Nordic Bronze Age some 2,600 years ago: plough and oxen (upper left), ships (bottom)
This is an experiment at writing White American history counter to the Pass-the-Torch trope of Mesopotamia/Egypt/Greece/Rome/England/Pilgrims. Instead of following a civilization back in time it follows a language and when the words for things entered it.
- 12,000s BC: Can count up to at least five. The oldest words in English. Stone age.
- 11,000s BC:
- 10,000s BC:
- 9000s BC: ice age ends
- 8000s BC:
- 7000s BC:
- 6000s BC:
- 5000s BC:
- 4000s BC: Proto-Indo-European culture, in or near Ukraine. A land of apple trees, eagles, snow and rabbits. Live in forts on hills. Very patriarchal. Raise cows, pigs, goats, sheep, horses. Millstone for wheat. Honey, salt. Drink mead. Spinning, weaving, sewing. The words for mouse and louse rhyme. Worship the high god Dyeupater. Hero-and-dragon stories. The River Styx (the Greek name). Metrical poetry. King-priests. Horse sacrifice. Can count up to at least 100. Use copper, maybe bronze. Sell prisoners of war as slaves. New: Wheel, ox cart.
- 3000s BC: Moving west.
- 2000s BC: Central Europe. Plough. Grow wheat, barley, rye. Work copper, bronze, gold. Beer. Beaker culture.
- 1000s BC: Nordic Bronze Age. Denmark and nearby. Ships, sails, kings, swords, shields, helmets, chariots.
1000-1 BC: iron- AD 1:
- 000s: The Ingaevones of Pliny and Tacitus.
- 100s:
- 200s:
- 300s: saddle, chickens, cheese, pepper, wine, street, dish, cupboard, merchant, Roman units (inch, mile, pound), grey.
- 400s: Anglo-Saxons. Start settling eastern Roman Britain. Writing (runes).
- 500s: Taught Christianity and ABCs by missionaries. Grammar schools, paper.
- 600s:
700s: purple- 800s: Danish rule. AD, BC. Trial by jury.
- 900s:
- 1000:
- 1000s: Norman French rule. Bottom of society – 10% are slaves.
- 1100s: Common law. Knights. Slave trade outlawed!
- 1200s: cake, sugar, peaches, rice. Chess.
- 1300s: pie, opium, clocks, compass, scissors, moat, dungeon, university, geometry, philosophy, alchemy, humours.
- 1400s: printing, gunpowder, playing cards, pocket, pump, screw.
- 1500s: Protestant, Negro, Indian. Tea, tobacco, turkey, potatoes. The colour orange. The letters U, J, W.
- 1600s: Settle east coast of North America. Puritanism. Wipe out natives, enslave Africans (till 1800s). Racism, white identity, American exceptionalism. Oligarchical democracy, coffee, newspapers. Science, machine, zero. Maize, tomatoes, chocolate.
- 1700s: Americans. Overthrow British rule. Presidents. Front line of settlement reaches Appalachia. Become part German, Dutch, Scottish and Ulster Scots. Gregorian calendar. Capitalist philosophy. Slave patrols. Blackface. Pink. Caucasian race. Human rights for rich, white men. Freedom of the press and religion. Constitution. Baseball, golf. Magazines. Mother Goose. Rubber, chemistry. Gin.
- 1800s: Industrial Age. Front line of settlement reaches Pacific, taking Indian and Mexican land. Slave trade outlawed (again). Railroads, telegraph, electricity. Biology, germ theory. Soap in common use. Public education. Blue jeans. Chinese food. Photography. Coca-Cola, cocaine, heroin. Basketball, tennis, ice hockey, American football. Vote extended to poor white men, some black men. Minstrel shows, lynching, Jim Crow. Social Darwinism. Banana republicanism.
1900s: cars, planes, bombs, radio, plastic, Hollywood, jazz, telephones, air conditioning, race riots, atom bombs, plastic surgery, pizza, television, computers, country music, rock music, moon landing, anorexic beauty, metric system, hip hop, crack, Internet. Become part Irish, Italian, Jewish, Polish, etc. Feminism. Women, people of colour can vote.- 2000s: same-sex marriage.
See also:
- White American culture - a different view of the same thing
- The white racist guide to writing history - especially the Passing the Torch Doctrine. I wrote this post as an exercise in avoiding that trope – but still fell into technocentric history
- The white inventor argument - also makes the point that white inventors are not most of history
- The Eleven Nations
- The post is a part of this series:
Disclaimer: This is a work in progress! LOL.
Note that till the 1800s AD they invented little:
I never really thought about it like that before. That’s probably because white Americans appear to credit themselves with the inventions of various individuals from a number of European nations and then associate these things with their own “whiteness”.
