How did people conceptualize the world in the distant past? If you had never been more than 50 or 100 miles from your village, how would you conceptualize the terms mountain, ocean, or lion if there were no mountains, oceans or lions where you live? I hate to use the term world view but what would your world view be like when there was only stories and no photographs or television?
Well, you relied a lot on pictures drawn by someone who had heard third-hand descriptions, or on third-hand descriptions; that’s how you get the epicanthic folds and flat noses of the Far East and those of Amerinds to be piled up under the same “race”. See photos, those people look very different; rely on descriptions from some big-nosed Mediterranean sailor and they sound very similar. The sea? A big lake that’s salty, you can’t drink the water. Mountain? A very big hill; take into account that what’s considered a “mountain” in some places would barely rate a name in others.
Even nowadays it can be difficult to understand some concepts; when my team of Spaniards got a job in Costa Rica, once the people there had grown confident enough they couldn’t wait to ask “how big are sheep?” Costa Rica has a thriving industry making Nativity figures, but there are no sheep; most pictures of sheep you can find won’t show them in a situation in which it’s easy to reckon their size. Snow, the sea; being in a valley when you grew up in the flatlands or in the flatlands when you grew up in a mountainous area; many people who being in the mainland are perfectly happy to never leave town get “island claustrophobia” when they find themselves in an island.
I think you described that very well
Yes, I presume different people all have different levels of desire to explore and see new things. Some people are comfortable never branching out.
There was a suggestion I read once that the unicorn was based on descriptions of a rhinoceros fourth or fifth hand.
interesting !!!
A very ancient stone carved to look like a sea-shell was found somewhere in interior Europe. This was from the stone age, and an indication of trade with someone who had at least seen a seashell if they hadn’t actually seen the sea. People certainly had some idea of the what mountains and oceans were and that they existed.
However, if you haven’t seen something yourself it may be difficult to truly grasp it’s properties. A friend of mine went whale watching last year, he had seen pictures and videos of whales before, but until he saw one up close in front of him he had hadn’t really appreciated their great size. So I’d imagine the people in this ancient village had some idea of what the world consisted of, but not with a true perspective.
Possibly conflated with narwahl horns.
That’s how Swedish taxidermists came up with the lion of Gripsholm Castle
Yes, that seems to be true. And I speak as a folklorist who doesn’t much like the idea that imaginary things are based on misperceptions of real things. Give this pdf a read for details.
This is a good description of what I meant
Most everyplace has trade routes, and some people from the village have surely travelled them and come back with stories. Areas related to trade (routes, villages people trade with, etc.) are probably pretty well know. People may also know pilgrimage sites or areas related to relevant rulers.
Outside of that, things get hazy. When I lived in Cameroon, I met quite a few people who didn’t really have a clear concept of what the US was or whether or not we are a part of France. I was once told New York was a very nice city in London, and a friend was asked if Canada was in Northern Africa. More than once I was asked if the map of Africa printed on the local notebooks was an upside down map of Cameroon. Blonde haired blue eyed me was frequently mistaken for a Chinese person.
The average view of the world there would be Africa, Arab areas, France-Euro-US and China.
But then again, on the plane ride back, the American next to me asked if I learned African while I lived there. Many of us don’t really have much of a concept of Africa and get basic facts wrong.
As for geographic features, words are pretty useful. I mean, fantasy novelists do a pretty good job describing places that don’t even exist, right? When I told my desert dwelling friends I was going to the ocean, I described it as a very big lake. Sure, it doesn’t capture it all. But then again, I can describe the landscape of the Cape Fynbos all I want, and even show pictures, but your still not going to get a full mental picture until until you experience it.
That’s the other difficulty - in the Good Old Days, there was limited literacy, limited education, limited reference material, and no way to fact-check (or provide cites).
Thus we have things like the story of the census in the nativity narrative - there were some censuses, but they were not empire wide, not ordered by Augustus; but someone writing almost a century later would know that something happened, and nobody would be able to point to readily available material and say “that’s not right”. We have the equivalent urban legends today.
So the same would apply to geography or bestiaries - someone would describe a land as being 'far, far away" in some general direction. By fourth or fifth hand, the details would become mangled. Someone would try to describe a lion, or tiger, as “a cat the size of a bear with funny mane/markings”; in the days before science classified everything, the idea that an animal must fit into specific categories - reptile, bird, or mammal, but not part of each - feline, ursine, rodent… Just consider - how much misinformation there was about the opposite sex and sex in general when growing up - and apply that ignorance to the whole world around you (with no such opportunity to correct it for yourself).
Another issue is innumeracy - a variant on illiteracy. We don’t really understand big numbers. To say something was a thousand miles away, in a world where people rarely encountered more than 20 on a daily basis - meant nothing. Like the example of whale size above, to say a mountain was “ten times taller than the tallest hill you’ve seen” was meaningless to someone in the flat lands.
I think, though, that you are overestimating our own command of the universe. How many of you can draw an accurate-ish map of Central Asia from memory? How many of you can name more than five facts about kangaroos? Can you tell me what a baobab fruit tastes like? If you wanted to mere a Dai person, do you know where to go?
