Medieval Myths DEBUNKED
HTML-код
- Опубликовано: 8 сен 2024
- Jason Kingsley, the modern knight, busts some of the most popular and wrong medieval myths that he's encountered. Myths busted. Medieval mistakes. things you probably get wrong about the medieval times. medieval people were not short. did medieval people wash? #historyfacts #history #medieval
Join this channel to get access to perks:
/ @modernknight
Part of the height myth actually comes from the fact that industrial revolution era people were shorter and more malnourished than the people before AND after them.
yes they also married earlier than people in the middleages, when only nobility could afford to marry before their 20s, and even then some bachelor nobles chose to stay single into their 30s, bc there is a lot to enjoy it seems, and also some women who kind of waited a bit longer, for the yountryside people it was expected to get a farm working and the income to actualy feed a family before even thinking of marriage so men usualy were around 26 before marrying, while wonmen were around 23
Amen. My family is a testament to that. We are just a few generations removed from dying of pellagra. Its weird knowing that my granddad lived with people who died of malnutrition. His dad was over 6'. He was 5'8". My dad, my nephew, and I are over 6'. It is pretty much the same on all sides of my family.
Part of that whole myth is sowed by smug Renaissance neo-philosopher and historian. perfect whataboutism technique.
Yes, it's the same case in the bronze age as well. Medieval people tended to be more similar in stature to modern people (or at least people in the last century), younger people in the modern day tend to be taller.
The ale myth has some interesting context.
I remember an ad to bring more women as brewers to the Jamestown settlement because the men weren’t preparing enough water for drinking.
I imagine they were brewing tea as well as ale.
As for the ale itself, that Tudor Farm documentary showed an ale that was brewed overnight, more like a strong tea.
Certainly puts the later English obsession with tea into a different perspective
Another note on the ale they drank is that it was much lower alcohol content back then and they could drink it more casually without getting totally smashed in the process.
Yup, they made small ale as well as strong ale, and it was the small ale that was drunk during the day.
Townsends (youtube channel) of course goes over this in extensive detail. Those folks are such a boon to have access to along with our gracious host Jason Kingsley OBE. Townsends deal mainly with 18th century ish times but the common folk of anytime prior to the 19th/20th century were more alike than dissimilar I would wager.
CHEERS!
So more like American beer?
Just pushing the point since I would have commented that, too.
@@phlogistanjones2722 A lot of Townsends' stuff has some applicability to the medieval period as well, although of course he might well use New World foods some of the time.
Talking of bright colours, the churches and cathedrals would also have been a lot more decorated prior to the reformation. I'm sure they would think our modern taste for unadorned stone and brick is dull
Prior to the reformation ?
Christian pictural art continued to strive regardless of the Reformation, and even thanks to it.
It is a well established fact that the reformation pushed the Church to fund art at an even greater rate than before and that artists like the Carravagio would've never graced the world without the Church's need to double down on her doctrine through powerful art, in her fight against protestantism.
there is this thing called the catholic church, dont know if you ever heard of but they are still around, they are the biggest "sect" of chiristianism and most of the churches they've built in the middle ages, specially the cathedrals, are still where they left them and some of them are quite similar in their decoration to what they looked like when built. they built even more churches after the reformation they had a whole thing called baroque. check it out, some beautiful stuff they made then.
@@remilenoir1271 I assume they mean on the protestant end. (I’m not sure that they started off more iconoclastic, though?)
@bahshas "sect" how to tell me you’re protestant
You also completely missed the point. Most cathedrals and churches are NOT the way they were back then. Catholic or not. Things faded away, got moved etc
"There was no progress, it was all grim and 'orrible."
I love the way you phrased this one, and it reminds me that I need to read a new book called the Bright Ages about all the progress that happened in the Middle Ages.
If life was as bad as the common misconceptions would have you believe, I couldn't imagine why they didn't all off themselves. Besides, if you're not aware of how bad your environmental conditions are, you tend to be blissfully satisfied. I think social media is a huge contributor to dissatisfaction in modern times, as it reveals how bad the low-status and oppressed people have it compared to others. A peasant that rarely leaves their farm, would only know about those immediately surrounding them, who likely weren't much better off than them. There would be some solidarity in the burdens and misfortunes of life
I think you mean "The Light Ages" by Seb Falk and yes it's a brilliant read.
The Bright Ages by Matthew Gabrielle and David M Perry. Excellent read
@@chrisandbrennacatania5864 Lindsay Drewe has it right, but thank you for the recommendation!
@@lindsaydrewe8219 I just finished it and second your opinion! Its a terrific book, and now I am dreaming of a trip to Ravenna 😉
Oldest medieval person I've found in Wales was Angharad ferch Owain, wife of Gruffydd ap Cynan and mother of Owain Gwynedd and our "warrior princess" Gwenllian (among many other chlidren), who lived to the ripe old age of 97. Born in 1065 and died in 1162. That's pretty impressive.
Plutarch lists several Romans that lived for 100 years or more.
I have read that people sometimes got suspicious of very elderly people and thought they might be witches! 97 is mind blowing for that time. Think what she had to avoid or recover from to keep on living!
@@YorkistRaven Imagine living so long and then eventually getting sentenced for witchcraft due to your long age.
@@CrniWuk Sort of a proto-fake news as it were. What a shame!
@@Roset03 No joke! It's true. You can find Bishops lamenting about how the population was so stupid, as they complained about quarantines believing the "elites" just want to starve everyone to death by closing business and the epidemic being a lie.
kinda sounds like Fox News but medieval.
The colour thing goes a LOT further!
Medieval people loved bright colours and rich patterns. Even hard working farmers had times where they had little to do and probably painted or carved decorations just because. Today, we see grey castles and churches, but they all used to be plastered at least indoors and quite often lavishly decorated.
I heard historians deny the use of decorative plants, but I'm pretty certain that they enjoyed flowers too even if the poorer ones had only place to grow food.
19th century coal tar dyes were brighter and more colorfast than what was available in the Middle Ages, but that was a difference of degree, not kind.
@@Egilhelmson Certainly, but we got like 10 shades of white, 50 shades of grey and 2 blacks and the rest of colours are only used as accents, but not as much as a base...
Using bright colours made dark rooms a lot brighter.
As well as domestic production in the home, dyes and pigments have been a major part of international trade since before the Roman Empire. Woad, which gives the same colour as indigo that is used for denim jeans, was a major industry in England and Europe in mediæval times. Madder root goves a bright red and was imported into England from France in large quantities. The colours were not fast but that just meant that people would get their clothes re-dyed at regular intervals, if they could afford it.
There were dyes that not everyone could afford, but most people could afford red. A rich black on the other hand (not the brownish black from black sheep) was very expensive. So if you want to portray someone not very rich, choose red instead of black.
@@kajsan760 it depends on the red and what can be painted with it. It makes one hell of a difference, if you dye linen in a reddish brown, or paint wood for exteriors in a bright red like Japanese shrines... Also, purple was not just expensive, but also regulated.
