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i love studying the past giving a big shout out to wonderful history teachers, art conservation, and the night at the museum trilogy
Wait so is the mandate of heaven and the divine right of kings the same kind of concept, or have I massively misunderstood one or the other?
divine right of kings: you can do whatever you want forever because you're god's specialest little boy!
mandate of heaven: do a good job ruling or god's gonna start sending hitmen
Ah, yeah, I see it now. This is the exact level of detail I needed of the key details of how to distinguish the two. Thank you.
Remember the way they treated MLK at the time, too.
And even when he did march in suits?
And, of course, he was assassinated anyway.
Respectability politics is always a trap, and they will always try to rewrite history to make it sound like they were playing fair the whole time.
Long before the introduction of color film, a Russian chemist and photographer named Sergey Prokudin-Gorsky used an innovative technique. He took three individual black and white photos, each through a colored filter (red, green, and blue), to create fully colored, high-quality pictures. The photo of this woman, taken by him, is around 107 years old!
No wait I looked this guy up and this shit’s amazing
It’s so incredibly humanizing to see people from the very distant past in such authentic color
And like. look at these landscape shots!! They’re so vivid!! Even aside from the historical value, these are just legitimately beautiful photographs
Green Tara, by Aniko (?), Central Tibet, c. 1260s. Cleveland Museum of Art (ID: 1970.156). For Tibetans, Green Tara is one of the preeminent figures of their Buddhist faith, a radiant savioress who embodies the female form of the perfect, enlightened mind. The Green Tara in the Cleveland thangka—a Tibetan devotional painting on cloth—specifically dispels fear and provides protection, just like her mantra inscribed on the back side of the painting. Her green color and fear-not gesture link her to the cosmic Buddha of the North, enshrined above her head. Most scholars agree that this work was painted by the celebrated Nepalese artist known as Aniko. (Cleveland Museum of Art)
Yes. Yes it absolutely fucken was.
Today is international women's day so I'm gonna share some important women in Black British history. Let's go:
Mary Seacole - British Jamaican nurse who self-funded her own travel to the Crimean War zone after the government refused to let her help look after injured and sick British soldiers. She set up the British Hotel and treated a range of diseases.
Claudia Jones - Trinidadian activist and feminist who created Britain's first Black newspaper, the West Indian Gazette. She also helped establish Notting Hill Carnival, a celebration of West Indian culture in London every year and one of the world's biggest street festivals.
Barbara Beese - British activist and writer. She was a member of the British Black Panthers and was one of the Mangrove Nine, tried at the Old Bailey for inciting a riot. Beese held up a pig's head at the Mangrove Demonstration to fight against police violence from the Metropolitan Police Force.
Olive Morris - Jamaican feminist and activist. She campaigned for squatter's rights and created one of Britain's first organisations for Black women, the Brixton Black Women’s Group. She also created a supplementary school for Black children.
Althea Jones-LeCointe - Trinidadian physician and researcher. She became the leader of the Black British Panthers after Obi Egbuna's arrest and she was a member of the Mangrove Nine along with Barbara Beese. The Mangrove Nine trial became the first acknowledgements of systemic racism in British history and the nine won the trial and got suspended sentences.
TERFS and radfems fuck off this isn't for you this is for Black British women!
New research uncovers a hidden network of female spies and messengers in medieval Ypres, revealing how women played a crucial role in wartim
Read the original study here
"In total, the Ypres city accounts for 1488–1489 record 38 named women and numerous anonymous ones engaged in intelligence activities. Some, like Josine Hellebout, were highly active, receiving payments for up to eleven separate missions. Others appear only once but often undertook significant and risky journeys—on foot, unarmed, and often alone or in pairs.
A key advantage women had was their invisibility. Because they were not suspected of military or political activity, they could pass through city gates, enemy lines, and military encampments with less scrutiny than men. This phenomenon, Demets argues, was both practical and tactical: “Women could more easily move in and out of cities or around military camps, acting as trustworthy intermediaries between opposing sides.”
