I was just talking about the Urban Myth of Goldfinger being dragged out of a plane through a single bullet hole he had put in the wall.
That’s OK for a movie,but in an age where shooting it out on a plane is a serious question, this kind of juvenile thought simply will not do.
You can’t understand anything if you believe the myths.
For example, if you watch a 1930 movie you can tell that someone is living in the Year 2000. He is walking around in a uniform, a tight outfit with pointy things on the shoulders, that everybody would be wearing.
If you look at a history documentary, you can tell who is an Ancient Man. He is filthy and dressed in rags, that is, shapeless animal furs.
That is what we see in backward lands today, so we assume out ancestors must have looked like that. But actual finds of Cro-Magnon statuary show hairdos that are nothing like what we find in primitive lands.
The backward colored peoples who have stayed backward would probably have looked primitive to the Cro-Magnons of Europe thirty thousand years ago.
In the Middle Ages, many castles had showers that are astonishingly like the showers we have today. But historians insist that the ceremonial baths were the only baths they ever took back then, maybe once a year.
Actually, bathing was popular inthe Middle Ages, but the Renaissance, from which I can find not one single advance and lots of backward moves, condemned it.
Hisorians will tell you that our ancestors never bathed, but once when the Danes had invaded Britain, they were surprised by the Saxons on Saturday, their BATH day, and they were routed because they were ALL in their baths!
But like Goldfinger going out that bullet hole, all the documentaries show that no one EVER bathed, much less a group bath required on Saturday.
Actually our ancestors were very rich. There was usually plenty to eat and Celtic and Germanic homes look a great deal more like our present homes than any in the Middle East do. So do their clothes. Germans didn’t wear robes and togas. The pants worn by Celtic tribesmen look a good deal like pants worn today. The Ice Man found in the Alps from five thousand eyars ago was dressed in clothing that would have been alien to a Middle Easterner but look familiar enough today, IF you take into account he was on a trip across the mountains and not at a fancy-dress ball.
There was a very practical reason peasants in the Middle Ages might have smudged faces. Have you ever heard the “expression “smoking them out?”
When people settled in agricultural settlements bugs became a serious problem. That is why they had no chimney. Their dwellings were very thick with smoke because the smoke drove out the insects.
Look at the accepted picture of Cro-Magnons painting on the walls. They are dressed in the uniform that says “Primitive non-Middle Easterners.” That is, their hair is ragged, their furs are ragged, and they are filthy. The cave is completely bare.
Look at Rome today. The Collisseum looked like that not that long ago. It was just bare stone.
I doubt seriously if the Emperor would have sat in a bare stone seat with no painting anywhere. I doubt that the room of Cro-Magnon was bare. I think they may have had a REASON to go deep into the caves,with traps and other blocks to outside entrance.
Historians insist Cro-Magnon went a mile into the earth just to paint and then come back out.
They get PAID for crap like that!
But deep in a well-protected cave there would be no tiny insects and no very large bears. It would have places cool enough to store food.
Can you imagine how impossible it is for me to take professional historians seriously?
#1 by Peter on 03/15/2006 - 1:32 pm
The problem with respected modern scholars is that they are specialized into irrelevance. Each scholar knows his narrow field, in which he sounds brilliant for his sheer mastery and nimble use of facts. But when he ventures outside his field he can sound dumb. The explanation is likely that the scholars, or should I say “researchers,” resemble those with Asperger’s.
There is research on just how much a particular society in the Middle Ages bathed. For example the Viking “Danes” you mention bathed twice a day with warm water and they were the pirates of Scandinavia, not the elites.
Also, I don’t know about smoke-filled homes and I think the bit about smudged faces a bit ridiculous. Scandinavian halls, for example, had a vent in the ceiling, smoke tends to rise and closed rooms are not usually windy. Old English halls were little different.
I think the desire for bathing is instinctive and genetic. When I have lived near a warm swimming pool or a pleasant body of water, I found myself in water up to four or five times a day. (This meant jumping in the pool as soon as I came home from work.) It’s not hard to spend the whole day swimming across a warm lake. Research has been done on old English bathing habits. I do not remember the exact results, but the majority who lived in rural communities bathed frequently. It was as simple as diving into a pond; I seem to remember that bath day meant the day when they took the trouble to heat up the water. The same scholar who told me this also said he found an Anglo-Saxon recipe for a salad of lettuce and greens and another for something identifiable as lasagna.
#2 by Tim on 03/15/2006 - 10:38 pm
Mr Whitaker,
I am Irish and on my mothers side I have Norman ancestors. I have a couple ancestors in Mr William C.’s black book. So tell this young man something about the Normans that the silly professors won’t tell me (or can’t).
#3 by Mark on 03/15/2006 - 11:08 pm
“When people settled in agricultural settlements bugs became a serious problem. That is why they had no chimney. Their dwellings were very thick with smoke because the smoke drove out the insects.”
Bob, wouldnt that have caused all of them to succumb to carbon monoxide poisoning? The humans, I mean, not the bugs. Well, maybe the bugs too.
#4 by Elizabeth on 03/18/2006 - 12:56 pm
Those white Classical statues weren’t white: they were all painted and painted as “true to life”
as possible. The empty eye sockets aren’t an artistic device: they had been filled with gems,
and the gems were stolen. All the Medieval churches, except for the ones built by the Cistercians,
were painted throughout. The interior walls of castles were hung with tapestries and were
otherwise decorated: they weren’t bare.
A lot of places that were famous in Europe and Britain as Christian holy places had
bodies of water, whether “wells,” pools, or springs, at them or nearby. A lot of these
places supported themselves as the Medieval equivalent of resorts as well as by treating
patients. Some of these places had been found earlier and then “Christianized.” Others
were apparently discovered during the Middle Ages. There are some interesting comments
from visitors in the Middle Ages and later about the “immorality” of the sexes sitting
around in pools, whether clothed in bathrobe-like things or completely nude.
As far as I know, ventilation has always been a problem. Taxing folks for window glass
(a “luxury”!) was done even in this country. You can cover windows with other things,
but those other things make adequate light and/or ventilation problematic.
#5 by Elizabeth on 03/18/2006 - 1:03 pm
I could be considered a professional historian. I’m in grad school and I’ve got
applications out for further study.
I’m interested in a field of history that really doesn’t exist in the sense of being
an established academic specialty offered as such. However, I believe I can do work
in an existing program in that field. But that doesn’t translate easily into things
like fellowships….
Also, my politics are somewhat…unorthodox…for academia, I’m a practicing Catholic,
I’m older than the average grad student, and I come
into this from genealogy — which means I have research skills and research experience
most history grad students don’t have, but…….it’s from….. genealogy…..