One big myth that wasn't touched on was that there was no medicine during that time and all they had was lancing/leeching and prayer and if you got so much as a paper cut you were good as dead due to infection. This is, of course, untrue, while they didn't have advanced surgical techniques, or the advanced medicines we have now, they still had medical treatments of various kinds and were aware of the anti-baterial properties (even if they didn't understand the science behind them) of things like honey.They also had some basic surgical techniques, while they probably couldn't repair damaged internal organs, they could at least remove arrows. Famously, Henry V, as a young man/boy, took an arrow to the face, a surgeon was able to remove it by having special tools custom made for him, just for this operation. He was also able to treat the wound and keep it from getting infected by using honey, and I think, vinegar.
Thank you for myth-busting! I keep running into those myths when I teach history, some of them are even in our schoolbooks and the kids are really suprised when I try to explain that it's usually more complicated than that. It's great to have a video to back that up.
As with pretty much all of life, the real answer is "it's a bit more complicated than that".
With a rare chance to ask a history teacher!
I have read/heard from somewhere that the actual "ale" that the medieval people referred to was something along the lines of Kvass from northern/eastern Europe. A low alcohol beverage that is kinda like beer, but usually made out of old bread or excess grain. Is that true?
@@matiasvarpanen9203
Small ale was usually brewed from the same wort as strong ale, after the brew that would become strong ale had been strained off, so it was weaker in flavour as well as alcohol content. Another similarity to kvass is that hops wasn’t a particularly common additive yet, which meant that ale was brewed frequently and in small batches instead of infrequent large ones.
I'm just over here learning additional stuff in the comments. Carry on.
Auf deutsch gibts Geschichtsfenster. Der macht auch sowas. Kämpft immer gegen gewisse Vorurteile an.
I'd like to add a bit to the first myth if I may. Not only was infant mortality high, but death by childbirth complications was also much more common back then compared to today. And most pregnant mothers didn't give birth to their first child in their 30's so their deaths also end up putting a thumb on the scales in terms of death before the age of 30, alongside the high infant mortality rate.
A lot of the infant mortality at birth was due to the mother being malnourished, lacking all the necessary vitamins and minerals from good cuts of meat etc.
@@EpsilonNought It does make sense when you analyze the risk. Retained placenta (childbed fever), infection and septisemia from non sterile hands at delivery, stroke risk from pre-eclampsia (high blood pressure) as well as problems from fetal position preventing delivery. Women of any age experienced those risks before prenatal care. Mean age expectancy of women was lower than men during their child-bearing years. Even in the modern period in the US, pre-1900, it wasn't uncommon for men to have 3 or 4 wives during their life times due to child-birth losses.
@@EpsilonNought It was high compared to our times. Which is what I said.
Your logic doesn't make any sense
I'd like to see a comparison of childbirrh deaths in the Middle Ages vs 19th century. Did greater medical intervention (prior to modern hygiene) lead to a net decrease or a net increase in maternal mortality?
@@fionahurley5546That would be very interesting.
One thing people often do not realize about the Middle Ages is that it encompasses a massive amount of time. It is difficult to generalize about a swathe of time that spans from the fall of Rome to the Renaissance, and includes many lands.
But one thing surely holds true: people are people are people.
Lovely video, Jason! Many thanks. ❤
You almost touched on it, but the idea that archers (especially English archers) were small, wiry people. I think this mostly comes from modern Tolkienien fantasy tropes (IE archers are long and thin). An English longbowman would have been a beef castle of a man. The minimum draw weight of an English longbow would have been something like 80 pounds, but could easily go up to 140 or 150 pounds. 80 pounds is pretty much the max weight of modern compound bows, at least that you commonly see.
You try pulling back a Yew longbow with a 120 pound draw weight if you're under 6'0" tall and don't have massive shoulders (or rather one massive shoulder, as was the case in medieval times). The strength it takes to do that is incredible.
(side note: that's why the scenes in movies where a commander is yelling at his archers to "HOOOOLD!" is probably inaccurate. It's too hard to maintain any kind of accuracy when you're pulling that kind of draw weight for any extended period of time.)
I've heard them described as looking like a wine glass, wide at the top and thin at the bottom. Also heard that they are the reason that the British Bulldog became the dog of Britain because they resembled the yeomen, wide shoulders and chests but smaller backsides and hind legs.
Even in Tolkien elves were jacked as befits an archer.
Yeah, Tolkien elves were not small, and the humans with elven blood were almost always described as tall.
Also if the commander told the archers to all fire at once, the enemies would know exactly when to take cover. If it is at more random intervals, there wouldn’t be a good way to predict when you might be shot at.
that started way before Tolkien. i’ve seen medieval tapestries where the archers were thin, but i think they made everyone look like that!
Low ceilings meant smaller room volume...took less to heat it...short doors were easier to defend, also...the bad guys had to duck to come in. In this position they were slightly more vulnerable...
Exactly, they knew their shit. To claim that medieval people were absolute morons it's pretty offensive.
Duck? Ever heard of the impossibly complex concept of 'crouch'? And you can fight in that position just as easily as on foot, too, so it wasn't any obstacle at all...
they were obviously short. like victorian era people, like ancient rome era people. some people may have been tall but that was not the norm.
So true!
My "favorite" myth is that people in the Middle ages didn't take baths, when they take A LOT of baths. The myth come from the fact that people in the later centuries (16. to 19.) didn't like bathing. The medieval people were much closer to us in this regard than the Renaissance man.
It was considered normal to take a bath once a week. So they were not that close to our modern standards.
@@DerMef Yes, not the same as today. But some people in the later centuries didn't take any baths at all.
I like how there’s a trend in recent medieval RPGs of a “cleanliness” mechanic, where people will look down on you if you don’t keep yourself clean. It’s really starting to push the idea that yes, people in the Middle Ages did have a sense of bathing and hygiene.
@@GrndAdmiralThrawn That does sound cool. Which RPG has it?
@@CharlesOffdensen Kingdom Come: Deliverance has one. Also a new game called Medieval Dynasty. There are probably others, but those are the only two I’ve played that do.
Just to add to the first myth, people normally say that a simple wound or infection could kill you, and this would all be a reason to have a low life, but in fact, people in medieval times were quite clean (maybe not by our modern standards) and had crude and unsophisticated but somewhat effective methods to deal with this kind of problem.
It drives me crazy in movies when they show peasants walking around with dirty faces. As if they wouldn't wash their faces when they woke up. People throughout history have always cared about how they looked.
Yeah, makes you wonder why they bothered discovering antibiotics at all, doesn't it?
@@Frank_Nemo
Our pre-antibiotics ancestors were, at times, almost obsessed with cleanliness, since that was their only way of fighting against pathogens and infection. Since they couldn’t really cure infection, they had to do their absolute best to prevent it.
