The Historical Ponderings Society

[EverySongbirdSays]

Following on from the thread "What questions do you have about stuff from History or am I the only one?" Which is here

Ever wondered how we got from the clothes of Cave people to the clothes of today?

Who was the first person to make and eat Cheese? Or cake?

How ideas became widespread

Why the Aztecs didn't have the wheel?

Why Elizabeth I never married?

How accurate historical fiction is?

Then this your thread and we are your people.

PROCEED HISTORY LOVERS

Se18 is a whole other district...I don't think all the old terraced houses in Whitechapel are gone but they might be worth a million!

True Lorelei, I always thought if I could shuffle my house down the road to Greenwich I'd be laughing!

Can I ask something please? Apologies if it has been asked already and also if its a very stupid question!
You know BC is before Christ, then ad is after his death, what about the years he was alive. There are 33 years unaccounted for. Did nothing at all hapoen during those years?

Again apologies if that is really stupid, I often put my foot in it and know very little about history. (although broc is the Irish word for badger too)

AD is Anno Domini, 'years of our Lord', so is supposed to start when he was born, and he died around AD 33. However the people figuring out his birth year screwed up so we know he was actually born around 4 to 6BC, as Herod died in 4BC. So another reason to use BCE and CE (before Common Era), which is the same year numbers as BC/AD.

In primary school , our teacher told us Anno Domini meant "after death". So thats where i went wrong!
Aha. Your explanation makes great sense and is very interesting. Thank you!

It's weird that as we have Anno Domini/AD, we don't also have Pre Christi/PC rather than Before Christ/BC. What did other languages use? At least Latin was fairly universal across educated mediaeval Europe.

When did CE & BCE come in? I don't remember them being mentioned much, if at all, when I was at uni in the early '90s, though I rarely had a need to go back before around 1500.

What conventions do non-English speakng/writing academics use instead of CE/BCE?

German uses v.Chr. and n.Chr. - vor/nach Christus (before/after Christ), and Google tells me there is also v.u.Z. and u.Z. - (vor) unsere Zeitrechnung which is (before) our time-counting/reckoning/figuring. Die Rechnung is the bill in a restaurant.
Don't know how common it is outside academia.

I first was told about CE/BCE in the late 80s but don't think I saw it used until the last decade. When distinguishing from AH dates (Anno Higira, the start of the Muslim calendar around 700 AD), books tend to stick to BC I think, probably because 'common era' leads to 'common for you I suppose'.

Interesting. I have to make a conscious effort to think other than in BC and AD, both of which come more easily to me.

Just going back to the 'blackest streets'. The poverty map of East London was made by Charles Booth, social reformer and rather interesting man. The map's still available online and can be searched in detail here

The immediate area around Christchurch is pretty gentrified now (hipster heaven) but thank goodness there's anything left at all. There was a big campaign to save all the lovely old silk-weavers' houses from being torn down in the 60’s, 70’s and even later. Dan Cruickshank (who lives in one of them) was one of the prime movers in the battle.

Fascinating. Thanks.

I would like to know what theories there are as to why a minority of societies developed religions that forbade eating meat.

Interestingly, Brillig, I have an old map of Rotherhithe and the surrounding area. (Changing, even in my day, to converted warehouses, bistros and pubs with names like 'The Three Compasses'. (And most of the clientele wouldn't even have known what a compass was! ))

I was always staggered by just how planning permission was given for half of the developments given the number of 'munitions dumps' etc etc listed on the old maps. The soil contamination must have been quite ferocious.

Did they actually forbid the eating of meat, though, have, or restrict it?

Islam and Judaism both ban pork, Hindus can't have beef. Then there are further restrictions at times of fasting.

I would have thought it's mostly to do with the risk of disease at a time when there's no antibiotics or helminthicides, and there's probably more risk of diseases jumping from pigs than ruminants which are grazing animals. Most religions seem to have originated in hotter, more tropical countries, which would make it wose to avoid shellfish, too, because you just can't keep it on ice. It makes sense to have a separate milk kitchen, too - raw, unpasteurized, unrefrigerated milk products are more likely to be a source of ill health than fruit and veg and grains. It's just easier to make rules and get people to stick to them if it's your God who said it.

