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I assure you, medieval people bathed (2019)

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Re: I assure you, medieval people bathed (2019)

#71

Post by culi »

fingerlocks wrote: post #60
culi wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The only reason our sweat even stinks is because of the way it's metabolized by our skin's microbiome. It turns out if you have AOB (ammonia oxidizing bacteria) they can oxidize our sweat and prevent us from stinking AOBs are found in soils pretty much everywhere. But they're extremely sensitive and can easily be washed away. In contrast, the particular microbes that have closely evolved alongside us to adapt to our…

How many mammals actually sweat? I was surprised to learn that dogs don’t sweat, which seems obvious after the fact

Good question. Human sweat _is_ indeed a pretty unique thing. Many animals sweat (e.g. horses, monkeys, hippos, etc). Some animals actually sorta do sweat but it doesn't play as big of a role in their biology as it does in humans. Dogs and cats only sweat in their paws for example

Humans are some of the weirdest hunters because of our incredible endurance. We're pretty slow creatures. If you're an ungulate that just got hit by an arrow, you can easily run away. But a human can keep following you for hours. Some hunter-gatherer groups will keep a persistent hunt going for up to 3 days

So yeah human sweat probably plays a pretty unique role in our physiology compared to most animals, but sweating is definitely not a uniquely human thing. And it's particularly more common in furless mammals

Re: I assure you, medieval people bathed (2019)

#72

Post by frostwarrior »

wizofaus wrote: post #39
culi wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's incredibly silly how tied we are to the idea that something was invented once and then spread. Soap is literally just a fatty acid salt with some phytochemicals that have antimicrobial properties (extremely easy to come by considering most secondary metabolites of plants are specifically produced to keep them from succumbing to bacterial/fungal degradation). Soap has probably been "invented" a million ti…

I can just imagine the reaction of a stone-ager being berated because they hadn't come up with "literally just a fatty acid salt with some phytochemicals that have antimicrobial properties". I suspect you could pick just about any tech invented in the last decade and describe it as "literally just a pick-your-adjective noun with some other random nouns that have something-or-another properties"... Explain again why a…

Turns out soap is not THAT essential to personal hygiene, if you have running water.

The point of bathing is to rub off dead skin cells, excess oil off your skin (note that I said excess). And you can actually do all that without soap.

Also note that sweat it's not that stinky when it evaporates quickly (for example, behind loose non-western clothes in a hot environment)

Soap helps a lot, of course, but the usual stench of being dirty is more because we use really tight clothes that keep sweat from evaporating

Re: I assure you, medieval people bathed (2019)

#73

Post by fian »

taeric wrote: post #9
klodolph wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most other animals? Well, most birds bathe. Elephants shower themselves with their trunks. Cats bathe themselves with their tongues, dogs get in the water and then shake themselves dry, and pigs wallow in the mud. Seems like what makes humans different here is that we use soap.

Charity to the question, I think it is a good question why we bathe as much as we do. Water animals spend a ton of time bathing, no surprise. Many animals are fine with dust baths, though. And many are severely hampered by being wet. Look up a picture of a wet owl.

Unlike many (but not all) other animals, humans spend considerable time in close proximity to other humans in enclosed spaces. If you are pungent, other people in an enclosed space with you will not appreciate your smell. I've done quite a few multi week hikes with only fresh water bathing (no soap, no deodorant) with others (2-18 other people). During the hikes we are outdoors and although we gather reasonably close (less than 1m, or a couple of feet) around a campfire or common place to eat it isn't often you'd be offended by someone else's smell. At the end of these hikes when we first get back to civilisation and are in an enclosed space again - you bet we suddenly notice how much we stink.