Yes, I saw an article recently in the Guardian (I put in a link but RUclips seemed to delete my comment, so now I'm trying without the link) about how there's research being done into reviving some aspects of medieval medicine and/or trying to see if there are elements of them that could be useful. That includes using maggots to heal wounds and also more obscure treatments e.g.
a 1,000-year-old Anglo-Saxon treatment for eye infections [...] After mixing allium (garlic, onion and leek) together with wine and bile from a cow’s stomach (oxgall), the team tested the mixtures on artificial wounds and later sent the recipe to America to be tested on mice. In 2015, they reported that the remedy - translated by Lee from a 10th-century medical textbook, Bald’s Leechbook - killed 90% of MRSA bacteria in wounds.
It's true that infections can be very deadly, but that was the case for almost all of history. Infections were still a (or even THE) major killer in the American Civil War and both World Wars.
Medieval people died to infections at the same rate as people in any other era in history, except for the last 100 years.
It's also true that Medieval people did not share all our modern standards when it comes to hygiene. Bathhouses were an important cultural institution, but it was considered normal to bathe once a week. They did not shower every day or every few days, as is common today. Of course they would still clean their hands and faces regularly, using towels.
I think a lot of misconceptions about the middle ages come from our memory of the victorion period where life was actually awful and people didn't live very long due to chemical and pollution exposure coupled with terrible city diets. It wasn't till ww2 when kids were evacuated to the countryside that the country people saw city folk and noticed how poorly and feeble the children were despite rationing not being in full swing in london at that stage
That makes a lot of sense. I always wondered why my grandparents (lived to 98 and 105 yrs!) were so optimistic and happy about all the technological and industrial changes of the 20th century despite the many problems they have created too. I think they were seeing the positive changes from the Victorian/Edwardian times to now, certainly many things are a lot better! But maybe not all things are better in comparison to more ancient times. There’s pros and cons to every age though.
Stone Age people wished they had Modern technology
@@christiandauz3742modern dentistry and hygiene at least
@@jonathanwells223
Hybrid cars and Rifles to deal with wild animals
Can we have more like this? I want more like this!
I love hearing the little things I already knew myself, but I love hearing even more the things I had no clue about!
Fascinating as usual Jason. Wish my history teachers at school had ridden up to class wearing mail with an arming sword, it could have been way more interesting.
That's something that I find to be a real shame - when in schools children are just sat down and taught names and dates based off old books. History is SO much more than that, it's hands on, practical, visual, real. Sure the books are good sources, but there's nothing like touching and seeing and playing with the real thing!
My school has an Experience History day where they get in a whole lot of experts to run workshops on weapons and armour, dancing, writing and a whole lot more about the medieval period. Seeing the kids donning mail and such is always a highlight of my year.
Someday I will become a teacher and I will do exactly that. I already got invited to my old school many times to teach blacksmithing, shoemaking or swordfighting
My alma mater tends to frown on me bringing arms to the building 😢
Even Bronze Age
@@moonshadowmagic7116 Ahhh...the unenlightened 🤷🏻♂️
height.
I think part of the issue is that in the 19th century, much of the population was a lot shorter than today.
Because of mandatory military service in Denmark we got statistics for the height of young 20-21 year old men going back to 1849.
And in 1864 the average height of soldiers was only 166cm.
And then people think, if they only had that height in 1860teis, then they must have been even smaller 500 years before..
they had a similar height in the roman empire 2000 years ago and italians were always considered to be short (at least shorter than the germans) even today
Interesting point about low ceilings and doors, it seems only the rich, and the church went for high, vaulted ceilings and impressive gates/doors because they had the money/labor to afford the massive amounts of wood required to heat those areas. For a poor peasant used to crouching in a dim, smoky hut, stepping into those vast open spaces must have been awe-inspiring.
Perhaps a reason for high ceilings in a Church is that they make a person look up toward God and heaven?
@Spitfire! Lionheart The Gothic cathedral was built for just that...to draw the eye heavenward.
@@SpitfireLionheartAnd it creates excellent acoustics. Which was an important consideration.
Note, that those huge halls were not heated.
I am 5"7 so quite short, however I live in the Cotswolds and we do have some Saxon buildings, I walk into buildings and through doorways and not give it a second thought, a few years back I walked into a tea shop followed by a chap of regular height and I heard a sickening thwack as he forgot to duck.😂
great video, thank you..
it always amazed me how people would flippantly say "Medieval people didn't drink water" or "Medieval people all died at 30"..
Great video!
A few more tidbits to add about doorways and scientific progress:
1) I remember reading that Viking settlements had small doors, with each home facing a different direction. Can’t remember the purpose of this, but I think it had something to do with defense.
2) One author stated it quite eloquently, that the Renaissance was merely the blossoming or culmination of all the scientific progress that had been happening during the medieval era.
In fact, if you look at the history of technology, the medieval era was one of unprecedented advances in technology unlike the world had experienced beforehand.
To be honest, Renaissance was actually going back to pre-mediaeval times when look into it closely.
The "Dark Past" myth where there was no progress at all during the medieval period drives me insane. It's Whig history nonsense that has stuck with us for some horrific reason even though it's easily disproven with a cursory look at really any segment of history whether it be scientific studies, engineering, military, architecture, farming, ect ,ect.
Thank you for mentioning the Whig thing! It’s totally brainwashed most folks!
i think a lot of the problem is people get confused over when the Medieval Period was and when the Dark ages where , equate them to the same thing. The Dark Ages really where the time just after the fall of the Roman Empire to say 700/800 AD. Most of the Medieval period people know about was long after, i.e. 1000 AD+. the other thing about the Dark Ages is not there is no progress , is that very little documentation, records exist of daily life.
I've always wondered what was London like in 700AD, or Rome, we have an idea about 14th Europe, but what was 8th Centaury Europe like.
Obviously people still survived , people grew food, presumably people knew how to count, take stock, perform taxation. But we know so little I think about the day to day, that we presume it was like Mad Max , but society survived, cities survived.
it's strange to think we are closer in Time to Henry VIII than he was to Charlemagne, yet i wonder what the actual difference in time was , would Charlemagne feel familiar if he went to the mid 15th centaury. Where Henry in a lesser time jump would find so little in common. Even Language, Charlemagne and Henry could converse in Latin, where Henry would have a hard time with Modern English. They would share many communalities, and life would probably not be that different.
Eh, but there was little to no progress. Dark ages lasted 1000 years but you saw less progress in that time than in 200 years under Rome or Renaissance - this bit is very much true...
@@KuK137 Yeah, but progress is almost always quadratic. We have had more innovation in the last ~50-100 years to so than the rest of human history combined.
Also, it is based on the idea that only Europe counts. Even if it were true that things were going "slower" at that time in Europe, it sure wasn't so for many other parts of the world.
I hadn't realized the part about the actual size of people compared to their houses and what 'amenities' or needs the household would provide in such a time. Explaining misnomers like these is so useful to not alienate us from the past and our earlier foundations. Thank you!