Probably not. But does that mean you have a radically bizarre view the world because you don’t know everything about everything? No. You know a lot about your immediate surroundings and life, an intermediate amount about stuff that comes up often, and only a few somewhat disconnected tidbits about stuff that is far away and irrelevant. I’m guessing that you, like the hypothetical villager, also hold some pretty distorted views of stuff.
Like, how big is Africa?
Did you guess this big: http://goafrica.about.com/od/africatraveltips/ig/Maps-of-Africa/Map-of-Africa-Showing-True-Size.htm
Probably not. I’m an Africa watcher and that map shocked me.
So while Joe Villager is certainly ignorant of a wider circle than us, I wouldn’t assume he thinks differently than us. Living with lots of unknowns and distorted ideas is the normal human condition.
I’d assume you would relate them to what you do understand.
Either way, can’t you make the same argument for how we humans feel about the universe at large? How many of us can conceptualize a star that is a giant diamond, lakes of liquid methane, atmospheres that rain precious metals, teaspoons of stardust that weigh more than the empire state building, snow made of heavy metals, etc? Not even including quantum mechanics in that list of stuff we have a hard time conceptualizing.
I think there are a few things that are different.
First, we have an incredible amount of reference material and the literacy (and internet) to use it.
Secondly - audiovisual media. Starting with movies in the early 20th century, and accelerating through today with TV, we have a very rich world experience - we’ve all seen accurate renditions of the Taj Mahal, the Imperial Forbidden City in Beijing, macho Pichu, or Hawaii shores and surf; we’ve seen surfing, we’ve seen penguins in the Antarctic, we’ve seen horse races… even though we’ve never seen these things in person. In fact, over decades of life, we have sought out these new experiences.
People may not be able to draw an accurate map, but they generally have a better idea of the world around them, the more exposed to media (and the more they pay attention).
When I saw the Vatican for the first time in person, my thought was how would some peasant from a small village in 1500 think of a building whose interior was bigger than their entire village, whose dome was taller than the tallest tree or hill they’ve seen?
wow!!! such great explanation. It reminded me of the post you made on the how did you keep people from stealing your horse thread. So… are you a history professor or an Anthropologist? How did you come to learn these things?
I put that up to remind you but also to let other people read it because it was such a good good explanation and tied into this thread as well. If anyone wants to see it is from this thread:
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=747015&highlight=horse+theft
Thanks.
Anyone who’s spent serious time in a small town knows what I mean - humans are social animals and everyone knows everyone else’s business. You know those stories of medieval times, where the stranger or time traveller claims to be a minor or distant lord who just wandered into the king’s court? Not gonna happen. Nobility in those days was a “small town”. Everyone knew who was related to whom, how they were related, etc. One item I read said there were only about 50 dukes, earls, and other high nobility in England, for example. Knowing intimately and how they were related, these was like how men nowadays can tell you about pro sports - every team, most of the players, and what their stats are. Who you were related to, who was your friend, who you could marry your kids to, and who would lend you money - this was the major key to survival for nobility in those days. Strangers who didn’t come from over the sea were nonexistent unless they were peasants.
Henry VIII like monarchs before and after him, kept an extensive network of spies. His claim to the throne was tenuous, the country had recently gone through 30 years of upheaval over claims to the throne, and his biggest paranoia was someone with some claim trying to rally the country against him. He had minions who watched for any notable or interesting oddities.
We may have an abstract idea of what the Taj Mahal is like (though this is incomplete enough that it’s still worth going out there).
But there are still countless animals, fruits, land features, and other things we haven’t actually seen. And yet if you saw a cenote or a mBaka person or an African prune (to guess some things you might not seen in pictures) it wouldn’t completely blow your mind. It’s be unusual and interesting, but in the end you’d compare it to something you are familiar with (“an African prune looks like a tiny eggplant and tastes like olives!”) and get on with your day.
Now our range of things we can make comparisons with is bigger, for sure. But that doesn’t really affect world view. It’s still the same basic process of taking something you don’t know and applying it to something you know.
I mean, if aliens were real and you were about to go to their planet where cities are covered in enormous domes and buildings are 500 stories high, does that leave you beyond comprehension, unable to picture things on a scale that doesn’t exist where you are? Most people can summon a mental picture quite easily. It won’t be 100% accurate. But neither is their image of the Taj Mahal.
But there’s a good example - we’ve seen “domed cities” of one sort or other… from Logan’s Run to The Dome to The Truman Show (Ok, not exactly the same) to countless comics and science fiction illustrations. The average villager of 1400 would not have anything even remotely comparable, they might see some representation of “the big city” as a background to a church sculpture or art, but barely likely. They probably didn’t even have illustrated bibles available because they could not read and the clergy did not want to share. And, of course, even with modern humans there are those who seek and retain “different experiences” and those who neither see nor observe.
A hill doesn’t give you a good idea of what a tall mountain is like. Until you’ve experienced the sight of a mountain poking up from the horizon many miles away, to see it grow ever larger as you approach for hours, or even days if you are on foot, until you finally reach it’s base to see the top obscured by clouds, or having to bend your head as far back as possible to see the peak, and then even to climb the mountain and notice the air chilling and thinning as you climb, to see the snow cap while the base is hot and dry, until you’ve done those things, you have no appreciation for the enormous size of great mountains.
In the modern world our experiences take us much closer to an understanding of the things we’ve never experienced firsthand, but they still can’t substitute for being there for real.