systems.
This isn't to say current problems are solely because of past inequities but worth recognizing that once entered into, exiting by solutions which entail solving challenging coordination problems are extremely difficult to obtain.
> black-and-white-and-rose tinted glasses
I know next to nothing about Indian history but what they says sounds plausible even if causality for present is more involved. I have at least heard of the famous Indus Valley Civilization and its emphasis on baths, scientific precocity, exceptional levels of egalitarianism, pacifism and influence on subsequent Indian civilization. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indus_Valley_civilisation#Post...
But is what you're linking what GP is talking of? Because this is over 2k years old, while it's interesting it doesn't validate or invalidate living conditions of pre-colonial India. Wouldn't it be like linking to an article on propsperity from peak Roman empire when discussing much more recent feudalist Europe? Roman influence on Europe (and beyond) abound, but some early positive characteristics of it's statehood have been long gone by medieval times. And I thought the thread was on recent(ish) history.
But what did I expect...
That doesn't sound like the kind of norm that would develop in a society where nobody has to worry about getting enough to eat.
A family of four needs about half a days with of cooking oil to have a bath with oil.
Hot water - I assume we're talking about a time period where it would've been heated over fire anywhere in the world.
Everyone, male and female, washes their whole body twice every day; and those who do not wash are looked down on
Dark skin is highly esteemed among these people. ‘When a child is born they anoint him once a week with oil of sesame, and this makes him grow much darker’
Instead, he says it's best to wait half an hour between the meal and brushing the teeth.
> Brushing Right After Eating
> If you feel the need to clean your teeth after eating or drinking, wait at least 60 minutes before brushing—especially if you have had something acidic like lemons, grapefruit or soda. Drink water or chew sugarless gum with the ADA Seal of Acceptance to help clean your mouth while you are waiting to brush.
(Now, even if I don't eat breakfast or lunch, which is quite typical, certainly not both, they'll start to feel unclean and I'll brush them before eating or drinking in the evening.)
A person who eats 3 meals a day is a rogi (Diseased)
A person who eats 2 meals a day is a bhogi (A content, satisfied person)
A person who eats 1 meal a day is a yogi (A person on the path to spiritual bliss)
A unified India did not exist until fairly recently. Neither as a political entity nor as a culture one.
Culturally India was a unified entity for millenia. As in, perhaps not having a unified government, but having the same cultural and literary background throughout the region.
Ancient texts like Ramayana and Mahabharata talk about various places and practices across the length and breadth of India, which are remarkably similar and have a unified core.
The greatest temples of Hinduism are not concentrated in one place, but spread over the entirety of the continent. And those are ancient temples. From Saraswati Temple in Kashmir to the Bhagavathi temple in Kanya Kumari.
The idea that India was not a cultural entity was a British invention
It is a bit more complex though, certainly even today there's some very distinct 'culture' in different regions across India. But also shared themes and roots (e.g. Sanskrit & texts written in it, from which modern 'distinct' languages/beliefs/teachings have been derived) that kumarvr's far better placed to comment on than I am.
Could you be a bit more concrete?
The Roman Empire is located in Europe, is more recent than "time immemorial", and I'll claim that they didn't regard the various barbarians in Europe outside its sphere of influence as culturally unified with them.
In a legal context, 'time immemorial' is often much, much more recent than the Roman Empire, even the Eastern part.
That is to say, if you decide that a region should be seen as unified (perhaps because of modern political boundaries), one can cherry-pick common elements to try to reach that conclusion. It's not entirely incorrect, but it's a biased way of presenting the evidence in order to justify a preconceived belief.
That is why, even today, the same chants used in temples in the north, are used in the south. The text, meanings, rituals, practices, etc, may have taken a regional flavor, but the essence is the same, the core is the same and the philosophical idea behind it is the same.
Which western kids did you hear from? Every western kid I know studied that in Roman times bathing was a very important activity; as a matter of fact there were very advanced public baths, thermae (which included "sauna" with hot and cold water) in every city.
Is it? "Non-western history" more accurately portrays the history of the rest of the world?
Still though, searching “who taught Europeans how to bathe” will confidently return you lots of articles like
https://sawarimi.org/archives/2893
In which the author confidently states that it was only due to African influence that Europeans ever learned about hygiene. It’s a nice idea, maybe? But it’s just completely made up.