Always thought smaller houses were cheaper to heat
Also, windows were much smaller, both to preserve heat, and because they didn't have large glass panes. Some windows would be just an opening, with wooden shutters, others AFAIK used pig bladder or such. But, smaller windows meant you could make the entire side wall lower, and have the thatched roof end closer to the ground, saving construction materials and time as well. This makes many medieval houses look like they're almost (or even completely) just a roof touching the ground, which makes them both physically, and visually smaller. Some (called pit houses or dugouts) would also go partially into the ground, making the house look even smaller from the outside, while still having sufficient room inside.
On the subject of height, I know of a knight from Wales whose grave effigy (which are usually life-sized) was nearly 7 feet tall. However, there are also legends, like the story of Tir Na Nog, that suggest Medieval people may have been shorter than their ancestors. I suspect there is some variation, and I wonder if diet and nutrition may have played a large part.
A person I worked with - who was from Wales - told me about the legend of the Fair People, whom lived in Wales before the Celts arrived, and were incredibly short and hairy!
Apparently the Fair People are in part an inspiration for the Fairy legends (the violent and vicious legends, not the tinkerbell kind!)
'I wonder if diet and nutrition...' Yeah, and there's something else I've noticed: people from mountainous regions are shorter than people from the lowlands. This might be because the highlands used to be poorer and more malnutricied, but one could also argue that lowlanders get tall from keeping their heads over water. :-)
nobility obviously would not be malnourished i think it was likely more pronounced depending on class. its still today this way that people of different status also are accordingly on average different in hight, aka the more status/ income, the taller people are. and in medieval times this was likely more pronounced
@@patriciusvunkempen102 I suspect nobility may have some advantages with the availability of nutritious food, but I think regional diets and what types of foods were available where would have a significant impact as well
@@hardyvonwinterstein5445 I believe mountainous regions are generally not as good for growing crops, so you may be correct there
Thank you for this video, Jason! Along with the "world is flat" theory, horned viking helmets, and the use of chastity belts - most modern people really know little about medieval times!
Except the thing about world being flat is whitewashing nonsense by religious people upset their holy books contributed to mass stupidity. Bible literally says the world is flat, has four corners, and the winds are caused by god personally blowing them out of boredom. To say anything else was heresy. Yes, some sailors and scholars knew it had some non flat shape but vast majority was completely ignorant and believed what priest said (or at best never actively thought about it and wouldn't be able to say anything concrete if asked). Cherrypicking 'scholar X totally knew it was round (unlike his colleagues who thought it was like square bowl to reconcile observations with bible who were conveniently ignored by whitewashers cause they didn't fit the narrative) so everyone knew!' as ""evidence"" is just complete BS.
I’m pretty sure more people TODAY believe that the world is flat than in the medieval period. Anyone who was educated would’ve known the earth was round, and anyone who wasn’t probably wouldn’t care.
Sorry what about belts?
@@UCannotDefeatMyShmeat They didn't exist. All of the things he listed were fake.
If I remember correctly, there is a section in Vegetius which explains what to look for in a water source to ensure it’s cleanliness.
General rule of thumb includes the wisdom that if you can see poo floating in the water... then don't drink it!
lol
@@SpitfireLionheart Really?
Interesting I'll have to keep that in mind for the next time.
@@bakersmileyface you're welcome 😉
I am fascinated by archaeology but your content gives a more firm grip for me of the relics I can observe. Thank you.
I think that the idea of medieval people being short partly comes from the fact that modern people have indeed grown. The average Brit has grown by about 10cm over the past century or so. The mistake is in assuming that this has been a continuous trend going back a long time. In fact, average height has historically gone up and down over time, with increase in times of prosperity and decrease during famine. It's not by a huge amount though, just a few inches.
I love the misconceptions about literacy in the medieval period, or the lack thereof. People could read, and write and the reason sources of the period claims they couldn't is because 'literate' used to mean "literate in Latin, specifically" - which was not a very wide spread skill.
Usually French, actually - the clergy spoke Latin, most others didn't so it wouldn't be uncommon to not speak Latin
It's where we get the term "lingua franca" from ("the language of trade")
In England right after the Norman Conquest, the peasants weren't literate *in French* so we end up with things like the Bayeux tapestry as pictorial story telling.
Pictorial story telling was still important. Not everyone was literate and people were at different levels of literacy. See churches.
I completely agree. Most people don't seem to understand that "illiteracy" back then usually meant you couldn't read Latin.
But for commerce and trade to take place, you would need some kind of writing system or bookeeping would become impossible.
I seriously doubt every single merchant would have learned Latin, yet they still plied a trade as merchants.
I have no idea where to ask this question, but would medieval people be better in simple mathematics then reading? Because almost everyone needs to do simple maths when it comes to simply buying things, trading, playing games, keeping orders for production and such. Just a thought that just popped in my mind.
Thank you for this, especially your first point. As a genealogist, it gets on my nerves when people say nobody lived past 35. It couldn't be further from the truth. Most of my own family lived through their 80s in the medieval times. Going through extant records from Europe also shows only a small difference in the death ages of adults compared with now.
Yes, as a genealogist, I hate this and esp. the further and crazier hypothesis that are based on this false claim - like that women had a menopause at 30 or that they started having babies in 12 (which was NEVER a common thing... and although I found brides younger than 15, they mostly have their first child at the same age as other women who married later. One author from the middle of 19th century actually described, that even if the child bride married young - mostly because of property reasons - she was not allowed to be touched by her husband until she was considered adult, which meant her first menstruation, before that she used to sleep with her mother-in-law. And the average age of that was somewhere close to 17 years at that time.)
@@carnifaxx that is so fascinating! First menstruation seems to be starting earlier and earlier nowadays most likely caused by excessive exposure to xeno-estrogens and plastics. It makes MUCH more sense for women to be able to bear children once they have actually grown up physically (around 17-18) than so early at say 12!
Don’t forget flaming torches. There were flaming torches EVERYWHERE. On castle walls, in the street, in abandoned cellars. Flaming torches that let out a massive, constantly burning fire ball and anyone was free to pick up and swing around whenever they wanted.
A relative mine was the closest equivalent we would get in the modern day to a professional archer. He had very uneven muscle development to the point it started causing him problems and he had to have a physio regimen developed to help him get realigned because he was dislocating important parts. All that point loading on growing bones distorts the joints and builds the muscles just as we see on historical skeletons. He’ll be a confusing one to dig up for a future archaeologist!
2:12 A few of the suits of armor in the MET were made for absolutely MASSIVE dudes
I've also heard that double-entry accounting was invented in a medieval Italian monastery to measure their income - and it a standard technique for business today!
Thanks for the mythbusting session! It's somewhat irritating to recall how many of the school textbooks that first helped kindle my love of all things medieval also taught these misconceptions...
