The Mental Floss History Of The World Part 12

Cold Cream

Quick: What do your wrinkled aunt Suzie and gladiators have in common? Right. Cold cream.

And Galen of Pergamum, the second-century Greek physician, anatomist, and self-promoter whose work dominated much of the medical world for a millennium.

After studying medicine for more than a decade, Galen began practice at a gladiator school in what is now Bergama, Turkey. Looking for ways to soothe tired sword arms, he mixed olive oil, beeswax, and rose petals. The resulting glop's water content evaporated on the skin, which left a cool, soothing feeling. Galen called it ceratum humidum ceratum humidum. We call it cold cream.

Galen eventually left the gladiatorial gig for a practice in Rome. There he became famous as a doctor to emperors. Insatiably curious, he dissected hundreds of animals, particularly Barbary apes, in an effort to understand more about the human body. One of his conclusions was that arteries were used to circulate blood and not air, as had been previously believed. Score one for science! Of course, he also believed his research supported the theory of the four humors-good health required a balance of four bodily fluids: blood, yellow bile, black bile, and phlegm.

A prolific writer, Galen cranked out about three hundred works, about half of which survive today. And he must have known something about health: he lived until the then-almost-unheard-of ripe old age of eighty-seven.

Saddle Sores

It seemed like kind of a no-brainer once it had been invented, but the humble stirrup made a huge difference in warfare during and after the Late Cla.s.sic Period. Men had been riding horses into battle for a long time, but not always to great effect. For one thing, it was hard to hang on the horse and wield a weapon at the same time, since the rider had to use his thigh muscles to keep his seat, and couldn't rise off the saddle. Sometimes it was hard even getting to the battle: a Persian king named Cambyses was reported to have stabbed himself to death with his spear while getting on his horse.

But by the middle of the fourth century, someone in China had figured out that putting two rigid loops on the sides of the horse for the rider's feet to rest in would make it a lot easier for him to shoot bows, swing swords, and so on. It also allowed riders to carry bigger weapons and wear more armor, and still maintain their balance.

This use of "heavy cavalry" greatly diminished the impact of slow-moving infantry and greatly changed battlefield tactics. Small nomadic groups could practice hit-and-run warfare on larger but less mobile armies.

At least one historian even maintains that the development of the stirrup led to the development of the feudal system, since armored knights on horseback became much more important than a bunch of peasants with battle-axes.

All that horseflesh and armor cost money, and kings paid off the knights with huge tracts of land and special privileges. Everyone else became serfs. Interesting theory.

Preserving Pompeii

Sure, their houses were on the side of a volcano, Mount Vesuvius, but it hadn't erupted in hundreds of years. True, there had been some violent earthquakes in 63 CE, but the inhabitants of Pompeii and Herculaneum, about twenty miles southeast of the site of modern-day Naples, weren't worried-until about noon on August 24, 79 CE.

A huge eruption of ash and pumice fell on Pompeii, quickly covering the city in almost ten feet of debris. Herculaneum was barely touched at first. But the eruption continued throughout the night. Sometime early on the morning of the twenty-fifth, a swirling cloud of super-heated gases and ash poured down on that city. Scientists estimate that the "pyroclastic flow" may have reached speeds of sixty miles per hour and temperatures of seven hundred degrees Fahrenheit. Any living thing in its path was instantly killed. Deaths totaled more than twenty-five thousand.

The Roman writer Pliny the Younger was an eyewitness to the blast from a nearby town, and wrote two vividly descriptive letters about it to the Roman historian Tacitus. Pliny's uncle, the naturalist Pliny the Elder, was also commander of the Roman Navy in the Bay of Naples, and led an unsuccessful rescue mission to Pompeii. The elder Pliny was killed, after calmly bathing, dining, and taking a nap as the sky rained fire.

