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 ?

JellyBelli

So when it says in the Bible that a Roman centurian offered Jesus a drink of vinegar and water from a sponge on a stick when he was dying on the cross, was that a toilet stick? Because I was told in Sunday School that it was an act of charity. the soldier could have got into trouble for doing it. But now I wonder if it was an insult.

He was actually offered myrrhina, which was a steeped mix of wine (vinegar) and myrrh (gall). It was the pain killer in pre-opium times, and one of the reasons why he was given it as a gift upon birth. Frankincense, too, is a sedative.

The way to remember them is that frankincense has a cannabis-like effect and myrrh is more like opium. Why do you think churches have been burning them as incense for thousands of years? They are psychotropic!

Some pharmaceutical researchers are actually trying to bring myrrh back as a pain-killer to avoid being so reliant on opium. It has other properties as well.

poppym12

I've also always wondered who first thought to milk an animal and then decide it was a good idea for humans to drink it.

I think it is more like that cheese was discovered first. Cheese is, fundamentally, pre-weaned baby animal sick. A hunter that took down a baby animal and cut it open would find a stomach full of "cheese". If left, the hunter would discovered that the product kept reasonable well in certain conditions.

This was probably established knowledge by the time humans turned to domestication. From that point, it isn't such a leap to consider milking and making your own cheese out of juices in the calf's stomach lining.

I'd consider that cheese was probably a more important end goal than milking for milk alone because cheese lasts longer. Most invention in food comes from people wanting to either make things edible or last longer.

I'd consider that cheese was probably a more important end goal than milking for milk alone because cheese lasts longer.

And cheese has much less lactose than raw milk, making it a useful source of food even for people who do not have the lactase persistence mutation.
(drawing on things we learned earlier in the thread)

I reckon that the preserving was the most important thing. There would have been a massive amount of milk knocking around. (And not much in the way of fresh nutrients during the cold months.)

I was agreeing-and-adding, not discounting that preservation was important :)

No problem, Trills.

I just don't think you'd have lasted too long if you had lactose intolerance. Backaways at least.

You don't really need milk to last...there's loads more the next day, not wasting it is probably more accurate than preserving - if that makes sense?

Most mammals have lactose intolerance after the age of weaning. Some humans being able to process lactose as adults (and therefore get nutrition out of milk) is a mutation.

In order for that mutation to spread and become common, there has to be an advantage to having the variant.

So it makes sense that eating cheese might come before drinking milk.

I found the Ruth Goodman book really interesting especially when talking about clothes and effect they seemed to have on the amount people smelt. As I remember she and someone else tested how washing the body and changing clothes affected their smell. Ruth didn't wash but wore cotton smock which I think was changed and natural fibre clothes which helped reduce her smelling, the other test subject could wash but had to keep on the same clothes as it turned he smelt worse after a week.

Hairbrushes too. When did we stop being tramps and get into grooming.

Combs feature in many neolithic (and before?) Museum displays.
It must have been a very early need. Grooming is an important function for primates and it would have been for early humans too.

Interesting.

(Although you wouldn't necessarily have had the resources - or the clothes - to change body linen frequently unless you were privileged, I suspect.)

I'd love ANY recommendations about little known historical events from countries which aren' big players on the world stage

Hmmm. I could tell you about my little corner of the world. :)

Our first king was a selfish, spoit and entitled, lying, teenage brat who didn't like his stepfather and went no contact with his cousin.
(Portugal)

Some things weren't that different in the past.

Portugal did a lot of its own conquering though I mean its a tiny country but it managed to "own" Brazil.

Don't really know anything about it

Werkz - that's a great theory about cheese.

Lactose intolerance isn't necessarily fatal, but it may make one less attractive due to all the farting, and perhaps have less energy and general resilience - it is something that was gradually deselected in European populations over millenia.

Not strictly historical, but for those who grew up without central heating, if you're still reading, how did people manage with chopping food to cook in those cold temperatures? (ie if they didn't have a range or fire that kept the kitchen hot, so this is more mid twentieth century than "olden days"). I am pretty good with lower temperatures and wearing warm clothes, but below about 10 degrees, my hands are worse at gripping and peeling stuff, and you can't wear gloves for that. People who lived all their lives without heating must have been somewhat more acclimatised, but there are limits.