The Arabs used algebra and it was the Knights Templar who invented many of the modern banking technics we use today.Everyone wasn't ignorant.According to German records , some of our family members were petty court officials, one relative in the Black Forest was a hereditary Forester a job passed down from father to son.So they had to be educated to some degree to work for a Duke Prince , or King.Also our Forester relative according to my dad also acted as a magistrate which meant he had to know something of the law in order to prosecute poachers, trespassers, etc.Being Catholic I,m sure there were monks and nuns back then in the family that would have learned some Latin in order to sing Gregorian Chant and celebrate mass if a priest.Merchants men and women had to be able to keep their books straight and write and understand contracts.Even peasants may have tried to get their children especially sons some learning.Tjat way if the son could work and prove useful to their local Lord, he could move up the ladder and bring the family to better things They had Dame schools were children were educated.Peole were not ad illitetate as we think
Could you talk a bit about how common people actually viewed religion? There seem to be two opposite myths about this-either everyone was an unthinking zealot, or everyone silently resented the oppression of the Church.
I once read a book called “God’s Battalions” that cited various letters and diaries from some of the knights and soldiers of the First Crusade. Very eye-opening insight into their complex thinking and motivations.
Probably viewed religion the same way modern humans do.
I fancy myself a medieval historian. Though an amateur one. Still I learned something new. The age thing was new to me and I am grateful to have learned it. It will even help me with my writing. Thank you Mr. Kingsley! Whenever I feel burnt out, you come up on my feed and give me a new source of inspiration! So lucky to have discovered you. I wish I could have a chat with you over a hearthfire sometime. :)
This guy deserves a knighthood for simply looking and acting the part so well.
I’ve heard that doors where knights frequented were low doors to prevent horses from following the knight inside when left. Elephants also try to follow their owners indoors so the doors had studs and spikes on them in India.
Fascinating. The lifespan thing is quite telling. I often think in some ways nature is kind in its cruelty. We often drag out people's lives in misery and suffering. If only we could experience that world, just briefly. As a kid I became obsessed with Fighting Fantasy gamebooks, D&D, crappy movies like Hawk the Slayer and the excellent Robin of Sherwood. I was intensely drawn to the medieval world and I'm not sure why. I'm still the same today and often linger in fields, puzzling over the humps and bumps of deserted medieval villages, trying to somehow get a vision of what it looked like. I sometimes like to imagine there is some kind of spiritual connection recorded in my DNA. Enjoyed your appearance on the Retro Hour recently! Fascinating stuff, great channel.
Another Robin of Sherwood fan! Nothing's forgotten.😁
@@susanscott8653 ah, yeah! Nothing is ever forgotten :) I'd love a visit from Herne. Have you ever read Mythago Wood?
In regards to the second myth. I do believe there is some role that nourishment plays. Specifically in how much vegetables people eat and how much meat and dairy people eat.
It does seem that a diet heavy on meat and dairy does increase average height in people. There are modern examples of this. Take Japan for example. In the northern regions of Japan, the traditional cuisine involves more meat and dairy compared to the southern regions that are more heavy in fish and vegetables.
Incidentally, average height in Japans northern region is statistcally taller than the southern region.
Holland is another example in Europe. They really like meat and dairy in Holland and have done so for centuries. As a result, the average height among the Dutch is remarkably taller compared to many other countries.
I'm not sure of how much meat and dairy the common man ate during medieval times, but I suspect that meat was more of a festive luxury than a part of everyday meals. Commoners probably ate more vegetables and grain than what modern people do.
I recently visited Vietnam, and noticed that older people tend to be very short but younger people are closer to "western" heights. In other words, people whose childhood occurred during war & extreme poverty were much shorter than people whose childhood occured during times of relative plenty.
You can look at data from immigrants to America. People from the Old World were small, whereas their kids and grandchildren raised on the American diet of beef and more beef were taller and stronger.
Medieval people did eat a lot of meat, actually. Most people were peasants who were directly at the source. Everyone had at least one pig (in cities, they were often taken care of by a swineherd - that's another common myth, pigs didn't actually roam the streets freely) and other meat was also common depending on the region.
Don't forget that most of the Medieval period had warm climate and large population growth, Europe's population tripled from 900 to 1300 and even more in some areas. Malnutrition wasn't common unless you were experiencing a famine.
@@DerMef Having your own pig does not mean you ate pork every day. A single pig doesn't last that long when an entire family is to share it.
We definitely eat more meat and dairy today than what the average medieval person did, because meat and dairy has been made so widely available due to industrial farming.
@@sevenproxies4255 We may have industrial farming today, but we also have much larger populations and a much smaller percentage of that population in agriculture.
Back then, more than 90% of people worked in agriculture and they did produce a lot of food.
Of course it depended on the time and place too, but AFAIK the sources suggest that people ate just as much meat as we do today in some periods of the Middle Ages.
I remember reading or hearing somewhere that the idea that medieval times were backwards scientifically, the "Dark Ages", was an exaggeration from the Enlightenment period, practically propaganda.
The Dark Ages was a term coined because historians of the time were looking for written records and were not finding many so they said that history 'went dark' for a while. It is also one of the reasons for why it was thought that the literacy rate was low. Several hundred years later and we have found tons of more written sources plus have the technology to read faded and damaged manuscripts that they didn't have the ability to read as well. There is another historical era called a Dark Age and that is right after the bronze age collapse as written records from that period are scarcer than from the preceding era.
Medieval farms were significantly more productive than Classical farms. People are generally familiar with the history of the stirrup, right? Well, farm technology developed too -- things like the horse collar and the horseshoe, and improvements in plough design, along with the increasing knowledge of things like crop rotation.
People are always trying to better meet their needs and those of their loved ones. The Medieval era was no exception.
* hums Age of empires melody *
Regarding small doors: I knew very ancient houses and buildings in Germany (Herzberg am Harz), some dating back to the year 900, the Carolingian period. I heard that there were a few effects affecting doors in ancient houses: In houses made from timber frames and mud, the timber dries out with time and can reduce the size of doors. Another is that the floors were repaired by just adding more mud, and later wood or other materials and the ground outside the house could also raise do to mud accumulating or later pavement being added.
I think another is the idea of women having little to no autonomy and only doing minuscule tasks. I'd be interested to know more about the roles and complexities of medieval women.
Compared to the 19th century, and even the 1950s, women had way more rights. Not equal obviously, but by far not like the typical depicted oppression
Agreed!
@@Glimmlampe1982 Could you tell me more?
To be frank, I sometimes need a sanity refresher when I find myself dealing with people who downplay and overlook the hard work women did in history (ironically, both them and extreme fem!n!$ts do the same thing). You have no idea what all sorts of insensitive bigotry they say.
I'm sorry for my odd writing.
