“Authors can’t use it in fantasy fiction, eh? We’ll see about that…”
–Terry Pratchett, probably
Try to implement anything but a conservative’s sixth grade education level of medieval or Victorian times and you will butt into this. all. the. time.
There was a literaly fad in the 1890′s for nipple rings for all genders(and NO, it was NOT under the mistaken belief that it would help breastfeeding–there’s LOTS of doctors’ writing at the time telling people to STOP and that they thought it would ruin the breast’s ability to breastfeed well, etc). It was straight up because the Victorians were freaks, okay Imagine trying to make a Victorian character with nipple rings. IMAGINE THE ACCUSATIONS OF GROSS HISTORICAL INACCURACY
people just really, REALLY have entrenched ideas of what people in the past were like
tell them the vikings were clean, had a complex democratic legal system, respected women, had freeform rap battles, and had child support payments? theyd call you a liar
tell them that chopsticks became popular in china during the bronze age because street food vendors were all the rage and they wanted to have disposable eating utensils? theyll say youre making that up
tell them native americans had a trade network stretching from canada to peru and built sacred mounds bigger then the pyramids of giza? you are some SJW twisting facts
ancient egypt had circular saws, debt cards, and eye surgery? are you high?
our misconception of medieval peasants being illiterate and living in poverty in one room mud huts being their own creation as part of a century long tax aversion scam? you stole that from the game of thrones reject bin
iron age india had stone telescopes, air conditioning, and the number 0 along with all ‘arabic’ numbers including algebra and calculus? i understand some of those words.
romans had accurate maps detailing vacation travel times along with a star rating for hotels along the way, fast food restaurants, swiss army knives, black soldiers in brittany, traded with china, and that soldiers wrote thank-you notes when their parents sent them underwear in the mail? but they thought the earth was flat!
ancient bronze age mesopotamia had pedantic complaints sent to merchants about crappy goods, comedic performances, and transgender/nobinary representation? what are you smoking?
“Most mass murderers do not go from zero to 60. Rodger made escalating assaults on women (splashing coffee on them, attempting to shove them off a ledge) before his killing spree. Both Cho and Justin-Jinich’s murderer harassed women before they killed anyone. When such acts go unnoticed and unpunished — because we expect men to harass women, and it’s not outrageous or even noteworthy when they do — they can become stepping-stones to more conspicuous and less socially acceptable acts of violence.”
Interesting to note that while a history of animal cruelty is widely accepted to be a link with becoming a serial killer, the link between cruelty towards women and killing women is still up for debate. If a guy abuses a cat and then shoots women we say “we should have seen it coming that guy was nuts”, but if abuses women and then shoots women we say “we had no way of seeing it coming that guy was a perfectly polite, kind and wonderful human”.
oxford was built and operational as a college before the rise of the mayans and cleopatra lived in a time nearer to pizza hut’s invention than to the pyramids being built
I need a noncomprehensive history book that covers Known World History in time periods, like “in this century, all this shit was happening concurrently” and not just all spread out so I have to piece it together like some unpaid uneducated scholar
Mongols were fighting Samurai in Japan and Knights in Europe at the same time.
Star Wars a New Hope came out the same year as the last execution in France by Guillotine.
Abraham Lincoln and Edgar Allen Poe were friends in their early 20′s.
When the Great Pyramids were being built there were areas that still had Woolly Mammoths roaming.
Harvard University didn’t teach calculus in its first few years after being established because calculus wasn’t invented yet.
No but the history behind this picture is really interesting
The reason that everyone always looked miserable in old photos wasn’t that they took too long to take. Once photography became widespread it took only seconds to take a picture.
It was because getting your photo taken was treated the same as getting your portrait painted. A very serious occasion meant so thst your descendants would know that ypu existed and what you looked like.
But one time some British dudes went to china to go on an anthropological expedition, and they met some rural Chinese farmers and decided to take their pictures. Now, these people weren’t exposed to the weird culture of the time around getting your photo taken, so this guy just flashed a big grin during the photo because he was told to strike a pose and that’s the pose he wanted to strike.
Onfim was an ordinary boy who lived in Novgorod, in Russia, during the 13th century. As was common practice at the time, he wrote letters and drew pictures on birch bark with a sharp stylus.