> In fact soap is a motherfucking medieval invention. Yes. It is. The Romans – whomst I don’t see a bunch of basics going around accusing of being filthy – did not, in fact have soap, in contrast. They usually washed using oil. Medieval people? Oh you better believe that they had soap.
Wait a minute, what about Aleppo soap? I thought the Romans knew of it and Wikipedia alleges the same in their article:
> Although it has been claimed that soap-making was introduced to the West from the Levant after the First Crusades, in fact, soap was known to the Romans in the first century AD and Zosimos of Panopolis described soap and soapmaking in c. 300 AD.
Citation: https://www.google.com/books/edition/A_History_of_Greek_Fire...
Then the OP author goes on to say:
> It was first introduced from the East, like most good stuff was at the time, but it took off rather quickly.
This contradicts their claim that soap was a medieval invention! It wasn't a medieval invention. It was adopted technology.
That's not a big deal I guess, but if you're going to make a rant about historical accuracies, what else isn't exactly accurate here? It seems the effort is put into the berating imaginary enemies rather than the writing.
Soap has probably been "invented" a million times in thousands of different cultures around the globe
Paper was invented in pre-Columbian Americas (look up amate). The earliest evidence of metallurgy (smelting, soldering, annealing, electroplating, sintering, alloying, etc) was by the Moche of the Andes who seem to eventually have went "meh" and got tired of it. Prior to Edison, there was at least 20 other inventors who "invented" incandescent lightbulbs.
We like to think of inventions as some strokes of genius that come along in a semi-random way. When in reality inventions are born to meet particular needs and those needs are caused by environmental conditions. Charles Babbage designed the first real computer (see "analytical engine") based on steam power back in 1837 but never built it out. We could've had steampunk computers back in the 19th century but it wasn't until WW1 provided a real need for it that we saw real advancements
Soap was likely "invented" and even forgotten over and over again by whoever needed and stopped needing it
At least with the Sapindus family, and probably a few other plants (like lepisanthes) that produce naturally surfactant properties, nature itself provides something akin to "soap", and has been used in bathing for long enough that we're not even sure when it even began.
One very common use of saponin-containing plants is for stupefying fish. Get some fish in a pond, add some saponins, and dinner just floats right up to you. Although saponins are toxic humans have specifically evolved a mechanism to not digest saponins so we can safely eat them (but your dog can't!). Saponins also play a really important role in modern medicine
Saponins are quite common across many unrelated plant species. Ginseng, soapworts, horse chestnut, sapodillas, oleander, soap bark tree, and even spinach are some examples
Because of their myriad uses (as well as their particular taste) and ways to identify saponin-containing plants it's easy to imagine that, regardless of whatever cosmology some culture used to ascribe these properties, most people could easily identify these plants
Explain again why anyone would stop needing soap? (other than having departed this world...)
The point of bathing is to rub off dead skin cells, excess oil off your skin (note that I said excess). And you can actually do all that without soap.
Also note that sweat it's not that stinky when it evaporates quickly (for example, behind loose non-western clothes in a hot environment)
Soap helps a lot, of course, but the usual stench of being dirty is more because we use really tight clothes that keep sweat from evaporating
Cast movable type was invented once and spread like wild fire.
The largest innovation from Gutenberg was finding an alloy that could withstand printing pressure and be dimensionally stable when it solidifies.
It sounds literally like: "monad is just monoid in category of endofunctors, what is so hard to understand?"
It's almost equivalent but told through a different cosmology/epistemology
She has a doctorate in medieval history, and I've read her work. It's rather interesting to consider a Google Books link more authoritative.
The author of the book to which the Google Books link linked also had a doctorate, in chemistry; WP describes him as "a key figure in the fields of history of science and chemistry in the beginning half of the 20th century" and "the first president of the Society for History of Alchemy and Early Chemistry". He probably knew more about the history of soap than Dr. Janega, but she might know things about it that hadn't been discovered when he died, and probably knows more about the social context of its medieval use than he did. Is your mention of Google Books intended to suggest that Google Books might be falsifying the text?
>> Although it has been claimed that soap-making was introduced to the West from the Levant after the First Crusades, in fact, soap was known to the Romans in the first century AD and Zosimos of Panopolis described soap and soapmaking in c. 300 AD.