It is a shame this thread is in Chat and will disappear in 90 days. It's a good policy when threads are personal or totally trivial, but it would be nice if things like this could stay.

TipTop

We are staying.

Mumsnet HQ will shift us to somewhere permanent in a few days

They got in touch with me via PM in response to requests apparently

Thanks to all who praised the thread

You say conquering, I say getting there before anyone else. :)
There wasn't much to conquer in Brazil, and we traded more than fought.
Still, we are small but tough. :)

John of Gaunt's grandchildren started off our overseas expansion. The marriage sealed a centuries old alliance with England. To the point that we didn't close our harbours to England at Napoleon's orders and got invaded 3 times. Russia has nothing on us.

I've just had a bit of a read of Afonso I - I don't much get how he was declared King, seeing as his own father was a count not a King. And he was a boy anyway when his father died. Sounds like Joffrey from Game Of Thrones.

re Victorian death certificates. This fascinates me & is worth a topic on its own.

In the absence of PMs & laboratory tests, what was put on a death certificate might not be too accurate. I've seen several death certificates with causes such as "old age" and even "Act of God". A more obvious one was "Apoplexy" but what do you make of "Diseased Brain and Diarrhoea" in a man who was 64? It did surprise me to see a 1876 certificate giving cancer of the uterus as a cause (she was 48 and this was 6 years after her last child was born)

Many babies apparently died of "failure to thrive" or "marasmus"which could cover a multitude of reasons including malnutrition. If mum had died shortly after the birth, baby might only have been given watered down cows milk or sugared water. Many poor families couldn't afford a wet nurse.

TB/consumption - I'm sure this was also used for many other causes. There must have been plenty of Victorians with lung cancer, emphysema etc but these terms seem to be used fairly universally if there was any history of progressive wasting due to lung/breathing problems. Although I have a cert giving cause of death as asthma in a 70-year old miner (still working) who had complained 2 years earlier "My wind troubles me now, and when one’s wind is gone, one’s strength soon goes too."

In the poorer areas in towns and cities, housing conditions were very poor and several families might be sharing one house. They might have to share a single tap with their neighbours. Infectious diseases spread like wildfire. One of my families lost 3 children in a week from scarlatina. There were periodic outbreaks of cholera that wiped out large numbers of people within a few weeks. Incidentally, it is thought that people who carry the gene for cystic fibrosis had some resistance to the worst effects of cholera, which might help to explain why its fairly common in Britain.

Its well documented that there were more deaths from childbed fever amongst the better-off working class & middle class than really poor people. If you could afford it, you'd pay for a midwife or doctor to attend a birth and their standard of hygiene was really poor - they never seemed to wash their hands between patients, so spread all sorts of diseases. Poorer people could not afford medical help. I have a chap in my family tree who lost his first 3 wives to childbed fever. He didn't have any children with the fourth!

I also have a relative, a doctor, who died in 1852 aged 30 of septicaemia after he accidentally cut his finger with his own scalpel during a postmortem examination.

People simply didn't know half the time.

'Although you wouldn't necessarily have had the resources - or the clothes - to change body linen frequently unless you were privileged' - exactly - and people were very conscious of how often you could afford to change your linen. Being super rich and fairly active, Henry VIII changed his shirt several times a day.

A more obvious one was "Apoplexy" but what do you make of "Diseased Brain and Diarrhoea" in a man who was 64?

Apoplexy is one of the usual terms for stroke, but diseased brain and diarrhoea plus age does suggest it too - or any neurological problem that caused incontinence as well as affecting the brain. Pre-senile dementia, perhaps, but lots of less common possibilities. I would assume the "diseased brain" was part of his last or recent illness, and not a learning disability as it was on the certificate.

Dead Gorgeous is a great book, so.is the history of underwear. Some great books on this.

This thread is so interesting!

Portuguese also went to Africa.

What set off Hitler hating the Jews so much

This may have been debunked but I'm sure I once read that his grandmother worked for a rich Jewish family and possibly got pregnant by one of the family, resulting in an illegitimate child, possibly Hitler's father, which meant that Hitler actually had Jewish blood. I'm probably wrong though.

Scarlatina would make a lovely name for a girl.