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 ?

This thread really needs an accompanying reading list!

glittery, Deborah Cameron (professor of linguistics) agrees with you. debuk.wordpress.com/

Eskimos having 20 words for different types of snow

I once saw a cartoon about this: two Eskimos fishing in an ice-hole, then one says to the other, "Did you know that in Hampstead they have 20 different words for bread?"

Hang on, LRD - tell us more about the midwife handjob thing?!

LRD I love you!
Does a little fist pump of joy!

Well, ok, I admit - it's quite obscure (but the texts where it is mentioned are very matter-of-fact, as if they're describing something quite unremarkable).

But. Some medical authors in the Middle Ages believed that women's orgasms relived all sorts of symptoms, and stopped heat from building up in women's bodies. Women, you see, should be naturally cool and wet, unlike men, who are hotter (!).

A woman who was suffering from unnatural heat might (for example) be retaining her menses. This would cause symptoms such as masculine-like body hair and excessive desire or itching in the vaginal area, and, of course, struggles to conceive (I wonder if they were actually looking at women with PCOS).

So, since orgasms released the heat and soothed the undercarriage itch, they were good treatment. But, obviously it would be really immoral to encourage women to go to men for orgasms! So, a woman skilled in female matters should undertake the task.

You have to remember this is a culture that thinks female orgasms are largely there for medical, procreative purposes.

glittery - I am a huge fan of hers!

At the beginning g of the thread wasn't there something about Tess of the D'Ubervilles and rape, becaus ethe prevailing thought was a woman couldn't conceive unless she had an orgasm, and Tess coneived and therfore had had an orgasm, and therefore had enjoyed it and therefore it wasn't rape? (did I imagine this? Can't be bothered to go bakc and search) but it sort of links to the midwife thing, as different understandings of women's orgasm.

Actually in a way I am quite impressed that it was talked about and considered. I think I am over influenced by Victorian lie back and think of England women, and forget that through most of history we were more free and less inhibited.

Yes, it's the same tradition.

Hummus

You could update that with 20 different words for coffee in Shoreditch!

Yep that was me. Female orgasms believed to be necessary for conception.

Have started reading the American midwife book upthread. V good.

There was a guide to marriage published in Georgian times that is heavy on the 'how to make your wife orgasm' detail, saw it in a Lucy Worsley program. Was considered important and part of the husbands duty

Has anyone seen the movie about the invention of the vibrator?
It seems in the 1800s doctors treated hysteria with pelvic massages, until one of them invented a mechanical device.

With the delightful Hugh Dancy and Maggie Gyllenhaal.

There's a Roy Porter book on medical and/or sexual history (can't remember the title, but must have been published c 1995, because of the library I was working in at the time,) in which I learnt a lot about devices for subduing female hysteria and preventing nocturnal emissions in chaps and all sorts.

Some people were disturbingly inventive.

Aha - I had wondered if it was similar to using orgasm as the treatment for hysteria (not actually that long ago), but I was trying to work out what it had to do with childbirth...

I wonder what medical stuff that is part of the current orthodox thinking will be looked on with the same slight incredulity as we have looking back at how medics believed balancing the humours to be the answer to pretty much eveything

Orgasm is a pain reliever and relaxant. As someone who had very hippy births I'm gutted I didn't think of masturbation as another method of relaxation!

Childbirth led on your back will probably be looked back on as a 'what were they thinking?!' period of time

Yes I work with people from India and that's what they have said that we smell of dairy and sometimes gone off milk

I had a Chinese housemate who said this to me - but I don't drink milk!

How come in England there are lots of Johnsons, Robertsons, Robinsons, Thompsons etc, but I've never heard of a Henryson, Arthurson, Paulson or similar variations on "CommonName'sSon"?

Don't forget surnames didn't always go father to son, an apprentice would take his master's name, hence so many occupation names, Taylor, Smith etc.

Also the 'son' ending is quite a Scandinavian thing so it may be the names originated in places with viking settlements, all the names you list as not existing do exist without the 'son' ending, Paul, Henry, Arthur - all exist as surnames, and the first two also exist in French, so possible a Norman link?

Oh and all the Mac and Mc surnames are son of as well - so McArthur is effectively Arthurson

Surnames starting with O' e.g. O'Neill, O'Brian are also 'son of' surnames.

Pretty sure I've heard Paulson as a surname

We went to Jorvik Viking Centre in York a few years back, and one thing that I learnt was that the street names ending 'gate' simply meant 'street' in the language the Vikings spoke.

So if a town or city has old established roads with names ending in 'gate' , it's a clue that Vikings once were settled there.

Someone waaay back at the start of the thread was pondering the leap from stick -> spear -> bow and arrow. Between spear and bow & arrow you have the atlatl or spear thrower.
It allowed a spear to be thrown harder and faster (like a ball thrower for dog owners). Simple bow and arrows came next. Then came composite bows , those are awesome.

Here, where the moors have been, we have lots of place names starting with Al, which means the.
Such as (the) Algarve. So, it's the the 'garve. :)

Have started reading the American midwife book upthread. V good.
Ooh, I am pleased! I must get my copy back off my SIL.

This thread really needs an accompanying reading list!

Too true!

Question. Jesus was a Palestinian Jew, swarthy of skin, bit of an Osama Bin Laden look. Why has western art always painted the guy as white?