... and the article on "Soap" has a lot more to say about the history of soap: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soap#History
> That's not a big deal I guess, but if you're going to make a rant about historical accuracies, what else isn't exactly accurate here? It seems the effort is put into the berating imaginary enemies rather than the writing
I would say, it is a big deal. Accuracy is the supreme virtue of a historian. A student who would submit such a poorly researched essay in my 101 course would get it back for factual (and stylistic) improvement.
I was using the term "essay" because its definition is so vague that almost any short not so academically strict non-fiction text may be called an "essay", at least in a wide sense. (And you can even call a rather austere text that deals with a broader subject an "essay", like Hume's Essays.)
But I am open for a better alternative: So if we have a short non-fiction text that wants to make a statement in a more casual style, how would you classify it instead?
Smarmy means excessively or fulsomely flattering.
The story goes something like this, Shiva/Shankar/Mahesh(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shiva) is a god of destruction in Hinduism. When he was out in the forest, his wife Parvati was alone and had to go for a bath. But she was concerned what if some stranger gets into the house while she was bathing. So to prevent anyone getting into the house she removes the layer of sandalwood and turmeric paste she had applied to her body and makes an idol of a boy and puts life into him. As the boy comes to life she instructs him to guard the house and not let anyone enter while his mother(Parvati) is having a bath.
Her husband returns after a while. Parvati is still in the bath. And as he tries to enter the house, the boy prevents him from doing so saying that his mother has instructed him not to let anyone inside the house. Shiva, known for his temper, gets angry and throws his weapon, trishul(trident), at the boy which chops off his head and it falls somewhere in the forest. Parvati, when she returns from her bath sees the headless body of her son and gets angry at Shiva and demands that he bring the boy back to life. But there is a problem, the head is missing. So Shiva goes in search of the head into the forest but he is unable to find it. So when he sees an elephant in the forest, he chops off the head of the animal and attaches it to the boys body and puts life back into it. That is how people of HN, the Hindu god Ganpati got his elephant head :)
Now, did I mention this is a mythological story? So please be kind to this gentle soul. I only narrated this story because it includes the concept of bathing :D
There are lot of such stories in Indian mythology where there is mention of bathing.
Not saying people didn't bathe at all but it clearly didn't meet societally acceptable standards of an educated person from Cairo or Baghdad.
There was only one IIRC, Ahmad ibn Fadlan, who wrote disparagingly only of the habits of the Vikings of the upper Volga river.
No obligation indeed, but there is a historical correlation, at least where i come from (France). Myths about the medieval era as times of barbarism and suffering have emerged with the "renaissance" (and its witch hunts which did not take place during the medieval era) then the "enlightenment" (Lumières) of the 18th century.
That's entirely correlated with the emergence of the "civilizing mission" of republican colonialism [0], whereas king/church-driven colonization before that was based on the idea that colonized peoples were not human and did not have a soul, as was ruled during the Valladolid trials of the 16th century [1].
In Western Europe, to my knowledge, it took until the late 19th/early 20th socialist/anarchist thinkers (Friedrich Engels, Pierre Clastres) to recognize that there were different cultures and that social/societal progress was not universal and linear. These ideas are still not really accepted across society as the entire field of economics is based on the idea of linear material progress and that those poor "backwards"/"underdeveloped" peoples need help from us "enlightened" westerners (see also David Graeber for a critique of such productivity metrics [2]).
[0] For example, a famous french politician who's remember in the nationalist propaganda as the father of public schools (Jules Ferry), would say that it's "the role of more civilized peoples to educate the lesser peoples".
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Valladolid_debate
[2] Managerial Feudalism and the revolt of the caring classes
These days using music or sound as an aid in mathematics is very uncommon. These days we only use graphs, diagrams, geometrical figures and. We have stopped using one of our senses for math. When did this happen?
I imagine sound could be useful for alternative ways of experiencing mathematical object as not just geometry, but also as ways to explore concepts in higher dimensions by using audio for some dimensions. In complex analysis, colors are used to visualize four dimensions but audio remains very niche.
A bunch of numbers in a table is often difficult to make sense of by looking at the numbers but can give many intuitive insights when visualized. I imagine there are probably things that are easier to make sense of if your hear it than visualize it. Maybe music should be put back in math education.
I've never looked into this s aspect of grooming and beauty but after googling it I'm not surprised that someone at The Economist has written about this in the past: https://www.economist.com/free-exchange/2008/12/23/breaking-...
