Biggest MISCONCEPTIONS of medieval CASTLES and LIFE

[Music] greatings I'm shad and this is a rather important episode that I'm doing right now because it's quite a fundamental basic question what was life like in the medieval period or just in medieval castles also like living in a medieval castle and I've avoided addressing it because the more I look into it the more complex a discussion and question I find it to be and the more nuanced there is and I've just been hesitant because I was worried that I couldn't address the subject properly enough the issue is there are many other you know people making videos are on this subject who unfortunately into a very poor job and spread a lot of misinformation and I realize well I can at least do a better job than what's already out there in actual fact the prompting there the final kind of kick to do this video was it in response to another video i watch recently on what life was like in medieval castle and there was a lot of incorrect facts misinformation and stuff and like I say every time I do I reapply video and this isn't really a reply video it's just more prompted by another video even even though it's not like that I always have to say I don't hold anything against these people I've held so many of these misconceptions before I've spread these misconceptions in the past and I actually like that people are making videos about medieval period because what it usually does it creates the catalyst for people to learn the correct information like me making this very video so even like the reply I did to Matt perhaps video about nine to summarize and Vikings and all the misinformation he made it I'm really glad he made the video and I know he tries his best to know there's these people who did life and counsel tried to best so look don't hold anything against them they get things wrong so now let me explain that the thing that lead most people to make mistakes about medieval times life what they did what it was like a castle and all those things and it generally comes down to one big mistake okay and it's when they hear or learn about a practice or something that happened at some specific location at one specific or maybe a few specific times within the medieval period and then assume that was how it was done for the whole medieval period across all of Europe and that's wrong this is what I mean about for greater nuance I have found when studying you know more about this time period and I love this time it's great okay and the more I look into it the more sophistication I discover I realized that her things were different between Britain and Spain and medieval Germany which is the Holy Roman Empire about medieval Germany to Italy to France to Bohemia like they all have different practices okay and then same with styles of castles and stuff and separates to differences from geographical location things changed in the time period as well things were different in 1100 you know AD in the medieval period compared to 1400 okay things change and evolved for these oh it's a long time period I myself regard the the real medieval period to happen between ten hundred AD and 1500 AD okay the broader kind of you know classifications medieval period starts at 500 AD but castles were like there's a period of 500 years where castles weren't around Knights really weren't around and stuff and you know if you really want to look at the iconic iconic medieval period it really starts at around ten hundred yet even there that's the space of five hundred years okay and things change so I want to address some of the big misconceptions people say this was just a medieval period and share the context okay the nuance as best I can I'm still learning all right there are still things that I don't know about I might still have erroneous misconceptions that I haven't corrected yet of course as you know when I find that I've spread something wrong I correct myself I'll start off with the idea that castles were dark dank and cold and when people say this they say all castles within a whole medieval period or dark dank and cold and no I guess sometimes yes but not all the times I mean again nuance all right there there's a lot of different types of castles in the medieval period okay and there are some castles like one of the reasons why they're there given the stigma of being dark is that having a large window on a castle is a big defensive weakness that means the enemies could climb through and so all the windows facing the outside of the castle like where the enemy can actually reach and get access to they're very small very thin usually only arrow leaps and in these instances there's not much sunlight gonna be let in but then you get castles that have an internal bailey and then they might have really large Gothic style windows facing the inside that would let in plenty of light there are so many examples of decent sized windows on castles that will let in a decent amount of light the other big kind of misconception that people get about this way they think castles in particular were dark okay not really more so than many of the homes of the medieval period what do I mean there is another issue with Windows just aside from being a defensive weakness for a castle defense and stuff it's that they let out a lot of heat okay and with the type of winters you can get in Europe especially Britain that's a big problem and so a lot of just regular homes and medieval period cottages and stuff like that had very few windows to keep in the heat some only had like a great like this and that's it and then they might have two openings on either side if you're looking at like a thatched roof more you know earlier again differences in time period if you go further back in the medieval period you're gonna find less windows you're gonna find less windows on quadratures gentle separate the castles just generally okay because you go further back all right yeah if they have kind of wattle and daub thatched roof home