But these were not simply passive messengers. Many women were paid not just to carry letters, but to “to find out about the enemies’” or “ascertain the situation” in enemy-held territory. During the Siege of Ghent and subsequent campaigns in 1488, for instance, Tuenine Spepers was sent to Damme and Aardenburg to “gather news about the King of the Romans [Maximilian of Austria]” and to Diksmuide to report on the local situation. Other women, such as Crispine Sroys and Beatrice Cambiers, carried out missions directly to military commanders or towns under threat, often accompanied by unnamed female companions, possibly locals or other camp followers.
The growing professionalization of this network became particularly evident in 1489, when the war intensified. “By 1489, women increasingly emerged as professionals within the medieval intelligence service in Ypres, as records show that the same individuals were repeatedly paid a ‘salary’,” Demets explains."
Looking for feminist YouTube recs? How about Max Dashu: rogue scholar who created the Suppressed Histories Archive dedicated to "restoring women to cultural memory, political analysis, spiritual awareness through global perspective, over history and across the cultural record, from rock art, archaeology, Indigenous orature, written records, and all testimony."
"they didn't even wear pants back then!" "you can't do anything in a skirt!" "we have more practical clothing now, like jeans!" "modern women are sexy AND comfortable in jeans!" "school bans skirts to be gender neutral!" "hampered by their long skirts, women in the past couldn't-"
biting you killing you maiming you biting you
we fought for the right to choose pants if we wanted to. pants are NOT some Inherently Superior Garment, and skirts aren't Inherently Oppressive. goddamnit, our ancestors did not struggle the way they did for more bullshit prescriptivism and erasure of their lived realities
(spoiler: they COULD function in long skirts! it's not that hard! obviously pants are better for some very specific tasks but like. full goalie gear is better for some tasks, too!)
Ancient Greek Women Mathematicians you didn't know about
Αίθρα - Aethra (10th - 9th century BC), daughter of the king of Troizina Pitthea and mother of Theseus, knew mathematics in another capacity unknown to many. So sacred to the beginnings of the most cerebral science, Aethra taught arithmetic to the children of Troizina, with that complex awe-inspiring method, since there was no zero… and the numbers were symbolically complex, as their symbols required many repetitions.
Πολυγνώτη - Polygnoti (7th - 6th century BC) The historian Lovon Argeios mentions Polygnotis as a companion and student of Thalis. A scholar of many geometric theorems, it is said in Vitruvius' testimony, that she contributed to the simplification of arithmetic symbols by introducing the principle of acrophony. She managed this by introducing alphabetic letters that corresponded to each in the initial letter of the name of the number. Thus, Δ, the initial of Δέκα (ΤΕΝ), represents the number 10. X, the initial of Χίλια (Thousand), represents the number 1000 etc. According to Vitruvius, Polygnoti formulated and first proved the proposition "Εν κύκλω η εν τω ημικυκλίω γωνία ορθή εστίν" - "In the circle the angle in the hemi-circle is right angle."
Θεμιστόκλεια - Themistoklia (6th century BC). Diogenes the Laertius scholar-writer mentions it as Αριστόκλεια - Aristoclia or Θεόκλεια - Theoclia. Pythagoras took most of his moral principles from the Delphic priestess Themistoclia, who at the same time introduced him to the principles of arithmetic and geometry. According to the philosopher Aristoxenos (4th century BC), Themistoclia taught mathematics to those of the visitors of Delphi who had the relevant appeal. Legend has it that Themistoclia decorated the altar of Apollo with geometric shapes. According to Aristoxenos, Pythagoras admired the knowledge and wisdom of Themistoclia, a fact that prompted him to accept women later in his School.
Μελίσσα - Melissa (6th century BC). Pupil of Pythagoras. She was involved in the construction of regular polygons. Lovon Argeios writes about an unknown work of hers: "Ο Κύκλος Φυσίν - η Μελίσσα - Των Εγγραφομένων Πολυγώνων Απάντων Εστί". (The title translates to "The circle is always the basis of the written polygons" or so.)