Some inventions from Europeans pre 1800s:
baseball,
smallpox vaccine,
the flush toilet,
cell biology,
neon sign technology (jean picard’s barometer),
vacuum technology (von Guericke),
what we know as modern accounting,
the electroscope,
Vesalius’s textbooks on human anatomy/the invention of modern medicine,
cursive handwriting,
steam engines,
water de-salination,
establishing longitude,
gas turbines,
baby carriages on wheels,
the practice of forensic medicine (the 16th century Italian, Fidelis.),
rocket science,
Galilei’s telescope (allowing views of the craters of the moon, leading to discovery of sunspots, and seeing the 4 large moons of Jupiter, and the rings of Saturn)…
“….eagles, snow and rabbits. Live in forts on hills. Very patriarchal. Raise cows, pigs, goats …. ”
Regrading the Scandinavian countries (Denmark, Norway, Sweden), AFAIK, most of the written history of those countries begins after 600 AD.
The little written evidence of Scandinavian history from 100 BC to about 600 AD comes from contemporary writers of history, like Tacitus, but there is little written history of the region prior to 100 BC. What’s more, a lot of modern European history seems contradictory.
Take for example, there is not even definitive evidence that it was “very patriarchal”. Researchers of north European prehistory like the Swiss, Johann Bachofen, said that motherhood was the source of human society, religion, etc.in northern Europe and beyond. Another, the Lithuanian archaeologist, Marija Gimbutas, believed that the southern Europeans of pre-history were matrilineal and had a goddess-centred religion. Others like Icelandic historian Helga Kress. argue that Nordic cultures (Finland, Iceland, Greenland) were organized around female hegemony, which was later severely damaged but not erased by Indo-European incursion and Christianity that came later.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johann_Jakob_Bachofen
Highly informative.
@ Bulanik
“I never really thought about it like that before. That’s probably because white Americans appear to credit themselves with the inventions of various individuals from a number of European nations and then associate these things with their own “whiteness”.”
And they pirate inventions from Africans and Natives, put a white face on it and claim it as their own.
@truth
Indeed! Their ripping off Africans and Natives is usually more in plain view .
That picture of that funny looking doll at the bottom says it all;back to 12,000 B.C.!
Abagond, are you saying “same-sex marriage” like it’s a bad thing?
so in 12000 bc if there were more then five rocks to count they were f’ed. Doesn’t sound right to me.
why do you have jazz and country music up there? Jazz wasn’t white people, country music even has its roots in african-american culture as well, but that one I guess can stay…but Jazz come on, you know that has it’s roots in black culture, even if whites later participated and u had people like bennie goodman.
Wow, nice list. How do colors fit into the list, ie purple, orange?
I’ll give you one better……..went from can’t count to five to land on moon. in only 12000 years. exceptional fast evolution those white americans. How’d they do it? those Neanderthal cave dwellers with tails……….lol.
This song has to do with nothing……just a song I enjoy from time to time.
But I will say this because it’s something I never hear in the inventor argument. “Blacks invented rock n roll right” …… but guess what if it wasn’t for Les Paul Inventing the electric guitar there would be no Chuck Berry.
My point is things go in cycles and trends. You need the chicken before the egg.
And here’s one for all you dumb white americans out there in la la land. “Mine as well JUMP”
Truth said:
And they pirate inventions from Africans and Natives, put a white face on it and claim it as their own.
Bulanik agreed:
Indeed! Their ripping off Africans and Natives is usually more in plain view
—–
My dears, strictly speaking I don’t think this is true. There are items and processes that were invented by blacks but the origins of the items are not thought about. Unless one goes looking for black inventions you don’t find out about the origins of the items. I think the average person in The West assumes that item “x” is invented by a caucasian (yes Bulanik, I know you think it’s silly to use that word.) if they were to be asked point blank. I don’t think it is true that many inventions known to be created from non-white person are literally claimed by whites.
Am I wrong in my thinking? Please point out some inventions that were just out and out ripped off. [Inventions not culture, it's easy to make a case for whites "stealing" culture.]
@Peanut, et al
Jazz is not like singing negro spirituals. Negro spirituals are, we could say, part of black american culture. Negro spirituals have never crossed over in to the broader American society. I don’t think origination is what the post is about. Jazz is part of white american culture too. Jazz was a crossover music. Jazz was pop(ular) music back at it’s peak (1930s-1940s I would guess).
I think Jazz, to speak grossly, was approached differently by white performers en masse and black performers en masse. So, eventually the music split. Whites happy to play big band, blacks playing small groups. Economically this makes all the sense in the world. Black big bands were not going to be able to have as much success or even work out reasonable logistics given the racism of the day. [Billie Holiday could not stay in the same hotels as her white band mates.]
Small groups can experiment more than big structured bands. Thinking about this nutshell history of Jazz, it is interesting and ironic to realize that the social structures of American society encouraged Be-bop to be created <by the black musicians of Jazz. Be-bop became the main form of Jazz, it was light years ahead of big band or swing stylistically. Also Be-bop is for small group playing.
——–
Re: my second paragraph
Emphasize: I’m speaking in general terms; there were black big bands and there were white small groups. There were exceptional white musicians; I have not yet heard his work but Bix Beiderbecke (a white man) is renowned as one of the most brilliant trumpet players in Jazz.
Dave, I think those videos you are posting are r-e-a-l-l-y gay! I hope Abagond deletes them!!!!!!
@ Legion. Yes, you have a point. It is about assumption.
By “ripped off” I WAS thinking of culture.
But as far as inventions go, my feeling is that they are taken for granted as of course and naturally NOT the product of Native or African intellect.