barely a single window on it to keep in as much heat as possible so when you go inside it's really dark when it came to situations like that people spend time outside okay far more so than we did and the other thing about being dark on the inside they did have candles even in the daytime if you have a room that's not it letting in a lot of light you can light a candle okay and then when we go bit later on the medieval period there was a couple of different practices that arose to help windows be put on homes to let in more light and things like that so they had larger windows and usually would it because glass was very expensive so you could get kind of the you know framed glass either stained glass or the classic diamond pad because making glass and large seats was a problem they had to make it in smaller things and that's why the classic kind of medieval windows are made out of diamond patterns and stuff because they are very small and they weren't clear they had they because it wasn't a consistent craft at that time and so if you look through these glass windows even as clear as they could make it would be very warped and everything but not everyone could afford that and so if you couldn't afford it your windows would generally just have wooden planks okay kind of like you're looking through bars in a prison and they would have wooden shutters on the outside the day I'll close in the daytime open up in the night time but if you're in the winter okay you're not going to have those windows open because again I'll let out all the heat of the inside so is going to be closed and you're not gonna have much light on the inside anyway so you'll rely on candles during the daytime and fireplaces fire I figure this comes into the other misconception about castles being cold okay cold was a problem that people had to deal with not just in castles but in just medieval living and so this idea that castles were specifically cold and everything else wasn't is again inaccurate and the way people combatted the cold was with fire and of course fire creates light as well and so you get light on the inside of these castles and there we go and again with fire creates warmth and comfort now again depending on time period you will find different castle designs with a lot of fireplaces and some with very few maybe only in the Great Hall the Lord's chamber stuff sometimes a little change little negate all yeah if you want to get an idea of what was inside at medieval castle check out my video once inside medieval castles get an idea of the layout and you'll be surprised at how few rooms really exist the medieval castle the standing one they got bigger and with fewer rooms meant less fireplaces needing to be built in the structure because there was only a few rooms I only need a few part fireplaces create the warmth in those rooms to make it more habitable but even if we go into a later period the this idea fireplaces create warmth comfort everything was quite prominent and so fireplaces were put in as many rooms as possible have a look at Bodie and Castle okay one of the things that you'll see on brodien castle are fireplaces that are built structurally in the walls with it okay about a meter thick or two meters in some cases which is ample room to make an alcove where you can fit a fireplace in and there are heaps of fireplaces in so many of the rooms on Bo diem castle is just one example wood other parts of the castle be cold well if it wasn't a fireplace of course but that could be an advantage sometimes because if you want to keep food cool well sometimes they would dig like an actual kind of cellar in the ground of a castle where it would be really cold and that's where they'll try and keep food and stuff that wasn't the case in all okay castles everything just one practice that I have learned about and this is what I mean about my hesitation of addressing the subject because even though I've learned of this practice I know it was done where they did kind of a cellar into the ground that kind of looked like a cave sometimes I'll be liable sometimes it wasn't stuff I haven't learned how prominent it was through all the different time periods within the medical period and the specific geographical locations because it obviously wasn't done over the whole thing about this is what people generally do they hear one thing and they're like that's what it was done in all the medieval period the room period is a very long time and covers a very large you drive a page it wasn't just blanket that's it this video is really me addressing a lot of the misconceptions that are brought up when people say life is like this in the medieval period or medieval castles and stuff so unfortunate it's not gonna paint a clear kind of picture of what life was like I'll try and do my best and address some things that I can share that isn't specifically to correct other things but I do want to correct their misconceptions first and foremost because those are the most important things to address in my opinion right now and there's more I need to talk about in regards to castles being cold and it comes into the idea of stone having very poor insulative properties which is true but the thing that people miss is that castle wolves are usually at least a metre thick if not more and so if you have something with poor installation of properties you can get a certain level of insulation if you just make it thicker and think I don't think I don't think okay the thing you get more insulation is properties and it gets to a point where okay it's it's half decent alright it's not it's not great it's not nearly as good as we can make in the modern day but it's not nearly as bad as people think the next big misconception that has spread so often the medieval period is regarding drinking water okay I've heard this a lot in many different documentaries and many YouTube videos to fly out where they say the water was so bad the medieval hariya that was contaminated you'll get