Medieval Underwear
Tell the truth - you always wondered what medieval underwear was like, didn't you? Just like you wondered what a Scotsman wore under his kilt, until you saw "Braveheart." And I used to think that the increased use of underwear in the late Middle Ages - early Modern period improved public health and brought down the death rate.
But it seems that medieval underwear was really responsible for the rise in literacy, which was higher in the Middle Ages than watching endless reruns of "Monty Python and the Holy Grail" would have led one to believe.
Read about it here.
Labels: humor, medieval history
posted by Clemens @ 11:46 AM
3 comments
3 Comments:
Hmm -- interesting. Parchment/vellum was certainly VERY expensive, and he trade in papyrus had dried up centuries earlier. But the technology for movable type was imported to Europe from China -- I'd like to know if the technology to make paper from plant fibers was also an import. The source of the plant fibers doesn't seem to be to be terribly relevant.
Go figure!
Supposedly when the Arabs defeated the Chinese army at the Talas River in Central Asia in 751 they captured Chinese papermakers, whom I suppose were there to make all the paper needed for all the paper work a Chinese army created. Anyway, they were sent back to Baghdad, the techniqe spread to Sicily, and...
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