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DarkCrisis
Spreading holiday cheer.
Who’s win the edition crusades? The bloodthirsty and battle hardened Grognards or the over powered and over HPed new breed?
Hussar
Legend
Think about it for just a second. You are living in a country with zero refrigeration. How long do you think food keeps? Bread molds in a day or two. Food spoils after about the same time. Never minding the conditions with which those meats and whatnot were prepared as well. Food spoils. This isn't a shock. And spices were there to hide the taste.Interestingly, this reputable source (among historians) indicates this particular falacious legend dates aaaaall tge way back to 1939:
15. That medieval people ate rotten meat
This particular myth is not that old – it started in 1939 with the publication of The Englishman’s Food: Five Centuries of English Diet. The authors were not experts in medieval food, but had read that in 14th century London there were laws against selling rotten meat. For some reason, they saw this as proof that people were eating lots of rotten meat. They also misunderstood a recipe from 1594, and that was all the evidence they needed to claim that people were using spices as a way to mask the smell of rotten meat.
Spices, which included very expensive items imported from across the medieval world, were widely used for the same reason people use them today: they added to the flavour. If medieval people, especially the wealthy, can be blamed for one thing, it was that they liked to create very elaborate recipes. In other words, they liked to cook.
20 Myths about the Middle Ages - Medievalists.net
People have some very wrong ideas about the Middle Ages. Here is a list of twenty of the strangest misconceptions about the medieval period – they often came about to portray the people as being ignorant, cruel and unsophisticated.www.medievalists.net
But, okay, you don't want to talk about hygene and refrigeration? How do I know that 90% of En Worlders would be dead? Because the world couldn't support 90% of today's population. We'd have starved to death long before we got onto the website.
Of course, let's not forget that half the population of the world was seen as sub-human and not worth having basic rights. Want to own property? Want to wear pants? Want to travel alone? Want to do pretty much anything? Hope you're not a woman.
But, sure, the Middle Ages were a better time.
Parmandur
Book-Friend, he/him
As noted, this is not an accurate portrayl of how things functioned in Medieval times, and the spice thing is a myth that was invented after Gary Gygax was born.
Noody is saying the Middle Ages were "a better time", it was a different time. Villifying it was a popular propeganda move in earlier times, but that doesn't hold much water with the modern academy because it is, frankly, inaccurate.But, sure, the Middle Ages were a better time.
Hussar
Legend
Yes, but, you keep glossing over that 70-80% infant mortality rate. And, what, no mention of the treatment of women? I guess those are myths too.
There's vilifying going on, but, it's not vilifying the middle ages. It's vilifying modern life. The idea that we've somehow "gone wrong" and that things would be so much better if we would just go backwards in time. No. Things were BAD in the Middle ages. Things were worse earlier, sure. But, they were still utterly, mind blowingly horrific. No civil rights. No freedoms. Well, unless you happen to be male of the right color and/or religion of course. Living conditions that we wouldn't keep farm animals in today.
Good grief, a modern dairy barn is a freaking hospital compared to conditions back then.
Paul Farquhar
Legend
Sure, how many people understand how technology works? Clark’s law applies.
But society and culture are much more important than technology, and FR is not just modern, it’s clearly American.
Parmandur
Book-Friend, he/him
Canadian, actually.
Parmandur
Book-Friend, he/him
I acknowledge that I am not likely to get through this farrago of bubblegum pop stereotypes, but as noted previously these are not statements grounded in reality, but in propaganda. Saying that the life of a cow in a factory farm is like a Mesieval human life is completely unhinged.
History is not a straight line of progress or regress (the Middle Ages were a better time to be a woman or racial minority than the 18th cnetury, for example, and the end of the Coloni syatem and rebranding it as "Serfdom" was a major project in trying to convince people they were better off as wage slaves which was an objectively worse state with fewer rights), but yes I am glad that we have penicillin, microwaves and bidets. That doesn't mean we need ro literally make up stuff about how horrific any other period was, when it just wasn't so.
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Paul Farquhar
Legend
So it's not the peasant chucker, it's the peasant chucker's son?
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