What is Primitive?
We watched the BBC's Tudor Monastery Farm with the unstoppable Ruth Goodman several months ago. We've watched the Primitive Technology channel on YouTube but something about Tudor Monastery Farm -- maybe because of William T. Cavanaugh's lectures -- has stuck. Maybe because Ruth, Peter, and Tom explain the techniques of our forebears in more detail than the gentleman on Primitive Technology.
Tudor Monastery Farm (such a mouthful!) challenges what we mean by Primitive. "Primitive" encompasses a vast range for us on this side of the Enlightenment and the Industrial Revolution. Cave men living in caves to Roman aqueducts and Gothic Cathedrals. If you mean simple tools, well maybe yes, all those things are primitive. If you mean ignorant, most certainly not. The Medievals may not have understood the human body as seen under a microscope. But they most certainly knew what boiling water, salt, and sunlight could do. They wasted nothing. If their tools were simple, their ingenuity was boundless.
We by contrast look like the primitive ones. For many of us, our lives consist of pushing buttons -- on thermostats, cars, computers, microwaves, refrigerators, washing machines, dishwashers, and phones. We may be able to give a coherent explanation of electricity but our skills are profoundly limited compared to the Tudor farmer. The farmer plowed, harrowed, threshed, thatched, gleaned, built fences from stone and from hedges, knew how to make a sturdy draft-free house for his pigs, made his own ale and cider, made his own charcoal, sheared his sheep, made his own rope and twine, he could gerrymander almost anything, and could wrestle any farm animal (because he had to): sheep, angry pigs, cows, and geese.
He may not have known how to read a book but he knew how to make read the seasons and make a living.
His wife could do almost all those things too. The division of labor appears to have had far more to do with the man's increased upper body strength. She milked cows, made soap, made the fire (no mean feat and an essential skill), could turn anything remotely edible into a meal, made cheese and butter, did the laundry -- carrying heavy wet linens, clubbing the soap into the laundry, wringing out the laundry (another feat of strength), and hanging it up to dry, she knew how to use every molecule of an animal carcass, and nearly everything in the house excepting the furniture, she made herself: cushions, mats, hangings, mattresses, stuffing, clothes. Watching Ruth work in the dairy filled me with awe.
I don't wish to idealize their hard lives. The documentary shows a middle class farmer always one day or one bad decision away from starvation. We are a wealthy people. Our poorest people know what cinnamon and coffee taste like and sugar is cheap. We go to gyms to replicate the physical labor of old days. The type of "strength" trumpeted in women's marches looks silly next the farmer's wife beating her laundry with a club and rushing to bring in the harvest. Our notions of feminism and equality look primitive when you see the work of the farmer's wife. Our notions of eco-friendliness look ridiculous compared to a society where one rarely had anything leftover and what they did have went back into the land or to the pigs for next year. We tend to idealize or forget the past. We owe it more respect.
Tudor Monastery Farm (such a mouthful!) challenges what we mean by Primitive. "Primitive" encompasses a vast range for us on this side of the Enlightenment and the Industrial Revolution. Cave men living in caves to Roman aqueducts and Gothic Cathedrals. If you mean simple tools, well maybe yes, all those things are primitive. If you mean ignorant, most certainly not. The Medievals may not have understood the human body as seen under a microscope. But they most certainly knew what boiling water, salt, and sunlight could do. They wasted nothing. If their tools were simple, their ingenuity was boundless.
We by contrast look like the primitive ones. For many of us, our lives consist of pushing buttons -- on thermostats, cars, computers, microwaves, refrigerators, washing machines, dishwashers, and phones. We may be able to give a coherent explanation of electricity but our skills are profoundly limited compared to the Tudor farmer. The farmer plowed, harrowed, threshed, thatched, gleaned, built fences from stone and from hedges, knew how to make a sturdy draft-free house for his pigs, made his own ale and cider, made his own charcoal, sheared his sheep, made his own rope and twine, he could gerrymander almost anything, and could wrestle any farm animal (because he had to): sheep, angry pigs, cows, and geese.
He may not have known how to read a book but he knew how to make read the seasons and make a living.
His wife could do almost all those things too. The division of labor appears to have had far more to do with the man's increased upper body strength. She milked cows, made soap, made the fire (no mean feat and an essential skill), could turn anything remotely edible into a meal, made cheese and butter, did the laundry -- carrying heavy wet linens, clubbing the soap into the laundry, wringing out the laundry (another feat of strength), and hanging it up to dry, she knew how to use every molecule of an animal carcass, and nearly everything in the house excepting the furniture, she made herself: cushions, mats, hangings, mattresses, stuffing, clothes. Watching Ruth work in the dairy filled me with awe.
I don't wish to idealize their hard lives. The documentary shows a middle class farmer always one day or one bad decision away from starvation. We are a wealthy people. Our poorest people know what cinnamon and coffee taste like and sugar is cheap. We go to gyms to replicate the physical labor of old days. The type of "strength" trumpeted in women's marches looks silly next the farmer's wife beating her laundry with a club and rushing to bring in the harvest. Our notions of feminism and equality look primitive when you see the work of the farmer's wife. Our notions of eco-friendliness look ridiculous compared to a society where one rarely had anything leftover and what they did have went back into the land or to the pigs for next year. We tend to idealize or forget the past. We owe it more respect.
Comments