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 used to know all sorts of stuff but it's all been replaced with trivia, I'm a good quizzer, but whilst I've realised I know a lot of good "quiz answers" - I don't actually know the knitting, the detail.

Eggs! Why on earth would you even think about eating something that came out of a bird's bum ?

And, fair enough, bread etc came about through accident/trial and error over a long period of time, but how did it spread worldwide? Or even to ten miles away?

Someone upthread said that royals/aristocrats = inbred; peasants = healthier. Peasants were very inbred too. If you lived in a small village your pool of mates was not large and travel to the next conurbation was rare if not unthinkable. My father came from a village and said that actually lots of the local people even as recently as the 1950s intermarried and learning difficulties were rife. Everybody in that particular area was employed in farm work back then so schooling was not such a big issue.

btw I believe James I (VI of Scotland) displayed classic inherited syphilis traits such as "bendy legs" and enlarged tongue. Therefore it would not have been relevant whether his parents were six foot apiece.

The first underground was cut and cover (Bakerloo) - you cut a big roadway, then roof it over. There was tunneling technology, from mining, and then trying to go under the Thames, notably by Marc Brunel (Isambard Kingdom Brunel's pa) - I have a vague memory it flooded at one point, causing the death of some labourers. There are still problems though - didn't Crossrail come within a couple of inches of the Northern Line or something when they were boring a tunnel? (Would check, but am on a train, and internet connection is flaky.)

On the subject of the USA, the Turner Thesis claimed the western frontier was closed only in 1892, I think. (Memory is a but flaky on the details.) But there was movement west ever since Columbus landed, plus you've got the rest of the world (Australia, New Zealand, and the far east and so on, anywhere considered uncivilised.) Europeans treated it all as places to provide riches to take back home, and natives needed civilising (i.e. Christian conversion and education.) It was all there, just didn't count until somewhere European had claimed it and mapped it and taken all the valuable natural resources. It got speeded up at certain times, e.g. during the Gold Rush.

And cow byres inside the house - you probably have archaeological evidence such as the remnants of the dung and so on, but also, in some places, it carried on later than the mediaeval period and there are written records. Makes sense in a lot of ways, as the animals will provide some warmth, and you don't have to go out for milking. And they didn't have modern understanding of hygiene, infection control and zoonotic diseases and so on.

When a nomadic tribe was successful the size of it would increase until eventually a group would split away and contact would be broken. Each group might wander in a completely different direction but they would take with them knowledge of plants and their properties, fire-lighting techniques, weaponry, curing of foodstuffs, pottery and whatever language they had developed.
They would come into contact with other tribes that had developed different techniques and learn from them as well as passing on their knowledge. Women might be married out of the tribe - or be enslaved/abducted - and take their skills with them.
There are all sorts of ways in which knowledge would be spread and become diverse over hundreds or thousands of years.

And, fair enough, bread etc came about through accident/trial and error over a long period of time, but how did it spread worldwide? Or even to ten miles away?

I suppose if one group of people hits upon something good by accident, then word would gradually spread - visitors / travellers see the bread, think "this is yummy", and either get someone to tell them the secret, or embark on some trial and error of their own with bread as the goal. Or children who've been brought up in a bread eating group marry out and take the bread making secrets with them to the next settlement or tribe along.

And as for eggs, there's animals that steal and eat eggs. Early people may have seen this, and decided to give it a go themselves, especially if there wasn't much else around.

Animals eat eggs. Nobody needed to think of it. We probably did it before we were thinking.

You don't need yeast for bread. Just flour + water can make some perfectly edible flatbread.

And if you leave flour and water sitting about, natural yeast will start it bubbling (I'm told that's how you go about making sourdough?)

Presumably early yeasted bread was accident + "keep some of the bubbly stuff" + "give it to your neighbours and call it friendship cake or some nonsense".

The toilets in the public schools , that is council schools, in Africa are shocking, no papers, no sanitary bins. A lot of the chemist shops here put out large bins were you can put in sanpro products to be distributed to girls in the area, which is something at least. And the poorest of the poor still have to pay ' school fees' here. It is a fucking scandal.

Fascinating thread

another here who's descended from John of Gaunt/Kathryn Swynford (waves to cuz)

Re milk: also works the other way, not uncommon in some cultures for human mothers to breastfeed piglets or puppies along with their own children.

Re Henry VIII and potential illegitimate baby: difficult to pass off in practice given that queens gave birth in public, surrounded by courtiers: if the baby died and you tried to pass another child off as yours, that would be an awful lot of potential blackmailers to keep quiet.

Re being too tired for sex. Apart from the obvious one of husbands having the final say on this, there is also the point that there were very few distressing options, particularly for the poorer classes. No internet, no television, no comfort food, no paracetamol, no antidepressants: sex probably had a far wider gap to fill.

