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Uriah

@crimkadid

Sep 2

Teenagers across northwest Europe were once expected to leave home and work as wandering laborers until settling down to marry in their 20s. This custom is much older than most think: the Germanic retinue of Tacitus, the warband, is a creation of these same life-cycle servants.

The Venetian ambassador Trevisano, visiting England in 1498, reported to his Italian readers that the English do not love their own children and so force them out of the house at tender ages, never to return. In exchange they take in unrelated children, who they then exploit.

The ambassador misunderstands two things. First, this practice was common across Northwest Europe, not just England. Second, the typical age children left at was 14, not seven. Perhaps ~50% of people served at some point: think of it as the traditional Northwest rite of passage.

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Uriah

@crimkadid

Jan 23

Christianity has historically helped to spread monogamy, exogamy, and consensual marriage around the world. None of these practices, though, originate in the Bible. They are all European traits which have piggybacked on to the Catholic Church. Where, exactly, do they come from?

In 1539 Philip of Hesse wrote to Martin Luther, asking him if bigamy was Biblically permissible. His first wife was ugly, smelly and drunk but these were then not grounds for divorce. Luther wrote back, admitting that "God not condemn polygamy.. but even seemed to countenance it”

Luther was not misinterpreting the Old Testament. Abraham, Jacob, Saul, David, and Solomon all married polygamously. The Bible only regulates the practice: a man cannot neglect his first wife, marry her sister, or prioritize children of his favorite wife in his inheritance.

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Uriah

@crimkadid

Jan 16

In 18th century England young men and women had complete freedom to select their spouses. This distinguished England not only from India or China but France and Germany. Where did this freedom come from and what are its consequences? A thread on "Marriage and Love in England":

To start, a love story. John Paston was a 15th century aristocrat. While John is away from home, his 20 year old daughter Margery pledges herself to his bailiff, Richard Calle. The family is outraged: her brother writes she will end up selling candles on the street.

Despite the family’s opposition (and wealth) Calle is confident he and Margery will win out. The law is on their side because Margery had formally betrothed herself to him and in England this means they are already married. The case is taken before the Bishop of Norfolk.

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Uriah

@crimkadid

Jan 8

Those who attempt to understand the Industrial Revolution often travel down a dead end. Every old economy is mostly agrarian, so European agriculture must have been unusually good, right? But European grain yields were actually awful and they somehow succeeded in spite of them.

Take this standard account from Robert Allen. It notes that on the eve of the Industrial Revolution English grain yields were good by the standards of northwest Europe, which itself “reaped yields twice those in most other parts of the world”. This is misleading in the extreme.

While Napoleon’s armies were in Egypt they surveyed the country's agriculture and discovered that it was more than twice as productive per land unit as in France. What's more surprising is that, when irrigated, the land yielded more even than in industrial age England.

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Uriah

@crimkadid

Jan 2

Why do the Somali have such thin bodies and large foreheads? This physical type is often explained as an adaptation to desert heat, but occurs in no other desert population outside Africa. The real culprit is milk anemia, a disease common in pastoralists and, once, in Europeans.

There are other African peoples, all pastoralists, that share many aspects of the Somali “look”. The type goes by many names: Hamitic, Cushitic, Ethiopid. Because they are often tall, the Belgian anthropologist Jean Hiernaux categorized them as “Elongated African".

The “F”s on Hiernaux’s map stand for Fulani, another pastoralist people. The Fulani have a striking physical resemblance to East African herders; many I think, could pass as Somali. There is though no close genetic link between them, something Hiernaux guessed 60 years ago.

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Uriah

@crimkadid

Jan 19, 2023

I grew up in rural Minnesota, about the least English part of the US. When my family went on vacations to "Real America" it dawned on me that we were not yet fully assimilated. We were Minnesota nice, but the Old Americans had something we didn't: they were "gentlemanly".

On vacation, my family went out to a Arizona VFW to celebrate my sister's 10th birthday. As he was leaving this long faced cowboy looking man congratulated her and casually handed her a 20. I was amazed at that. Minnesotans are _very_ nice, but they don't do things like that.

I tried to understand: why don't Minnesota Germans and Norwegians ever act like that? Maybe because it would be seen as invasion of privacy, but that's only a rationalization. Germanics don't do it because they're stiff: they prefer straightforward, stereotyped politeness.

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