...A darkness came that was not like a moonless or cloudy night, but more like the black of closed and unlighted rooms. You could hear women lamenting, children crying, men shouting...we stood up and shook the ash off again and again, otherwise we would have been covered with it and crushed by the weight-Pliny the Younger, describing the eruption of Mount Vesuvius

Herculaneum was eventually buried in a layer of volcanic mud that in some areas was fifty feet thick. Pompeii was under a layer of pumice stones and ash about half that thick. Except for looters, both cities were essentially forgotten until the mid-nineteenth century, when a systematic excavation was begun. Nowadays, the site is visited annually by thousands of tourists, who are treated to what life was like in Roman times-just before it ended.

s.e.x Laws

It has inspired more X-rated websites than just about anything, but there's a lot more to the Kama Sutra Kama Sutra than kinky s.e.xual positions. The work, whose t.i.tle translates loosely as than kinky s.e.xual positions. The work, whose t.i.tle translates loosely as Aphorisms of Desire, Aphorisms of Desire, was written sometime between the first and sixth centuries in India, probably during the reign of the Gupta Empire, and is attributed to a religious student named Vatsyayana. was written sometime between the first and sixth centuries in India, probably during the reign of the Gupta Empire, and is attributed to a religious student named Vatsyayana.

It's organized into thirty-five chapters: four chapters on love in general; ten chapters on s.e.xual topics ranging from kissing to a.n.a.l s.e.x; five chapters on how to get a wife; two chapters on how to treat a wife; six chapters on how to seduce someone else's wife; six chapters on courtesans, or mistresses, and two chapters on how to attract people in general.

Despite the Kama Sutra Kama Sutra's reputation, only one portion of one of its chapters deals with s.e.xual positions, listing sixty-four, including "the curving knot," "the tigress," and "the sporting of the sparrow."

Women in the Sciences

She was a leading Egyptian female philosopher and mathematician, which in the fifth century could get you killed as a witch.

The daughter of a noted scholar named Theon, Hypatia was born sometime between 350 and 370 (historians differ). After attaining adulthood, she became the leader of the Neoplatonist school of thought in the Egyptian city of Alexandria, attracting a sizeable following of students. She was also apparently an accomplished mathematician and astronomer, although any works directly attributable to her have been lost.

It's believed that Hypatia helped develop early versions of a hydrometer, used to measure densities of liquids; a hydroscope, used to look underwater; and a plane astrolabe, used to measure the positions of heavenly bodies. She also made extensive revisions in the work of the mathematician Diophantus, particularly in the field of algebra.

Fables should be taught as fables, myths as myths, and miracles as poetic fancies. To teach superst.i.tions as truths is a most terrible thing.-Hypatia of Alexandria

Being a Neoplatonist meant Hypatia believed humans could attain perfection and happiness without the help of a deity. This was a dangerous belief in the early fifth century, since the Roman emperor Theodosius I had declared open season on non-Christians.

In fact, it was fatal. A mob of Christian zealots who believed Hypatia to be a pagan witch attacked her in 415, beating her to death. The mob then hacked her body to pieces and burned the various parts.

Nonetheless, Hypatia will doubtless be remembered in coming centuries as a pioneer for a woman's right to think for herself-and solve for x x.

A Really Big Tombstone

Nintoku Tenno was the sixteenth-century imperial ruler of j.a.pan, according to tradition. Not much is known about him, except that he lived around the middle of the fifth century and apparently sent emissaries to China twice during his reign. There is also a legend that he suspended forced labor for three years and sacrificed his own comforts until prosperity returned to his empire.

Whatever. What we remember him for today is his tomb. The keyhole-shaped tomb of pushed-up earth is 1,600 feet long and 115 feet high, and covers 1.5 million square feet. Located near the city of Osaka, it is alternately surrounded by three moats and two greenbelts, and is one of the three largest tombs in the world. (The others are the tomb of Shihuang-di, the first emperor of the Chinese Qin Dynasty, and the Great Pyramid of the Egyptian pharaoh Khufu.) Nintoku's tomb was thought to have been covered by more than twenty thousand haniwa, clay sculptures. The tomb may have taken twenty years to complete. So much for no forced labor.

AND THANKS, BUT NO THANKS, FOR...

Sore Losers

While we don't know as much about Pok-a-tok-the popular ball game played by the ancient Maya and other Meso-American people-as we do, say, baseball, it's highly likely that the players were too nervous to eat before the big game.

Just how it was played is unclear, but archaeologists have figured out it involved a rubber ball, which could vary in size from that of a baseball to that of a beach ball. Its composition also varied, from solid rubber to hollow, to containing a human skull.