Edit: sorry, paywalled article
I've noticed that the more I exercise, the cleaner + healthier my skin is. Showers only get me partly there - I need to sweat through a full rinse cycle to get all the funk out.
AOBs are found in soils pretty much everywhere. But they're extremely sensitive and can easily be washed away. In contrast, the particular microbes that have closely evolved alongside us to adapt to our skin microbiome often live several layers deep in our skin. When we take a hot shower or soap up we kill them on the surface but, luckily for our skin's health, they can be replenished. However, the AOBs don't have this deep relationship with us because they are not anaerobic. Instead it's likely that we've evolved to expect a constant influx of soil-based bacteria on our skin
Indeed if you look at any other hairless mammals, one of their favorite things is mud baths. Elephant, pigs, rhinos, etc. We're still learning the full extent of how our skin microbiome plays into our health, but the recent research on the gut-brain-skin axis shows it's likely deeply integrated into our evolutionary past
Humans are some of the weirdest hunters because of our incredible endurance. We're pretty slow creatures. If you're an ungulate that just got hit by an arrow, you can easily run away. But a human can keep following you for hours. Some hunter-gatherer groups will keep a persistent hunt going for up to 3 days
So yeah human sweat probably plays a pretty unique role in our physiology compared to most animals, but sweating is definitely not a uniquely human thing. And it's particularly more common in furless mammals
Define "cleaner"? What is not clean about your skin that requires exercise to get clean? After every shower, my skin is just "clean"?
By sedentary I mean full-on jacked-in to the Matrix, 14 hour days on the computer. Someone with a more balanced life will probably experience it differently.
That said, my bird spends half his day preening and making sure the feathers look good.
Seems like what makes humans different here is that we use soap.
Many humans cross paths with hundreds to thousands of other humans every day and the set of people interacted can have great variability across days. Growing up we were taught at home and in school how important it is to regularly wash your hands. The only other examples of such a high level of social mingling for other species that springs to mind are insects swarms/hives/nests and when there are plagues (mice, locusts etc). Unlike these groups, humans are unique in having a very high degree of share tool use (door handles, public seating for transport, cross walk and lift buttons), so there is a huge potential for cross contamination. Bathing and washing with soap is probably one of the key reasons we are able to live in cities the way we do without regular disease epidemics.
Not so sure about the disease spread part. Hand-washing was... not particularly universal, not so long ago.
As an example, I can definitely develop body oder. However, it generally takes me longer than the rest of my family. I can do 30 miles on my bike and just need to change clothes. And I basically never use deodorant.
To see this at a notional level, consider that deodorant is not common in Japan.
There was an amusing viral video not long ago about people remembering growing up that they had a bath day. Typically Saturday or Sunday, when they would bathe for the week. This is not that uncommon. Well, was not.
Edit: more relevantly, the number of times I've seen people complain about how someone must not shower, to then learning that person showers daily, is also amusing. BO is something that has a quick onset for a large number of people.
I've watched many a bird do so, after a fire.
I know it is not the same as soap, but it is an interesting parallel.
And if you’ve ever hunted you’d know wild animals often stink terribly and have a multitude of health issues ranging from parasites, worms, skin infections, etc.
Humans could get away with minimal bathing as well if they are willing to put up with those things as well.
Honest question: is there any way to tell a stranger they stink, without it being horribly awkward and even inappropriate? Truly, this is a gap in our social customs.
Some things are awkward no matter what, mostly because the perpetrator made it so, not you.
A strong reason to bathe is acceptance by others. One of the first things we do for a newborn or someone injured after getting first aid is to clean them up. We want people to respond positively to us, and being clean is a part of that.
I doubt you'll see a dirty newscaster.
ISTR that the Aboriginals in Australia didn't bathe. But what if they encountered a river? Did they wash and then immediately roll in dirt to ward off mosquitos?
All that product that can be sold, to be literally poured down the drain and strip your body off the natural, protective oils and bacteria on your skin and hair.
- Aztecs were burning incense around the conquistadors to hide their unpleasant body odor (documented)
- The Christian Church actually said bathing naked was forbidden
- the pope instructed all public bath to be closed
- The monks order clearly said to bath only once a year
- general decline of the cities caused that a lot of public baths to be closed. Rome had none in medieval time.
- Muslim and Byzantine records mentioned how dirty westener were
My understanding was that bathing was strongly discouraged by church and in places where church did not have a lot on influence or they become Christian latter like Skandinavia bathing was still considered important.