Τυμίχα - Tymicha (6th century BC). Thymiha, wife of Crotonian Millios, was (according to Diogenes Laertius) a Spartan, born in Croton. From a very early age, she became a member of the Pythagorean community. Iamblichus mentions a book about "friend numbers". After the destruction of the school by the Democrats of Croton, Tymicha took refuge in Syracuse. The tyrant of Syracuse, Dionysios, demanded that Tymicha reveal to him the secrets of the Pythagorean teaching for a great reward. She flatly refused and even cut her own tongue with her teeth and spat in Dionysius' face. This fact is reported by Hippobotus and Neanthis.
Βιτάλη - Vitali or Vistala (6th – 5th century BC). Vitali was the daughter of Damos and granddaughter of Pythagoras, and an expert in Pythagorean mathematics. Before Pythagoras died, he entrusted her with the "memoirs", that is, the philosophical texts of her father.
Πανδροσίων ή Πάνδροσος - Pandrosion or Pandrossos (4th century AD). Alexandrian geometer, probably a student of Pappos, who dedicates to her the third book of the "Synagogue". Pandrosion divides geometric problems into three categories:" Three genera are of the problems in Geometry and these, levels are called, and the other linear ones."
Πυθαΐς - Pythais (2nd century BC). Geometer, daughter of the mathematician Zenodoros.
Αξιόθεα - Axiothea (4th century BC). She is also a student, like Lasthenia, of Plato's academy. She came to Athens from the Peloponnesian city of Fliounda. She showed a special interest in mathematics and natural philosophy, and later taught these sciences in Corinth and Athens.
Περικτιόνη - Periktioni (5th century BC). Pythagorean philosopher, writer, and mathematician. Various sources identify her with Perictioni, Plato's mother and Critius' daughter. Plato owes his first acquaintance with mathematics and philosophy to Perictioni.
Διοτίμα - Diotima from Mantineia (6th-5th century BC). In Plato's "Symposium", Socrates refers to the Teacher of Diotima, a priestess in Mantineia, who was a Pythagorean and a connoisseur of Pythagorean numerology. According to Xenophon, Diotima had no difficulty in understanding the most complex geometric theorems.
Iamblichos, in his work "On Pythagorean Life", saved the names of Pythagorean women who were connoisseurs of Pythagorean philosophy and Pythagorean mathematics. We have already mentioned some of them. The rest:
Ρυνδακώ - Rynthako
Οκκελώ - Okkelo
Χειλωνίς - Chilonis
Κρατησίκλεια - Kratisiklia
Λασθένια - Lasthenia
Αβροτέλεια - Avrotelia
Εχεκράτεια - Ehekratia
Θεανώ - Theano
Τυρσηνίς - Tyrsinis
Πεισιρρόδη - Pisirrodi
Θεαδούσα - Theathousa
Βοιώ - Voio
Βαβέλυκα - Vavelyka
Κλεαίχμα - Cleaihma
Νισθαιαδούσα - Nistheathousa
Νικαρέτη - Nikareti from Corinth
There are so many women whose contribution to science remains hidden. We should strive to find out about more of them! For more information, check out the books of the Greek philologist, lecturer, and professor of ancient Greek history and language, Anna Tziropoulou-Eustathiou.
Something I find incredibly cool is that they’ve found neandertal bone tools made from polished rib bones, and they couldn’t figure out what they were for for the life of them.
Until, of course, they showed it to a traditional leatherworker and she took one look at it and said “Oh yeah sure that’s a leather burnisher, you use it to close the pores of leather and work oil into the hide to make it waterproof. Mine looks just the same.”
“Wait you’re still using the exact same fucking thing 50,000 years later???”
“Well, yeah. We’ve tried other things. Metal scratches up and damages the hide. Wood splinters and wears out. Bone lasts forever and gives the best polish. There are new, cheaper plastic ones, but they crack and break after a couple years. A bone polisher is nearly indestructible, and only gets better with age. The more you use a bone polisher the better it works.”
It’s just.
