Would you have survived in the middle ages?

http://www.shamusyoung.com/twentysidedtale/?p=1247

by soundsop • 17 years ago

28 34 17 years ago

zackattack2• 17 years ago

This was my favorite kottke.org post from last year,

"I wanted to ask for survival tips in case I am unexpectedly transported to a random location in Europe (say for instance current France/Benelux/Germany) in the year 1000 AD (plus or minus 200 years). I assume that such transportation would leave me with what I am wearing, what I know, and nothing else. Any advice would help."

http://kottke.org/08/06/survival-tips-for-the-middle-ages

Jason even opened it up for comments.

rms2• 17 years ago

Great post. It was also discussed here. http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=418516

anthropocentric• 17 years ago

In reading the Kottke thread for about 30 mins (it rules), I just had this thought: What if Michaelangelo (or some other prolific inventors) weren't that special. What if they were simply average Joe's like you and me that were transported back in time. They used their basic knowledge of stuff around them to "invent" things.

piramida2• 17 years ago

assuming that could be true, we get the paradox of "who actually did invent this things, then?" :)

rms2• 17 years ago

Like this guy? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avicenna

zackattack2• 17 years ago

Honestly, besides the natural teleological questions this prompts, if I were transported back to the middle ages there's not all that much I'm sure I could invent. For example, I have no idea how a computer is actually built, from the ground-up. Maybe I could have a few acute scientific observations ("try penicillin!"; "use tungsten for your light bulb!", "b-b-boil that milk!") and I could probably derive Calculus. But... that's about it. The vast majority of human knowledge is culturally transmitted; few humans have cumulative "clones" of the current "repository" of human knowledge stored in their memory.

hillel• 17 years ago

I recorded a song based on the kottke post and a similar thread over on marginalrevolution.com.

http://www.sugarfix.net/2008/06/23/song-1000-ad/

TheSOB88• 17 years ago

Brings up the point of our continued evolution towards weaker bodies - the more cures we have for asthma, children's diabetes, etc., the more the people that have those ailments reproduce, and the more people there are with those ailments.

barrkel• 17 years ago

And the contrary point: we are likely to find fixes for genetic diseases, halting the deterioration there.

piramida2• 17 years ago

And another point - how much would remain of an original nature-made human after that. So far, every optimization/fix we made to our body's protective system led to a more serious illness that would avoid the invented cure. I'm afraid fixes on gene level would open the door to the new kind of threat, it's a race we can't win.

BTW, site shows http 403.

Bjoern• 17 years ago

Actually humanity is not really part anymore of the "survival of the fittest" or evolutionary cycle. We are actively changing ourselves and starting, in laboratories at least, to modify genetics. Won't take long before parents can "modify" their children to be smarter, healthier, etc.

habs• 17 years ago

I disagree. We are no more not part of the evolutionary cycle than we are not part of planetary climate change. (Pardon the double negative).

Evolution is no more than genetic drift within a population through reproduction and variation shaped by selective pressure. What you describe as gene therapy could be seen as a selective pressure. But there are many selective pressures on large populations of humans and these selective pressure vary from one set to another. I do agree that the dynamics of selective pressures has changed for humans thanks to modern medicine. But I contest it still applies.

xiaoma• 17 years ago

Natural selection may not do much anymore, but sexual selection is alive and well.

lunchbox• 17 years ago

I wouldn't worry too much about this. Scientific/technological progress is one of the fastest things out there; evolution is one of the slowest. In other words, our ability to treat disease is greatly outstripping any theoretical effects of these treatments on human evolution.

gregwebs5• 17 years ago

There is an assuption here that the only infulential factor on health is genes. Environment could play an even stronger role. A person in the middle ages wouldn't be surrounded by a toxic environment and be consuming the chemical-laden nutrient deprived food that is standard fare today.

rjprins• 17 years ago

Speak for yourself, the nutrient rich food and especially the variety I eat each day was not available in the middle ages. Remember that people in the those times where much shorter (as proved by the shorter beds), this is the result of malnutrion.

Toxicity is likely to be higher then, open or no sewage systems, very low hygiene (people didn't bathe, lots of animals) and remember they used woodstoves in side the house!

eru2• 17 years ago

The woodstoves were actually somewhat good for health as the smoke killed the bugs. Obviously the smoke also damaged the lungs and eyes.

gregwebs5• 17 years ago

sewage systems are necessary for sanitation in cities. Most people were living in the country side. "hygiene" is largely a social aspect that doesn't effect health much. Some researchers claim people did not lose height in the Middle Ages at all. Variety of food is not that important- we just need to get all the required nutrients in the foods we eat. Great to hear you are able to go against the modern trends and eat nutrient rich food.

ZeroGravitas• 17 years ago

I've just finished reading a history of medicine that claims that medicine's impact on prolonging life is miniscule, maybe 2% of the increase in live expectancy.

The biggest impact is childhood (and prenatal) nutrition and basic sanitation. So if you did get sent back to the middle ages, the diseases would be much less likely to kill you as you are generally much more robust as a result of your late 20th century upbringing, and you'd be less likely to get them as you would understand how they spread e.g. avoiding drinking water with human excrement in it. And of you course you didn't die in childbirth or shortly after, by conveniently being in a different century, which will put you above average in life span too.

And the big message from the book: avoid the doctors. They would actively be weakening you via bleeding, laxatives and emetics, right up until about the 1920s.

jacobolus3• 17 years ago

> A person in the middle ages wouldn't be surrounded by a toxic environment

Are you serious? You don't think living in a tiny room with 10 family members and all kinds of animals (along with all of the lice, fleas, diseases, etc. that go along), with a wood fire filling the whole place with eye-stinging, lung-choking smoke, was a "toxic environment"? You'd be eating mostly grains, with very occasionally some meat, and if it spoiled you'd still figure out some way to eat it, because otherwise you'd be going hungry altogether (and that would happen anyway, in poor harvest years). The water would be whatever you had nearby, probably infected with all kinds of pathogens from the excrement that would inevitably wind up there. You'd maybe have a sweat bath or sponge bath once every week or two if you were lucky, using the same water for the whole family. You certainly wouldn't have more than a few changes of clothes, which you'd wear for days or weeks at a time.

I suggest you spend some time with rural peasants in a developing country before arguing about toxic environments or nutrient-deprived food.

gregwebs5• 17 years ago

I guess the difference here is that you are assuming they are drinking excrement filled water, where I was thinking they are drinking fresh water. There is probably a large difference between those that began to live in more crowded cities and those that were still in more pristine country side. It is not clear cut whether people were smaller in the middle ages. http://researchnews.osu.edu/archive/medimen.htm Bathing or changing clothes is really a social aspect that is not that important for health.

patrickg-zill• 17 years ago

I would like to point out that they used lead for drinking vessels sometimes...

parenthesis• 17 years ago

Lead has been used in drinking water pipes much more recently than the middle ages: http://eh.net/bookreviews/library/1233 .

mahmud• 17 years ago

I am from Somalia: In 1991 - 1992 I witnessed exactly that, a lapse into a dark, and long forgotten period of pure human savagery.

Would you have survived in the middle ages?

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