On medieval cats
going-medieval.com
going-medieval.com
Kudos for calling them out that nowhere, in the histories, did any of that happen.
Guy in Truck: “Hey, you wanna hear something?”
Girl running: stops (pulls ear buds out like she couldn’t hear) “Sure” (confirming it was BS the whole time).
Music plays
Girl: “wow this is really good!”
Guy: “Thanks”, can I get your number?”
Girl: blushes and gives him a blank piece of paper because they are actually secretly married.
Other examples: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nayirah_testimony
I once got a good deal on a house because a significant number of people in the 21st century still believe in ghosts.
I would have only passed on the deal of the house if it was across from a cemetery. Haunted AND on location? I don’t believe in ghosts but that’s just bad juju. Anywhere else and I’d sign those papers.
The players change, the dance remains the same.
> No wonder wars are raging, people are fighting, and all while making cute videos of cats while spreading 3rd grade history plausibilities.
No, the current wars are not caused by TikTok.
> Even reporters are getting their “source” from “I heard it on TikTok”.
I wonder what you are getting your source from for this claim.
But the propaganda is being spread on there, fueling hate crimes and more.
“I wonder what you are getting your source from for this claim.”
Ask any 20-something where they get their news. Sure some are getting it from legit sources like NYTimes or WashPost or the like but a lot are getting it through their feeds on TikTok.
I know it sounds like a “kids these days…” rant or a “get off my lawn” but I’m being dead serious. Every single young person under 20 I have spoken with (and I speak to a lot) gets their news from TikTok or a site like BuzzFeed or Newsweek that often will run TikTok stories.
I’m not even that old and I see it. So yeah, be angry, but don’t be angry at me for calling out “Lazy Girl Jobs and how to get one” reporting. Because it happens and you know it.
> > I wonder what you are getting your source from for this claim.
> Ask any 20-something where they get their news. Sure some are getting it from legit sources like NYTimes or WashPost or the like but a lot are getting it through their feeds on TikTok.
So your source that reporters are getting their sources from TikTok is...20-something year old kids who heard it from TikTok? Either you didn't understand at all what you were being asked or you don't see the irony
> I know it sounds like a “kids these days…” rant or a “get off my lawn” but I’m being dead serious. Every single young person under 20 I have spoken with (and I speak to a lot) gets their news from TikTok or a site like BuzzFeed or Newsweek that often will run TikTok stories.
If you're concerned about proper reporting of news, I'm not sure that relying on selection bias is an effective way to make this point.
> Even reporters are getting their “source” from “I heard it on TikTok”
When asked what your source was for this, you said:
> Ask any 20-something where they get their news. Sure some are getting it from legit sources like NYTimes or WashPost or the like but a lot are getting it through their feeds on TikTok.
Then in response to musing about the fact that it sounded like you got this info from the very people you were claiming only consumed inaccurate news, you said:
> If those 20-somethings are journalists, yes. I understood and gave my perspective.
As best I can tell, you're claiming that there are 20-something year old journalists reporting using TikTok as a source, and you've concluded this based on the fact that 1) there are 20-something year old journalists who exist and 2) "a lot" of 20-something year olds use TikTok for news and not publications like the New York Times or Washington Post. This seems like a pretty dubious inference; it implicitly assumes that not only are these journalists part of the group using TikTok exclusively for news, but that they're also writing stories using that as their source. I don't see why you couldn't just as easily assume that the 20-something year old journalists are part of the group that use the New York Times or Washington Post, or that they use TikTok for news but don't use it as the source for the news they write.
You complained about "wars are raging, people are fighting, and all while making cute videos of cats while spreading 3rd grade history plausibilities" and "propaganda is being spread on there, fueling hate crimes and more", and I can't even tell if you think that TikTok is responsible for these major world problems as well as being a place that cat videos are posted or if you're angry that younger people are choosing to engage with TikTok instead of reading about those problems in more traditional news sources, despite several attempts at clarification on your part. To be blunt, this comes across as pretty unhinged.
Depends on what "is" is... No, sorry, "it"! Depends on what "it" is, I meant: GP wasn't saying those 20-something year old kids heard it on TikTok that everyone their age gets their news from TikTok; they meant (AFAICS) that those 20-something year old kids get their news from TikTok. Which IMO is a legit "it" to show that they get their news from TikTok.