50,000 years. 50,000. And over that huge arc of time, we’ve been quietly using the exact same thing, unchanged, because we simply haven’t found anything better to do the job.
i also like that this is a “ask craftspeople” thing, it reminds me of when art historians were all “the fuck” about someone’s ear “deformity” in a portrait and couldn’t work out what the symbolism was until someone who’d also worked as a piercer was like “uhm, he’s fucked up a piercing there”. interdisciplinary shit also needs to include non-academic approaches because crafts & trades people know shit ok
One of my professors often tells us about a time he, as and Egyptian Archaeologist, came down upon a ring of bricks one brick high. In the middle of a house. He and his fellow researchers could not fpr the life of them figure out what tf it could possibly have been for. Until he decided to as a laborer, who doesnt even speak English, what it was. The guy gestures for my prof to follow him, and shows him the same ring of bricks in a nearby modern house. Said ring is filled with baby chicks, while momma hen is out in the yard having a snack. The chicks can’t get over the single brick, but mom can step right over. Over 2000 years and their still corraling chicks with brick circles. If it aint broke, dont fix it and always ask the locals.
I read something a while back about how pre-columbian Americans had obsidian blades they stored in the rafters of their houses. The archaeologists who discovered them came to the conclusion that the primitive civilizations believed keeping them closer to the sun would keep the blades sharper.
Then a mother looked at their findings and said “yeah, they stored their knives in the rafters to keep them out of reach of the children.”
Omg the ancient child proofing add on tho lol
I remember years ago on a forum (email list, that’s how old) a woman talking about going to a museum, and seeing among the women’s household objects a number of fired clay items referred to as “prayer objects”. (Apparently this sort of labeling is not uncommon when you have something that every house has and appears to be important, but no-one knows what it is.) She found a docent and said, “Excuse me, but I think those are drop spindles.” “Why would you think that, ma’am?” “Because they look just like the ones my husband makes for me. See?” They got all excited, took tons of pictures and video of her spinning with her spindle. When she was back in the area a few years later, they were still on display, but labeled as drop spindles.
So ancient Roman statues have some really weird hairstyles. Archaeologists just couldn’t figure them out. They didn’t have hairspray or modern hair bands, or elastic at all, but some of these things defied gravity better than Marge Simpson’s beehive.
Eventually they decided, wigs. Must be wigs. Or maybe hats. Definitely not real hair.
A hairdresser comes a long, looks at a few and is like, “Yeah, they’re sewn.”
“Don’t be silly!” the archaeologists cry. “How foolish, sewn hair indeed! LOL!”
So she went away and recreated them on real people using a needle and thread and the mystery of Roman hairstyles was solved.
She now works as a hair archaeologist and I believe she has a YouTube channel now where she recreates forgotten hairstyles, using only what they had available at the time.
Okay, I greatly appreciate the discussion here about the need for interdisciplinary work in academia, and the need to reach outside of academia and talk to specialists when looking at the uses of tools, but somehow people always have to turn this into a “gotcha!” where the stuffy academics get shown up (even though this very thread shows some archeologists reaching out to craftspeople to ask about how tools are used because they recognize the need for that knowledge and expertise).
“A hairdresser comes a long, looks at a few and is like, “Yeah, they’re sewn.”
“Don’t be silly!” the archaeologists cry. “How foolish, sewn hair indeed! LOL!”
So she went away and recreated them on real people using a needle and thread and the mystery of Roman hairstyles was solved.”
Did they? Did they really? The archeologists all laughed at the plucky hairdresser and then she proved her theory by simply recreating the styles?
See, what actually happened is that Janet Stephens (the hairdresser/hair archeologist in this post), who published an article about her theory in The Journal of Roman Archeology in 2008, spent about 6 years of research pursuing her idea that perhaps Roman hairstyles were sewn hair and not wigs. She did both hands-on experimentation sewing the actual hair, and more traditional research reading through a ton of sources. This is coming from an interview done with Stephens herself:
“Lots and lots of reading, poring over exhibition catalogs, back searching the footnotes to the reading and reading some more! It helped that I am fluent in Italian and, in 2006, I took a German for reading class. Working in my spare time, the research took 6 years.”