The article does highlight and bring some context to this:
... Well the idea that medieval people didn’t bathe is a persistent myth ... Why is that? Well part of it is a modern misunderstanding of the idea of bathing. It’s true that we have medieval sources which warn against “excessive” bathing. But here’s the thing, that wasn’t really about being clean, it was about hanging out naked in bathhouses with the opposite sex. They didn’t want you to not be clean, they wanted you to not be going down the bath house and getting your fuck on.
... And yeah, some holy people didn’t bathe, notably saints who would forego bathing themselves but bathe sick or poor people ... But if you bring that up you are missing the point. Medieval people thought that bathing and being clean was really nice, so giving it up and living with your stank was a sign that you had given up on the corporeal world and only thought of heaven. It was holy because it was uncomfortable, like wearing a hair shirt, or eating vegan, and hitting your chest with rocks and sitting in the desert trying not to wank. You know, standard saint stuff. It is mentioned because it is uncommon and uncomfortable ... These things, while they make sense in context are often taken by people who have never learned a damn thing about the middle ages and read in the worst possible light.
> Muslim and Byzantine records mentioned how dirty westener were
That may have been probably true from the perspective of muslims because in Islam personal hygiene is part of the religious obligations of muslims. Religious muslims are supposed to pray 3/5 times a day, but before they do so they are supposed to clean themselves as per a prescribed ritual called wudu ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wudu ). So a religious muslim, even in the medieval times, would be cleaning himself atleast 3/5 times a day (and that's apart from regular bathing). Thus, in comparison to that, some non-muslims could have been perceived as "dirty". It would have been even more so for them if they also learnt of christian saints and / or leaders promoting not bathing as a path to salvation, when their religion tells the exact opposite.
There's no "The Cristian Church," I think you're referring to a modern misconception on a Catholic ban on mixed bath houses. They still had bath houses, they just banned men and women being naked in them together. These bath houses were often also brothels, which makes the ban perhaps still prudish, but nothing extraordinary.
Monks did bathe rarely, which is discussed in the article.
While most of the great old public baths of the Roman era closed, there are illustrations and archaeological evidence of bathhouses in the Middle Ages. They're wooden and much smaller affairs, but they still exist.
I recognize a few other common misconceptions of in the rest of your list, and there's a number of issues with "Muslim and Byzantine records mentioned how dirty westener were." There were certainly cases where "Westerners" thought "Muslims" and "Byzantines" were dirty too, that's a standard way to otherize other cultures. Cross-cultural judgments of hygiene are not a thing one should take at face value. But also all three of the labels "Western" "Muslim" and "Byzantine" are broad generalizations. To generalize about their attitudes towards others or bathing is to be in error, as these were neither constants nor universals nor even truly discrete groups.
Pope Gregory I declared baths should be only used to cure the sick. Of couse, we read his words different today (like he allowed it) but bathing was considered sinful. There was a belief that bathing invited demonic possession and that the dirt, sweqt, etc. actually repelled demonic forces.
In my part of the world, there are still stories how church was telling people that you should take a bath only on Đurđevdan (and joke is that only Gypsies followed that).
You do know that the devil is lurking from the water don’t you? I guess folk tales cannot be used as proof since they are no written records.
From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hygiene_in_Christianity:
Early Christian clergy condemned the practice of mixed bathing as practiced by the Romans ...
The Church also built public bathing facilities that were separate for both sexes near monasteries and pilgrimage sites ...
... baths were normally considered therapeutic until the days of Gregory the Great, who understood virtuous bathing to be bathing "on account of the needs of body" ...
As far as I know, these tales were meant for children to stay away from bodies of water to prevent drowning of kids.
The article specifically mention that people tend to confuse medieval and early modern periods when it comes to things like this. But conquistadors was early modern.
The conquistadors spent months packed on a boat together with pigs and other livestock, then were basically camping out as they traveled. And the Triple Alliance* were extremely clean people, so this might not be the fairest comparison. I smell pretty unpleasant after a single day on a roadtrip, kids can confirm.
* I think this is a more accurate term than Aztec, based on my rereads of 1491.
Added: As culi points out in another comment (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32364340) "(...) ammonia oxidizing bacteria can oxidize our sweat and prevent us from stinking. AOBs are found in soils pretty much everywhere."