Accidentally, Onfim created fascinating archaeological data which was discovered centuries after he lived. This unintentional time capsule has provided a unique insight into life in Medieval Novgorod.
Onfim was a six or seven-year-old boy who preserved his personal messages, IOUs, love letters, shopping lists, syllables, notes, and homework in the clay soil of Novgorod. He also kept his drawings which depicted everyday experiences such as fights between him and his teacher.
Onfim’s notes are valuable because of their childish honesty which describes the life in Medieval times impartially and can be studied as social history. Most records of the past are the writings of politicians, theologians, and historians, but children’s preserved work tells more about the life of “actual” people.
The collection consists of seventeen birch bark items of which twelve are illustrations with text, and the remaining five contain only text. Scholars have studied the amusing collection and analyzed Onfim’s work.
In one of them, he had illustrated a knight on a horse, stabbing someone on the ground with a lance and it was concluded that Onfim drew himself as a knight.
Most of the preserved work is part of his homework – he had practiced the alphabet and had written psalms including phrases such as “Lord, help your servant Onfim” and fragments from Psalms 6:2 and 27:3. Most of his work contains citations from the Book of Psalms.
The boy left drawings of knights, horses, arrows, and slain enemies, and apparently, he liked to illustrate people more than anything else.
On one of the drawings he had illustrated himself, his mother, and father, while on another one he had drawn a portrait of himself as a fantastic animal. There is also one of the children playing around a tree, while one of them is hidden behind the tree.
There are notes on the illustrations, one saying “I am a beast” and another “Greetings from Onfim to Danila.” He had also illustrated his father and written “This is my Dad! He is a warrior. When I grow up, I want to be a warrior just like him!” We hope that he did and that he was a happy knight when he grew up.
isn’t captain hook and his crew suppose to be a lost boys who escaped and that’s why he’s trying to kill peter pan
…what the actual fuck
I NEVER TRUSTED PETER PAN
nah everything in Peter Pan was fucked up.
Tinkerbell and her fairy buddies were having an orgy when they found baby Peter. Tinks also extremely jealous, tricking one of the Lost Boys into shooting Wendy in the fucking chest.
Peter’s also crazy omnipotent. Like, he “make believes” he’s a doctor, and heals Wendy. When he’s hungry, he pretends to eat imaginary food and his stomach actually gets fuller.
He’s also a dick. He would teach children how to fly but never how to stop, so they’d fly for months on straight without rest or break, and they couldn’t sleep either or they’d stop flying. And when one of Wendy’s brothers actually fell asleep and plummeted into the ocean, Peter laughed his ass off. He only saved him when Wendy begged him too.
okay but that’s the point of Peter Pan. It’s not supposed to glorify never growing up, it’s supposed to show kids why growing up is not only good, but necessary otherwise they’d end up as fucked up as Peter. He never matured, never learned right from wrong, he never listened to his parents because – according to Peter – he ran away as an infant.It’s a tale to teach children that listening to their parents and growing up is good. As far as Tinker Bell goes, if you actually read Peter Pan you would know that fairies only feel one emotion at a time and they feel that emotion very strongly so the orgy? lust. Trying to kill Wendy? Jealousy. She embodies the seven deadly sins and what happens if you let your emotions get the best of you. (And as far as the new fairies series of films making her nicer it’s because you only see the jealous side of her in Peter Pan and you see other sides of her in the series because those movies are about her). Rant over, you can go back to your regularly scheduled blogging now.
So if Peter Pan shows up in your window. Stab him in the fucking chest kids. You have school tomorrow
Reblogging because I believe this will be important to the Once Upon a Time fandom tomorrow.
It’s more complicated than that. Peter is kind of a tragic hero. He chooses not to grow up, he knows he is incomplete.
I mean, he cut off Hook’s hand because he thought it was a game. He clearly doesn’t know right from wrong. He also only knows the unconditional love of a mother to a child, which is why he thinks everyone wants to be his mother. He also switches sides in a fight just for fun, kill pirates for fun, and “thins” out the Lost Boys when they can’t fit in the tree anymore.