“I am an independent researcher, but my husband is a professor of Italian at the Johns Hopkins University, so I have library privileges there. We are friendly with colleagues in the Classics/Archaeology department and at the Walters Art Museum. They were kind enough to send me articles and clippings, read drafts and help with some picky Latin, though I try not to impose.”
(Source: http://www.thehistoryblog.com/archives/14729)
Wow, so people in the Classics/Archeology department and at the art museum sent her articles and clippings and HELPED her with her research as opposed to laughing at her in their gentleman’s club! It’s almost like people working the archeology/art history these days aren’t all stuffy old white guys from the 1950’s!
Stephens also presented her work at the Archeological Institute of America Conference, and according to the interview I cited above, it was apparently well received: “It seemed to create a a lot of buzz and people said they enjoyed it. It’s not every conference where you go to the poster session and see “heads on pikestaffs”!”
Like, there’s plenty to be said about the ivory tower and the need for interdisciplinary work, and the racism/sexism etc. that newer researchers are working against, but framing this story as “hairdresser totally shows up the archeologists with her common sense!” is needlessly shitting on the academics involved here (and the humanities in general have been struggling to maintain funding at many universities in the US, they don’t need to be further attacked), as well as greatly over-simplifying and downplaying Janet Stephens’ achievement. I think it’s more respectful to acknowledge the six years of work that she put into the project than to tell the story like she just sewed some hair and then all the archeologists’ monocles popped out.
YES @sammysdewysensitiveeyes! 100%!!
While we’re on that, the story about the leatherworker above is also entirely apocryphal – which is actually proven in the article linked to the entirely fictional paragraph above. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again:
This claim that “they couldn’t figure out what they were for the life of them. Until, of course, they showed it to a traditional leatherworker” and all about her taking one look at it yadda yadda is…entirely unsubstantiated.
The story makes no sense if you pause to think about it: it’s new to discover this tool from this long ago. But, if we’re still using them today, then people were probably still using them throughout history from that time until today. So is the idea supposed to be that anthropologists have just been encountering this tool from all different time periods, up to and including the modern day, and just….never bothered to figure out what it was? Until they found a REALLY old one and were like, well, better get on this now? Of course not!
These anthropologists were able to identify the use of this tool, because they have experience, as anthropologists, studying tools. In fact, the risk that they might not have been able to identify this tool was not because they were anthropologists, but because they were anthropologists who studied a time period from which these tools had not previously been discovered. However, because they had experience with other time periods, AS ANTHROPOLOGISTS, they were able to identify this tool.
Here is a quote from that article (unsurprisingly, it does not support the “gosh wow!” conversation in the original post):
“The first three found were fragments less than a few centimeters long and might not have been recognized without experience working with later period bone tools. It is not something normally looked for in this time period. “However, when you put these small fragments together and compare them with finds from later sites, the pattern in them is clear,” comments McPherron. “Then last summer we found a larger, more complete tool that is unmistakably a lissoir, like those we find in later, modern human sites or even in leather workshops today.” ”
To repeat: the reason these anthropologists might not have recognized this tool is not because it’s new to anthropology, or because all anthropologists have just been like ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ every time they found it. It’s because they “might not have been recognized without experience working with later period bone tools” because “it’s not something normally looked for in this time period.” Happily, these anthropologists had that experience! However, anthropology as a field has long been familiar with these tools – because “we find [them] in later, modern human sites or even leather workshops today.” Unlike the fake!anthropologist from this post, the real anthropologists, named Marie Soressi and Shannon McPherron, were not shocked that a modern leatherworker was still using these tools – because they knew that already! What they didn’t know was that Neandertals also used that tool, so long ago.
I’ll let them share a little more about their thoughts on this discovery:
“Lissoirs like these are a great tool for working leather, so much so that 50 thousand years after Neandertals made these, I was able to purchase a new one on the Internet from a site selling tools for traditional crafts,” says Soressi. “It shows that this tool was so efficient that it had been maintained through time with almost no change. It might be one or perhaps even the only heritage from Neandertal times that our society is still using today.”