Also times of scarcity - it's no coincidence that Lent coincides with the time of year (usually February to March/April) in Western Europe that last year's stocks were starting to run low and things haven't really got started with growing for the Spring.

Closed seasons for game (which I don't think have anything to do with religion) tend to cover the breeding and offspring-raising period of game animals.

I don't know thus as gospel truth () mind you, it just makes sense.

Many of those food rules probably do come from controlling disease, I agree.
At some point they get written down, put together with the religious books and become religion.

I also have a theory about face covering.
In many countries where women cover their faces there's a disease called cutaneous leishmaniasis that can cause disfiguring scars. It's transmitted by an insect, so it makes sense to protect your face when out and about. But the origin of that tradition may be so old that it won't be possible to ever know, I think.
Like head covering makes sense for the cold and the sun. Western societies required head covering outside until fairly recently. My own grandmother used a headscarf all her life. Not Muslim. :)

I wear a headscarf whenever out in hot sun (which is basically all day every day when I'm on holiday). Also not Muslim. I just have thin hair and don't want my head to burn!!

I too sometimes use a headscarf. I have had a burnt scalp along my parting before, and I don't want that again.

I think I remember seeing a documentary that said that the requirement for women to wear head coverings in public (as opposed to women freely choosing to wear headscarves etc to protect themselves from the weather) dated back to the ancient Babylonians.
So predating the rise of the ancient Greeks, Rome, Christianity and Islam.

Men are and have been required to cover their heads in public too. Even Muslims and Jews traditionally do it. And you only have to go back a few decades to see all men with hats in the west.

It's kind of interesting that women actually got more freedom about what to wear than men in the west (or regions where's there's more sex balance), whereas in more traditional (patriach) regions it's men who got more of that freedom.

But, going back to pork, pigs are "filthy animals" and transmit more serious diseases than beef.

re meat, isn't it Jains who won't even kill an insect? So if the pp was thinking of religions who forbid the eating of all meat, surely that's because of not hurting living beings?

I was wondering how royalty even became a thing. Is it that that rich and powerful families or tribes managed to establish it as something of importance? And people just kow-towed to whoever managed to accumulate money initially?

Good question. I can see how a leader would find it hard to keep power in older age, so passing the power to any person would be risky. Having a son, or close relative set to inherit and protect your power while you get old seems like a good strategy.
Also, having a clear rule of the eldest son can save much damaging infighting. Not 100%, of course, but still easier transitions of power.

oh good point, I had thought of eldest son more as a way to avoiding breaking up estates into smaller pieces, but yes of course - passing on power has more clarity that way too.

but what I'm wondering is why anyone paid attention to someone saying "ooh I have magic blood" in the first place - but that's going to be about money and tribal warfare isn't it? I probably am clueless because i've never been big on ancient history.

When traveling in Oman, I was told by a Bedouin woman that the face coverings ( quite hard, rigid, masks) protected their skin from the sun and sand in the desert. There was an exhibition in one of the forts about how they were made.

"I would have thought it's mostly to do with the risk of disease at a time when there's no antibiotics or helminthicides, and there's probably more risk of diseases jumping from pigs than ruminants which are grazing animals."

Pork carries/carried trichinosis which can survive even in cooked meat (well not thoroughly cooked) and can also be caught just by slaughtering and preparing, so it's pretty widely believed that that's a major factor in it becoming forbidden.

Re head coverings and dress codes... You've got to factor in that Christianity did traditionally insist on those too, and it's only as we've become more secular that they start to disappear.

Also, because it's mildly interesting - the othering of Islam through clothes ie, the west being all bothered about women having to cover up is a complete 180 from for example during the Victorian era when we were all worried that Muslim women were scantily dressed harem girls as in Arabian nights. As our values to do with clothes and sexual Liberty has changed so has what we focus on about Islam and the east. Not that I'm saying I agree with enforced modesty for women - but it is interesting that it's portrayed has changed as we have.

Pork carries/carried trichinosis which can survive even in cooked meat (well not thoroughly cooked)

I always get it confused with trichomoniasis, which is not the same... It led to a rather confused conversation with my mother once, because I couldn't understand why she'd gone on from salmonella, listeria and brucellosis to STDs. (She regularly pointed out how everything in the fridge could kill us.)