Shinto priests still were those square wooden shoes when they conduct ceremonies - they're not differentiated either. They look soooo comfy.
while that is true nalebinding (single needle knitting) is much older - samples have been found in Denmark dating from 4200 BCE... it is reasonable to assume that prior to knitting socks would have been likely to be nalebound rather than made from fabric ...
Yeah, nalebinding was mentioned in the article I read. From what I gathered, it's a form of knotted work, or chain creation work. Which might actually have been very durable and less likely to unravel than knitting. I wonder when crochet was invented. I'll need to look. What prompted this was a remark made in a book I'm currently re-reading, The Time Traveller's Guide to Medieval England. I hadn't noticed it before, but in the section about clothing, the author Ian Mortimer mentioned that nobody wore knitted garments at that time, because knitting 'hadn't been invented yet.' (By that, he meant not in England, apparently.) I thought ...WHAT? And went online to investigate further.
Yes they did. "In Misconceptions About the Middle Ages, Stephen Harris and Bryon L. Grigsby write: "The myth of constant beer drinking is also false; water was available to drink in many forms (rivers, rain water, melted snow) and was often used to dilute wine." Steven Solomon's Water: The Epic Struggle for Wealth, Power, and Civilization examines uses of water, including for drinking, going back to Sumeria." One reason people would choose beer and wine over water wasn't the quality of the water, but the nutrition in the beer and wine. But the main reason was because, like most people today, they liked beer better. "There is no specific reason to believe that people of the time drank proportionately less water than we do today; rather, since water was not typically sold, transported, taxed, etc., there simply would have been no reason to record its use. Did people in the time prefer alcoholic drinks? Probably, and for the same reason most people today drink liquids other than water: variety and flavor." https://leslefts.blogspot.com/2013/11/the-great-medieval-water-myth.html https://history.howstuffworks.com/medieval-people-drink-beer-water.htm https://www.medievalists.net/2014/07/people-drink-water-middle-ages/ https://www.neatorama.com/2014/02/28/The-Great-Medieval-Water-Myth/
A couple of other misconceptions that haven't been addressed here: The medieval world wasn't entirely England. It's unfortunate that most of the published material about the medieval period comes out of English history. Try digging up what it was like in 14thC Croatia some time. It's a challenge. Speaking of the medieval period, it spanned a thousand years(~476 [the commonly-accepted year the Roman Empire fell] to ~1460 [when the Renaissance ideas finally spread to the reaches of Europe]). So much of what we see in media shows the medieval world to be "Arthurian" (circa 12thC) to pre-Renaissance (circa 14thC), a period which comprises about 20% of the total medieval period. We've addressed armor a bit, but "full plate" wasn't until the very last (which someone mentioned above). The first five hundred years of the medieval period, most armor looked like variations on the 12thC version in this image:
Dammit, I'm having trouble with the image insertion. Here, try this link: https://www.deviantart.com/levaleur/art/Armour-evolution-421878469
That seems a very nebulous definition. It was, of course, the Western Roman Empire that fell in 476 - the Eastern Roman, or Byzantine Empire endured (with a break) until 1453. Your date seems related to that.
not really - about 5 seconds on google https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:14th_century_in_Croatia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Croatia too many other links to bother quoting them here...
Ancient textiles included spinning wool and weaving. Don't forget tanned animal skins were used, cloth was woven. But not everything was sewn. History of clothing. I didn't know that until I looked this up.
The Japanese kimono is designed so that it uses a whole roll of cloth with minimal wastage and sewing. It doesn't require separate pieces of cloth to be attached to one another - it's just a single piece of cloth.
Here's another misconception - that medieval food was bland and unimaginative. In fact, people used a wide range of herbs and spices to liven up their food. Sugar wasn't available, so honey was used to made sweet dishes.
While I disagree with none of this, a tangential thought: Long ago in this very forum we had a member who was deeply, deeply invested in the sure-to-be-calamitous outcome if people didn't know these little historical facts. Romans, Gauls and the wearing of socks became a heated discussion. I read this person's first draft and it was riddled with not just these facts, but these facts presented in a corrective syntax within the narrative, acknowledging the reader's presumed misinformation, and attempting to correct it most directly. It wasn't a narrative; it was a remonstration. To those who care about such data, have a care that you aren't inadvertently wagging a finger at the reader. If you mention the incorrect data in the process of also mentioning the correct data, you violently break the narrative mode. If a fur is worn a certain way and you're tired of seeing it depicted the wrong way, for god's sake, don't say, "he wore his fur in proper manner, rather than the wrong way with the fur facing out..." You, the writer, do not belong on the page, so have a care that you don't "photobomb" the narrative with your historical accuracy ax to grind.
Oh, I don't have an issue with people ignoring real history - fantasy is not real life, after all. I'm long past the stage of sitting in front of Last Samurai and going "but... but... but... NINJAS?!?!?". Fiction is meant to be entertainment, not education. What I *do* have a problem with is people who assert "well, I'm doinhg this in my story because this is how it was in real life!". That's just me though.
I had a beta reader for dark fire get upset because the antagonist forces who were numerically superior didn't win an archery battle and it wasnt realistic wah wah wah i could have pointed out that a) the antagonists are badly led by a egotist b) The good guys are defending a fort on a high mound and thus have a major advantage in an archery duel but most importantly c) this is a book that features shape shifters, ambulatory trees, and a hero who is sworn to the goddess Agrona, never to lie with a mortal woman in return for his skill at arms... realism isn't may be the number one factor. I didn't, I just thanked them for their feedback, ignored it, and quietly removed them from my beta reader list for next time
Well, again, my point is less about accuracy or believability and more about the way the writer delivers this information to the reader. Assuming that the reader has the wrong data and then presenting the correct data in a way that speaks to the reader as if to say, "You've been misled by books and Hollywood for too long. I will now, through this character's actions, correct your misinformation, which I will state flatly, and then give the correct information." I realize that sounds ludicrous, but it was actually a lot more subtle than that, but not quite subtle enough to fly under my narrative intrusion radar.
Yeah i get that - I remember the unlamented Regis Artorious... what i was saying was that my beta reader seemed to want me to be one of those guys
I'll just go through the thread with some replies It's worth noting that much Church knowledge was found or accrued for specific religious interests, which are also self-interests, and disseminated to the largely illiterate public in ways favourable to them or not disseminated at all, but yeah. Good not to caricature certainly. I'd note that the younger the bride the longer they usually take before they are impregnated. Taking a very young bridge is usually a sure sign that one is more interested in dowry, alliances and status than sex because they knew pregnancy was harder to achieve and more dangerous if one was young.
True, but the video mentions a knight at an inn, not a peasant in their home. And things like salmon wouldn't been the cheapest, they would have been regional mostly and they would be seasonally available; those two factors would made it more expensive than brown bread. Also the most common item in peasant food was something akin to gruel; pottage, which is essentially soup of whatever you have and was most commonly made with cheap vegetables. Meat was class stratified in terms of availability and was more expensive than vegetables.