Re freezers and people smelling- oh dear, this is where I realise that I am getting really old. We didn't have a freezer when I was a child, relatively few people did. And two baths a week + body washes were still the norm for the older generation.

bloody autocorrect: de-stressing, not distressing

The Tube - a lot of the route of the Tube was dictated by the underlying Geology, hence why great tranches of South London are tubeless. These are generally the area on The London Gravel and Thanet Beds - loose, waterlogged sands and gravels. The Underground tunnels generally run though more competent strata like the London Clay. As tunnelling technology and ground stabilisation techniques improved, it became more cost effective to tunnel in other areas. But as mentioned upthread, many people died in building the Victorian tube network. Construction was still the injury with the highest death rate in the UK until about 10 years ago. Lots of death, legislation and pulling our socks up later - we seem to be getting it together a bit.

Only a bit though. It is still a very dangerous industry

I always wonder weren't people cold before central heating? No, I mean REALLY cold, shivering, teeth-chattering cold. Even with double glazing, central heating and warm clothes sometimes I'm still cold.

Even recently, I see 20th century fashions where the women are wearing skirts and stockings all year round, and think why don't their toes have frostbite.

What DID the commonfolk do for entertainment?

No radio, no TV, novel reading didn't start til the late 1700's

Reading for pleasure generally was a province of the upper classes until probably 20th Century

The Bible didn't appear in English until Tudor times so when you went along to Mass you had know clue what the ceremony was saying.

That could be the reason for so many kids. People drank a lot and shagged a lot out of sheer boredom and looked forward to the next day out at the gallows with their kids and their sammiches

regarding gene pools/inbreeding.

Actually, most of the Royal pedigrees I've looked at aren't that bad. Marrying close relatives hasn't been permitted by the Christian church for a very long time, possibly because they appreciated the possible health consequences (this is long before genetics of course). Although I concede that many generations of marrying your first or second cousins (which is allowed though not encouraged the way it is in some cultures) is going to concentrate the genes.

I have a branch of my family tree based in Northumberland (may be coincidence but this is the one that goes back to the Percys etc, to John of Gaunt) For about 300-400 years, up till Victorian times, they were farmers with a fairly notable presence in one small area. They tended to intermarry within a select group of families of similar status. It was more to do with keeping the land & money in that group than not having much of a choice of bride elsewhere. (Although one chap married for the first time at 49, and his bride was 15. Wonder whether there were actually any other suitable girls of marriageable age, or whether it had been arranged before she was born? I digress...) In this line I only have one cousin marriage, the others all seem to be the in-laws of siblings/cousins. In other words, although the families are mixed so the tree resembles a bowl of spaghetti, the actual bride & groom are only very distantly related, if at all. My gt grandfather married his sister's niece... it looks (and sounds) odd, but there is absolutely no genetic connection between them.

Might be luck, but these lines seem remarkably healthy, and certainly not lacking in mental capacity.

Antonia Fraser and Ailson Weir are much better writers, I feel, than PG.
Another good one was Diana Norman, wife of Barry Norman. She wrote some excellent historical novels, and a brilliant series of books under the name of Ariana Franklin. The first one is The Mistress of the Art of Death.
Jean Plaidy, Sharon Penman, Elizabeth Chadwick and Norah Lofts are also good.
One of my heroines is Eleanor of Aquitaine, what a woman she was. I read about her years ago at school in a book called 'A Proud Taste for Scarlet and Miniver' and have read everything about her since.

Who first discovered cheese? Like, who had some milk going off and minging and lumpy in the corner and thought 'I know, I'll eat me a bit of that'.

Of, so it might have been quite nice when they ate it but why did they eat it in the first place?

fridges & freezers: I remember my mum getting our first fridge in the early 1960's.

We had a larder, with a stone slab, to keep food cool. We didn't have central heating then.

(remembers ice patterns on the windows, frozen toilets INDOORS, and trying to get dressed under the bedclothes because it was too cold to get out of bed)

I really liked the stuff I've learned about the women from Gregory though

I'd particularly like to know more about Jacquetta Woodville and Margaret of Anjou

Of, so it might have been quite nice when they ate it but why did they eat it in the first place?

Hunger?

But who came up with cheese and what they thought they were doing is a good question.

Along with how different food emerged in different places. You can make pasta anywhere, but it's become synonymous with Italy.

You can get fish anywhere but fish and chips is synonymous with the UK.

What did people do for entertainment?

They didn't have much time for entertainment, anyway.
Women would probably take all the time they could mending clothes, spinning wool, preparing foods. And men would probably fix things at home.

Still, they would most likely tell stories, play music, sing, play games, gossip about. Probably while most did those other jobs.

I don't think most people would sit still long enough to feel cold, even, but most houses would be small and heated by fires.
You'll notice some ancient beds were in a sort of closet, which kept the heat in. Which is probably the reason for canopy beds.
I've recently been in a castle where the main bed had a space under it and through the wall for heated coals, so it would warmed from underneath it. Richer people would also use bed warmers before they got in.

Great thread. Will come back later to read properly.

I get very annoyed by the modern vogue for four poster beds with no drapery. The whole point of the posts was to hold up the curtains and canopy!

I always find it slightly hard to imagine the extent to which people shared beds, even with strangers in inns, but I think you feel very differently about it in an unheated house. Mil used to share a bed with her sister as a child and says it was lovely and cosy.
I think keeping warm was quite a major preoccupation. In those books of hours that have a picture for each month there's usually one where the main activity is chopping firewood.