This apocryphal story crediting our fictional she/her leatherworker reinforces the idea that anthropologists and other scholars are a bunch of elites who know nothing about the real world and the lives of people outside the ivory tower, including the people they study. This ends up both erasing the tremendous amount of knowledge that people in these fields hold (I find giving the fictional leatherworker she/her pronouns to be an interesting twist, given that it’s erasing the contributions of the real woman working as an anthropologist who co-made this discovery), and distracting from the real issues of racism, sexism, and exclusion that have shaped these fields and affect the increasingly diverse people working in them today. These issues are real, and the harms that the field of anthropology has and does perpetuate are real, and are best addressed honestly.
Instead of creating parables that scholars know nothing, let’s celebrate what human curiosity has been able to discover about our past; learn about and work to repair the real (not apocryphal) harms perpetuated in anthropology and academia; continue to make academia more inclusive of people with various expertise, gender, race, ethnicity, prior knowledge, and ways of knowing about the past; value multiple types of expertise both in and outside of the academy; and celebrate what is most exciting about this discovery:
not that anthropologists are all ignorant, but that our ancient ancestors were wiser and more creative than we knew, and gifted us this tool so long ago.
In your recent post on Sun Warrior pants, you mentioned they were inspired by those from Cambodia, Laos, and Thailand. In the recent Avatar novel (Reckoning of Roku), a young Roku travels to a Fire Nation island that has kept itself isolated for thousands of years. The women wear skirts called tolgè while the men wear loincloths called wanoh. These garments originated from the Phillipines in the real world. These countries (Cambodia, Laos, Thailand, and Philippines) are all located in the Ring of Fire, a region that rims the Pacific Ocean and is known for its high concentration of volcanoes and earthquakes. Japan (which Fire Nation culture is also partially based on), is also in this region.
Oh, that's neat! In general, pre-colonial Filipino culture doesn't get much exposure, so I love that the Roku novel is bringing some attention to one of the indigenous cultures of the Philippines: Ifugao culture. Pictured below are the tolgè and wanoh mentioned in the novel.
The Fire Nation is very Southeast Asian, so indigenous Filipino culture fits right in.
Completely unrelated, but the mention of nations along the "Ring of Fire" immediately brings to mind this song:
Feminist fantasy is funny sometimes in how much it wants to shit on femininity for no goddamned reason. Like the whole “skirts are tools of the patriarchy made to cripple women into immobility, breeches are much better” thing.
(Let’s get it straight: Most societies over history have defaulted to skirts for everyone because you don’t have to take anything off to relieve yourself, you just have to squat down or lift your skirts and go. The main advantage of bifurcated garments is they make it easier to ride horses. But Western men wear pants so women wearing pants has become ~the universal symbol of gender equality~)
The book I’m reading literally just had its medievalesque heroine declare that peasant women wear breeches to work in the field because “You can’t swing a scythe in a skirt!”
Hm yes story checks out
peasant women definitely never did farm labour in skirts
skirts definitely mean you’re weak and fragile and can’t accomplish anything
skirts are definitely bad and will keep you from truly living life
no skirts for anyone, that’s definitely the moral of the story here
Now, a skirt that’s too long will be harder to work in–skirts brushing the floor may look elegant, but is also a tripping hazard–but that is not a problem with skirts in general, it’s a problem with that particular skirt not being suited to being worked in. Skirts are very practical. You can hike them up if you’re hot or need more freedom to maneuver (this is called “girding your loins”). If you need to carry something, you can lift up your hem and make a pouch just like the person in yellow in the bottom picture above. If you need to handle something hot, a skirt generally has enough material you can hold it out from your body to use as a hot pad. (Tight skirts were only used by people who didn’t need to work/move until the invention of elastic fabric.)
Long skirts were markers of class almost as much as gender. Both men and women in the European middle ages wore extravagantly long garments to indicate both “I’m so rich I can afford THIS MUCH fabric” and “I don’t walk in the mud, I pay servants to do that for me.”