seeking drinking it so everyone drunk I'll just let's see if we could slow down and just really process that I mean you can debunk this just by thinking about is like really for at least five hundred years if not a thousand years for all of medieval Europe people weren't drinking water and they were only drinking ale just the idea is to of course not okay people drink water and what they do is they test if the water is clean or not if the water is clean never clean water source and they won't drink it okay now having said that water is nice we need water to live but we do enjoy flavored drinks okay and so of course all throughout the medieval period people were making wine or Mead or a you'll of course okay a lot of them were far less alcoholic than we might assume and then these the idea people are aware of what alcohol does okay and so people generally this is where it gets really bad when they take one thing that did happen and then apply to the whole medieval period across all medieval Europe okay then they think well if that's the case everyone must have been drunk all the time and then they say in the medieval period everyone was drunk yeah of course not people are stupid they know what being drunk is like and they know you know I'm going into battle I might not want to be drunk I need to use my head I might not want to be drunk in this circumstance they're not gonna say oh well because there's no water anywhere I just have to drink and you're drunk anyway no and you know the other thing even if a water is slightly contaminated you boil it okay and then it's good for drinking I mean my goodness right so why were some waterways contaminated in medieval period well animals do their business in water okay so even if you don't have humans throwing their own feces in it if there's a chance that it might be contaminated just off the bat but when you have that and again that one of the main ways of waste disposal in the medieval period was chucking it in waterways not at all cases sometimes they just dug it bit in the dirt and buried it problem solved okay and if they needed to create a kind of communal privy or whatever I just dig really low drop Danny or whatever and do that in and they weren't always communally this is one more recent video where they're always come no people there was such a thing as privacy though they weren't nearly as prudish in the middle period because of just practicality sometimes it wasn't practical to have complete privacy and so of course there but sometimes people did one privacy and you could attain it or wasn't out of the realms of possibility the main situations in which water would become really contaminated from human ways specifically is when you get a large group of people okay large towns and cities now this is another kind of thing that people think in medieval Europe people just dump their feces and poo onto the streets and this comes from accounts about Britain specifically London I'm gonna will show that we'll come back to it because there's more nuance to that one as well because people think well because it happened here it happened everywhere no but all right if you have a large town of people and they're dumping all their feces in the water well then it's going to be contaminated did that mean people didn't drink it well not actually sometimes who would did drink it and they got sick and they died I want from it as well there was a lot of death and sickness and one of the reasons was drinking contaminated water but guess what that's evidence of them drinking the water not saying that they never drank the water but sometimes they don't and in those situations yeah okay making a law would be a safer alternative and that's where we can see instances of this happening but not in all cases all right if you have if you're in a village or town or in the country or anywhere even if you're in a city all right if you have found a clean water source you would have caused drink it because water is convenient and you don't want to be drunk all the time all right dealing with human waste let's go in there because we kind of branched off in it and yes in many instances they dumped it in the water but not in all instances okay of course we saw that a lot in you know medieval London and even just medieval wondered I like the industrial period later in London that the thames horribly contaminated I mean why goodness you and even today I don't think you want to drink out of it like at all in fact most waterways near cities you know like I just think of the Yarra in Melbourne you know near where I live you don't want to drink out of it but if I go up the hill a little bit and find a creek generally the water is perfectly fine to drink so again you want differences now there are instances recorded instances of people dumping their crap and who onto the streets alright but not in every instance now again this is another one of those things where I wish I was more prepared at but it takes time okay and save me from doing a video in several years time I'll do a follow-up later and I my knowledge has grown but for now I'll do what I can with all I have and what I know and I have redditor of an account where people were charged okay it was a crime to dump feces on the street because these people are people all right there are a couple of things that you can did poo smells foul to us okay but smells bad for us yes it smelled bad for our ancestors in the past they don't want to walk through crap on the street everywhere and so there were actual walls in some instances in place that had held penalties for people dumping their crap on the street because you don't want to smell it and you don't want to step in it all right and so the instances are like there is a street in London called Shi T Street okay because obviously people ignored the law there but that's not to say all throughout medieval London there was proved on all the streets no okay there's a thing called night watchman I mean there was