Even the poorest laborers understood the importance of cleanliness, laundering their linens with soapwort to deodorize and chamber lye to brighten whites. Ultimately, the soot-covered serf is largely a caricature created by later generations to make themselves feel more enlightened by comparison.
6 Ways Medieval Life Is Misrepresented in Movies
https://www.mentalfloss.com/history/misconceptions/medieval-life-misrepresentations-movies
6 Comments
ButWhatDoesItAllMean@sh.itjust.works · 14 pts · 121d
What a neat read!
Wren@lemmy.today · 11 pts · 121d
I especially loved the parts about the dyes, as a natural dyemaker myself. I'm growing woad and madder right now.
teyrnon@sh.itjust.works · 3 pts · 120d
People were super dirty back then, whether they did they wash their clothes occasionally or not, they did not have the wherewithal to take baths regularly and would not if they could as they could catch a cold by doing so.
They also wiped their ass with their hand, that did not change until we learned better from the Chinese and Japanese in the colonial era.
Wren@lemmy.today · 3 pts · 120d
Mental floss has a pretty good track record for fact checks. What you're saying sounds like an over generalization and glorifcation of early asian culture, especially considering medieval europe was a plethora of diverse cultures and practices and not a monotony. Do you have sources?
teyrnon@sh.itjust.works · 1 pts · 119d
DarrinBrunner@lemmy.world · -15 pts · 121d
I'm not going to read this, because I've already learned it.
But, yeah, all media are some level of fiction, even documentaries, even history books. The further back in time the document attempts to describe, the more uncertainty. And, the more popular the subject--meaning more people have written about it--the more biased personal and political crap, and intentional fiction, finds its way into the "official" stories.
This isn't just a problem for ancient history, either, the same thing happens with accounts of events from 20 years ago.
You might think I'm saying that we shouldn't fully trust anything we haven't seen with our own eyes, and while that's not terrible advice, considering the alternatives, humans aren't especially good at interpreting events as they're unfolding. We miss many details, and simply remember things that never happened.
Personal bias and political crap makes its way into even the most carefully written and reviewed scientific papers, too. Virtually no document is fiction-free.
Of course, AI is making all of this much worse, in every way.
All we have is fiction--bedtime stories we tell each other to keep the monsters at bay, and make ourselves feel better about the shitty things we do and allow to happen.
Wren@lemmy.today · 12 pts · 121d
You might want to read it.
MedicPigBabySaver@lemmy.world · 3 pts · 120d
teyrnon@sh.itjust.works · -3 pts · 120d
MedicPigBabySaver@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 120d