Also, NYTimes or WashPost are barely credible news sources today. I wish I could recant the multiple reasons that made me feel that way but there’s been too many articles, too many videos, too many audio clips from them and others like CNN, MSNBC, and Fox. Forbes is another where you’d think their finance section would be immune from political bias but even they editorialize beyond the pale. I’m sure you know what I mean regardless of political side. Aren’t we all tired of being told what we ought to feel is important and worse, the degree that we ought to experience those feelings. Man, after Covid, they’re all on the chopping block in my book.
recount?
> the multiple reasons that made me feel that way
It is a general problem with a lack of respect for historians.
We have literally been doing that to ourselves, for about 30 years now. We've absolutely been steadily handicapping our education system for decades.
"wars are raging"
Um who starts wars? Politicians, exclusively. What is the average age of politicians? Let's put it at 60's to be charitable. You do the math.
It seems that TikTok, which you state, and GenZ, which you imply, don't have anything to do with the major issues that you attribute to them. This whole ranting incoherent comment kind of highlights the kind of behavior that has caused those major issues; complete rejection of reality in favor of screaming at scapegoats. Actually sounds a lot like someone who was in court today.
So you can be obtuse and read what you wanted to read, you can equate me to someone you hate to justify your anger, but again it’s not me you should be angry with. I completely agree it’s politicians who start wars. These same idiots are watching the same crap their kids are showing them - on TikTok. Why else would there be a congressional hearing over Chinese spying over an app about dancing and narcissistic behavior?
So who is rejecting reality? Here’s the reality. There are two (2) wars being fought. Both of which are being fueled by propaganda and misinformation being spread causing reactions, counter-reactions, and 3rd parties to pick sides. One of these wars has been brewing off and on for 50 years, with no path forward. Now there’s talk of occupation. The other, fueled by misinformation and lies. This isn’t some guy on HN crying about kids these days, it’s a genuine warning that if we (the hacker/coder/inventor) community don’t stop it, we won’t have a community because Russia or North Korea or some idiot with a spray tan will nuke the reality in which we have known all our lives.
They weren't, the entire article is about disproving the video. They literally say "So anyway, the cat video is wrong.".
I'm not sure why you extrapolate from one account with inaccurate cat videos to bashing the whole platform. E.g. on YouTube there are similar video accounts and worse.
(Even _if_ the event described happened, it was clearly exceptional, and _even with that in mind_ doesn't support the idea that people in The Olden Days (TM) were afraid of cats; the printer is _keeping_ cats).
Btw. nice trivia about cats and plague: Venetians caught cats from the mainland and took them to their islands to catch mice and rats that they knew were responsible for the plague. Therefore it was prohibited to feed the cats but there was a special rain water collector for the cats to have enough drinking water next to each Venetian rain water cistern.
Eh. The Middle Ages were hardly darker than the eras preceding them, and the contrast with the Renaissance is much less stark than what the Renaissance people would have you believe. And the era spanned almost a millennium and most of Europe, and it's incredibly simplistic to sum up such a big chunk of spacetime with any single adjective. There's very little similarity between, say, 7th century Scotland, 11th century Spain, and 15th century Venice.
If anything, you could call "dark" the centuries after the fall of the Western Roman Empire until the early middle ages. And obviously only from a fairly narrow Western-Europe-centric viewpoint.
I am not a historian tho
1) ius primae noctis was a thing (it wasn’t)
2) witch hunting was a medieval thing (very late medieval thing, maybe, but mostly it was in 15-17th century)
3) flat earth as a widespread belief for wise men (it wasn’t, and both Columbus and the Council of Salamanca knew that)
We’re willing to believe that for about 1000 years Europe collectively abandoned reason, while before and after it was there. Sure, sounds logic.
That is to say, it wasn’t a law but not even an accepted custom. Raping is something else, unfortunately I’m sure that happend. So are power dynamics and sex, but it wasn’t connected to the first night.
There is a document from Maur, Canton Zurich, Switzerland, stating: "...soll der Bräutigam den Meyer in der Hochzeitsnacht bei seiner Frau liegen lassen oder fünf Schillinge und vier Pfennige bezahlen" (Rough translation: "...the groom should let the Meier [administrative manager] lie with his wife during the wedding night, or he shall pay five Shilling and four pence").
The document is from 1543, but it states in the very beginning that these rules are "von alters her" (rough translation: "since an old age").
Source: (University of Zurich, Faculty of Law) https://www.ius.uzh.ch/dam/jcr:00000000-1e72-6fc8-0000-00003...
