#45 Fast Facts
Last updated
Last updated
Originally published as part of PHD in Curiosity email newsletter in 2016
We probably think of the Roman coliseum as this fairly boring, empty stone structure because our main reference for it today is the ruins. But did you know it had a retractable roof? Made of canvas and supported by means that we're still not really sure of, the function of the awning is a few fold: protect against sun, rain and also provide a vortex of updraft that cooled the entire building as the heat rose through the central oculus and sucked in fresh air from the lower outside to replace it. Talk about zero energy architecture!
Also, did you know they could flood the coliseum and host naval battles?
As you're probably more familiar with, it also hosted animal hunts, battle re-enactments, theater productions and Ridley Scott's Gladiator. Over the last 2000 years it has also been converted into housing, workshops, a graveyard, a church, a fortified castle, a wool factory to employ prostitutes and a backdrop to concerts by Ray Charles, Billy Joel and Elton John.
Think about basically any historic building. Imagine the doors that are on it. Think about the type of doorknob they used to have. Maybe it's wood or metal. Do you have it in your mind? You're wrong! Door knobs were invented / patented as recently as 1878, which is only like, 138 years ago.
In the 200,000 years or so of human development and invention, door knobs are super later to the party. It also means that we effectively invented elevators before we had a way of securing regular doors and opening them from both sides. That also means that Lincoln never used a door knob - he was assassinated before they even happened. We have to back up a bit and talk about how people lived. The medieval era was mostly one room huts. Your whole family slept together, often with livestock animals because you often didn't have a separate barn and 90+% of folks were farmers just to grow enough to sustain the community. Unrelated: think about how crazy it is that we have so much more food and the farmer population of Canada is 2%. Technology is awesome.
The main door, the only door, what we would now call the front door, was secured from the inside with a large bar that went across the whole doorway. It was sort of impossible to lock yourself out, fortunately, but it also meant that someone on the inside had to specifically allow anyone else in. What a luxury it is to live with multiple private rooms. Also, there's actually a really cool history of sex with regards to this sort of privacy (or lack thereof) but to keep this newsletter relatively G rated suffice to say: they didn't care. The whole prudish regards to the act is a fairly recent invention; the shame didn't really exist until the later reforms of Catholicism (which is also why America in particular has such stringent sexual concerns - the colony was basically the height of this conservative ideal). But anyway. So you didn't have a doorknob and couldn't lock your doors without someone also being inside - peasants (ie. basically everyone) didn't really have valuables anyway, but what they might have is a small lock box with a key. That way the house didn't have to be secure, just the small box.
As an extension of the previous one, the move away from those single room houses was largely due to the plague. As can be expected, having everyone and animals living in tight quarters was brutal for disease spread. 200 million people died as result of the plague (half of England in one year, and again another fifth a few years later) but in its wake were some of the fastest advances in scientific history. It's sort of cruel to say, of course, but the plague did leave the human race better off: a natural selection meant that the survivors were stronger and healthier. A rapid decrease in the population meant that food was more abundant and required less farmers, meaning more people could do science and start universities. Those universities used to teach Latin as the primary language, but the Latin teachers were largely old and most affected by the disease so the younger replacement professors taught and wrote in vernacular languages - the proto- Italian, English, etc.
Hospitals started to actually treat patients rather than isolate and condemn them. 'Medicine' in those times was little better than praying, so the idea that they could take sick people and treat them back to health was the beginning of healthcare. Also, since the monks and priests died at the same frequency as everyone else, people started to suspect that maybe the praying thing wasn't so effective. In the coming time, as commoners started to learn to read and could pick up a bible themselves, we see the grip of religion loosen (because remember, people didn't have a choice - they were baptized as they were born and did mass their entire lives. They didn't know anything else, the clergy were part of the ruling class.)
Architecturally, we saw more rooms per house. They didn't have doorknobs, but they did start to work in stone (rather than mud walls) across the population spectrum and that reduced the number of rats and bugs burrowing into your walls. They also moved away from covering the floor with grasses and instead used wools and fibers to make rugs and proto-carpet. We also saw the revision of ornate gothic architecture into simpler forms as the craftsmen population were either busy or dead, this lead to much bigger reliance on stained glass windows and allowed more light into buildings which is a pretty happy thing overall. Perhaps the biggest was the end of feudalism. Now that half the serfs were gone, the remaining labourers demanded money for their crops (they weren't paid well or at all before - they were peasants of the lords) and faced with the threat of revolt or starvation, the landlords agreed. The king and related cronies tried to pass laws to cap peasant wages in an effort to restore the status quo, but the changes had already been made, and the balance of power a little more equal. This is the start of the middle class as the more enterprising serfs left the rule of their old masters and into business for themselves, creating wealth from individual skills. Now, with more disposable income, trade increased from the East and led to the exchange of ideas and growth of the renaissance on the whole.
Hilariously, these merchants would often become more wealthy than their old masters who tried to pass laws forbidding merchants from wearing furs or gold jewelry. Don't hate the players, hate the game. They also used their wealth to invest in arts and science, travel and exploration - everything the old kings couldn't and didn't when everyone was busy trying not to die if the wheat didn't grow well that year. I mention the renaissance, but it's hard to overstate how beneficial it was to all of humanity. It took us out of the dark ages. Almost everything we have now, in effect, can be attributed to that plague (in the West, anyway. Asia was cooking along just great at the time - a lot of similar worker revolts lead to more handicrafts and prosperity despite terrible crop conditions).
Personally, I find these stories inspiring. We've seen them happen again and again throughout history and they work out generally okay. The people who fear monger our modern politics are the same as they've ever been and we people are the same as we've ever been. There's a lot of talk about robots taking over jobs and what post-scarcity society even means. Talks about universal basic income, talks about how wages effectively become meaningless, and it's all very fascinating. I think the thing I take most from this is that the economic freedom to do cool things seems to always result in people doing cool things. Those plague survivors went from being farmers who lived in squalor and who couldn't read to patrons of art and science. Now, nearly everyone can read. Literacy rates went from basically zero (only the priests) to men who could sign their own names to nearly all merchants. Sweden grew to a near 100% literacy rate by 1800 (~300 years) and has remained on top ever since. It's an opinion, for sure, but I've always felt like giving people the tools and abilities to do good work will inspire people to do good work. We've seen it before, and we'll see it here again. It's just human.