Thus I don’t think you are “wrong” in your thinking at all.
I believe that many or most of us wouldn’t think about “who thought of this originally” and “where does this come from” whilst we are going about our daily doings! That’s the damage already done, right there…
Thinking back, I suppose I was lucky in one sense as by the time I reached the age of 8 or 9 or so, I had started to ask questions more and more from stuff I was hearing from teachers and seeing in educational books. I was breathing in white supremacist crap like everybody else. Yet, as I found out little bit by little bit, it did strike me that so much contribution was hidden if it was of non-white origin. I think what started me off was when I looked at the map of the world and realized that Egypt was in Africa! Africa! Something so fabulously glamorous and busting with genius was African. Simple. My grandparents had told me much already, but the realization only hit home after I started looking for myself.
They told me stuff like almanacs came from Mayans, that cornmeal, potatoes, tomatoes and tobacco was cultivated by the original people of the American continent (they NEVER called them Indian, because some of my family are of India in Asia, and they wanted me to be clear about who I was). They explained to me about rubber, what it was, where it came from. My grandfather was at pains to tell me that US system of government was based on the original native American model – but I didn’t really get it at the time. I recall that I had a spinning top as a toy — this toy and its invention was Amerindian! They told me that. My grandmother took huge interest in tropical botany, natural medicine, food preparation. She was a passionate and thoughtful gardener, believing that the herbs and plants possessed the secrets of health and healing. She would explain that the Amerindians had deep knowledge of the plants around them, not just for farming, but that they understood how to use them as medicine. Her own father, though a German, had practiced the ways of Amerindian medicine in the tropics, both for animals and people. More than once she explained what aspirin was and what anaesthetics were, that these powerful plant substances were the developments of American aboriginal peoples…
Later, I learned some more about the American aboriginal roots of genetic engineering, urban development planning, astronomy and so on.
http://www.newnativenation.info/tech.html
I was taught that Egypt was not “exceptional” in Africa. I recall once that my grandmother made me sit down and listen to our West African neighbours talk about the smelting of iron that had been practiced in Nigeria (Nok culture), about the way that yam had been cultivated, palm oil, mined turquoise, gold and copper — and take particular notice that all this done had been done for 1000s of years long before Europeans or Arabs stepped in!
I won’t get started on India’s inventions… like the concept of zero, or the decimal point, algebra, algorithms, the value of Pi….I remember having that explained to me a few times, but not really seeing the point of mathematics in the “real” world. LOL.
I suppose I was taught to question the hype about white people (white Americans), and was taught instead to see inventiveness as something that was essentially human to all of us and therefore the most natural thing to people of colour. It’s easy to fall asleep and forget that, and then find oneself stupid — stupidly, stupidly “surprised” by the inventions and inventiveness of Africans or aboriginal peoples all over again.
@ Legion
Linda and I had a discussion about the inventions and contributions of the aboriginal American peoples only recently:
http://abagond.wordpress.com/2012/09/13/hb-2281-arizonas-law-to-ban-ethnic-studies/#comment-145747
http://abagond.wordpress.com/2012/09/13/hb-2281-arizonas-law-to-ban-ethnic-studies/#comment-145752
What the… Most of these things were not White Americans… They sure didn’t exist 12 000 years ago. I usually understand your sense of irony and the way you present things to get your point across, but this post makes no sense whatsoever.
@ Bulanik
Yup.
@ Peanut
They did not invent jazz but it did become part of their culture. MOST of the things on this list are like that. They did not come up with streets or planting potatoes or constitutional government either, but they became part of their culture.
Ames
Because there were no words for those colours before those dates. Like before the 1700s, pink was just “light red”. Purple was once just a shade of red, as in “red” wine.
Maybe in a hundred years there will be a commonly used word for school-bus yellow, which is in between classic yellow (lemons) and classic orange (oranges). I have used “school-bus yellow” repeatedly. Also “black, dark grey, grey, light grey, white” is a completely pathetic grey scale.
The human eye can tell apart tons of different colours. So paint companies, Crayola crayons and web designers have words for many of them, but the words are not standardized and not in common use.
@ Mira
I was so intent on packing in as many things on the list as possible that I cut back on the introduction. Judging from some of the comments, apparently I cut it back too far.
In an earlier post where I wrote about how to write history like a white racist, I talked about the “Passing the Torch Doctrine”:
This post is in answer to that. Instead of running the film of white history backwards into English, Roman, Greek, Egyptian and Mesopotamian history – the Pass-the-Torch history you always see – I ran it backwards according to the history of their language: English, Proto-Germanic, Proto-Indo-European. Then I looked at when certain words entered that thread.
The language that White Americans speak is called English. But that language has been spoken in an unbroken chain that goes back at least to the 4000s BC (Proto-Indo-European). It probably goes back way further, but it is hard to know anything about it beyond 12,000 BC.
There were no White Americans in 12,000 BC or even in 1500 AD, but the culture that they came from did not fall from the sky. It has been there all along. A culture mostly of herders and farmers that goes back thousands of years. It was NOT the culture of Rome or Ancient Egypt, even though it was affected by them. Just as Igbo culture in Nigeria is NOT English or Western, even if it has been affected by those cultures.
