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The article boils down to: "We can see that ordinary working folk had a higher risk of injury compared to the friars and their benefactors or the more sheltered
by polycaster 6y ago
The article boils down to: "We can see that ordinary working folk had a higher risk of injury compared to the friars and their benefactors or the more sheltered hospital inmates" (ie. 44% compared to 32%/27% having bone fractures).
Somehow I fail to see how this is surprising.
- Vervious 6y agoI guess most research shouldn't be surprising, otherwise there'd be an eureka every day
- polycaster 6y agoThere's certainly value in their finding. My comment was more targeted at the usual HN audience perhaps expecting an intellectually stimulating story.
- ejolto 6y agoIt's important to have data to back our unsurprising assumptions. Lots of unsurprising assumptions have turned out to be false.
- kibwen 6y agoIndeed. Relatedly, here's Popular Science's list of articles in the category "Science Confirms The Obvious": https://www.popsci.com/tags/science-confirms-obvious/ https://www.popsci.com/tags/science-confirms-obvious/
- Cederfjard 6y agoI’d be more interested in a list called “Science Disproves the Obvious”. Anyone got one laying around?
- taeric 6y agohttps://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_common_misconceptions https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_common_misconception... is about the best I know of.
- libraryatnight 6y agoThis some fantastic reading. Some insightful, some hilarious: "Steak tartare was not invented by Mongol warriors who tenderized meat under their saddles."
- smogcutter 6y agoMaybe a confusion of tartar the sauce with Tatars the central Asian nomads? There’s possibly something there though, even if the steak tartar version is incorrect. Bret Deveraux claims the aim was to preserve meat into a kind of jerky: “On the move, meat could be placed between the rider’s saddle and the horse’s back – the frequent compression of riding, combined with the salinity of the horse’s sweat would produce a dried, salted jerky that would keep for a very long time.”[1] His stuff is very well sourced, but also he’s self-admittedly talking outside his area of expertise there. So who knows. [1] https://acoup.blog/2020/12/11/collections-that-dothraki-horde-part-ii-subsistence-on-the-hoof/ https://acoup.blog/2020/12/11/collections-that-dothraki-hord...
- andredz 6y agoThis is the first time I hear of this (https://xkcd.com/1053/ https://xkcd.com/1053/). I had always assumed they had the same etymology. It didn't help that in Spanish all of these words maintain the 'r' between the 'a' and 't': tártaro, ra, Tártaro, Tartaria. Here there are 3 different etymologies: https://dle.rae.es/t%C3%A1rtaro https://dle.rae.es/t%C3%A1rtaro and here there's another one: https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sauce_tartare https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sauce_tartare Although I don't know if the Wikipedia article should be trusted, since the English version one (Tartar sauce) states: "The word Tartar is a Turkic word that is the name of Tatar people."
- bb123 6y agoJust because it isn't surprising doesn't mean it isn't interesting.
- polycaster 6y agoNo, it doesn't. But it is very likely that one thing comes from the other. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interest_(emotion) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interest_(emotion)
- datameta 6y agoPerhaps for some here (including myself) this data helps imagine a more detailed approximation of what life was like there in that time period.
- mytailorisrich 6y agoI don't think that this quote is what the article boils down to. IMHO the key information is rather: ""However, severe trauma was prevalent across the social spectrum." At all levels they found a significant number of skeletons with bone fractures.
- sandworm101 6y agoYes, the injury rate may be similar, but the sources of these injuries are likely not. Amongst the ruling classes, horses were the danger. Ride a horse and you will break more bones than the guy who walks to work. Be a friar working in a hospital, not toiling in the fields nor riding horses, and your fracture rate would be much lower.
- wpasc 6y agoBut your risk of bacterial infection probably skyrockets
- ashtonkem 6y agoAlso violence, but in different forms. For lower classes, regular street brawls will produce a lot of injuries. Upper class people will get into some street violence, but the presence of retinues will drastically reduce their incidence. On the other hand, for upper classes (but not monks) war and training for war will produce a ton of injuries, many fatal. Learning to fence and joust are very dangerous activities even in modern times.
- sandworm101 6y ago>> Learning to fence and joust are very dangerous activities even in modern times. Horses. Even today, horses are profoundly dangerous. Go to any hospital warn dealing with neck injuries. Young men fall off motorcycles, and so are generally a little older (16+). Young girls break their necks falling off horses. That particular fall (head first off a horse) is horrible. The neck takes all the load. Helmets protect the skull, not the neck. Obama once said that if he had sons there would be a conversation about them playing football. If I had daughters, they would not ride horses.
- chrisseaton 6y ago> Somehow I fail to see how this is surprising. Validating assumptions is useful science.
- pasquinelli 6y agoyeah, but it's also been published on the bbc and posted here.
- beckman466 6y ago> Somehow I fail to see how this is surprising. Yes! who cares about the lives of such lowly peasants. /s
- dang 6y ago"Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith." https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- shadowprofile77 6y agoCan't say much for hospital inmates but, bear in mind that friars in medieval Europe often had their days filled with plenty of hard physical labour as well, and often tended to farm plots for the benefit of their monasteries and church lands with lots of their own sweaty work. It was not what we would today consider a sedentary job at all. Though yes, a labourer would have been much more likely to suffer injuries regardless... One good fictional account of medieval life among all classes: Pillars of the Earth, by Ken Follet. Wonderful reading and realistically depicted in most ways.
- dang 6y ago"Please don't post shallow dismissals, especially of other people's work. A good critical comment teaches us something." https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- 99_00 6y agoWhat did you think the % of bone fractures would be before you read the article?