What questions do you have about stuff from History, or am I the only one?

[EverySongbirdSays]

Hi all, HQ here. We're moving this thread over to History Club now where Songbird will be starting a Part 2 thread for more History quizzical shenanigans

The main history thing I've been pondering for the last couple of days since the weather shifted is the history of clothes.

So... how did Early Man manage in the winter, how did they make clothes out of animal skin?

After that, I understand that clothes production as we know it today began with the industrial revolution.

But how did people manage for clothes you know before we had cotton or machinery

How/when did we realise you could knit wool to make a jumper?

I'm sorry if it's a bit of a stupid question

Has anyone got any stupid questions I might know the answer to ?

I was born in 1981 and we had no central heating in our house. We had a coal fire and a coal bunker down the side of the house and it was flipping freezing in winter! I remember frost on the inside of the bedroom window and wearing lots of clothes, we always had on a cardigan or jumper in the winter. The living room, where the fire was, was relatively small which I suppose was done deliberately to make it easier to heat, it would get toasty warm in there which made the rest of house seem so much colder. I think it was 89 or 90 when the council fitted gas central heating and replaced the wood and putty window frames with plastic ones.

why did she say 'It's too good for me. Jesu have mercy on my soul' - or something very similar - on being told that she would go into the Royal apartments on her arrival at the Tower?

The thing was that she was actively encouraged that if she said Not Guilty it would anger the King, she was told that if she admitted guilt that she wouldn't die and she would be allowed to live out her days in a nunnery and hopefully have some access to her child. So that makes sense.

Sorry, I seem to have X posted with others

What language was spoken in England before English existed?

I know we all spoke French in Norman times

I've read Pillars Of The Earth

About healthcare in the past, I think a lot of people are underestimating the rule and knowledge of women. One person referred to breach birth, I live in Mexico and a neighbour of mine had a breach baby, but her MIL worked on her for about a month and turned the baby around. Same with antibiotics, I remember A. S. Neill saying there was an old lady in his town who used to put cobwebs on cuts and many years later he discovered that cobwebs have a natural antibiotic.

A lot of knowledge got lost between wise women being called witches and killed and men taking over medicine.

What I don't understand is why nobody used the wheel in America before the arrival of the Europeans? I don't think the wheel is a very difficult invention and in fact it is quite obvious, and here in Mexico they were extremely advanced in things like astronomy.

But yet the Inca didn't have the wheel, if I recall, Atenco. It's extraordinary.

We bought our unrenovated house in the 90s and it didn't have double glazing or central heating. We put in the glazing, but managed with one gas fire downstairs and one electric radiator until we had DD2 in 2004, and then because it was cheaper than running different electric radiators.

Prior to getting married, when DH stayed over at my parents home, we slept out in the driveway in the caravan. Unheated. In midwinter. There would be ice on the ceiling, but we'd been fine. Cold, but bearable.

I'm a right wuss now we've had central heating for a few years.

I wonder if something like the wheel is one of those developments that's got blindingly obvious benefits once you've seen it in operation, but it takes a huge leap of imagination for someone to think of it in the first place?

I had another question about the lives of cave people while I was out and now I've forgotten.

What I was pondering was why we know more about some countries than others. I know lots about the Romans, the Greeks, the French, a bit about the Spanish, Russia etc
All I could tell you about Finland is the capital and where it is. Otherwise NOWT.

WHAT'S GOING ON IN FINLAND?

English is a Germanic language - borrows heavily from many places and had it's own evolution - but I think it came over with Saxons, angles and other Germanic tribes after Romans left.

www.thehistoryofenglish.com/history_before.html -- This gives a more detailed history.

Latin came over with the Roman's but may have been like Normal French spoken as an elite language or a like English today common second language - but that invasion pushed Celtic languages to fringes of the UK the Celtic language survives today only in the Gaelic languages of Scotland and Ireland, the Welsh of Wales, and the Breton language of Brittany.

I know we all spoke French in Norman times - no the elite spoke normal french the aristocracy french Normans who came over and the Saxons who married them - which originated I think with the vikings settling in northern France.

It why we have pork and beef - from Norman french who ate the meat and pig and cow from Saxon English who raised the animals.

....All I could tell you about Finland is the capital and where it is....

I suspect that that puts you ahead of many many people.

The language question:

Celtic was spoken in Britain before the Roman conquest; and Pictish in the north. Then Celtic and some Latin. After the large groups of Anglo-Saxons arrived in the 5th/6th centuries, Old English in most of England and Celtic (Welsh and eventually Scottish Gaelic) on the fringes. Scots Gaelic was brought over by Irish immigrants to Scotland. After the Viking conquests, Old Norse was also spoken in parts of northeast England.