@ dave
I said AT LEAST five. But it is possible that is as far as their language took them: five = the fingers on one hand and there are human societies that lack a word even for three. There may have been no need to count more than five rocks.
@ Legion
The very internet you are using was a black invention. The cell phone was a black invention. The elevator was a black invention…I could go on and on. But these genius men and women never get the credit or recognition for it.
Abagond,
I respect you, you know I do, but… no. Just, no.
First of all, it’s bad. I know this isn’t how you mean it, but this sort of linking to the past stuff that can’t be linked – without clear labeling that it’s sarcastic/a mind experiment – is dangerous. The stuff of this sorts is what was in the hearth of all those people who influenced Hitler, such as Kossinna. Not to mention it’s also one of the main arguments for the shit that had escalated in my part of the world.
Second of all, you can go back in time like this for as far or near as you want. You can go back to Paleolithic Eve. (Is that the point?)
Truth,
it’s easy to say that, but you didn’t provide a source or a context of how you mean your claim. When we say so and so invented the couch it is simple to check who did it because the couch (settee) is a finite object just like a can of soup or a ball point pen. When you say the internet was a black invention, I wonder if you mean the first computer to communicate with a limited network, or do you mean equations written down by a visionary who didn’t have the powerful computers needed to implement the equations…do you see what I’m getting at?
(I’m not insisting that everything needs a source, but when something is not quite clear, it is helpful.)
I looked up “cell phone inventor”, I got this guy:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Cooper_%28inventor%29
@Truth
You forgot to mention the traffic-light, combustible-engine, air-conditioners, and the cell-phone as well. Black people have created and still are creating a better way of life for all of humanity…Ditto!
Tyrone
Bulanik,
thank you for your response and that link. That is some link, a lot of information. The author should have put the sources after each entry though. This entry is, uh, salient (to say the least
):
- Well before 1492, Native Americans were commonly changing and cleaning their infants at least once a day, sometimes more often. Soiled diapering material was disposed of and replaced with fresh clean material. (Medieval European babies were diapered in swaddling cloths, which remained unchanged for months. Bathing at that time was considered “the prelude to evil”, although the monks at Cluny were required to bathe twice a year. By the 1600s the diapers of European infants were changed more frequently, but still not for several days at a time. Although the more progressive nobility sometimes bathed themselves as often as once a week, bathing infants was generally thought to be ill-advised because it was believed to “open the pores to the disease”. Until sometime in the 1800s diapers were customarily dried but not washed before re-use. By the mid-1800s, common people now often bathed their infants and themselves once a week. Diaper rash and other skin maladies connected with soiled diapers can cause pain and scarring, and develop into life-threatening conditions.)
Do we know for a fact that hygiene conditions were this primitive “in Europe” during the dark ages. I put that in quotes because I think a lot of things are not continent wide, perhaps the hygiene thing is one of them. Maybe the author sourced this in their list of sources but it will take some searching to find, because of how non user friendly that source list is. Babies get dirty in a hurry, mothers like to hug and kiss their babies. It boggles the mind that swaddling clothes doing double duty as diapers would be uncleaned for protracted periods of time. Mothers of any era/culture would want to hug and kiss fresh smelling, clean babies; at least, one would imagine so.
The Dark Ages are usually taught in our educational institutions as a time of “lost knowledge.” They are not taught, in a prominent way, as a time of great filth. When I think about the Middle Ages I usually think about it in a lost knowledge context and I often forget the hygiene aspect because I’ve never really learned just how bad the Medieval European understanding of hygiene was.
——-
Yes, I read your exchange with Linda. The inspiration and model for U.S. govt. is usually cited as Rome. I never knew about about the modelling of Native American forms of government. (Or had briefly encountered that fact as a toss away footnote and then forgotten about it over time.<—-This is why people of colour need to keep our voices alive and loud, but articulate.)
@ SW6
Phillip Emeagwali created the internet. A black man.
Henry T. Sampson created the cell phone. A black man.
SW6, may I say respectfully, that Europeans suckled at the teat of Africans/Natives with language, the alphabet, the number “0″, which gave birth to the Dewey Decimal System, medicines aka “bush tea”, geology, astronomy, architecture, farming, “barbeque” aka outside cookery, animal skins aka “winter clothes” and basically life survival skills.
Since I have learned the very difficult and life-long task of un-brainwashing myself from this prison, I’ve learned that “sources” given to us by Europeans are worthless…as is their education, vernacular and views on life itself.
I know that you and I have never seen eye to eye on many things, especially my views on whites and what they ultimately stand for, but…from one black woman to another:
Whatever the European claims is a lie.
Lies are not fact.
Lies are myths.
They make a living on pirating other people’s cultures, inventions, actions, words and basically everything that make life “life.”
Just the other day, a good friend opened my eyes to another lie. Zeus, the greek God was used as a template to draw the white Jesus. Study Greek and Roman history. You’ll find lots of answers. Dr. Afrika was correct, “Study Europeans once and you’ll never have to study them again because they don’t change their tactics. They just get more sophisticated.”
@truthbetold
People erroneously confuse commercialisation of things with inventions, e.g., Americans often say Edison invented the light bulb only because he was the first to commercialise it.