- Soap is given as a medieval invention, but this is stretching to the extreme both the idea of "inventing soap" and the idea of "medieval." In reality it was widely made and used at least as a hair wash by the waning days of the Western Roman empire.
- The ingredients list for soap contains a number of equivalent or derived ingredients listed as though totally separate, as if the author weren't aware of the relationships and went copy-pasta crazy from mixed sources.
- Aleppo soap is described as if made exclusively from laurel oil (rather than the correct mixture of laurel and olive oils).
- The photo shown of a light brown bar of soap with a caption seeming to suggest that it's Castille soap is in all likelihood actually Aleppo soap (cf. the text of the Arabic seal, which is rather humorously shown upside-down).
- The description of a deodorant made using "salvia and sage" is rather perplexing, as salvia is the Latin word for sage... and the name of the modern genus of plants containing common sage. A reference to salvia in the colloquial modern sense of Salvia divinorum seems unlikely in the extreme.
All told, while this is an interesting read, and does contain some useful information, from a scholarly perspective it seems to be, at best, slipshod.
Soap goes as far back as Babylon, you Anglophilic weeaboo.
Even if what the author says is true about medieval upper caste people (I don't doubt it), I have trouble believing that peasants could afford the cost and time required of regular bathing. Water didn't come easily unless you happened to live next to a river or have a well next to your house. We've all seen women in third world countries carrying water for cooking and drinking on their heads, often long distances. And we haven't even gotten to the costs of the other things she mentions. Poor people rarely ate meat because they couldn't afford it; where are they going to get animal fat to make soap?
The author doesn't provide any evidence, just makes claims using words to imply you're stupid if you doubt her. All the "photographic" evidence she provides all pretty clearly DO NOT depict poor people.
This aspect of 3rd world countries is commented upon again and again. But, what I find most amusing is that in modern times, water comes to your home, but you go to the gym to slog it out for an hour. Just waster your energy that you over ate the day before.
Its true that women used to carry water over a few kilometers every day. But in most cases, water sources were available nearby (Most settlements happened in the vicinity of water sources, and there are many historical references that show whole villages up and leaving in search of water sources if their current source seems depleted)
Across the board, obesity is high, BP problems are high, Diabetes problems are high, people have lesser stamina and strength and a whole host of health problems, that were not even an issue a few decades ago are now mainstream.
In ancient times, we depended on nature and it necessitated regular work for living a life. Getting water from local well or pond, cooling for long hours, household chores like washing clothes, etc took a long time. People traveled a lot by foot, etc. Life was hard, but life was healthy too. To account for accidents, health issues in old age, etc, joint families were the norm, where the family and the society supported a disabled person or an incapacitated person to the extent possible.
Modern living in convenient, but not healthy. Is luxurious, but not cheap. Is plentiful, but not sustainable.
> Modern living in convenient, but not healthy. Is luxurious, but not cheap. Is plentiful, but not sustainable.
You’re very confused if you think the way people lived in India 1000 years ago was sustainable. Packing up the village when a well ran dry should hint at something for you. It was both sparse and unsustainable.
According to [0], "over 50% of the world's population lives closer than 3 km to a surface freshwater body, and only 10% of the population lives further than 10 km away." They also note that it varies by region, and Europe is among regions where people live closest to water.
Walking 10 km by foot to the nearest river to bathe is not a gargantuan task, especially for medieval people who were used to walking by foot.
I'm pretty sure that "existence of village" almost always implies "next to a river" in Europe/Americas up until the 1800s. I'm trying to think of a notable exception and failing spectacularly. Long distance goods transport via roads basically didn't exist. Not being next to a river would be a horrible handicap in almost every way possible.
It's something that we take for granted in modern times, but Bret Deveraux (acoup.blog) talks about how if armies couldn't forage (water, wood, food, and fodder) an army simply couldn't go there. https://acoup.blog/2022/07/29/collections-logistics-how-did-...
In 1000 A.C. the estimated world population was ~200–300 million people, so it was probably easier than today to settle people near fresh water.
I hope this isn't a widespread belief. If it is, then this concerns me.
We really can't know how people lived a 1000 years ago, despite what might appear to be mountains of evidence. This evidence is actually the creation of historians in the past century... and when you look at their sources for yourself, you will see that they are open to interpretation despite being presented as fact.
For the ruling structure today, saying that the peasants of yesteryear were dirty, and even the nobility, supports the idea that we are progressing and have never had it so good. As if better tech means we have better lives.