But, like, it wasn’t a cautionary tale to tell you to listen to your parents, it’s a story about death and youth. Why can’t Peter grow up? One of the popular theories is that it’s because he’s dead. J.M. Barrie’s older brother died when Barrie was little and he dressed up in his brother’s clothes to please his mom. His mom – who was always distant, whose love Barrie craved like Peter craves a mom – started crying and said something like “At least my baby will never grow up” and that idea stuck with Barrie forever. Then, as an adult, it’s believed he never slept with his wife because Barrie was just a kid. He was Peter Pan. He was too innocent for that. He befriended the Llewelyn-Davies boys and based Peter Pan off of them and their games. (Fun fact: The boy Peter Pan was named after, Peter Llewelyn-Davies, threw himself under a train). There was also a bunch of stuff about Barrie being in love with The Llewlyn-Davies boys’ mother, but that’s not important here.
People think Peter’s dead because he literally cannot return home. He tried and the window was barred and his parents had replaced him with another baby. Why? Probably because they had lost Peter to the flu. Why does Peter come in through the window? Because of the joke “I once had a bird names Enza. I opened up the window and ‘influenza’.” Because lots of babies died back then form the flu. The Lost Boys are children who fell out of their prams. Odds are babies could not survive falling out of their prams. Peter is liked the pied piper ferrying the souls of young children to the neverland/afterlife. Barrie believed that all children were “gay and heartless” but he didn’t think that was a bad thing.
Also, Hook and his crew are not old lost boys trying to kill Peter. Hook was once a British gentlemen (hinted at to be associated with Charles II and attended Elton) and he is afraid of growing old. His biggest fear is growing old and dying – that is why his nemesis is the embodiment of eternal youth. That is why the crocodile that chases him swallowed a clock and ticks. That is why when Peter finally decided “It’s Hook of me this time” the crocodile has stopped ticking and Peter started (he’s trying to trick them into thinking he’s the croc). At that moment – Peter is time and time has ran out for Hook.
Also, it’s not so much that Peter is omnipotent. All kids basically are in the Neverland. Like, it states that the island looks different to every kid because it’s the land of their dreams and stuff. Also, the island legit freezes when Peter leaves and thaws when he comes back. He’s been there so long he’s not human anymore – but fey. (keep in mind being fey isn’t good, just chaotic neutral). Peter even secretes pixie dust now. The island is so fine tuned with him because he’s one of the only people that stay, that it caters to him. Most likely any child that stayed as long as he did would become omnipotent to an extent.
As for Tinker Bell, the above stated is true. Fairies are so tiny they can only have one emotion at a time – “Tink wasn’t all bad” – and they also have really short lifespans so, like, Tinker Bell isn’t even that important to Peter Pan. He forgets all about her and Hook by the time Wendy is grown up.And the orgies thing is because in the legends fey are known for their revelries.
And it wasn’t so much that Peter was a dick, he just doesn’t know when to stop. He’s a child. He doesn’t know right from wrong. He doesn’t know when to stop playing -cutting Hooks hand off was a game to him. He also has the memory of a child, so odds are he just forgot to teach kids how to stop flying or how to imagine food, etc. He is just carefree, like all children. Everything is a game to him, because he never learned anything else.
But like, no, Peter Pan is not a cautionary tale. Barrie loved his character and the story and brought up a lot of good things in it. He wrote Peter as an exaggeration of a cocky overconfident boy, but, like, Peter wasn’t afraid of death. It says “he felt scared, yet he felt only one shudder run through him when any other person would have felt scared up until death. With his blithe attitude towards death, he says, “To die will be an awfully big adventure”.” and with that Barrie is showing us both a naivety and bravery we possess as children but lose as adults and is basically telling us that we shouldn’t let that go. Like, the point is growing up is inevitable but you don’t have to lose everything.
And so yeah….I’m really passionate about Peter Pan.
Humans are a communal species that have banded together and cared for their sick, disabled, and elderly since before we were ever modern man. Resources were shared even as skills specialized.
