Here's to you ‘a handful of history’, my sharing of real-life stories from around the world. All the narratives I pick are rooted in history one way or another, yet most of them carry themes and happenings that we can easily reflect upon today. Enjoy :-) - Majken xx
Here are two women who can tell us what it was like to be a teenage girl in London in the late Victorian era. How amazing is that!
Let me present to you: Berta Ruck, a successful romance novelist, and Frances ‘Effy’ Jones, who was one of the first women to be trained to work as a typist.
The BBC interviewed these two witty and free-spirited ladies in 1970 when they were in their late 90s and we get to hear about how it was like to be a teenage girl in the late Victorian era. Jones, for instance, tells how she rode a bicycle which was not an ordinary thing for women to do at the time. Her cycling outfit was a "rational dress” which looked like this:
She remembers when one day she was cycling, a cab driver asked her if she didn't want any children - at the time some thought that it would damage a woman’s ability to have children to ride a bicycle. She can’t remember what she answered, but "probably something cheeky”.
Also, the two women reveal how they spent quite a lot of time brushing off their skirts from all the dust and mud they gathered when walking the dirty streets of London. Who would have guessed?
COFFEEEEEEE
So how do you prefer your coffee? Strong? Milky? Small, big, middle-sized? You just know, right? However, have you ever considered - while sipping your favourite kind - how this black liquid was invented?
According to legend, the first coffee wasn’t a drink; it was more a sort of snack. So says Judith Hawley, professor of 18th Century Literature, in the BBC radio show " Coffee ". A story occurred in - probably - the 1600s in which a goat herder in Ethiopia or Egypt observed that once his goats had eaten the berries of this particular bush, they became frisky and uncontrollable. The herder then decided to try them too, and after eating some berries, he started dancing around. Next, a religious man gave it a shot, and when he discovered that it helped him stay awake for hours, he was hooked as well.
Now, the BBC "Coffee" show goes on to tell about the first coffeehouse in London. It was, they reveal, opened in 1652 by a Greek guy named Pasqua Rosee, a servant to the businessman Daniel Edwards who imported goods from Turkey - including coffee. The story goes that Edwards grew tired of entertaining his guests with this new drink which now had become very popular. Not so much because of its taste - which was “unspeakable” - but because of its uplifting effect. Therefore, Edwards asked his servant to open a shed where he could serve the coffee, which he did. Every morning people would gather, and within a year or two, Rosee had made enough money to move his coffee business into a proper building.
Now coffeehouses started to spread all over London and the rest of the country as well. The houses became popular meeting places where people - mostly men - exchanged news, knowledge and business ideas. But also, coffee production started spreading worldwide. In the early 1600s, we are told, some countries had difficulties trading with the Ottoman Empire, and a Dutch man then figured out how to plant coffee in one of the Dutch colonies in Java. But still, it was in America the first mass market for coffee appeared. This position was helped by the Civil War (1861-1865), where soldiers presumably consumed coffee at all times of day to keep themselves alert.
Wow! So much history to a cup of coffee. I’ll keep that in mind the next time I have one.
How did People Talk in the Stone Age?
- this article asks, and that is what you call “a good question”, I believe. We are first reminded that the Stone Age stretched over a very long period long ago. It started about 3 million years b.c. (3 million years!) and lasted until about 40.000 years ago.
The first 1-2 million years was the era of the early humans - or ‘early upright apes’ as they are collectively named. The article writes that these beings were not as intelligent as us and thus they did not speak. But they would have made sounds.
Then 400.000 years back, three types of humans started to exist, and they had a much larger brains than the early upright apes. One of them was the “Neanderthals”, who not only produced stone tools, but also made wooden spears and a few simple tools made from the bones of animals such as deer. Despite their larger brain, the Neanderthals didn’t have an actual language, though. Or this is at least how scientists believe it was.
No, an actual language only started with the Homo Sapiens, a.k.a. the “wise humans”. They lived in Africa starting about 200.000 years ago, and they were just as intelligent as we are today - which means they could speak using a language just as we do. They, too, made tools from different types of material such as stones, wood, bones and leather, and also, they had clothing and shoes, and were able to make shelters. On top of this they even started drawing pictures on the walls of caves. As they were able to communicate with each other using actual words, they could probably also teach one another and thereby share their knowledge.
There would have been different languages spoken in the various tribes; however, there were far fewer languages in the Stone Age as there were only fewer people in the world. Also, the languages would have had fewer words than we have today because there weren’t as many things to name compared to nowadays.
But apart from this, it is believed that the Homo Sapiens spoke in a language just as sophisticated as ours. So what did they talk about? Okay, here’s a wild guess: they probably talked about many of the same things we talk about today, such as what to eat and what shoes to wear, and presumably, they also complained about their annoying neighbours and their partner’s snoring all through the night. Or something.
Original photo (added text and arrows): Cleveland Museum of Natural History.
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THIS IS a blog post from me to you. I send it out once every fortnight - if you want to join my email list please go HERE. In turn, you will receive ‘a handful of history’, which is me sharing real-life stories from around the world, narratives I’ve picked that are rooted in history one way or another. Every other time, my latest act, ‘from my corner of the world’, will land in your email. These are texts in which I share with you thoughts and views about writing, researching and creating. All the doubts and wonders I come across, all the surprises and discovery of new roads I am lucky to experience when working with my non-fiction texts.
Thanks for reading. I’m happy to see you here! - Majken xx
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