To me, it is a perfectly plausible idea that how people lived in the 'medieval' times was far more equitable, natural and healthy than today. But that story doesn't 'sell' - who would want the tech dystopia we are coding ourselves into, if a pastoral idyll were held up to it?
History is what is expedient for the present. It is the story the present governance structure would like you to believe.
Medieval lives in the west were very prone to disturbing forces : invasions, successions of lords/kings, religious clashes, poverty, draughts and deceases. My own ancestors in the 17th/early 18th century died from 6 different deceases and floods and harsh winters. There were “poor hunters” , hunters who kept out the poor from the village. Of 14 children, only one ancestor survived in that time of whom I descent.
Another part of the family in another section of the country lived reasonably well and in peace at least. They were able to marry into better living conditions.
Life in medieval times could be pastoral, but it could just as well be a wretched existence. It depends where you look and in what time.
What do you think 'we' know? Is 'knowing' even a group activity? It is not of course, we can only know what we personally verify.
Now you can say that you are familiar with what an archeologist has written about what he found, but it is another thing to look at the sources for yourself and see if you concur with the conclusions.
I'd be interested to hear more on how you know so much about your family in the 17th and 18th centuries, especially if they were poor. If you have good information and sources that would definitely be unusual, at least as far as what I have found. Most people have hardly any records of their family history.
Futher records to piece together their lives are tax records, registries (like doing inventories for the government) and you have guilds and orders who wrote things down. From simple bookkeeping to extensive chronicles. If you are lucky you have early authors and artists describing the locale. Even better are judicial records which tend to be exhaustive and on the whole quite accurate in description. Often noting the exact words of the of ones involved. Also there are a ton of objects surviving. Just go to your local antiquarian and be ready to dive into the world of our ancestors.
All in all you get a pretty good picture of your ancestors lives and context they lived in.
While knowing is a personal accomplishment, and you can go through lengths to verify all by yourself, some sources can be trusted and create a bedrock of knowledge. Like if you know C# you don’t have to go and verify if every command works as described. You trust the authors and you know it was done with rigor.
I am amazed you were able to deduce the above, via the use of ecclesiastical records, tax records, registries, etc. As an aside, what is a "poor hunter"? You write the term as if it a type of profession, but could it be that they lived off the land? Genuinely interested to hear more.
I agree that knowing is akin to a programming language, and that being able to test the methodology others describe brings it in line with the scientific method. This is personal verification.
History is assuredly NOT like this - it is an art form, a pastiche of bits of info that may (or may not) be authentic. History is re-written by the victor, and was likely a biased account in the first place! Moreover, we apply our modern way of thinking and interpretation onto what evidence we have. It's an interpretative act - what does this evidence evoke in you?
Professional historians are no different - they are just empowered to write the history we are taught today. And, of course, all history can be interpolated from a specific position - eg communist, feminist, capitalist - etc.
As I said, the history we are given/find is what is expedient, primarily for the governance structure. If that is not enough and you are personally interested, you can dig deeper. In that case you still don't know, but you will find a reflection of yourself. It won't be something outside of yourself that is in some way independently true. That personal analysis (personal story) has its own value, but its not that 'we know' about the historical world.
Recently I had a back and forth with a German historian and German history is a lot more less prone to filling in the gaps, where as in the anglicized sphere there is a bit more interpretation/extrapolation (in the academia)
A “poor hunter” was someone hired by the community (usually the towns council I believe) to keep the poor, the beggars and so on from the lands and homes. It was a profession! Some people had multiple jobs, and this could be one of them.
Doing genealogical research is great to do because you get out of the big scope of things and you follow your family through time into a historic context. It’s a long way from the broad strokes you learn at school, and it gets personal. I highly recommend it for anyone to do!
Academic history tends to refer to primary sources. It is true that what survives in the archive is a curated collection, but curating the archive is not the same as doing history and should be thought of differently.
Historians have absolutely no trouble with the idea that the archive can produce multiple narratives and that no narrative is the absolute truth. A lot of people from engineering and scientific backgrounds find this to be some huge blow to the field of history but really it is basic material covered in intro classes. I find it frustrating to see so many people with no or minimal background in anything resembling the discipline making wide proclamations about the limitations of history writing. We don't tend to rely on what seems plausible to untrained people.
and
> I find it frustrating to see so many people with no or minimal background in anything resembling the discipline making wide proclamations about the limitations of history writing.