Skirt hiking: Definitely a Thing. (Janet’s tied her kirtle green/above the knee and not below…)
Love this post, and want to add: another example of the “empowerment means shitting on feminity” is the bizarro way that this genre attacks basic survival skills like cooking and sewing as pointless, inferior or mutually exclusive with masculine pursuits (like your lady knight should probably know how to cook for herself and sew her own wounds and patch her clothes while she’s on her quest through the North to rescue her boyfriend, or this happy couple is in for a world of hurt!)
Or to quote one of my all favorite posts, “fuck women’s contribution to our survival.”
Historically, skirts have been the garment of choice for almost every culture, gender and class. Breeches, or pants, were created specifically for riding horses.
Meanwhile, men wearing skirts.
*bangs gavel* NEEDS MOAR SKIRT
(Seriously, the notes on this post are a goldmine for people mentioning their cultures where men wear skirts. I couldn’t fit them all in. This is missing toooons of cultures from every part of the globe, especially Asia, Africa, and the Americas.)
Ancient Rome
Modern Morocco
Medieval Europe
Traditional Saudi Arabia
16th century Russia
Traditional Papua New Guinea
16th century Turkey
Modern India
i deliver propane. this means driving a large truck, then dragging a heavy hose up to one hundred and fifty feet through people’s yards, usually in deep snow and severe cold. i was the first woman my company ever hired.
and when i showed up for work in a skirt, all the men went BALLISTIC. they told me i’d trip, i’d get stuck, i’d freeze, i’d quit within the month when i found that i had underestimated how hard the work was. i asked what they thought women wore to work outside before the mid twentieth century, and they told me “women didn’t work outside then. they stayed in the house all the time.” and that’s when i learned that hatred of the skirt is another way of erasing women’s history–if you can pretend that all women were too hobbled by their clothes to even function, you can pretend that they never contributed jack shit to society.
anyway i’ve been doing this job in a skirt for three years now, and all the men should be jealous of my complete range of movement and infinite layering potential.
Before the Spanish showed up and WRECKED OUR SHIT, precolonial Filipinos all wore skirts, dresses, and/or loincloths. It is much easier to weave a single piece of fabric, or a single tube of fabric, than it is to weave the fabric, pattern the fabric, cut the fabric, and sew the fabric into breeches. Why would you do that unless you had a practical reason to?
There were occasional examples of what looks like breeches in the Boxer Codex, a late 16th century Spanish manuscript that contains illustrated examples of the attire of the various ethnic groups in and around the Philippines, (along with ethnic groups from other Asian countries), but irl most likely those were just malong/patadyong (a garment that is a tube of fabric) tucked and tied to create breeches.
Please enjoy the below illustrations.
(There is a critical lack of mention of hanfu, yukata, or hanbok on this post. I only have the expertise to cover hanfu, but I don’t have the strength, spoons, or enough expertise to feel comfortable handling that so I’m hoping a hanfu expert can weigh in!)
the thing about being from a place whose written history only began with colonialism is that it's like. i know you. i love you. you're in my very bones. but at the same time: who are you? who are you? who are you?
(via The Psychology of Community and Revolution)
Notes on Anitismo - The Ancient Religion of the Philippines by Isabelo de los Reyes.
Keep in mind - this was written a while back.
Ancient Chronicles written by the Jesuit hispanic Friars state that at the that the first spaniards set foot in the Philippines from the coast of visayas to Manila there was a considerable population of Muslim converts
This was especially true for Mindanao due to conversion by Islamic teachers from Borneo
De los Reyes argues that because of this, to find native Filipino religion at its purest, we must look to the North
Distinguishing native religion without outside influence such as from Islam, Hinduism, Christianity etc can be tricky
However he argues that the traces of Native Filipino religion can be found in the stories superstitions and advice that belong to various Filipino ethnic groups (Tagalogs, Bicolanos, Zambalenos etc)
From the South of the country in Mindanao to the extreme North like Luzon, De los Reyes argues then native Filipino religion was consistent
This religion was Anitism or the Cult of Anito, meaning souls of the ancestors.
