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What Did Medieval Peasants Know? (2022)

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Re: What Did Medieval Peasants Know? (2022)

#61

Post by adastra22 »

somenameforme wrote: post #60
adastra22 wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A median modern person, no question. What’s the argument that you are implying but not stating?

I replied here [2] to an essentially identical question. Basically, it comes down to a question - what do you want out of life? And are you going to be more able to achieve that as e.g. a king, or as somebody earning $45k a year in the US (the current median personal income)? [2] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45951385

And again, it feels very obvious to me that the median modern life is better than a king in the Middle Ages. Unless your interests are leading a short hedonistic life being controlled by your court and meeting a violent end. But I don’t think most people would value that.

Re: What Did Medieval Peasants Know? (2022)

#62

Post by somenameforme »

adastra22 wrote: post #61
somenameforme wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I replied here [2] to an essentially identical question. Basically, it comes down to a question - what do you want out of life? And are you going to be more able to achieve that as e.g. a king, or as somebody earning $45k a year in the US (the current median personal income)? [2] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45951385

And again, it feels very obvious to me that the median modern life is better than a king in the Middle Ages. Unless your interests are leading a short hedonistic life being controlled by your court and meeting a violent end. But I don’t think most people would value that.

Going with what I said in the other post - I would like to: have a large family, plenty of social relations, and the ability to play a role in shaping the future of society. Am I more likely to be able to achieve this as a king, or as somebody in the US earning $45k/year? For that matter I can't really think of anything that would be easier as somebody earning $45k a year in the US. What are your aspirations in life?

Re: What Did Medieval Peasants Know? (2022)

#63

Post by _yy01 »

kamaal wrote: post #52
_yy01 wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I do have relatives who live in far villages and have not travelled and seen the world(In fact not travelled more than 100 km radius from place of birth) This was literally where I grew up before I got education and become software engineer. Its not a good thing and we should not glorify it. Villagers in India are malnourished, the education is not upto par with cities, and the life is stagnant there. There's no op…

Large metropolitan cities in India are purely for job reasons. I do believe buying expensive real estate in a city like Bangalore is pointless. You can put the same money in a good mutual fund, and buy a home in a Tier 2 city around Bangalore. You can reach Bangalore in an hour for most of things. The pollution, population density and pace are all a lot lower. Plus if the idea is to retire early, this is like the bes…

> You can reach Bangalore in an hour for most of things.

* Then it takes 2 hours to reach your office in Bangalore.

* It just postpones the actual problem. Gradually the tier-2 towns will get crowded too.

* It means your local tier-2 town won't develop, and economy will be centred at these metropolitons.

Re: What Did Medieval Peasants Know? (2022)

#64

Post by vintermann »

somenameforme wrote: post #54
vintermann wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know about bog iron, of course. It's an example of a technology which just couldn't compete at all. It was insignificant 200 years ago, at least where I live. It's too much work for too little iron in too low quality. Even 2000 years ago: I read an article about trying to find archaeological traces accompanying the spread of Sami languages into Scandinavia. They've only found one, tenative one: it seems there was a…

Bog iron most certainly isn't low quality. There's some variability, but it's generally rather pure with relatively low rates of undesirable impurities, trivial to reduce, and it's a renewable resource. The main issue is in immediate quantity. Bog iron is 'decentralized' and not appropriate for setting up a massive scale centralized iron production facility, but is more than appropriate for village to town level prod…

I haven't seen the Townsend group you speak of so I can't judge. I was thinking more of a channel, I think it was called "primitive technology", out of Cambodia, I think? Anyway, very obviously faked stuff.

You're talking past me here. I think old-fashioned crafts are very cool, and certainly people were more self-sufficient 200 years ago. I've been doing genealogy, and verified a family story that we're descended from a famous local woodcarver, who made the most gorgeous church altar pieces during the 1750s, most of which are still in use. He allegedly carved them with a common pocket knife (tollekniv), or, according to other stories, with self made tools fashioned from scythe blades. Fantastically cool. But no one alleged that he used his own bog iron!

In fact, when I dug into the story, the more connected to his society I understood that he was. Art historians have commented that he was clearly in touch with artistic trends from more central European countries. It turned out, he wasn't just a woodcarver, he was also the local schoolmaster, so he was perfectly literate and may well have corresponded with artists in other countries. He had also made musical instruments.

If he'd lived alone, he wouldn't have been able to do much of what he did. We underestimate how connected everyone was 300 years ago - or even 3000 years ago. Bog iron is one thing but try making bronze on your own!

Re: What Did Medieval Peasants Know? (2022)

#65

Post by somenameforme »

vintermann wrote: post #64
somenameforme wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bog iron most certainly isn't low quality. There's some variability, but it's generally rather pure with relatively low rates of undesirable impurities, trivial to reduce, and it's a renewable resource. The main issue is in immediate quantity. Bog iron is 'decentralized' and not appropriate for setting up a massive scale centralized iron production facility, but is more than appropriate for village to town level prod…

I haven't seen the Townsend group you speak of so I can't judge. I was thinking more of a channel, I think it was called "primitive technology", out of Cambodia, I think? Anyway, very obviously faked stuff. You're talking past me here. I think old-fashioned crafts are very cool, and certainly people were more self-sufficient 200 years ago. I've been doing genealogy, and verified a family story that we're descended fr…

I think you're creating a false dichotomy here - either some massive interconnected, and relatively singular, society - or people living literally alone. If you're at all into video games, the game Kingdom Come Deliverance, is unique in that it's not only based on real 15th century European (Bohemia - present day Czech Republic) locations but engaged in extensive research to create as accurate a physical representation of these places as possible.

So it can give you a tremendous feel for how "society" in the past might have felt in terms of scale and layout. And a decent sized city, would typically be smaller than a large suburban neighborhood now a days, in spite of there being hundreds of millions of humans alive at the time. And so I wouldn't view stuff as like 'society vs outsider', but rather large numbers of mostly self sufficient societies.

----

The channel discussion is really interesting! The original Primitive Technology channel [1] is 100% authentic and an amazing channel. But its growing popularity spawned a bunch of imitators including the Cambodian one (or 10) you're referencing. The imitators began doing ever more elaborate stuff for clicks, except it pretty much begin being obviously faked at some point - like multi-story spring fed swimming pools with crystal clear water, all constructed with extensive cuts and editing that was the video version of this meme. [2]

For the original you can watch him do stuff in real time, with no cuts or editing. And it's very doable yourself. Townsends uses edits and cuts, but again there's nothing like 'zomg how could they possibly do that' - it's just historical recreations, like building a log cabin, blacksmithing, and so on. All the stuff that would have been carried out in beginning one of these many little autonomous 'mini societies.'

[1] - https://www.youtube.com/@primitivetechnology9550

[2] - https://s3.amazonaws.com/marquee-test-akiaisur2rgicbmpehea/w...

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