Capitalism isn’t natural. A community should not have members dying of starvation or exposure while there is an abundance of resources. That isn’t how it works. That isn’t how it’s supposed to work.
ok so my roommates are anthropology students and their favorite example for debunking the ‘survival of the fittest’ bs is shanidar 1. (x, x, x)
shanidar 1 is a neanderthal who, at a pretty young age, was hit in the head hard enough to blind him. this also led to that side of his brain shutting down and withering his right arm, and possibly crippling his entire right side. not only that but his skeleton also shows that at some point, he broke a bone in his foot and, in addition to the other factors, resulted in a noticeable limp. there are some sources which say he likely had degenerative diseases. (arthritis was really common in neanderthals)
going off of widespread ideas of “”primitive”” (no longer the word used in anthropology/academia to describe early-modern humans) societies, shanidar probably died really young, deliberately abandoned or killed. i mean, he was severely crippled, blind, etc., he couldn’t contribute anything, he would have been a “”burden to society””, right?
except he lived to be between 40 and 50 years old. (about ~80 in human years)
this means that his social group had to have taken care of him for a minimum of two or three decades without his ‘contributing’ anything significant to the group. this discovery (and Shanidar III’s) was huge because it basically proves that early humans had a concept of hospice. early modern humans cared for the sick and the elderly, greatly extending their lifespan, simply because they cared.
tl;dr: the concept of someone needing to be ‘’useful’’ or ‘’’productive’’’ in society in order to be valued and cared for is a very modern concept and our quasi-predecessors would be ashamed
Also, Shanidar I was buried with flowers. They cared about him after he was dead, too.
What’s really wild is that the native people literally told the Europeans “they walked” when asked how the statues were moved. The Europeans were like “lol these backwards heathens and their fairy tales guess it’s gonna always be a mystery!”
Maori told Europeans that kiore were native rats and no one believed them until DNA tests proved it
Roopkund Lake AKA “Skeleton Lake” in the Himalayas in India is eerie because it was discovered with hundreds of skeletal remains and for the life of them researchers couldn’t figure out what it was that killed them. For decades the “mystery” went unsolved.
Until they finally payed closer attention to local songs and legend that all essentially said “Yah the Goddess Nanda Devi got mad and sent huge heave stones down to kill them”. That was consistent with huge contusions found all on their neck and shoulders and the weather patterns of the area, which are prone to huge & inevitably deadly goddamn hailstones. https://www.facebook.com/atlasobscura/videos/10154065247212728/
Literally these legends were past down for over a thousand years and it still took researched 50 to “figure out” the “mystery”. 🙄
Adding to this, the Inuit communities in Nunavut KNEW where both the wrecks of the HMS Erebus and HMS Terror were literally the entire time but Europeans/white people didn’t even bother consulting them about either ship until like…last year.
“Inuit traditional knowledge was critical to the discovery of both ships, she pointed out, offering the Canadian government a powerful demonstration of what can be achieved when Inuit voices are included in the process.
In contrast, the tragic fate of the 129 men on the Franklin expedition hints at the high cost of marginalising those who best know the area and its history.
“If Inuit had been consulted 200 years ago and asked for their traditional knowledge – this is our backyard – those two wrecks would have been found, lives would have been saved. I’m confident of that,” she said. “But they believed their civilization was superior and that was their undoing.”
“Oh yeah, I heard a lot of stories about Terror, the ships, but I guess Parks Canada don’t listen to people,” Kogvik said. “They just ignore Inuit stories about the Terror ship.”
Schimnowski said the crew had also heard stories about people on the land seeing the silhouette of a masted ship at sunset.
“The community knew about this for many, many years. It’s hard for people to stop and actually listen … especially people from the South.”
Indigenous Australians have had stories about giant kangaroos and wombats for thousands of years, and European settlers just kinda assumed they were myths. Cut to more recently when evidence of megafauna was discovered, giant versions of Australian animals that died out 41 000 years ago.
Similarly, scientists have been stumped about how native Palm trees got to a valley in the middle of Australia, and it wasn’t until a few years ago that someone did DNA testing and concluded that seeds had been carried there from the north around 30 000 years ago… aaand someone pointed out that Indigenous people have had stories about gods from the north carrying the seeds to a valley in the central desert.
it’s literally the oldest accurate oral history of the world.
Now consider this: most people consider the start of recorded history to be with the Sumerians and the Early Dynastic period of the Egyptians. So around 3500 BCE, or five and a half thousand years ago
These highly accurate Aboriginal oral histories originate from twenty thousand years ago at least
whitemanning critical 