I think I already made the same point as you, ie that no narrative is the absolute truth.
You then say how my comment frustrates you. In fact, you provide a case in point about how easily things can be misunderstood!
You accurately quote what I said about evidence, but failed to provide the context from the preceeding remark, where I talk about the appearance of 'mountains of evidence'. I'm not sure if it is intentional, but I feel like you have cherry picked something too make your point, despite my intention!
Here is what I said:
> We really can't know how people lived a 1000 years ago, despite what might appear to be mountains of evidence. This evidence is actually the creation of historians in the past century... and when you look at their sources for yourself, you will see that they are open to interpretation despite being presented as fact.
I think you are unreasonably critical of historical writing and are presenting a false claim about what historical writing today looks like.
I hesitate to mention this, but here is an overt example of state management. You know it is a criminal offence to discuss certain events in World War 2 in many countries, including Germany and Canada? I use this as an example to illustrate that honest analysis of history is not possible if there is no freedom of speech. If potentially important information is unavailable, we are being 'guardrailed' - only certain authorised lines of thought can occur. History is not a naturally unfolding cronicle of reality.
For the masses, it is even more simple - just manage what is on the school syllabus and they will never know. But, they will believe what they are taught is true as it is presented unambiguously, rather than a provided narrative - we agree on this. This is intentional - the main value of history is that it is accepted as truth. History is what is expedient for the masses to believe in the present. Only sanctioned historians can alter it.
Also, do you realise that professional historians typically live their entire lives beholden to the state for their livelihoods? Could you risk biting the hand that feeds you?
So, I think it is quite possible that the historians believe they are being honest and well-intentioned AND also be supportive of the governance structure. Their education will provide them with a clear but narrow sense of what is acceptable. They will know when they are flying close to the wire or over-stepping the line.
I don't think this is a history specific issue btw. I think all education serves a role, though most people are unaware of how they are guided through their lives. So science, history, economics, technology, etc, etc have all been bent to serve a purpose that is not in our interests. We can pretend it isn't so if we like... but the evidence is there when we look.
I am married to a history professor. I am quite aware of the relationship that historians have with funding bodies and state-run universities. I do not conclude anything close to resembling what you conclude in your post. I think you are making a completely false and ignorant claim about the field and about the author of the linked blog post in particular. This "we cannot actually trust what professionals write" and "go look at the sources yourself" approach is just folly. Professionals who've spent thousands and thousands of hours studying methodology and embedding themselves in the archive are simply able to understand the archive better than laypeople can.
That's not ancient times. That's practically Renaissance.
It's not ancient times, but also not quite reneissance yet.
After having had over the course of my life a small number of friends who stopped bathing for one reason or another, and my successfully talking them back into the habit, I will tell you what I told them:
With respect, I guarantee you, you stink to the people around you, and you cannot smell it yourself. Find a soap that does not irritate your skin and use it.
Also, launder your clothes. We humans sweat proteins, which when they decay, smell bad. If we sweat into our clothes, the proteins remain there and smell bad. The people around you unconsciously interpret this as illness, and will instinctively avoid you.
My friends who stopped cleaning (and were not ill in some way) almost universally were questioning societal standards after childhoods with controlling parents, as hippies or otherwise back-to-nature transcendentalists. Not sure if that's you, but if so, it checks.
But they also gave us soap, there's that.
Bathing was mostly a ritualistic activity or a social activity (see Roman thermal baths)
We know Romans, Egyptians and very possibly other cultures shaved themselves almost completely both as a social gathering activity (barbershops were very popular places for gossips and news) and to prevent lices.
So yeah they bathed, some ancient cultures did that a lot, they might have been clean people, doesn't mean their hygiene was generally good nor better than the civilizations before them.
They still walked around in cities or villages with no sewage systems where people and animals lived together.
It's no mistery and no wonder that medieval times were plagued by all kinds of diseases and epidemics.
I read to the end. He never closed his parentheses.
TL;DR immaturely written for no reason.
This modern stuff you can buy barely lasts a day.
Need me to mail some for you?
It’s trivially easy to find ancient soap recipes and revert them at hope. Or one can buy Aleppo soap, or Castilian soap from specialty markets.
It’s not like there’s some lost secret, or extinct ingredients - it’s soap, and it’s been a pretty simple thing to make for thousands of years.