@@cadethumann8605 dont remember too much, its been a while since I watched something about it. I could give you a link to a very good video about it, but its in german, so I think its not to helpfull to you :)
but some things I remember:
women were allowed to inherit stuff, like noblewomen had often their own fiefs. and partly to keep them indepened from their men, so they own stuff in case of divorce.
also if the man was traveling, like a knight or merchant, the wife most often took over administrative work at home. managing the castle, including commanding the remaining soldiers if necessary. I also remember that theres a extensive correspondance remaining from a merchant wife. the man very often had to travel, obviously, and in the meantime she managed the whole operation at home. from the house (including all servants) the shops at home and even her husbands lovers (times were different I guess). and she and her man corresbonded very often by letter, so we learn how she started up and learned what she had to know. Like teaching herself to write or how accountance works (she had employees and somehow had to check if they tried to cheat her)
also because of the high death rate of women due to child birth it was very common for old men to marry younger wives, which then potentially leaves young widows inhereting her late husbands workshop. so it was common that she either might take over the business, or marry the (potentially younger) journeyman.
oh, and I think in cologne they renamed a street recently, because theres no evidence for male silk weavers, so it was a completely female trade. Including a all-female guild and the duty to guard a specific part of the city wall (not by themselves, but potentially with hired soldiers... as most male craftsmen did too. if you dont have to, who wants to stand guard or risk your own skin?)
In a time when humans don't have complex labor saving machines, survival is very much tied to ability to perform physical tasks. Productivity in physical tasks is very much tied to a persons stature, and so that is the basis for which jobs around the house is divided.
Whatever tasks the ladies performed in and around the house were not 'minuscule' they were just as necessary for the survival of the family.
Egalitarianism and equal division of labor is a fine concept when you have means to care about it.
While it is important to note that people in their 40s or 50s weren't seen as old, during medieval times, many people died young and many people died middle aged due to accidents, illness etc.
I've been reading up on the history of coffee and tea and how they were introduced to Britain in the 1600s. It's fascinating to think about how boiling water kills bacteria and makes it safer to drink. So the safest stuff to drink was probably alcohol or a hot drink that involved boiling water.
Thanks Jason for another great video!
Adding to the "medieval water" myth:
Before the Industrial Revolution, pollution wasn't really a thing except in the biggest cities like London or Paris. Most cities were small enough for rivers to easily manage any Industrial waste that may be dumped into them (note that urine and feces were not wasted, as they were useful in certain Industries like tanning and agriculture respectively).
Streams were clean and teeming with wildlife like crayfish which mostly disappeared during Industrialization.
In many places, people went to great lengths (literally) for their water supply, manually digging wells several tens of meters deep until they finally hit water. They wouldn't have done that if all they got out of it was polluted, dirty water.
We can't look into the minds of people who are long dead, but the main reason ale (and wine in other parts of Europe) was so popular is likely the same reason why people today don't just drink water. They preferred beverages that had a taste they liked. Especially when the water you'd be drinking sat around in a wooden bucket for a while. Much better to go for an ale instead, which was often brewed at home, using the clean water that they had available.
I wish history lessons at school were this fun
I wish school was this efficient
Difference between school learning and this, is that school makes you learn or you fail. No pressure learning here, and it's entirely out of curiosity, making it easier to learn for the most part
@@zsDUGGZ in school, all we learned about was ww2 . I wanted toknow our history
You had a bad teacher! Our history lessons were this interesting.
@@rakino4418 Most teachers are either bad, or so hampered and harassed that they might as well be, I think. The ones who actually go in wanting to help people may perhaps be less numerous than those who teach because they couldn't do.
Medievalist here. Thank you! I love this video. A true myth buster!
The myth about height also stems from armor. Armor is displayed on a "tree" that keeps all parts overlapping. Even when no such overlap happened when worn by the owner. Also, munition armor was made with as little metal as possible, protecting the vital organs and not much else.
Beds in old farmhouses were not long enough for regular sized people but at that time, a myth went around, that you could drown from your own fluid if you sleep horizontal. The made the beds shorter and you had to sleep with a pillow on your back.
Doors on a lot of fortified buildings, including walls were not very tall. A attackers had to bend down their heads to get through and defender could easily chop them off.
I think your point about the heraldry getting covered in blood on the battle field sheds a lot more light onto why the flag bearer position was considered so important. There's the obvious symbolism, of course. But also, just considering how expensive it would be to make a new one, both the materials and endless hours of women crafting it by hand, you would want to entrust it to someone reliable, who has a good chance of keeping it both safe and clean until the battle's over.
Really enjoyed this. The biggest myth is the whole notion of the “Dark Ages,” as you point out. How anyone can see the beautiful art of that period and make that claim is beyond me. And the art itself puts many of the other myths in their place by showing all the color and liveliness of the period. There are even accounts of folks who boiled water before drinking it. Battlefields are by their nature a terrible, regardless of the period. I do imagine it was cold in the winter, even with plenty of firewood. Sad that Roman central heating didn’t survive their departure in England and other places.
another awesome video, sometimes I wonder where those myths came from. Read somewhere that goat milk was the most common milk drunk before cows milk became the number one milk until the late middle ages but I reckon that is true in central europe not sure about other regions!
1:40 "if you don't have central heating... ... it doesn't really matter how tall your ceilings are". It actually matters quite a lot. A room with a low ceiling heats up much faster and also keeps the warmth at floor level better than one with a high ceiling. You can see this even in modern houses. Minimum ceiling height in Sweden, for example, is 2.4 m, in Italy it's 2.7 m. That's not because Swedes are shorter or poorer than the Italians, it's all about the climate.
These videos are quite simply wonderful. This era is so fascinating to me, and these videos are utter treats to be able to learn what everyday life would have been like.
Your videos are absolutely wonderful. Medieval times have always fascinated me and I'm glad to have found your channel. Thank you for all your educational content 🙏🏻
Welcome aboard!
Another medieval myth that was debunked in another video that I found very interesting is that medieval people had bad teeth. In this video it was said that in the Middle Ages people took care of their teeth using self made tooth paste and people today have much bigger problems with their teeth because we eat way too much sugar these days.
Nice little video. I just saw a video about William of Cassingham which dispelled the story that Britain/England hasn't be invaded by a foreign army/power since William the Conqueror.
The old Technicolor movies, like "Ivanhoe" and "Richard III," probably got the look about right with the brightly colored clothes. It was the revisionists that gave us the "everybody was dirty and wore rags" view. A lot of that can probably be blamed on the Monty Python guys. "Monty Python and the Holy Grail" and "Jabberwocky" were not documentaries.
Wanna know something else that is a straight up fact? Your theme music is the coolest! 😎
Been so busy I haven't had much time for RUclips and forgot how wonderful that music is.
So interesting how our perceptions have been distorted over the centuries. Thanks for setting us straight!
Lovely video! For me what seems to be gotten wrong about history all the time is how different everybody and everything was, but - as you do here - when we stop approaching history this way we can find a lot of humanity, understanding and comfort in the historic perspective on life. And kudos for the way you speak - always so clearly, with thought and warmth making listening truly engaging. Also this video made me crave a Guinness, haha! Cheers from the viking lands!
having toured a few museums with nice armor collections...it's interesting to note how short suits of armor tend to be. the problem with malnutrition is that it doesn't have to be constant to effect stature, one year of famine amoung several good years can still have a noticeable effect on the growth of a whole generation
Yes! To all of these! Thank you so much for making this video. (Why do these myths persist?)