their job to collect prayers in houses they actually had poop it's like cesspits and stuff in individual houses and they'll be cleaned out weekly if not daily if you had enough money yeah then they took it to the river and dumped it in the river but they had organizations okay like there was jobs to clean the poo out of their houses they wouldn't need to do that if all the poo was being dumped on the street so that's evidence that it wasn't always dumped on the street and then times when it was were those you know more specific events that of course or it stood out more you're gonna notice the street the poo on it more than you know the street without and so people made note of it it gets recorded and then when we read about the modern day and if there everyone dumped you on the street no it's just a couple of specific instances and I'm quite confident it happened in many other places throughout medieval Europe and stuff like that where food was dumped on the street in some places within different cities but it wasn't a universal thing and okay people don't like poo you don't get it they don't like stepping it I don't like smelling it they don't like getting it on their clothing okay and this is where we come to the next thing cleanliness in the medieval period and people think are all covered in dirt and mud or crap and interestly in the more recent video I kind of kick this I don't know there are a lot of videos and documentaries they get this wrong and the more recent one they mentioned that they they incorrectly say that you know medieval people are covered in poo a lot they didn't like bathing and they got sick and and then later on they say Oh contrary to common belief maybe evil people did bad I mean recording their own video anyway so of course that they bathe there were even public bath houses so if you didn't have a big you know I wouldn't barrel or whatever to have a bath in or you weren't near a river because guess that's the other place you're gonna have a bath in in natural waterways and you don't want to go in polluted waterways like in London things like that so they have bath houses and there we go public bath houses where people regularly went to get clean okay because people are people you can bad smells or bad smells you don't want to be around people who smell bad if all you don't want to smell bad is how to smell your own bad scent but anyway you in for that so you're about houses in actual fact bath houses kinda at one point I think was in London got outlawed you can fact check me on this but got outlawed because a lot of the bath houses were turning into brothels okay and you can see you some pretty risky medieval artwork of people getting into some interesting things and bath houses and stuff so well there you go but evidence that bath houses were very prominent okay and therefore people like to pay they like to be clean maybe people weren't always stinky and things and it wasn't a luxury reserved to the rich these bath houses were available to everyone and even if you couldn't afford it you have access to clean water as well and it doesn't take much to boil water to clean yourself up either I mean my goodness and in another tangent ooh this about general cleanliness of the people loved colour okay colorful clothing in fact the more colorful the more prestigious that was a kind of site if you could afford purple which is like purple became a kind of a royal color because of really expensive I mean you're really and I people will say or was outlawed and wonder how true that is I mean yeah and if it was outlawed or only been a couple of kingdoms nations may be only in Britain things like so it confirmed this because if you can make purple and you wanted to wear it why not you know there was people who did make the dye why couldn't they wear purple so was it comes into the thing about the long sword was being it was Lord way I'll go into the longsword next but before I get out of the longsword let me finish up on the idea of color this might end up into a big video but there's a lot to cover okay when you say what was life like in the medieval period I mean that's a big subject like people's lives are complex and elaborate and they do a lot of things okay so my goodness maybe I will only get to address the misconceptions I might have to make it several full up videos to go into other things because it's like I love there are things I love about an interview and there's so things that just catch Rangers like swords and castles and knights but then when I go into what life is like in this different time for you Kelly it just enthralls me to try and understand it's a different world it's like it you go into a different world and see how people live it's amazing and yet you can really tell because it's still people and you can actually understand there are weird practices that from our perspective might seem really strange and weird but when you go in to understand it it makes so much noise it's just like a classic example medieval etiquette or n rules around etiquette sorry different to what we have in the modern day but when you try and understand it if you go out for instance if you had an itch to scratch it was real again I don't know i I've read this a one account and sorry I don't know how applicable it was because of course dining etiquette would change between geographic locations I don't know so don't think this is applying the whole maybe period it's a lot but it's just one etiquette example that I haven't read about and it's that if you had an itch you wouldn't scratch with your hands because you ate with you like in many situations the food was communal you've gone and grabbed it and so if you scratched your face you could get dirt or junk on your hands and then transfer it to through that other people ate from so you would not scratch your face if you had an itch you would break off a bit of bread scratch it with the bread and then eat the bread okay bad and so this was a standard