It surely wasn't widespread or normal, as rennaissance and early modern porn fantasies would want us to believe. But it surely happened.
I think this is the right conclusion, given the available evidence:
"....the so-called right was simply the ability of the powerful to subject the less powerful to their will. Rape might be a better term to apply since husbands and families had to resort to subterfuge to thwart the desires of the powerful.?
Source: Vern L. Bullough (1991) Jus primae noctis or droit du seigneur. The Journal of Sex Research. Vol. 28, No. 1 (Feb., 1991), pp. 163-166 - https://www.jstor.org/stable/3812958
I’m not sure what to make of the document you shared: does it mean that in 1543 near Zurich this right was still being upheld? Because in Italy there are plenty of documents and popular stories in which “in the past we were subject to this horrible practice by an evil Lord”, but no contemporary source. In these cases it is likely a local legend to emphasise the improvements of living in a city and not under a lord.
I can only see the preview of the article you linked, but it mentions the culagium (a tax on marriage, fundamentally), and it has been speculated that its name had an influence on the later perception of jpn: culagium sounds very much as “culus”, which means “ass” in Latin.
For another explanation and a reference, see https://old.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/2omu3t/was_p...
I don't know.
I am just saying:
(1) there are rennaissance and early modern authors who want to make us believe this was common and usual and happening widely during the 'dark ages' (likely from a mixture of anti-medieval sentiment and pornographic fantasy, but I am speculating).
(2) there are 20th Century and contemporary authors, who want to make us believe this was just a renaissance invention with no basis in fact whatsoever.
(3) given the available sources (like some religious texts, like the 1543 document I linked, like a very few other sources) and what we know about power dynamics and the 'justice system' (lol) in the European Middle Ages (there were very few limits on what a lord could do to local peasants without repercussions), probably neither is true.
(4) It likely happened, and it likely happened not just thrice over 1000 years. But it also wasn't something happening everywhere and all the time, and as a codified law. It wasn't "part of the package" of being a lord, with everyone just shrugging, saying "that's the way things are and ought to be".
(5) the idea of a culturally-homogeneous medieval Europe is laughable, before printing and modern-ish communication networks, customs were very likely more varied than they were in early modern times. The only (exaggeration!) trans-european force were the Catholic (which back then had a meaning of 'universal') church, and gold coins being accepted everywhere. So, except a few ways of trading goods and a standardized-ish Latin mass there were very few things true for all of the european Middle Ages.
(6) lords surely raped the peasant girls on their lands, and usually without any negative effect on the lord. That is the right way of putting it: rape. Even if there was (there very likely wasn't) such a 'law of the first night', it would still have been the same: rape.
These are my points, and they seem well supported by our current historical knowledge. For anything more specific, ask not just a historian, but a historian specializing in sexual relations in pre-modern Europe. I am not.
The starting point was "many people believe jus primae noctis was a thing, but it wasn't", which roughly meant "it was not a codified law and/or a widespread accepted custom". I never commented on raping (or the connection between power dynamics and sex, which I think also existed), this was just referring to "jus primae noctis", which literally refers to the (codified) right of a local lord to (potentially) have sex with every bride in the first night of marriage, legally. This was not common, accepted or normal in any region of Europe as far as I know (and who would accept this, in any case? There would be rebellions everywhere, everyone had a daughter or a wife!); however, a sizable amount of people think this was indeed the case.
I think we're agreeing on this?
I'm sure some (or many) lords convinced/threatened their pheasants to have sex, or directly raped them, probably with little repercussions, but that seems not limited nor peculiar to medieval times.
(2) the very idea of ipn is a wrong framing. The proper name for non-consensual sex is rape, no matter the time, culture, legal framework or absence thereof.
No further points, this is going nowhere. We are in agreement.
To nitpick, I am like the current authors (by "contemporary" I meant "medieval", btw): it was not a codified right, and that's really the crux of the issue.
If you want to point out that the concept is morally wrong, I think everyone in the world agrees it is, but it's not a very helpful point when talking about the legality and existence of a practice in its historical context.
If we change the name to "legalized rape" maybe it's easier to see this: my first post reads like "legalized rape was never a widespread and accepted custom".