Anitism is not a monolithic religion and hosts a broad pantheon ranging from Gods to animals, nature, elements and space.
The Philippines had its own modern spiritism and De los Reyes argues this may have been the origins of the cults of "Romanist Saints" (Catholic saints) in the Philippines. By this I think he means that Filipino spirituality influenced how Filipinos proceeded with Catholic worship.
The oldest chronicles about the Philippines can be found in various museums and libraries (such as the National Library of Madrid, Covenant of St Augustine in Manila)
We can follow these chronicles, from when the Jesuit Pedro Quirino provided news of religion in the Philippines in 1604, followed by reproductions by others like the Jesuit Colin in 1663 and others such as Fr. Morga, Gonzalez de Mendoza, Aduarte etc.
Fr Morga said that Filipinos practised Anitism in certain regions like Camarines and Cagayan.
Some traditions would say that Manila and its regions were not originally native to the island - they were from Malayan islands and other remote areas.
Before the Spaniards arrived, Islamic teachers from Borneo came to preach and interacted with the locals
Their teachings and beliefs spread quickly throughout the Philippines
Fr. Grijalva writes that they (Filipinos) started adopting their traditions and took on their names.
De Los Reyes argues that Spanish conquistadors' arrival/conquest was delayed because Filipinos were already familiar with various religions and beliefs and also because of the hands of Datu Lapu Lapu. What I believe he is arguing is that Datu Lapu Lapu and the previous exposure Filipinos had to different religions at first delayed Spanish influence from spreading so quickly.
Other islanders who weren't under the control of the government in the Philippines has their beliefs influenced by religious preachers who travelled to them from the Straits of Malacca and the Red Sea.
An account, dated April 20th 1572 (preserved in the archives of India) which is from the conquest of Luzon details "In these towns, closest to the sea, they do not eat any pork, which the moors taught them. But if you ask them, they say they do not know Muhammed or his law." This account was reproduced by Wenceslao Retana.
In actuality, very few Filipinos could understand/read the teachings of the Koran despite the Islamic influence.
In Filipino traditions, reverence and worship was given to nature and the elements, and this was usually consistent throughout the islands.
Native Filipino religion beliefs include elements, animals, stars and ancestors.
Filipino religion in Manila and nearby areas was a mixture or Anitism, Buddhism, Hinduism and Islam brought by the Malays of Borneo.
Vocabulary included Sanskrit and Malay terms such as Bathala, meaning Lord.
However these terms are not used in Northern provinces.
De Los Reyes argues that Itnegs and other mountain tribes conserved and maintained the purest form of Filipino religion
In the Ilocos, Cagayan, Isabela and other provinces of Northern Luzon, native Filipino religion was more prevalent
Hindus and Buddhists converted many in Java and Malaysia.
However Muslim influence became dominant in 1478 - 60 years before the Dutch invasion.
According to Javanese legends, Hindus arrives in Java 78 years before Christ.
The first Malays came from the Minangkabau river region to establish cities in Malacca , Ojohor and Singapore in the 12th century, as per Malacca records.
In the 13th, 14th and 15th centuries, there were various Malaysian emigrations reaching the Philippines
De Los Reyes argues that Filipinos may have also populated the islands of Malaysia, and emigrations could have originated from strong winds coming down from the North.
The first Spaniards found the son of Lakandula, King of Manila, when they went to Borneo.
The emperor's master of ceremonies from Japan (Mr Fujita) argued that emigration likely came from the north and that Filipinos may have some relations to the Japanese.
According to Geographers and Historians of the Mariana Islands, what De Los Reyes calls the "know it all Spanish" - had no idea about interesting ruins found in Oceania, one of which was a prehistoric statue that was being held in the British museum.
He argues there may be hidden megaliths, artefacts, and remnants of lost civilisation in the Philippines, as seen in various locations such as : Butacan caves, Pangibalon Hill, Madias de Iloilo and Nasso.