rule and when you just hear about like if you have an itch scratch of then why why don't you scratch an itch with bread well it's again it makes so much logical sense once you understand the context is that they ate a lot with their hands and it's a communal food and you don't want to pass on your gesture and so it's interesting and they didn't really understand germs but they understood cleanliness okay and so certain practice has evolved around that okay again going back to color they loved color and so you're gonna see lots of color in clothing and in decoration okay insides of medieval castles had beautiful Neuros I so when people say castles were dank dark and cold and dreary nah if you couldn't a real medieval castle you'll see just a huge explosion of color with painted murals on the walls and everything like that because again these are people like if we look at this like that's dark and dank wild you want to live there perhaps that might be the same reaction that a medieval people had in the medieval period and so they would do something to change it and guess what they did okay now did every Castle have painted murals on them no but a lot of them did I like the more I saw into castles that seems to be the general under saying that most castles if they could get away with was at least whitewashed with plaster so now white they weren't just dark dank stone okay they were white and plastered and then if they had more money there would be just at least patterns painted on them maybe just like floral patterns with like branches and leaves and other things like that to full-blown murals out I get just amazing things okay and again it was a sign of wealth the more fancy you're inside of the castle the more impressive and prestigious that you would be seen so of course they painted them a lot and it got more elaborate but more you go through middle period to the point later you could see some crazy fancy things with really fancy wood paneling and all that stuff and if you very early in the medieval period Yenisei whitewash plaster or whatever with more basic mirror of the similarly interesting practice that did happen again I know it happened in France in some cases stuff like that depending on the type of stone was a reflection on how wealth you were on the castle and if you had a lord who could just build a basic castle with basic stone okay you know yeah yeah they might want to be seen as more wealthy and so castles were generally whitewashed on the outside because one that looked more impressive and it was a protection against erosion you can make our water resistant you know whitewash I made a whole video on it why the castles right there we go so they did that and then they painted so they won't wash it and they painted a stone pattern on the outside to make it look like it was made out of marble and you going to inside of castles already stayed but a whitewashed it plastered it and it have painted stone on top of the actual real stone to make it look like more impressive stone see people are funny but it makes so much sense because status prestige welfare's also important to be seen stuff like that and so people wanted to keep up with their neighbors cue up the Lord over their people it's interesting how different yet the same people are when you look at different historical periods all right long swords the reason why I bring up along swords because people have said there were certain interesting situations in the past where the longsword was outlawed to the average person the peasants okay now that gets spread a lot that gives me the impression that okay there might be some validity in it somewhere I have yet to find it if you guys know of an actual historical reference from a document or something written in history that actually specified the long sword being outlawed for different lower classes of people I would love to hear because at this point I have never come across it okay I've come across many instances of Irish people using long swords that contradict it and so if there was a situation where there was a law that outlawed long swords being carried by the average person it would have only been some very small locations throughout medieval Europe but in contrast to that there are many cases where the average people carried long swords and they're very popular and the cases I've found usually in the latter periods in the medieval period especially in Germany but then you get things like the Krieg's Meza like two-handed ones but in Italy I believe that the average people started to love using long swords and carrying long swords and stuff I think this actually it might be a full-blown misconception that there the idea that the longsword was outlawed for regular people or carry that might be a whole misconception I'm kind of suspecting it yet I haven't been out of confirm it yet hence the reason again while it's hesitant to make a video like this because my read my research is incomplete but then again it'll never be complete so just like I said I'll do what I can with what I have and I believe this misconception has arisen out of the fact that the longsword is a two-handed weapon which means you are not gonna get the advantage of a shield so the situations in which you want to use a longsword as when you're wearing full plate armor but full plate out or any heavy heavy enough armor doesn't have to be a full plate like a heavy enough armor where you feel protected enough to not warrant the necessity of carrying a shield and so in that sense the longsword I believe was associated with being of higher status being the sword of the night and chivalry and things because if you don't have full plate armor you need a shield and if you're gonna have a shield well you need a one-handed sword over to and a sword and that is where in my opinion that division created that the class distinction between the long sword to and a sword and a one-handed arming sword but then the army sword became really popular