Britons credit Tim Berners-Lee with the invention of the internet because he supposedly made the first connection between a http client and a server, even though such connection was only made possible b/c of the work of Emeagwali (and others). Berners-Lee’s connection is not the internet itself, it is just a commercial means of communicating with servers.
As to Zeus being the template for white Jesus, Zeus is a copy of the African god Amun…
@ resjan
Thank you for the great response. I was trying to explain, (perhaps I should’ve been clearer…sorry) that whites pirate other people’s inventions, folklore, etc… including Jesus, for whom Zeus was a template, for their own purposes.
Dr. Afrika speaks of Amun Ra, Set, Isis, etc…and how Europeans fashioned their version of “God” after our ancestors but with a whitewashed, Nordic face. When I began to search for my roots, the real one…not the one taught in a white educational system, I was startled at how ignorant I was.
I literally had to go back to the beginning and learn the African alphabet and symbols to “catch-up” on all I’ve been lead to believe. Now, all I do is read, read, read…and I’m still ignorant!
Everything the European has, I’ve learned, is a copy of an African/Native creation.
@truthbetold
Thank you for that as well.
I think we’re all ignorant when it comes to African history, b/c none of us in the West were taught anything positive of Africa or Africans in primary school when our belief systems were being formed–with the exception of “Egypt,” which we were taught was not African.
You are absolutely right that Western civilization has its roots in Africa. The concept of the deities you mentioned are often taken for granted by most people, but they represent tens of thousands of years of astronomical and biological observations, calculations and cultural traditions–and much of Europe was under ice prior to 9,000s BC, as mentioned by Abagond.
I am not a fan of country music, at all, and avoid the country music channel at all costs/times. Imagine my surprise, one day, when accidentally stumbling on the country channel, and seeing a 2 1/2 hour documentary on country musics’, black American roots. I was shocked, as I did not know this, never heard about it.
I view the country music channel as the ‘confederate music channel’, so was shocked to learn this, and see it on the country channel.
@Legion I’ll admit most people(even my white friends) don’t dig the ledo shuffle. I hear you on that. But the vid he did delete is probably the most skilled and greatest rock song of all time Van Halen’s “jump”. If you listen to the lyrics of the song I thought there was a message that relates. Why don’t you tell me your favorite and I’ll critique you on how “Gay” it is. Point being on “stealing” culture, the point was as you go through the history of rock music it got better in my opinion, and peaked with bands like Van Halen, they weren’t sitting there worried about how Chuck Berry or Little Richard did it. They were ground breaking in their own thing. I guess you can link them to black “inventions” from black music, but my point was you can link those artists to some white innovators like Les Paul the inventor of the electric guitar. So sharing between cultures is a good thing….. It moves us forward. Not just in music but in all factors of life. We wouldn’t be where we are if it weren’t for each other. White people shouldn’t take the credit for all inventions. But instead of bridging the gap, I have heard alot of people on here saying black people invented everything as well. Aren’t they just as wrong?
Really this shouldn’t “Prove” anything. If fact I’ll bet if you asked Les Paul he wouldn’t want “white” people taking racist credit for his innovations. I don’t personally think that black or white people should personally take that sort of credit. Just because someone in their own race that they don’t even know did something innovative…….. “We” did that , or “We” are responsible for that…. B!@#$(sounds like rich) “YOU” didn’t do anything. I don’t get why people get caught up in that. Instead of keeping score on what white or black inventors did, why don’t you do something good yourself, that you ACTUALLY can be proud of.(NOW THAT’S REAL TALK)(I always hated that saying)
LOLWUT?
http://magazine.biafranigeriaworld.com/cezeilo/2003nov09.html
http://saharareporters.com/report/how-philip-emeagwali-lied-his-way-fame
From the second link:
The rocket man? Nahhh!!!!
@ Legion
I don’t believe infants were swaddled continuously. AFAIK, they were changed regularly and released from their bonds to crawl around. The swaddling might come off altogether when the child was old enough to sit up on their own. Furthermore, swaddling was not necessarily the norm in all medieval cultures. For example, Gerald of Wales remarked that Irish children were never swaddled. Also swaddling techniques vary, allowing the arms and legs to be bound but no binding over the buttocks, which was covered with another, separate material for dryness, cleaning and changing.
I once read that infants in Medieval times probably spent much of the time in the cradle, unswaddled but tied inside the cradle, allowing them to move within it but keeping them from crawling into trouble. But mothers often carried their babies about in their arms on their errands outside the home. Infants were even to be found near their parents as they laboured in the fields at harvest times, on the ground or secured by a tree.
Babies who were not swaddled were very often simply naked, or wrapped in blankets against the cold. They may have been given simple gowns or long dresses. There is little evidence for any other clothing, and since the child would quickly outgrow anything sewn especially for it, a variety of baby clothing was not an economic feasibility in poorer homes. (Legion, I can’t remember where I read this, but I might still find find it if you’re interested.)
However, I also recollect reading that a baby’s urine was considered anti-bacterial when dried and not washed away, and that the child’s filth was believed to be of no harm and would strengthen them as they grew. This part of the child’s skin was cleaned with cooled ashes or soft, dried sawdust.
