The good old days

Here we are in 2019, and it's time to get Eccentric!

Have you ever heard someone say stuff like “Oh, I was born in the wrong century”, or “I wish I could go back in time and live a simpler life”?

The next time someone says stuff like that, you can pull out some neat facts about how bad things were back in the “good old days”. And I do mean old...

Let's start with the good old tradition of having a beer with a friend. Back in Mesopotamia, sometimes around 1500BC, in the region that is roughly in Kurdish Iraq, people didn't get a drink of their own. Instead you got a straw of your own, and everyone drank from the same urn at once. Imagine going to the bar today, ordering a nice beer and instead of being served a drink you get a straw and the bartender points you to the table that's drinking out of the barrel you like. Yeah, I'll take my own glass, thanks.

This communal drink sharing did stop eventually and everyone got their own containers to drink from.

A common fear in people today is being contaminated or poisoned with toxins and harmful substances. It may surprise you that this is something that has basically always happened. It's a well known fact that the Romans were often exposed to lethal lead poisoning from their amphoras and water lines, but lets go back further.

250.000 years ago, the Neanderthals suffered very hard winters and autumns, and evidence left in their preserved teeth show that they ingested high levels of lead. Exposure from both contaminated water and fires would have made them extremely ill, with no way of understanding why, as they sought shelter in caves that amplified the lead poisoning.

Imagine you are a scientist. You've studied hard, worked hard and now you spend your days analyzing 700 year old poop. Not exactly glorious work, but we now know thanks to them that people in Lubeck, Germany had bad parasite problems. Improperly cooked fresh water fish is rife with worms and evidence gathered from medieval outhouses show that they had worms in spades. Interestingly, this research also shows that society shifted towards a more meat based diet around 1300, probably due to a rising demand for leather goods.

A lot has been written about how bad sugar is for your teeth, which is true. But did you know snacks like potato chips (crisps) are worse? Sugar is easily dissolved in water or saliva and washed down, but the starchy snacks tend to stick to the teeth and feed the bacteria that causes cavities.

This phenomena is known to have been a problem as far back as 15.000 years ago, when early settlers managed to cultivate domesticated wheat and barley. Grinding down these early grains together with nuts, legumes and made into porridges and flatbreads caused the same dental problems as modern chips. This has been proved again from teeth, these ones found in Morocco, but back then they didn't have dentists with modern pain killers to fix teeth far nastier than those found today.

Four good reasons to be happy to be alive today in 2019.

That's that, join me again next time, and until then, have a great week!