Many humans cross paths with hundreds to thousands of other humans every day and the set of people interacted can have great variability across days. Growing up we were taught at home and in school how important it is to regularly wash your hands. The only other examples of such a high level of social mingling for other species that springs to mind are insects swarms/hives/nests and when there are plagues (mice, locusts etc). Unlike these groups, humans are unique in having a very high degree of share tool use (door handles, public seating for transport, cross walk and lift buttons), so there is a huge potential for cross contamination. Bathing and washing with soap is probably one of the key reasons we are able to live in cities the way we do without regular disease epidemics.

Re: I assure you, medieval people bathed (2019)

#74

Post by kingkawn »

b112 wrote: post #26
kumarvvr wrote: post #21

Earlier 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…

[flagged]

You’re changing the subject to avoid the truth of what he’s saying. Logic can absorb any input. Set aside defensiveness to see more of the world through these peaceful and difficult challenges to the worldview.

Re: I assure you, medieval people bathed (2019)

#76

Post by culi »

shakna wrote: post #38
culi wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's incredibly silly how tied we are to the idea that something was invented once and then spread. Soap is literally just a fatty acid salt with some phytochemicals that have antimicrobial properties (extremely easy to come by considering most secondary metabolites of plants are specifically produced to keep them from succumbing to bacterial/fungal degradation). Soap has probably been "invented" a million ti…

> Soap was likely "invented" and even forgotten over and over again by whoever needed and stopped needing it At least with the Sapindus family, and probably a few other plants (like lepisanthes) that produce naturally surfactant properties, nature itself provides something akin to "soap", and has been used in bathing for long enough that we're not even sure when it even began.

Yup! Sapindus (aka Soapberries) is actually a genus... in the family Sapindaceae... in the order Sapindales. Same etymology as the phytochemical "saponins" which, besides making soap, has a ton of uses and is easy to identify

One very common use of saponin-containing plants is for stupefying fish. Get some fish in a pond, add some saponins, and dinner just floats right up to you. Although saponins are toxic humans have specifically evolved a mechanism to not digest saponins so we can safely eat them (but your dog can't!). Saponins also play a really important role in modern medicine

Saponins are quite common across many unrelated plant species. Ginseng, soapworts, horse chestnut, sapodillas, oleander, soap bark tree, and even spinach are some examples

Because of their myriad uses (as well as their particular taste) and ways to identify saponin-containing plants it's easy to imagine that, regardless of whatever cosmology some culture used to ascribe these properties, most people could easily identify these plants

Re: I assure you, medieval people bathed (2019)

#79

Post by culi »

frostwarrior wrote: post #72
wizofaus wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can just imagine the reaction of a stone-ager being berated because they hadn't come up with "literally just a fatty acid salt with some phytochemicals that have antimicrobial properties". I suspect you could pick just about any tech invented in the last decade and describe it as "literally just a pick-your-adjective noun with some other random nouns that have something-or-another properties"... Explain again why a…

Turns out soap is not THAT essential to personal hygiene, if you have running water. The point of bathing is to rub off dead skin cells, excess oil off your skin (note that I said excess). And you can actually do all that without soap. Also note that sweat it's not that stinky when it evaporates quickly (for example, behind loose non-western clothes in a hot environment) Soap helps a lot, of course, but the usual ste…

yeah for most cultures soap was probably used for cleaning other things first. In general it's a good way to loosen bits of dirt off of something. Very useful in making and maintaining fabrics. The idea to use them on our own skin likely came as a secondary innovation

Re: I assure you, medieval people bathed (2019)

#80

Post by bryanrasmussen »

kumarvvr wrote: post #21
b112 wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

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…

>In ancient times, right until the attacks by Islamist marauders and "civilized" Britishers, none of what you have mentioned were an issue.

My assumption, when applied to India, would be that it would be an issue for the untouchables caste?

>If you are not aware, this was how most of the world lived. Lower class was the norm. We are now living in an age of disproportionate luxury.

Even so it still seems unlikely that every member of the society would be able to enjoy these amenities, the question really becomes at which cutoff point is one too poor to do so, and how much of the society was that poor?

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