Trashy Plantagenet Trash

Your source for the most up to date gossip about their majesties and their weird kids

[pileofknives]

[homunculus-argument]

The burning question about "homesteading tradwive influencer vs. actual medieval farmwife" wouldn't be about who would win, but what would be the final straw that would make Kathrynn - who got married at 21, doesn't know what a chemical is, and who would have sent her children to school if she had had the chance - finally decide to beat the ever-loving shit out of Kathrynn, who got married at 21, doesn't understand what a chemical is and can't spell for shit, but still thinks she can homeschool her kids.

It wouldn't be over feminist issues. Medieval Kathrynn has no concept of "women's right to vote" - it's not like her husband has the right to vote in government matters either. It would probably be about religion. Medieval Kathrynn has no idea what "catholism" is, but she heard Modern Kathrynn talk shit about the saints and decides to toss aside the goat she was castrating and go "that's it, I'm beating your ass."

[elihearts]

I'm pretty sure it would be vaccination, actually. Medieval Kathrynn would find out that there's an easy, safe way to keep the babies from dying of measles/mumps/smallpox and that Modern Kathrynn is CHOOSING TO NOT DO IT and would use the grave marker of her third child who passed from the pox as a bludgeon.

[lesbinewren]

i love it when people like “omg [story] copied [other story]” and then list the steps of the heroes journey

[r--g--b]

[batmanego]

im having feelings about the uffington white horse again

[batmanego]

so essentially there’s this cool horse drawn into the hills in england made out of chalk and it’s like 3,000 years old.

people carved trenches 3,000 years ago and filled them with chalk in the shape of a horse but what’s interesting is that if you fail to maintain the horse by adding new chalk regularly, it will disappear. for 3,000 years, we’ve been filling in chalk in this horse so it doesn’t disappear.

we’ll never know what the purpose of the horse was originally. we’ll never know if it had ritual or spiritual significance or if it was just art. but we do know that people maintained it then, and, even though the meaning of the horse has long been lost to time, we continue to maintain it now.

the people who made this horse are long dead, but they live through us still, don’t you think?

[batmanego]

couldn’t agree more we’re best friends now

[bearie]

[chucktaylorupset]

BOSS MAKES A DOLLAR

I MAKE A DIME

THATS WHY I MAKE MEADE

OUTTA THE COMPANY SLIME

BOSS MAKES A DOLLAR

I MAKE A DIME

THATS WHY I STEAL HONEY

TWO ATTA TIME

BOSS MAKES A DOLLAR

I MAKE A CENT

THATS WHY I TAKE HONEY PACKETS,

BOTTLE, AND FERMENT

BOSS MAKES A DOLLAR

I DONT MAKE JACK

EXCEPT FOR THE MEAD

#MEDIEVAL LIFE HACKS

[professorerudite]

[sca-nerd]

There's a thing for that if anyone is wistfully interested. The SCA has what's called bardic circle and you should come and hang out. Stories, songs, music, poetry... all immersive and all amazing.

[medieval-enquirer]

[fishsticksart]

Francesca - Hozier

If someone asked me at the end, I'll tell them put me back in it

[Francesca, Hozier // The Ghosts of Paolo and Francesca Appear to Dante and Virgil, Ary Scheffer // Francesca, Hozier // Canto V, Inferno, Dante Alighieri // Francesca (Official Video), Hozier // Francesca, Hozier // Ship on Stormy Seas, Ivan Aivazovsky // Francesca, Hozier // Canto V, Inferno, Dante Alighieri // Paolo and Francesca, Mosè Bianchi // Francesca, Hozier // Paolo and Francesca da Rimini, Gustave Doré // Before Romeo and Juliet, Paolo and Francesca Were Literature’s Star-Crossed Lovers, John-Paul Heil // Paolo and Francesca, Frank Dicksee // Francesca i Paolo, Ludwik Wiesiołowski // Before Romeo and Juliet, Paolo and Francesca Were Literature’s Star-Crossed Lovers, John-Paul Heil // Paolo and Francesca da Rimini, Dante Gabriel Rossetti // Francesca, Hozier // Francesca (Later with Jools Holland), Hozier on BBC Music // Canto V, Inferno, Dante Alighieri // tumblr user @handgf // The Kiss, Auguste Rodin // Paolo e Francesca, or Morte di Paolo e Francesca, Gaetano Previati // Hozier // Hozier // Hozier]

[flork-of-cows-official]

world history

[medieval-enquirer]

[medieval-enquirer]

[medieval-enquirer]

[tiktokstowatch]

[somethingusefulfromflorida]

Achilles dragging Hector’s corpse around Troy

[burninglights]

my internal monologue when Ancient Egypt is mentioned: [don't talk about imhotep and the first codified diagnostic manual. the fact you know so much about it is deeply weird and nobody cares about medicine that much]

[hellolovelyscientist]

That sounds fascinating and I want to know. Please.