Thank you for another excellent program. God bless you.
Thank you for debunking these myths. There needs to be a lot more of this sort of thing addressed in the kind of calm informative way as this video does.
Another one that I keep hearing is that medieval people were constantly in a state of war and enjoyed war. Comes from a few too many movies and TV shows focusing on the times of war I think.
I'm so happy you brought up the calorie aspect of drinking ale as this appears to be overlooked nearly every time drinking is discussed about most historical periods.
Also, much of the ale drunk was quite weak and wouldn't have 'fermented out' to the poiint that we would see in most modern beers, leaving more unfermented sugars to add to that calorie count.
The nutrient content of ale is high too. Lots of B vitamins especially. When the temperance movement encouraged people to drink water in place of ale - malnutrition was a result.
i love your vidoes the food vids you did a few years ago suprised the HELL out of me how good the medieveil people ate back then i always thought it was mostly bread water or cheese but your food vids opened my eyes and showed me how good there food was .......i was shocked to find out how good peasents ate salmon peas pottage and good bread and ale looked really good
I used to believe the same thing about life expectancy (that surviving into adulthood meant there was a good chance of living to old age) but I did some digging recently and read research that studied skeletal remains and concluded that life expectancy for someone surviving into adulthood would have been no more than 50 (although of course some people did live into old age).
Yes. There's a recent post on r/badhistory about this titled "No, average human life expectancy in the past was not "60-70 years if you discount infant mortality""
Aren't torture devices mostly Victorian myths too? Not sure if you already have a video on that. Thank you for another great video.
A lot of bizarre devices were made with no intention of using them. Just take your prisioner to the torture chamber. Show them what might happen to them. and they will singing like a canary in no time flat lol
@@glenchapman3899I read somewhere that there are 3 levels to torture. 1) Telling them what you plan to use and what will happen. 2) Showing them what you intend to use/do. 3) Actually using/doing it.
Most of the time, you only need the first 2.
Thanks, great video! At min.4.38 I was thinking about those paesants in the film "Monthy Python and the holy grail".
Greetings from Italy.
Overall, I just grow tired of the popular attitude of our superiority over Medieval Europeans. They had the exact same brain as us. They were human. The typical commoner also had a lot of practical knowledge in general we don't. It would do well for us to respect our predecessors more.
We should all take a moment to appreciate that this very busy and successful man took the trouble to put on mail armor just to make a 5 minute explainer video. He didn’t have to do that, he could have just popped on a fancy looking costume shirt or something. He pretty much never promotes his products in his videos and most viewers don’t even know anything about it. That’s a commendable amount of dedication to correcting the record on this period of history.
Again: we all would have watched this if he didn’t bother to wear the armor. Right? But he does it because it makes the video better. Well done Sir.
I've been reading the diary of Peter Hagendorf (a mercenary during the 30 years war) recently and what really put some things into perspective was just how many wives and children the man lost during his life.
This is by far my most favorite RUclips channel, I love that it is using the power of RUclips and the internet for its original intended purposes. To share knowledge and educate.
I've always read that average height for medieval male was about 5'7" for common folk (almost everyone) and 5'8" for nobles. So only a few inches less than today.
It's so obvious when you mention it, yet I never thought of it before - of course there was so much infant mortality that it completely skews the "average age" statistics for medieval times.
I wonder if the statistics you used are for a very wide time period or a specific area. I did a research project on mortality in 13th century France. It showed that only 1 in 10 children lived to adulthood, and even then mortality was so high that only 1 in 20 people born lived past 30-years-old. Those who did lived into their 70's and 80's, a higher life expectancy than during the industrial age.
They are for medieval England in the broadest sense. Which bit of C13th France by the way, an urban area?
@@ModernKnight
It was for France, in general, for a period of 80 years that we covered from 1210 to 1290. It was a huge project that was a lot of fun to do! Going through church records and so many other documents was quite fascinating. But it took a lot of time and effort. It wasn't just me doing the research alone, as that would have been too extensive for just one person.
Thank YEW.... never stop your channel ! Cheers from Texas !
Myth: The medieval church fought to suppress science at every turn.
No, they didn't. In fact, those monks copying ancient books in monasteries were largely responsible for _saving_ science.
yes the Catholic church has a mixed record when it comes to science. Some area of investigation were definitely frowned upon, others were encouraged, and yes a lot of monks actually did a lot of early science.
It's indeed a mixed bag, but the terrible image we usually get comes probably from many of the Enlightenment intellectuals who kind of needed to discredit how things were done before, to prove they were doing it better ;)
Index Librorum Prohibitorum.
The Myth Busters would be amazed - educational, entertaining, and no explosives!
Hope all is well in the UK.
You really do put out some inter4esting and informative content. Glad I'm subbed!
Thanks for the sub!
1:15 According to Kyivan chronicle, during a war against Novgorodъ waged by Ruthenian king George (Gjurgi Volodiměrovičь) in 1147, one of his knights named Petrъ Iličь died at age 90, still riding a horse and everything.
Would love some news about the Mule with No Name. How's he doing?
Oh man Im looking forward to this one. I've hit the like button, got a packet of crisps and ready to hit play.
I still find it disappointing that, during the medieval period, no one was able to determine the air speed velocity of an unladen swallow, or where to find a good shrubbery..
What do you mean? A European or an African swallow?
Wouldn’t it be wonderful to be plucked up and taken back to medieval times? Of course, I’d want to land there as a high-status individual! Love your channel. Always hoping to see the mule again. He was lovely!
I don’t know, there’s no air conditioning, the food wasn’t great, and most people had to perform manual labor all day. Baths were possible, but running water wasn’t. It sure doesn’t sound like a fantastic time to me.
@@andrewreynolds4949 A medieval peasant had a wonderful life, stop believing the lies. He could catch fish in a river, eat tasty salmon, be outside all day in the fresh air, and relax in a plastic free nature after his work shift. There was no inflation or global war, I count that as a bonus
@@larochejaquelein3680 agreed, modern technology has done more harm than good in my opinion.
@@andrewreynolds4949
The one aspect of everyday life that was definitely worse than today was laundry.
Only if I could return to my native time period after a little while!
I love watching your episodes. So interesting, fascinating and informative. Thank you.
Hugely annoys me when “historical” movies/tv dress everyone in dull colours. This idea than men don’t wear bright colours is a modern one (and a misguided one in my opinion).
