As it was explained to me, the soap people made themselves in the old days was so much better than today's, a bath could last you weeks, or even months.
This modern stuff you can buy barely lasts a day.
I assure you, medieval people bathed (2019)
201–210 of 360 posts
Re: I assure you, medieval people bathed (2019)
#202Earlier quoted context omitted.
In ancient times, right until the attacks by Islamist marauders and "civilized" Britishers, none of what you have mentioned were an issue. Your statement reeks of colonialist attitudes of seeing natives of other lands as some sort of brutes and degenerates living in destitution in poverty. In India, Every village was in the vicinity of a water source. Every village had a temple, with a large pond. Massaging with oil…
If it was a cultural value to feed people outside of the home before yourself and food donation was a cultural promoted ideology then that means there were lots of people to feed..
How do you reach this conclusion? I know many people in France who have difficulty feeding themselves / their family, yet depending on the region it may or may not be part of local culture to feed other people outside your home.
In fact, it's definitely not local culture in any big city i've visited, and on the countryside it varies not by region but from one village to the next. From what i could see it it's really not correlated with local productivity.
Re: I assure you, medieval people bathed (2019)
#203As it was explained to me, the soap people made themselves in the old days was so much better than today's, a bath could last you weeks, or even months. This modern stuff you can buy barely lasts a day.
Maybe, but i don't think the best soap the world has ever seen will keep me from smelling like sweat after a few hot days
Re: I assure you, medieval people bathed (2019)
#204Earlier quoted context omitted.
Well, not to take a side here, but it wouldn't, would it? The topics GP listed are (allegedly) 'continuing bad things from past', so why would someone with 'pride in their past' mention them?
Where has this 'pride in their past' narrative come from except for the comment that lists those topics? The comment I appreciated kumarvvr posting makes no proclamations about pride or India or Hinduism, it talks about cleaning practices and traditional herbs almost exclusively.
> Where has this 'pride in their past' narrative come from except for the comment that lists those topics?
Nowhere, but that's the thread we're in. I was just pointing out you perhaps misread what it was a list of, because it seemed to me perfectly consistent with the rest of the comment.
> The comment I appreciated kumarvvr posting makes no proclamations about pride or India or Hinduism, it talks about cleaning practices and traditional herbs almost exclusively.
I appreciated it too - and still do - just perhaps more so before reading some of the others.
Again, not 'taking a side' here, I don't really even know enough to judge what I'm being told, if you see what I mean. Here I was only intending to make a sort of meta-comment about your reply and the comment it was on, I'd have said the same in isolation without seeing the rest of the thread/submission.
(E.g. note I said 'allegedly' and 'someone' - I wasn't making any claims about anyone and certainly nothing personal.)
Re: I assure you, medieval people bathed (2019)
#205As it was explained to me, the soap people made themselves in the old days was so much better than today's, a bath could last you weeks, or even months. This modern stuff you can buy barely lasts a day.
Maybe, but i don't think the best soap the world has ever seen will keep me from smelling like sweat after a few hot days
Yeah, like I said, modern soap. You can't buy the good stuff at all.
Re: I assure you, medieval people bathed (2019)
#206Earlier quoted context omitted.
This wood tubes do not use metal or nails, are made from just one piece of wood. When I was a child we had a big ree, one day my grandffather brought a family of wood workers , they cut the tree and madfe a ton of wood stuff from it, including big and small "tubes" , the small ones are used for backing or as containers, big and small spoons, other wood stuff I don't remember. But it was all curved, no nails or glue.…
I appreciate you explaining this. I'm not an expert on the history of baths. I may be wrong but I still think the tubes you're describing are the exception and not the rule.
So you think there were better quality ones and bathrooms or that the peasants just washed in the river or with snow?
Re: I assure you, medieval people bathed (2019)
#207Earlier quoted context omitted.
> This is also a bog standard description of Christianity and a bunch of other religions. I never said India is special in this regard. >Bullshit. Just the history of England and France alone are packed full of wealthy and privileged people focusing their life on the pursuit of enlightenment (spiritual, artistic, and/or scientific) and giving up pre-arranged lives of power and wealth. Name 2 kings or monarchs who did…
That is the great thing about Hinduism as a religion, that it does not preach one true dogmatic doctrine, but love of the universe. Buddhism is not too far from that either. Still the teaching can be great but what about practice and where is it going now? Are Hindus becoming less tolerant of other religions? See for example: https://www.latimes.com/world-nation/story/2022-02-16/india-...
Nor sure how the Muslim minority sees Hinduists (as opposed to Hinduism, most religions preach love of your neighbors in theory and ignore it in practice, Buddhism included) "love of the universe".
Re: I assure you, medieval people bathed (2019)
#208Had me right up until the last paragraph. One does not have to be a colonialist or carry bias to have misconceptions about the midevil period. Ignorance is a fine reason. I myself am a huge fan of history but mostly ignorant about that time period. It's just never been my jam. I'll admit I'd probably think the "bring out your dead" and "oh Dennis, there's some lovely filth down here" sketches in Monty Python's Holy G…
> One does not have to be a colonialist or carry bias to have misconceptions about the midevil period.
No obligation indeed, but there is a historical correlation, at least where i come from (France). Myths about the medieval era as times of barbarism and suffering have emerged with the "renaissance" (and its witch hunts which did not take place during the medieval era) then the "enlightenment" (Lumières) of the 18th century.
That's entirely correlated with the emergence of the "civilizing mission" of republican colonialism [0], whereas king/church-driven colonization before that was based on the idea that colonized peoples were not human and did not have a soul, as was ruled during the Valladolid trials of the 16th century [1].
In Western Europe, to my knowledge, it took until the late 19th/early 20th socialist/anarchist thinkers (Friedrich Engels, Pierre Clastres) to recognize that there were different cultures and that social/societal progress was not universal and linear. These ideas are still not really accepted across society as the entire field of economics is based on the idea of linear material progress and that those poor "backwards"/"underdeveloped" peoples need help from us "enlightened" westerners (see also David Graeber for a critique of such productivity metrics [2]).
[0] For example, a famous french politician who's remember in the nationalist propaganda as the father of public schools (Jules Ferry), would say that it's "the role of more civilized peoples to educate the lesser peoples".
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Valladolid_debate
[2] Managerial Feudalism and the revolt of the caring classes
Re: I assure you, medieval people bathed (2019)
#209ughh I dislike when pop history takes this smarmy tone and is also not particularly accurate. > In fact soap is a motherfucking medieval invention. Yes. It is. The Romans – whomst I don’t see a bunch of basics going around accusing of being filthy – did not, in fact have soap, in contrast. They usually washed using oil. Medieval people? Oh you better believe that they had soap. Wait a minute, what about Aleppo soap?…
Which group of people we mean when we talk about Romans? And from what period? I mean sure some country had computers. After all they are used now so they must have been couple centuries back too right?
Indeed. Abaci have been used for millenia.
Re: I assure you, medieval people bathed (2019)
#210Its funny that western history distorts the history of the rest of the world. I hear western kids saying no one used to bathe in the ancient times. As an Indian, it was practically mandatory for each and every individual to take a bath at-least two times a day. Additionally the following customs were very prevalent till recent times. 1. Washing legs after coming home from outside. 2. Washing hands, face and legs befo…
> I hear western kids saying no one used to bathe in the ancient times. Which western kids did you hear from? Every western kid I know studied that in Roman times bathing was a very important activity; as a matter of fact there were very advanced public baths, thermae (which included "sauna" with hot and cold water) in every city. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermae
No post body was provided.