by Alyssa Anderson
This short book contains a novel list of hazards to living in the ancient world including:
Medieval Europe, Victorian Era Britain, Ancient Rome, Ancient Greece, Ancient Egypt, The Mayans, The Vikings and Pre History.
People often complain about the present state of the world. When you consider how bad people have had it throughout ancient history, it becomes clear that todays world isn't such a bad place after all.
Examples from the book:
* Ancient Rome is well known for it's glorious public baths, however these baths lacked chlorine or disinfectant and sick people - suffering from diseases such as typhoid fever and malaria, were typically ordered by their physicians to bathe in the same baths for their claimed healing properties. Consequently these baths would have sometimes been little more than cesspits for the spreading of diseases.
* The Mayans thought that they needed to make a sacrifice every day in order for the sun to rise. Human sacrifice would sometimes take place when a person was held down, then had their chest cut open with the beating heart then offered to the gods. Unfortunately for the victims, the theory of the need for sacrifice was so trusted that they never bothered to not make the sacrifice to see if the sun would come up anyway.
The Mayans would also practice self bloodletting as sacrifice, though not to the point of death. In this sense they could be considered the Emos of the ancient era.
* The Vikings terrorised and invaded large swathes of North Western Europe, especially Britain and Ireland, from around 800AD for the next 200 years. Furthermore, they took many British as slaves. Slaves were not recognized in the law, they were treated like animals and had no rights.
The Vikings seem to have made two major errors. Firstly, they kept invading the cold parts of Europe. There was no need for more cold land, as Scandinavia was sparsely populated and the Vikings already had enough cold land for themselves. They should have gone to Spain and the French Riviera instead where they could kick their feet up in the sun, but because of where they chose to invade, they had to make do with Irish beaches which, although possibly preferable to Swedish beaches, are not exactly ideal.
In alignment with their cold land settlement policy, the Vikings furthermore settled Iceland and Newfoundland, Canada. They were in fact the first Europeans to settle in North America. Why they would have chosen to settle places which were even more inhospitable than Scandinavia, when they weren't exactly running out of room at home, is not obvious.
Their other major error was that they took many British people as slaves. Of all the people in Europe to enslave, the British were probably the most likely to whinge, and it is not clear that the benefit of free labour would have outweighed the annoyance of whingeing, all day every day.
Warning: Contains adult themes.
The Hazards of Life in Ancient Civilizations - Kindle Non-Fiction
Reviewed by Duh
on
11:00 PM
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Reviewed by Duh
on
11:00 PM
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