sword and buckler and that was kind of the average person combination but it wasn't the case for the whole medieval period and every geographical location in the medieval period so again if you know the more specifics as to when it was happen and even if there was a specific law I'd love to know I actually at the moment I'm not thinking there was so once again it's too many incorrect logical steps taken from something that look okay rich people a lot of the wealthier knights using or two-headed longsword a lot of their you know average joe's one-handed swords well I mean that must it must happen because it was a law because why wouldn't you want to use a two-handed sword if you could so the people must have been outlawed when no it was probably just because armor and shields food people say that food and medieval period was all bland tasteless and black now of course they had nowhere near the variety that we have in the modern day we are sorry insanely spoiled in the modern day we eat the food and variety flavor and affordability that we have a few of the modern day is insane we literally we better than the kings of the past even poor people eat better than the Kings the past amazing period what they have available unless you're so poor you can't afford food but I'm referring to more the poor of the first world countries the Western world all right sorry the people of that that level still eat incredibly well the poor of our modern day in first world countries living better than the kings of the past and that is not an overstatement you know that is absolutely factual so ok does that mean all the food was planned no I mean they had salt back then ok and sounds great at adding flavor to things and if they had enough salt to preserve things I had salt and such abundance to bury things in salt and preserve them which is one of the preservation methods I don't think they were going to be scrimping for salt to put on their food ok and then what are the types of things they eat well I mean all the things you can grow you can eat okay and so vegetables fruits all those things they are available to everyone meats can get a little bit harder to get a hold of depending on how much well if you have but if you have access to water you can catch fish okay and so fish was a very prominent thing that the average person enjoyed and I mean you think someone is expensive now someone was very common for the peasant average person to eat in the medieval period I found that in a couple of different sources but one in the specific documentary said that fish was more reserved for the upper-class people and like where do you that's completely contrary to everything I've heard but it was still a fairly well respected documentaries I'm not saying I can't get things wrong they can but they were actually sharing an instance from the journal the records of a medieval chef and how he prepared his fish for his lord and then I was saying well this was an up it was only reserved for thought if they caught the fish that was the Lords fish and so again I think we're seeing differences in geographical location and time period and so fish might have been regarded with different prominence and you know who got to how it for de belit was depending on time period and on location and stuff and so of course it varied so when I say fish was prominent for less people not all the time there's differences but of course fish is always available and the main meats they ate was pork that one I've had decent enough confirmation on pork was the main meat okay beef not so much because cows are a beast of burden you're either gonna be pulling in a plow if there's a you know an ox or you're gonna be milking it if it's a cow okay and so you're gonna use it to the end of its life raising cattle just to like fuel a beef industry it's not really gonna happen they did that with pigs for pork and also lamb but of course sheep provide wool so they're not going to be slaughtering them for the sole case of eating it either the most prominent meat was pork and if you're a bit more wealthy beef would be more available and if you had a cow that reached the end of its life and then you slaughter it then you'd have beef as well of course so it wasn't like no one ate it but the most prevalent one was pork and pork is great okay you make lots of things out of pork rabbit yeah of course we're happy prominent meats rabbit was huge of course and so there are so many different means and there's a lot a variety and I mean there was cookbooks in the medieval period in creating different so to say that all food was bland and that and look there were times of gross starvation I'm not saying they wasn't but what about the times in between okay when there was times of Plenty and other thing people love pickled herring okay you know more fish and when it comes to exotic spices that's when it gets more upper-class okay like peppers and cinnamon and all those things okay but it's funny we might not nearly like many of the spices that the you know in the medieval upper class really enjoyed because salt does a great job and so for the peasants if they can sort their food and they have an enough variety making of different things that now I have there'll be family recipes everywhere and all that stuff there would be plenty of variety and full bellies in times of Plenty and it's not and it's not like everything was bland oh and everything wasn't boiled either I mean the classic potted okay was very probably anything that you cook in a pot and boil was pottage okay and there was pata jizz everywhere but there would be different recipes with different ingredients and so there was a large variety of Portage's and of course pies and pastries and all that stuff and if you're wondering about sweetness okay where do they get their desserts and stuff though they didn't have refined sugar like we have in the modern day they have honey and they have fruits all right add those into recipes you can get a lot of