[burninglights]

@karmaphone @hellolovelyscientist @lamiabelladonna

I have been enabled, and By Jove I Will Deliver.

The year is 1862, and antiquities dealer (and forger) and self-made Egyptologist Edwin Smith steals a papyrus from an antiquities seller in Luxor. I could go on a whole separate rant about European colonialists treating culturally significant artifacts like grab 'n go bags and have done so here.

Anyway, Edwin's pilfered scroll gets translated in 1930, and it turns out have been a transcript from about the 17th century BCE of a papyrus written by a man named Imhotep, a vizier in the court of King Djozer who practiced neurosurgery, and made forays into astronomy and architecture too.

Now, Imhotep was wicked smart. As in "when the Greeks met him they incorporated him into the pantheon as a magician of Ascelpius because they couldn't figure out how he had such a comprehensive understanding of the human body and treating it's ills" smart. His scroll was a record of treatment of 48 cases, ranging from fractures of the hand to open abscessed wounds to trauma injuries to the skull. Side note: a lot of medicine during this period was considered to be the work of occult phenomena, and so a lot of treatments involved charms to ward off malignant spirits and incantations to aid in curing them.

What's remarkable about the Edwin scroll is that it is the first recorded account of medicine without the attachment of spiritual or occult phenomena as the root cause or a means of treatment; it's a purely scientific endeavour, complete with an anatomical glossary, diagnosis, summary, method of treatment and prognosis for each injury and illness.

It's the first evidence-based, scientific diagnostic manual.

The most significant case is Case 45, concerning a patient with “bulging masses — they may be compared to the unripe hemat fruit which is cool, and hard to the touch” in the breast. These masses are malignant tumours, the manifestation of breast cancer, and provide us with the first ever recorded case of cancer.

Imhotep knew that a tumour that has hot to the touch was a sign of infection (the inflammatory immune response produces tumor (swelling), rubor (redness), dolor (pain), and significantly to this calor, or heat). Infected abscesses could be treated with draining and a topical poultice. In the section for therapy for Case 45, though, there's one single, haunting line:

“There is none.”

In 2500BCE, well before germ theory, aseptic technique, chemotherapy and antibiotics, a surgeon picked up a scroll of fresh papyrus and provided us with the first ever codified, scientific diagnostic manual for injury and illness, and the first written record of the emperor of all maladies that we call cancer.

That's pretty fucking dope.

(If the cancer aspect is something you're interested in, I highly recommend The Emperor Of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer by Siddhartha Mukherjee. It's a record of the diagnosis and treatment of cancer from the days of Imhotep to the present day, and it's a fascinating read)

[systlin]

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. 

[saxifraga-x-urbium]

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

[assasue]

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.

[anx1ous-op0ssum]

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.”

[whatevercomestomymind]

Omg the ancient child proofing add on tho lol

[pbrim]

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.

[catchester]

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.

[hazelsheartsworn]

^^ THE PERSON MENTIONED HERE IS JANET STEPHENS!!

Here’s her YouTube channel with the recreated hair-styles

And the research she did got published in the Journal of Roman Studies (which is a big deal in the Classics world) “even though” she doesn’t have at least a Masters degree in the field.

[To give reference to the gate keeping in this field, she was, I think, only the second or so person without a PhD to be published in the history of the Journal]

But that’s the point, she knew hair and she knew her craft so well that when scholars had ridiculous theories and scoffed at her own, she went ahead and experimented and proved her theories right.

[glorianas]

me reading your “posts”

[lemon-embalmer]

fantasy characters: “Geez”

me: who the fuck spread Christianity there

[lemon-embalmer]

this two-years-old shitpost just gained a hundred notes who the snickerdoodles dug it up

[she-who-fights-and-writes]

W H A T