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

Someone mentioned the time-travel book with Elizabethan England - can I recommend the Sterkarm books? More the first one (Sterkarm Handshake) than the second.

It's fascinating - really evocative. A woman travels back to the Scottish borders. But the details are really surprising ones - like, the smells!

I remember visiting a reasonably intact mediaeval priory when I was a youngster and they had it pretty well sorted. A row of stone 'sitting places' - complete with central holes - constructed over a running stream going through the priory. Half of the people visiting made a bee-line for the 'privy place' (I forget the Latin name) when they were able to as well!

The Sterkarm books are just the BEST and there is another one coming out in January.
One of the most effective things is the way the 16th century people react to modern technology. They understand the modern time travellers to be elves and technology is elvish magic.

Earlier in the thread someone was pondering how Victorians would see modern technology. There's a wonderful chapter in E. Nesbit's The Story Of The Amulet where the children visit the future. It's fascinating to see how an Edwardian writer envisaged an ideal future - not so much the technology but the social organisation, lots of communal ownership.

Please may I join? I love this sort of thread.

Lots of Elizabethan and later recipes for cold cream and lip balm, both in the household books and the herbals.

What would the victorians find strange but interesting: air travel, the Internet. Disapprove of, if middle class and European , the decline of Christianity, marriage, growth of a welfare state " pauperising the poor". Not understand, the decline if agriculture and industry in this country. Those are my bets.

Where I come from, almost the Pennines, thee and thou are used, us's not our, lots of old words, marred, mardy, ginnel, vennel, starved meaning cold, clemmed meaning hungry.

About 20 years ago I went to see an aunt in the West Country and there was an old chap who'd worked for my great grandparents on the other side of the family. I couldn't understand a single word he said. And that's after lots if BBC pseudo West Country series. I hugely regretted it as I wanted to know more.

The Queen 's accent has come down the social scale, massively,

Returning to toilets and Time Team ... in the vert last series, they excavated a navvies village from the building of a railway line. They located the cesspool, and I was surprised when the archaeologist said they could smell poo - nearly 150 old !

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Settle%E2%80%93Carlisle_Line

My parents' house has a wall with 200 year old cow dung plaster and the builders who restored the house insisted they could smell it.

Oh Unicorns

I've read those

They are awful.... EPICALLY BRILLIANT

I'd like to know about the first cloth. I can figure how wool could be pulled into yarn, but making a frame and weaving a thread at a time across must have taken ages to make a square inch of fabric. I think the shuttle loom came in around 1200 but what was there before that? When did people invent knitting? Or maybe crochet came first as that only needs one widget to hold the yarn?

Before they had knitting or crochet the Vikings had nalbinding

I have a feeling that crochet was after knitting, but I'm ignorant about looms.

That's a fascinating technique. I shall return to that.

One of the continuities they tend to pick out is the "seat with a hole" which is fairly common in Western history.

The changes tell us much more about societies- the level of understanding of infection, class systems (slaves to empty, or different types for different classes), even the communal element of some periods.

I got rather over invested in toilets.

Re weaving taking a long time, if your thread is thick and your weave is loose it wouldn't take that long. When I look at very fine early fabrics like fragments of silk I find it mind-blowing that every thread was spun by hand - no wonder it was expensive. But I don't have trouble imagining how they got started.

wiki page with some early loom reconstructions

Ah, good point Countess! I suppose the first yarns wouldn't have been very thin, so weaving a sac-like mesh of chunky pulled fleece could make a layer pretty quickly - fast enough to see that it would keep you warm and was worth doing.

I think I've seen hats made like that in Norwegian craft shops. Some of the typical jumpers had sections in that sort of texture, though the bulk of them was standard knitting.

Ooh joining.

I loved the last thread.

I forgot to change to my non-morti name and now I've posted on a few threads and don't want too nc incase I confuse anyone myself

One of the Discovery of Witches novels has time travel to the Elizabethan era too.

Google the LLoyds Bank Turd

The Stroy of the Amulet, with the time-travelling Edwardian children was written by Edith Nesbit, who was one of the founding members of the Fabian Society, who believed in social reform and a socialist society achieved by gradual transition, rather than violent revolution- the future in the book showed her hopes for the future. And the future people referred to Edwardian times, when 'the great reformer, [H.G.] Wells' lived, as 'the Dark Ages'...

enochroot that is brilliant! Can't wait to show it to my DS'

On the foot-washing question, Gerald of Wales wrote in his 12th century 'Description of Wales' about hospitality
"When water is offered to them [travellers], if they suffer their feet to be washed, they are received as guests; for the offer of water to wash the feet is with this nation an hospitable invitation. But if they refuse the proffered service, they only wish for morning refreshment, not lodging."

I learned from an episode of Time Team that bronze swords were not made in the same way as iron swords. A two-part mould was made from stone, often soapstone which can be carved. The two halves of the mould were tightly bound together and molten bronze poured in. It cools and then the sword can be pulled out when mould has been loosened. That’s probably the origin of the Arthurian myth of pulling the sword out of a stone – not the sign of a king but a skilled blacksmith.

human pooh smells bad because we are omnivores

Human poo smells bad to us because it's ours. We can catch diseases from our own poo, so we evolved to avoid contamination with it.

Can someone tell me the origins of glibrator being English? I'm sure I was told it was given to the brits by the Portuguese to annoy the Spanish

You mean Gibraltar? It was never Portuguese to start with.

I have just Googled the turd. And that, children, is what happens if you don't eat your vegetables.

Mangnalls questions, the standard text for years for Victorian girls, I think said that knitting came from the Channel Islands and QEI was revolutionary in wanting her stockings knitted.

I'm relying on third parties here because I've never read it, only seen it quoted,