sweetness so apple tarts and always things of course they existed okay people like to eat well when we need to eat them because we need these if we want to make it enjoyable until we get a final grades that we like and again it's not like people didn't have taste buds in the medieval period and the types of the ways that they cooked I've heard people say that I was always over a fopen fire okay ovens I mean you can make an oven out of dirt for crying out loud let alone brick and stone oh and it's actually really sophisticated the way they develop how to control temperature and stuff remember how I said Stone has bad insulated properties it's capable of absorbing a huge amounts of thermal mass and then retaining it for when I say a while like a good couple of hours I mean if you create like a stone castle and it absorbs all that sunlight that heat in the stone from the day it's going to dissipate in a few hours to the night and it'll get kind of cold which is why in the afire so it's not like it traps the heat and stays at all right but those few hours where it is able to routine like really high amounts of heat is how they you worked ovens okay they would set the fire in the oven and then they would I can't let the fire burn out or pull or just drag all the fire out drag all the coals there's no fire in the oven at all but there is such heat retained in the bricks or the stone that's when they put in the patient the bread bread was by far one of most prominent things people ate by the way I was wrong about all these things and everything's like bread absolutely and you know what you liked it with bread butter okay milk butter and everything and then they can create other things combined red dipping sauces and all that stuff always prominent and by the way if you ever eaten fresh bread I mean the stuff you buy from the shops doesn't even compare a fresh properly made good bread delicious and the peasants would actually be eating wholemeal bread because to grind the flour into what we would call white flour takes even more work and therefore more expensive and so white breads little more unhealthy kind was actually reserved for the upper class than nobility and in actual fact the from studying different nama you know cooking recipes and other things that made your period we find that the higher class of people had worse diets than the lower class of people all costs we had better diets eating more healthy food and will probably be stronger and healthier fun eating I then there's a hobby disease and infection I think generally led to people's deaths I'm not saying they lived really long lives but anyway sidenote and so going back to the oven take out all the heat and there's so much heat in the oven that's when they put in the bread and stuff and just the heat in the bricks and the stone is of such strength that they can retain it and that's how they can control temperature because like there it will lower at a fairly gradual rate but stay fairly consistent and so if it's too hot they'll wait they put it in and then they can time or just keep an eye on when whatever is in there is cooked and done and so they had sophisticated ways of cooking things it wasn't just over our open fire pit and you can do a lot with an open fire pit alright so there's that a lot people working all day every day and life is nothing but work not really okay I mean I if most of the people in the medieval period were farmers all right do you farm all times of the year there will be times in the year in which the work would be crazy like plowing the field and planting okay planting the seed once you've plowed and planted what do you to do you didn't need to wait until it to grow yes oh look there might be weeding there might be keeping pests out and all these things but once that work is done you have a fairly decent you know gap of time we're in good weather as well in which you're not needing to farm okay and then comes harvest time and that would be crazy crazy work work work work work work straw it all away you have your stores for the winter you're good to go and of course you'll separate grain seed and other things like that and all right then you hit the winter then what okay there's actually a lot of time in between the Maine crazy work things if for an average farmer and that leaves them room to do other things maybe they need want to help build a barn okay or they want to build a mill or let alone building well if they have animals okay animals would increase the work and every - every medieval home would at least have a gun every not every sorry a lot of course would have a garden bed and a couple of animals especially an animal to milk chickens for eggs and other things is I taking care of the animals would be a fairly regular thing but the idea that all's always work back-breaking labor and no one did everything like creates the impression that life must be horrible in the middle we know there are times in which you didn't need to work as much as other times in actual fact they always have a bit more freedom than we might consider in the modern day there's this idea in the bottom day of wage slaves and I feel there is some validity to it but I still feel there is choice and there is a way to break outside of the wage system but you have to be ambitious you do have to have opportunity and education all these are things are playing though thing about breaking out the wage slave thing but if you compare the the wage slave to people in the medieval time you had a lot of freedom and choice to choose what you wanted to do in between the times when you need it to work and sometimes that would be more work but it might be things that you're injured what if you had a interested in crafts and you wanted to start carpentry or something like adding you do and buy what people do company because they enjoy it and so there's a lot of people who would have taken up a craft because they loved it and they enjoyed it and then they're not really