Many people like to assume that all of history has been a progression from “it sucked back then because people were ignorant savages” to “everything’s great now!”
But honestly, that’s not how it works.
I mean, take Egypt. For many thousands of years, Egypt was…actually a pretty great place to live, and TBH women there had better rights than we enjoy in many parts of the world today. The medical care? They used techniques in Egypt 3,000 years ago that we’re looking at now and going “Okay so that actually has some legitimate points, maybe they knew what they were doing.”
(I mean, sure, they also used crocodile dung as a contraceptive, but hey, the Pill hadn’t been invented yet.)
The Scythians…again. Life with them? I’d be okay with it.
I mean, if you get salmonella, trichinosis and infection from C. pneumonia at once- all three of which Nile Crocodiles carry -you’re probably not gonna stay pregnant. This could potentially be because you are dead, but it does count.
True.
(They used it to make a pessiary, btw. They dried it, powdered it, and mixed it with honey and sodium carbonate, or what is now known as washing soda. Now, the honey and washing soda probably DID kill sperm, much like a modern spermicide, but the dung???? Yeah that didn’t do much.)
Other methods of Egyptian birth control involved condoms made of animal intestines (which were used more because they protected from VD’s, to be fair)
If you couldn’t get crocodile dung, ground unripe acacia fruit and honey could be used to make the spermicide. Unripe acacia fruit is acidic, (as is honey) and sperm are killed in acidic environments, so it probably did help.
Egypt was LEGENDARY for its advancement during that period of history! And compared to many other civilizations at the time, women were indeed in a very good place! I think they could even own property, own and run businesses, and divorce their husbands but I’m not sure. As a man you were expected to keep your wife happy and provide for her, I know that much.
But it’s even wilder. Get this: they had a pregnancy test. They would have a woman urinate on a handful of grain. If it sprouted, she was pregnant. If it didn’t, she wasn’t.
It was 70% accurate.
NO BUT LISTEN
WHAT THEY DID??? They moistened a grain of barley and a grain of emmer wheat with the possibly pregnant person’s urine. If the emmer alone sprouted, it was positive. If the barley sprouted, it was negative.
NOW HERE’S THE WILD PART; certain hormones in the urine of a pregnant human inhibit germination in barley.
WE’VE JUST NOW FIGURED THAT PART OUT
In ancient Egypt? They didn’t know why it worked. They just knew it DID.
I KNOW IT’S SO COOL
People don’t seem to really grasp the fact that this one civilization existed for more than half of recorded human history. They had plenty of time to figure this shit out and become one of the greatest civilizations ever.
I love them so much ;u;
“Living in Egypt for most of history would have been pretty good actually.” -My history teacher during “History; ancient to early modern, part 1″ in college.
i think they suffer from The Biggest Picture syndrome because they seem to be looking at a large scale observation of the time with simple summaries like “yeah that time sucked”…. we can argue that THIS time sucks but like… it doesn’t mean we don’t got good stuff and doesnt mean we didn’t do stuff for ourselves? like sure, suffering is rampant and there are bad people around who get rich on hurting others, but people still live? it’s like that plague post abt the Youth™
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