The Norman conquest did not mean that everybody spoke French. It was the language of the aristocracy and to some extent of the middle classes/upper clergy. The clergy also spoke Latin. And ordinary people spoke Middle English which gradually became Modern English. Lots of people were bilingual or trilingual. Eventually more and more noblemen came to speak English as their first language.

no wheel in America before the arrival of the Europeans

Incas knew of wheels but no horses - and large hills made them less useful.

I do find it odd that they didn't have horses till the Spanish invaded - as I have such an image of plain Indian's on horse back - that what I remember from primary school and our history lessons.

www.straightdope.com/columns/read/223/why-did-the-peoples-of-the-new-world-fail-to-invent-the-wheel
www.aracari.com/the-incas-and-the-wheel/

Yy, as Mrs Whitewash says, we have:

Pig (Anglo Saxon) / Pork / porc (Norman)
Cow (AS) / Beef / boeuf (N)
etc

and things like

Sewing (AS) / embroidery (N)
woodwork (AS) / carpentry (N)

The vikings settled in what is now Normandy (yes, there was once a King Rollo, to anyone old enough like me to remember the kids' series). William the Conqueror (or "the bastard", as he was known there) was a viking descendant. And - tying this back to the earlier discussion on ginger hair - William's son was William Rufus: ie William the Redhead

Mrs Whitewash - my inventories which I mentioned upthread produced something which I found very interesting in this regard. I kept coming across animals which are referred to as "caples". I think that is something a bit like the Welsh for horse or pony. I expect some Welsh speaking Mumsnetter will be along to tell me, but if I'm right, then it suggests that some of the original language survived along with the Germanic languages.

Rockpebblestone Sun 20-Nov-16 21:02:49
"The question that I often mull over is why Vikings are considered a wholly different people to Anglo-Saxons? Geographically they lived so close to each other. Their Pagan beliefs seem similar, with similar gods. I know that there were different tribes of people etc and you sort of need to think less about geographical locations / countries as they are today but still.."\

They were considered different people for the same reason that the Swedes and the Danes are considered different people today, despite obvious similarities in language and culture: because they think of themselves as different people. Interesting book by Benedict Anderson on "Imagined Communities" spells it out; a community is basically a group of people who (for whatever reason) sees themselves as a community.

Old Norse and Old English are actually far more different from each other than Swedish and Danish are. Not to mention that the Anglo-Saxons were Christians, and under strong cultural influence from the Catholic church, by the time they had any real contact with the Vikings.

Interesting ConferencePear

ceffyl - horse in welsh I think so could be at least that what Duling is teaching me.

Doesn't surprise me in one respect we've moved a fair bit - and DH and my family have different dialectal words so words much hang on in different places or evolved from other origins - with some words gradually taking over and spreading and some just dying out.

About children helping their parents to work, I think the modern British are quite unusual even by European standards in how long they take before they allow their children to do anything remotely useful. My Swedish nieces and nephews were allowed to play with hammers and saws from an early age: by the time they got to their preteens, they could be genuinely useful on family renovating jobs. They were taken out fishing; again, by the time they got to 10 or 11, they would require minimum adult supervision. They learnt how to cook from a very early age. And even school crafts lessons were arranged so that they would learn to make actual useful things from an early age: stools you could sit on, candlesticks you could put candles in, garments you could wear. Not the same as going down the mine, admittedly, but not a million miles from helping out on the farm.

conference, 'capel' is a standard Middle English word for 'horse'. I wouldn't know the origin (may well be Welsh for all I know).

*Cozie and EverySongbird
*
I love discussing this with you, without prejudice. None of us can be sure, but this debate is food for the soul.

Going off track, someone/some group places flowers on Anne's tomb each May.

Compared to the hysteria over Richard III, this is a touching gesture.

I also wanted to praise everyone on here who has knowledge of all other periods. I know a lot about a brief time, but the experts on here are astounding.

If only the Daily .... followed this sort of thread

Yes, st many media sources quick to scoff and condemn MN but there are a lot of highly intelligent, inquisitive, women on here.

every , you can be sure that if the Mail decided to write about this thread they would paint it as loads of 21st century women having an obsession with Tudor syphilis or something like that. There would be no mention of lots of well read and inquisitive women having a really interesting discussion and sharing their knowledge, it would just be tee hee, 16th century STDs.

Fascinating thread!

Hear, hear Treacle