I discovered your channel recently and it has been of great help. One of the things I enjoy with friends is writing poetry and lyrics to medieval music (or modern music written in medieval style), which we use mainly for role-playing purposes. I just wanted to add that I think the criticism people bring about lack of scientific progress is perhaps not entirely unfair; the examples you gave would not be traditionally associated with what would be considered as science today. Part of the confusion comes from how people perceived ‘science’ in medieval times and what the word means today; a narrower definition which also includes the scientific method and works without introducing religion and philosophy into things. That said, the eastern part of the Roman Empire which had survived (“Byzantine”) saw a sort of renaissance in the sciences and medicine of the time; even having female physicians work in hospitals and many proto-sciences were already being established. Either way, the idea that there was no progress is certainly a myth.
The biggest myth I think is that of literacy
By the standards of the learned peoples of medieval times yes the peasants were illiterate - but their standard of literacy was can you read/write Latin and maybe French.
Any language that has a written alphabet of only a couple dozen characters would likely have had a much broader literate population than many people today believe because reading and writing are very valuable skills. Going to market, you need a list. Need to tell somebody something who isn't home when you pass by, leave a note, etc.
I'm not saying it was anywhere close to 95+% that we have today, but I can see 70-80% of adults being literate enough to convey ideas, follow written instructions, etc
They may not have had consistent spelling practices but anyone who was taught their alphabet phonetically can easily put misspelled words into their proper context.
We teach 5 year olds how to read in just a few weeks and we largely begin the process with a silly song.
Sticks and dirt, or bark and charcoal were things every household had access to for teaching props.
When we are talking the medieval rural population I think you are wrong. Based on the fact that we do have statistics for later period. And they are much much lower. There is a reason many European states started spending a good deal of money on public schools in the late 18th and early 19th century for the rural areas.
Also writing was. Ink was expensive and so was something to write on.
And if you look at areas today with low literacy, people are usually that much better to make remember things like a shopping list. Because they do so all the time, where we just write it as a note on our phone or look up the list our wife/husband send us on messenger
But looking the population in towns. Then yes some sort of literary to understands lists was likely way more common.
And the reformation(and the printing press) clearly had a big impart on basic literacy.
There are a few countries today with literacy below 70%. I suspect the proportion of literate medieval people was considerably lower.
I'm supposing those 70/80% rates of literacy were the conclusion of serious scientific research and not just pulled out of your imagination/bottom. But I am probably wrong.
@@auturgicflosculator2183 Nah. He said he "can see 70/80%". Are you doubting the accuracy of his vision? What's next, are you gonna ask the author of the video for sources on anything he is saying?
@@thomasbaagaard I think you are taking a bit of a modern view of what literacy means
Also, I'm not sure how much credibility I'd give to statistics gathered around the late 18th to early 19th century - the secular scholars and other leaders of the enlightenment are noted for having had a hand in popularizing many of the myths that Jason mentioned in this video. Its not beyond belief that they would manipulate information to justify their ideas. Manipulation of data to justify doing the thing you already planned to do is by no means a modern invention
I'm by no means suggesting that they were literate at what we might expect of a high school graduate, or that they were everyday reading letters and books or anything like that.
Simply that literacy - being able to make marks on materials to convey ideas relevant to them or those around them - was far more common than what contemporary people believe.
I would not expect peasants to write on paper but they were however quite resourceful - slate, chalk, bark and charcoal, maybe old cloth or leather were things peasants would primarily use. Disposable materials that are readily available and so the sort of things that would end up in a firepit at some point and provide little record of their existence.
These people had the same brains as we do and were just as capable of intellectual feats as we are.
We've just been thoroughly conditioned the last 100 or so years to think that you need a credential to educate other people.
The question of lifespan is really interesting. I imagine that, along with infant mortality and lack of germ theory, there were also marked positives to Medieval life, which would've balanced out the life expectancy.
Things such as constant hard work and exercise, paired with nutritious, wholesome diets would've been very healthy habits!
People today aren't dying of typhoid or smallpox, but so many of us are suffering from diabetes and heart failure, among other ailments increased by modern lifestyles.
About height:
People today (in the West) are taller now than they were in mid 20th century. And those people were taller than people in late 19th century, who were taller than those in early 19th century.
And if you follow that logic - you will think that people were shorter even more in medieval ages. Actually, people were malnourished and shorter because of the Industrial revolution and working in factories and mines for whole day, living in worse conditions (overcrowded towns and cities) than those of medieval farmer or craftsman.
That's how I see the "short medieval people" myth came to be. Maybe I'm wrong, but I think it's true for some people.
Cheers!
we have a little bit of data from ancient rome and they were about the same height of victorian england (5'4-5'6). they had a height requirement for leggionnaires as 5'7 and they were supposed to be a little taller than the average man.
Great video. Everything being lit with flaming torches would be another one
Interesting, isn't it, how myths are so strongly believed even when the evidence shows that they must be wrong. For example the point about medieval people having been short - seen the longsword wielded by King Edward IV, in St George's Chapel/Windsor Castle? Not exactly useable by someone 'short' ...
Consistently one of the best channels on RUclips. I've been watching for years, the content is always interesting. Please never stop!
Interesting about the issue of "height". Do you think it might be genetics? The reason I ask is because most peoples who use legumes or protein sources as a base, other than meat, do not fulfill their full genetics. This is noted by various societies such as Mexico and others who base their protein on beans. Just wondered...
I have heard that the average height in Britain went down during the Industrial Revolution owing to how bad the average diet became plus the increasingly bad living conditions in the towns and cities. So perhaps diet plus genetics may plays a role?
@@SpitfireLionheart I don't know the stats but, diet did change for the worse.
Diet is a great factor. The average Height of English people during the Victorian times are quite short since a lot more people live and work in densely packed Cities like London, with cramped living quarters, bad water supply and the majority have a poor diet with little meat on their diet (European immigrants to America were surprised at the abundance of meat and it's cheap prices in the US that a lot of them started many deli shops) . Also peoples teeth are bad because of the proliferation of sweet sugared food coupled with bad dental hygiene. These situation in the Industrial Revolution propagated the notion that Medieval people must be more pathetic than we are.
Excavations of Medieval burial sites showed that most Medieval people are practically the same height as us today. And their teeth are good and strong.
One can just compare the Edo era Japanese people who are on the average are just 5 ft. Their diet consist mainly rice and vegetables and some fish. Eating of beef, pork or chicken is quite uncommon, some area it's taboo. It's only the introduction of Western diet in the 19th century and it's popularity in post-war Japan did their average height grew almost a foot.
If I may, I'd like to add a bit more of an explanation to the points you made. Our belief that the scientific progress was non-existent in the medieval period stems from the fact that the technological advancements made since the industrial revolution simply outpace any other period in human history. If anything, it's a matter of perception. We often forget that before the 19th century human population was much smaller, only few people could afford an eduction and travel was limited, so there was fewer people capable of developing new ideas, and it took more time to present them to one's peers and spread them across the known world. On the topic of clothing and dirtyness, one has to remember that fast fashion didn't exist before the 20th century, everything was hand made, materials ware scarce, so people owned less clothing and took a lot of pride in keeping it clean and in good shape.