We can talk about the futility of the word "legalized" if we're considering the morality of it (in that legal rape is still rape, and wrong and abhorrent), but in the context of historical practice this is... irrelevant? Rape still existed, unfortunately, and it was likely not always pursued/punished (and even worse, not necessarily for the lack of an indipendent judge: sometimes rape was "fixed" by marrying the girl, which was... a thing until the last century in Italy, and I imagine there were even cases where the raped girl was also disowned by the legitimate husband)
Now, - having abandoned the ipn concept - you are getting too broad with your claims.
very few legal systems allowed for the prosecution of rape within marriage before the 1970s - legalized rape was a common thing.
But I have to do some work now, so I likely won't answer any further.
Have a nice day (if you are in Italy) or a good night (if you are on the other side of the globe).
I’m only, exclusively referring to the non existence of a feudal right to have sex with the wives of other people. You seem to agree that this was not a thing, anything else is a conversation topic you introduced, giving (or having) the impression I was reflecting on that, or implying anything about it. I wasn’t, as your topics had nothing to do with widespread misconceptions about the dark ages.
Have a good day you too.
They were right, he just happened to run into a giant continent instead of dying.
In this model reaching china by sailing west is impossible because the sphere of water is absolutely enormous and all the possible emerged land is already known so there can not be any antipodal land you could find to restock on food.
Source? It’s literally in the Talmud, and many other histories. https://www.sefaria.org/Ketubot.3b.1?lang=bi&with=all&lang2=...
Also, that one source mentions it (I have no idea what that says, when it is from, what is the context etc. - I’m also no historian myself so an English translation would not necessarily help) it doesn’t mean it’s true, otherwise we would have to believe that Pegasus existed… or the myth of Salamanca’s council.
Update: ah, I found the English translation. Indeed, by reading it like this I see what you mean, but I have no idea when, where and in what context it’s been written, whether it talks about a widespread thing, etc.
For more context: https://old.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/2omu3t/was_p....
My sources are, unfortunately, in Italian only :)
The term originally refers to the idea that it's an age of ignorance by Renaissance scholars essentially having a massive Classical Antiquity appreciation binge. This gets amplified by Protestants as an attack on Catholicism. Some more modern people get even more zealously anti-religious and view it as something pushing back the industrial revolution and other things back by 1500 years or so. This especially gets intertwined with things like unilinear cultural evolution models [1], where the Middle Ages end up getting classified as going backwards in culture. Most of these beliefs are basically complete and total hogwash in terms of actual evidence.
Archaeology can trace a rough outline of the economic history of Europe. We see a peak of economic activity in the first and second centuries AD, a decline in third century, which stabilizes somewhat in the fourth and fifth century, before plunging. It hits its nadir in the eighth century, and then starts recovering, surpassing its pre-collapse highs sometime between 1000-1300, depending on which metric you're looking at. If you want to refer to the time from ~500-1000 as a "Dark Ages" on the basis of poor document preservation and general economic collapse, that's actually a reasonable, grounded definition.
But if you're trying to use the term to indicate a loss of knowledge somehow, well, it just doesn't work. Even during the absolute worst depths of the post-Roman collapse, you would still be speaking Roman, learning from Roman textbooks (if you're fortunate enough to be learning), practicing Roman religion, obeying Roman laws. And there's a decent chance you might be doing that despite your village never having once been part of the Roman Empire.
[1] Or, more simply, Civilization-style tech trees.
If the Roman (pagan) material dared to suggest something different than accepted church teaching, it wasn't copied or preserved.
Hell, that's why the capture of libraries in Spain in the 15th century was still important to the renaissance. Muslim scholars preserved a bunch of Greek and Roman material that had COMPLETELY disappeared during the European dark ages.
this really isnt true.
The loss of so much literature in the Western Roman Empire has to be understood in the context of the overall collapse in literacy there, which was due to late-antiquity political factors and not religious ones, and then resource starvation in scriptoria.
The self-domesticated cat had and have great use to reduce vermin and medieval monastery had plenty of that as monasteries were not just spiritual places but working farms.
Anyway, if your house is loaded with mice and rats, you will also have fleas. Unlike the rodents, your cat will even let you comb it.
Also people weren't necessarily clear on fleas or whatever being something you caught. They were more seen as things that just showed up under certain circumstances.
1) I think you underestimate how bad a rodent problem can get, and how quickly.
2) Healthy cats are decent groomers, and also flea magnets. Fleas go to them preferentially. If the cat isn't a lap cat and doesn't sleep on your bed, it's going to be doing most of the interacting with fleas while you relax in your mouse-free study.
Humans are fucking stupid, and it's very easy to get them to believe bullshit. We are only slightly harder to trick than a dog.