Pok-a-tok was played on large walled fields that could be longer than modern football fields, although narrower. Side walls sported stone rings as much as twenty feet above the ground, and the object of the game was to touch the ring with the ball, or pa.s.s the ball through the ring. Players, who could number from one to four per side, couldn't use their hands to accomplish this feat, which meant matches could take a really long time to complete.

Which is just as well if you were on the losing side. Often, although not always, the losers were decapitated and their blood drained as an offering to the G.o.ds. And you thought the sports fans in Philadelphia were tough.

Zorobuddhachristianism

Not much is known for sure about the founder of Manichaeism-including his real name. It is known that "Mani" (actually a t.i.tle of respect) was Persian by birth, the son of a woman with ties to Persian royalty. He began preaching at an early age, after the first of two visions he claimed to have had.

Somewhere around 240, Mani revealed a new religion that attempted to combine elements of Christianity, Buddhism, and Zoroastrianism. Manichaeism contended that the spirit was good and the flesh was bad, and that salvation came through self-knowledge and identifying with the soul rather than the body.

Mani took his new religion to India, and then returned to Persia, where he won permission from the ruling family to preach-at least until about 276. When a ruler named Bahram I ascended to the throne, Zoroastrian priests persuaded him to have Mani executed. After a trial that lasted nearly a month, he was-apparently in a fairly gruesome fashion: one version of the tale is that he was flayed alive; another, that he was crucified, then flayed, with his skin stuffed and hung on the city gate as a warning to his followers.

AUGUSTINE OF HIPPO.

As a theologian and writer, this North Africanborn guy was, well, a saint. In fact, he is generally regarded as one of the early Christian Church's most important and influential theologians.Augustine was born in a small Roman community called Tagaste, not far from the city of Carthage, in 354. His mother was a Christian, his father a pagan. Augustine was well educated, and became a teacher in Carthage before leaving for Rome at the age of twenty-eight.In Rome, and later Milan, Augustine taught rhetoric and began building a reputation as an accomplished speaker and writer. He also dabbled in religion, mostly adhering to the precepts of Manichaeism. According to his own account, Augustine converted to Christianity in 386 and returned to Africa, where he eventually, and somewhat reluctantly, became a priest and then bishop of the city of Hippo. (He's known to have had at least two concubines before he gave up s.e.x to join the priesthood.)He also became a prolific and widely known writer, the bulk of whose works-more than five million words-have survived to the present, and played a key role in bridging the transition of Christianity from its beginnings to the Middle Ages. The most important-the twenty-two-book City of G.o.d, City of G.o.d, and the thirteen-book and the thirteen-book Confessions Confessions-laid out not only details of his life, but also the foundations for orthodox Christianity.Augustine attacked pagan beliefs and the numerous variations on Christianity that sprang up in the first few hundred years after Christ's death. He described a vision of life that saw this world as doomed to disarray and disappointment, and counseled that man should instead focus on getting ready for life in the next world.Augustine died in 430, at the age of seventy-six, while the city of Hippo was under siege by the Vandals. His writings have since influenced not only theology, but also philosophy, sociology, and other areas of Western thought-including the concept of a "just war," or a war that is fought after peaceful options are exhausted and the potential for civilian loss of life is accounted for.

Following his death, Mani's religion spread quickly, both east and west from Persia, into Rome, Egypt, and the Eastern Roman Empire, and even reached into Tang Dynasty China. Its followers included St. Augustine, for the eight or nine years before he became a Christian.

As with any good religion, its followers were fiercely persecuted just about everywhere. Although it enjoyed sporadic success for several centuries, Manichaeism never reached the levels of influence of the religions from which it was distilled.

BY THE NUMBERS.

0.

number of women who ruled Rome from 1 CE to 500 CE 0.

number of women who ruled China during the same period

3.

average length, in years, of a Roman emperor's reign in the third century

40.

average life expectancy, in years, of citizens of the Roman Empire

41.

reign, in years, of Octavian Augustus Caesar

7.

number of years between 1 CE and 500 CE that the doors of the temple of Ja.n.u.s were closed, signifying that the city of Rome was at peace

26.