@ Legion
There’s a book by Will Durant, “The History of Civilization”, in which he says something like it was Medieval etiquette to wash hands, face and teeth every morning, but not bathe, because cleanliness was associated with immorality.
That meant that although Christian authorities did not ban people from washing, they condemned attendance to public bath houses for pleasure and condemned women going to bath houses that had mixed facilities.
But, from what I know, over time, more and more restrictions appeared. Eventually, Christians were strongly discouraged from bathing naked and, overall, the church began to not approve an “excessive” indulgence in the habit of bathing. This culminated in the Medieval church authorities proclaiming that public bathing led to immorality, promiscuous sex, and diseases.
I think a common belief at one stage was that the sweat of the body kept it clean.
But cleanliness and washing was not only associated with morality.
There were also notions about water… I don’t think that clean drinking water was easy to find or safe at that time, and people found wines and other fermented drinks safer to consume than simple water. In some parts of Europe that idea prevailed that water could carry disease into the body through the pores in the skin, even causing death. They also felt that with the pores widened after a bath, this resulted in infections of the air having easier access to the body. Hence, bathing became connected with spread of diseases.
What many people would do, if they could afford it, was to rub their bodies with scented rags, and use heavy perfumes to mask their body-stench. Men wore small bags with fragrant herbs between the shirt and waistcoat, while women used fragrant powders.
Having said that, If most of the entire populace smelling rancid wasn’t enough, during Medieval times in Europe, the streets of cities tended to be coated in faeces and urine thanks to people tossing the contents of their chamber pots into the streets.
If that wasn’t enough, butchers slaughtered animals in the streets and would leave the unusable bits and blood right on the ground. I can not being to imagine how people survived the heaving stench on sun-baked summer days.
To look at London or Paris now, all cleaned up, it might not be apparent simply how grotesquely mucky they were in the Middle Ages.
I initially thought this was a valuable blog, now I see it is filled with strange afrocentrists. The guy up there claiming a black guy invented the internet and cell phone is just preposterous. You tally up the inventions from any group of people and whites will come out on top. Why that is you can speculate. To say that there is some precedent for some invention is to say very little. Nearly all cultures come from somewhere, and all innovations inspired by something. This argument would apply to Africans and natives as well, then we’re back to square one. And believe it or not, I am not a white guy.
@Bulanik
Thanks B. The chamber pot emptying onto the streets thing, was something I knew. In fact, that info is common, as you know. But I did not know just how the church was instructing people to live in terms of hygiene. I did not know how the church was generating memes (our word of course) about “bathing is evil” and “this is why.” But one can see it, right? Scarcity of water, so you have public bath houses, but then one thing could lead to the next. So, the arbiter of morality for the era has to drive it into peoples minds how evil it is to take a bath, and one lie MUST be supported by so many more.
“The sweat of the body kept it clean.” Oh wow, a people struggling to live life as the church ordains but absurdity after absurdity mounts up.
Amazing how Durant remains a gold standard, if you will, for historical research. But then, if something ain’t broke, don’t fix it! Malcolm was a fan, as I’m sure you know.
————–
…. I also recollect reading that a baby’s urine was considered anti-bacterial when dried and not washed away, and that the child’s filth was believed to be of no harm and would strengthen them as they grew. This part of the child’s skin was cleaned with cooled ashes or soft, dried sawdust.
I am aghast, what rotten conditions.
There were also notions about water… I don’t think that clean drinking water was easy to find or safe at that time, and people found wines and other fermented drinks safer to consume than simple water. In some parts of Europe that idea prevailed that water could carry disease into the body through the pores in the skin, even causing death. They also felt that with the pores widened after a bath, this resulted in infections of the air having easier access to the body. Hence, bathing became connected with spread of diseases.
Of course, there indeed would have been tangible experiences that backed up their notions about water. But because they weren’t connecting all the dots about what it means to be clean and how to be clean, their beliefs about water would have persisted and persisted. A semi well crafted story can feel like gospel truth. “We” do the same thing today with using market theories (and other modern thinking) to justify certain activities.
No need to find that reference Bulanik, thank you for taking the time on your response to me here.
@ Dave
I restored your Van Halen video now that I understand why you posted it.
@ edad
Commenters are free to say what they want. There is no party line here. Neither is there a hive mind.
While I have never been a fan of the black inventor argument, neither am I a fan of the white inventor argument. I find it overstated, propagandistic and unbalanced. Preposterous, in fact. Sure, People Who Are White have invented some important stuff. I am not going to knock that. But “whites will come out on top” is preposterous. Whites play up the stuff they invented, take credit for stuff they only improved upon and overlook tons of stuff they had nothing to do with.
Part of the point of this post is that White Americans and the culture they directly came out of invented damn near NOTHING till the 1800s. But they write their history books in a way where they HIJACK Roman, Greek, Egyptian and Middle Eastern achievements as if it were a part of THEIR history, something they take credit for all the time. When the Romans and all them were doing their stuff, the great and wonderful Anglo-Saxons were a pack of barbarians. They had NOTHING to do with the glories of the civilizations to the south – other than to help destroy them.