working a day in their life okay and there are other things what if you wanted to plant a vineyard to make wine stuff like that or if you wanted to start to you know get you know fibers from your wool or whatever and turn it into fibers make clothes or linen or you grow flax turn that linen or you wanted to create cheese and stuff and so all these options were available to you and you got to choose what you wanted to do what you liked and if you like cheese making cheese well you probably enjoyed doing that and then you could sell the produce that you had you know at the local market or whatever and you might focus on one kind of thing and then in between the moments of work and stuff well there were festivals everywhere in the medieval period they loved to party okay and then they also they loved games and not only they'd been running we love games they love story and song okay so singing the idea of the bar or the troubadour you know the storyteller and stuff like that people took that up as a per as a profession because I was so enjoy and that didn't mean that they had to wait for a you know a troubadour whatever to come through to tell the story there would be the local straight like heck everyone would know stories and they'd love to share stories about King Arthur or so George in the dragon or whatever right was the thing for you in the dragon right get them confused but oh like these stories that have it survived to the modern day came from back it in okay and they'll be sharing them one to the other and you know it's interesting the practice of dramatic storytelling like was something fairly prominent I learned about this from the fact that my sisters and my mom loved well is it Anne of Green Gables that's the one okay and uh and there's a part in of Green Gables where the character does a dramatic telling of the story as a presentation over art and I was like I've talent show or else just some event ins and she chose to do that and it was actually really common in my mood I'm actually related me right here there's a lot of kind of things like that and it's just interest like people created means of entertainment for them that foreign to us because we got TV in things I had but telling stories in the communal setting was a very common thing not that far back in history it was still being done and so in the medieval period absolutely so much so that people could devote their entire profession to it if they wanted sometimes people wanted to travel to see other parts in the world and absolutely they did and people created things for people to travel to to be seen because tourism there was even tourism trades back then and usually it was like it religious artifacts or the bones of certain saints and things like that people would travel over very far distances to have a look at say but by you'll get to see the world and be an adventurous kind of thing and you could do it as a regular peasant it wasn't restricted to the upper-class and stuff like that people like to do things travel go on holiday okay you are still if even if you're a peasant or serf you could still do that all right the world was an adventurous thing with lots of entertainment and joys to be found there were harsh things just like this harsh things in the modern day that we have to deal with heartache and sorry pain suffering loss of life and all these things life can be really tough yet there are times where it can be really good as well and that was just the same in the medieval period as it is in the modern day it was an abject misery if it was abject misery constantly everyone would have committed suicide and we wouldn't even exist them under our you know it no one be you're left alive do you know have you no descendants children it's not like I know that family life is a joy as well people loved having children people loved to getting married okay these are all wondrous things so even if you're a peasant and you weren't the upper-class riches of the rich you could still live a fulfilling happy life of many Joy's in between and some work didn't have to be a misery either okay especially if you got to choose your work something that you love to have the freedom to and just see the results of building things and I things need to be understood in context and look this video is already massively long sorry I I'm I have to end it there because of time there are still things that I could have mentioned and gone into so perhaps follow-up video I'll do more later on and especially as my knowledge grows and I'll learn more more new things but the takeaway from this I hope that if you were to take away one thing you'll take away this is that a lot of the things that quirky things you might hear about the medieval period more often than not it was only like a more restricted kind of event practice or that happened and wasn't necessarily broadly applicable and even if it was more broadly applicable it needs to be understood in context because it's context to everything okay so if people say the medieval period was like this and I was just like that with no other nuance to it yeah you can be a little bit skeptical in that regard so thank you for watching I hope you have enjoyed I've ever done adequate job because there's a long rambling video there's a lot to cover and there's a lot I didn't cover video I hope you've enjoyed thank you for watching and of course I hope to see you again till that time [Music] you [Music]

Channel: Shadiversity

Views: 1,113,761

Keywords: medieval, history, education, middle ages, times, what was life like, castle, castles, farmer, serf, commoner, lord, historical, dark ages, sword, swords, longsword, misconceptions, past, king, knight, knight's, food, game of thrones, lord of the rings, skyrim, dungeons and dragons, dnd, d&d, great courses plus, cottage, oven, fortress, fortifications, machicolations, crenelations, crenulations, ruins, stone

Id: PFC32MzqHIc

Length: 42min 27sec (2547 seconds)

Published: Fri Apr 05 2019