^There’s a comment, that I think you made to JT, where you said about the same thing, though you were cross at the time. I’ve been hoping to stumble on it again but never have, can you link it?
@ Legion
I do not remember that.
@ Mira
I rewrote the intro to make it a little clearer what the post is about.
From what I understand I am making the opposite point that the Germans made. They saw themselves as the racially pure Aryans. I see the Aryans (Proto-Indo-Europeans) as a) a culture, not a race and b) not particularly amazing. They were herders and farmers and nothing great till they came in contact with southern civilizations that THEY did not found but merely joined and contributed to.
Can you elaborate?
I agree with that, though it was not a main point.
Dave, you should have stuck with just moon landings, most of the instruments in the jazz world were invented for the European classical orchestra with some having origins in other places before that…it is how these incredible black American jazz musicians put their techniques and culture to these new instruments…like how they played the up right bass compared to the orchestras…nothing like that had been seen before…it was just pizzacato
Of course there are other elements on top of jazz and funk and rock, but they are a slave to the African groove ( ironicly).All our popular American music and dance owes a tremendous debt to black Americans….too bad for the dolty white people who dont want to get that or accept it…its just plain truth
@ Legion
LOL! I doubt if you or anyone watched the documentary I posted, but what it showed was a world that we cannot imagine right now, conditions so unclean as to be vomit-inducing.
It was the same filth-infested Europe that white Americans do not take credit for so gladly and quickly as they do the credit for the inventions created by the very same European ancestors living in foul slime and muck.
Do you have an image of me being all aghast?
It’s a word that just doesn’t get used anymore, I’m sure it’s gonna die out, but really, I was ‘aghast.’ 
You are right about how they want to leave some things out.
But, I did watch your vid, after I posted my comment. The thing is an hour long, so I thought, “let me watch 10mins, and the rest later.” But this thing was an ever escalating account of unreal hygiene abomination. My brain started to fictionalize it, like I was watching a made up story. I thought, when we get to the plague London is finished, it will be wiped out. But of course we know that didn’t happen.
It’s good to get some factual historical perspective, though on the lighter side, I too thought this was funny:
http://abagond.wordpress.com/2012/09/04/europe-is-a-continent/#comment-144420
@ Legion….So you had a trip to Yucksville, then?
Yes, I did have an image of you being all aghast :-0 When I watched the documentary, there were times I had to look away and swallow hard to keep going.
Medieval Britons simply didn’t have indoor plumbing, so bathing was hard work. In fact this was so up to about the 1960s and 70s in the British Isles and Ireland. Having a bath meant fetching buckets of water from a well or fountain, heating them up over a fire, then filling and emptying the tub by hand. But washing did occur, soap was made and used, so were toothpicks, mouthwashes and marshmallows (mallow from the marshes) used for teeth cleaning. Medieval towns had wells for water, and sometimes public fountains which were kept running with spring water from conduits or on carts.
Latrines, both for public and private use, were often placed alongside or even spanning streams/rivers. The practice of building houses and businesses on bridges was motivated in part by the easy disposal of sewage and other garbage provided by the river flowing below them.
Public toilets were also a common feature of medieval cities. In a book by P. B. Newman about life in the Middle Ages, the author says that in cities which processed sheep fleeces into wool cloth, the public toilets served an additional function, the collection of urine for commercial use! Urine was collected and sold to wool processors, who used the urine to remove oil from the wool, an essential step in turning wool into good quality cloth.
Continental Europe had comparable, or even worse, practices.
Parisian policy was also “throw everything in the streets”: household waste, urine, feces and even fetuses.
There came a time in 16th century France, when property owners were ordered to build cesspits, for the collection of human sewage, into each new dwelling. Those who would not go along with had their houses confiscated, and rents were collected to pay for the cesspits. Most of these cesspits were built to leak so as to be emptied less frequently — water tightness was not mandated until the 19th century. Cesspools remained the most common method of dealing with human sewage until the late 19th century and cut down on the human sewage found on the street. Some of these residential cesspits looked like this, when tidy at least: http://www.translucency.com/frede/parisproject/Cesspool5RueFiguier.jpeg
But for most city dwellers, I don’t know if they had the luxury of even a leaking cesspool. The industrial revolution in France attracted workers to urban centres. And that created large, overcrowded slums. The poor lived in furnished buildings, which were frequently subdivided, again and again. New floors were sometimes added, creating six-foot ceilings. Stairs were often nothing more than ladders. Water was only available in the streets, and access to a cesspit or cesspool, was not that common..
Someone once told me in 17th century France there was an ordinance that stated feces must be separated from other wastes at the dump, in order to begin manufacturing poudrette or human guano — a greasy, powdery, flammable substance made by open-air fermentation of human sewage. Valued as a fertilizer, it was toxic to breathe and incredibly foul smelling for miles around.
All this foul humidity was not only dangerous to human health, but politically dangerous as well, because the the sewers of France were thought of unchecked places that harboured enemies of the state. In fact, I believe that the earliest research done on sewers was usually linked to the research of prostitutes and criminals. As part of the early rationalization of urban spaces! All this whilst TB and cholera, etc., was rife with streets piled high with excrement in the middle. The way corpses were disposed of from the streets as late as the 1860s: http://www.translucency.com/frede/parisproject/NadarCataMan.jpeg
Public sanitation in France was opposed in by the middle and upper classes who did not want to pay for it. The free market opposed sanitation. The rich opposed it. The most civilized and educated opposed it. It was only when bureaucracy was imposed on the population that the clean-up began.
The last sewer was installed in France in the 1950s.
@ B.R. I agree with you there. I think the white contributions are assumed by some white people. Which is why some of the “Well Meaning” whites put so much emphasis on the black contributors. Actually they may be doing so because they secretly look down on blacks. So it become novelty to find out how great blacks are(as all humans) “Chuck Berry was the original Innovator of the electric guitar” on some documentary I saw some time ago. I would reference it but I don’t remember what it’s called. I found out he borrowed alot from Les Paul. That was my point. Obviously Chuck influenced like every guitarist after him for like 20 years. Even though they were all playing (at least the good ones) Les Paul’s Gibson. Point being all music is shared and even though black artists were huge contributors, just don’t give them all the credit.
That’s some insight, dave.
Overall, the song ‘Jump’ sucks deeply in my opinion (no offense intended), but the electric guitar work, as featured in it, is outstanding nonetheless.
To that end, rock guitarist (and part Indonesian) Eddie van Halen certainly is a credit to the white race…as is, I suppose, Slash, the half Black guitarist from Guns N’Roses. Jimi Hendrix was also part white, I hear….
@Dave
I’ll admit most people(even my white friends) don’t dig the ledo shuffle. I hear you on that. But the vid he did delete is probably the most skilled and greatest rock song of all time Van Halen’s “jump”. If you listen to the lyrics of the song I thought there was a message that relates. Why don’t you tell me your favorite and I’ll critique you on how “Gay” it is.
For me the notion of a “white culture” is not something I take too seriously. I grew up listening to a lot of stuff and I am English; I had to endure stupid North Americans telling me that I “act white” when I moved away from England. I once had a black man stop me in a parking lot to scold me about the “white music” coming out of my car speakers. *eyeball roll* He was really concerned for my welfare, lol. Anyway, that’s a whole other story.
Point being on “stealing” culture…
It should be clear to you from my comments here that I think cultures should be open to all, I have the same position on the Fake Indians thread. I am probably clearer about it on the Fake Indians thread.
Very well Dave, here are my submissions, some songs that are favorites for me.
The Sound of Music-Joy Division
(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gZcm7iKTVR8)
Carly-(rockin’ it in that dress mmm…)
(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ux7HgO9QhAc)
Kate-Experiment IV
(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NTUcoR8_pyE)
These songs aren’t “white” for me; it’s a ridiculous notion. But I know they would have driven that man from the parking lot nuts.
@Fiamma…….. let’s not forget Eddie’s mom was half Indonesian. But I guess 75% Dutch might qualify as white. I don’t know the rules there. I think his dad was the original musician in the family though. But I think Alex Van Halen on drums makes the band good as they are with not the credit as Eddie his brother get. However, there would not be a Kirk Hammett (Metallica) if there was no Eddie Van Halen……… and you can name many other guitarists in the Metal genre even though Van Halen doesn’t qualify as metal. So if he was black would he play the Chuck Berry or the Hendrix role as the main innovator of metal? Or I’ll give you one that you may like. If hard rock music was more popular in the black community would you have had a guitarist that blew them all out of the water? maybe so.
a song that you will rarely see cover bands do. Because of the difficulty of the guitar and drums.
@bulanik:
Finns were considered to be extremely filthy by central europeans since they lived in so called smoke huts, small log houses which were warmed by an open fire plcae covered with stones. It was actually an mix between a log hut and smoke sauna. Yes, every one was getting the black soot on them BUT the heat of the system killed off parasites ;D During the 30 year war finnish soldiers were considered to be both extremely dirty and witches since it was their habbit to run naked around the woods and bathe in rivers and ponds etc. like the wild animals did. Of course we understand that they went for swimming and propably washed themselves as much as possible, but they did it like animals in the wild, and I bet they had they own saunas too, which explains the Nudist witch conventions in the eyes of the more civilized central european commentators.
As for the Paris and France, the whole parfume industry, yes the whole of it, was created to dent the stench of Paris and the royal court. In magnificent palace of Versailles there were no lavatories at all. There were servants who carried around buckets into wich the noble people of the court did the deeds, both numer one and two, also during the fabulous royal dances. One of the Sun kings personal doctors was executed when he got tired for the health issues of the women at court. He called them all to the great dance hall of Versailles and showed them a tub full of hot water and a soap and said: this is the answer for the health problems of the ladies of the royal court. Off with his head.
The ladies suffered from wet rot in their scalps under their huge wigs, their nails were falling off because there was puss under them, they had lices and such, and the stench under their skirts was tremendous.
@ sam, man, why you treat me like this — I was just about to munch into my lunch — and this:
I should have stopped reading at…. “… servants who carried around buckets into wich the noble people of the court did the deeds, both numer one and two, also during the fabulous royal dances…
Complete loss of appetite.
@bulanik:
Sorry, now you can not watch The Three musketeers ever the same way.