The Mental Floss History Of The World Part 16

The Althing Althing continued even after Iceland was taken over by Norway in 1262. It was dissolved temporarily around 1800, but was restored in 1844. Some historians consider it the first example of representative government, and it is often hailed as the world's oldest surviving legislative body and "the grandmother of parliaments." continued even after Iceland was taken over by Norway in 1262. It was dissolved temporarily around 1800, but was restored in 1844. Some historians consider it the first example of representative government, and it is often hailed as the world's oldest surviving legislative body and "the grandmother of parliaments."

The Ol' Battle Axe

She was the illegitimate daughter of Eric the Red, half-sister of Leif the Lucky-and a world-cla.s.s b.u.t.t-kicker.

Although Viking women generally enjoyed greater status and more rights than their counterparts in most other contemporary cultures, Freydis Eiriksdottir was unusually a.s.sertive. She partic.i.p.ated in at least two of the voyages to Vinland (modern-day Newfoundland) that her half-brother Leif took in the early eleventh century.

One Norse saga credits her on the first expedition with giving birth to the first European born on North American soil. It also credits her with thwarting an Indian attack by ripping open her bodice, baring her swollen b.r.e.a.s.t.s, and slapping a sword on them, much to the consternation and confusion of the natives, who subsequently retreated.

On the second trip, Freydis apparently was actually a co-sponsor of the expedition. A falling-out with her partners led to the establishment of separate settlements in the New World. She further strained relations when she told her husband that the men at the rival settlement had raped her. He and his men dutifully killed all the men at the rival camp, but drew the line at killing their women. Freydis then reportedly picked up an axe and did the job herself.

After a three-year try, the Viking settlement was abandoned and Freydis returned to Greenland. It's possible, though unconfirmed, that she and her spouse were exiled for their activities in Vinland.

A Beautiful Mind

Abu Ali al-Husain ibn Abdallah ibn Sina was, quite simply, one of the brightest guys in history. Known in the Western world by his Latinized name Avicenna, he was the son of a local government official whose home, in what is now Iran, was a gathering place for the area's learned men.

Avicenna was a precocious, and largely self-taught, child. By the age of ten, he had memorized the Koran and volumes of Arabic poetry. By the time he was sixteen, he had completed extensive studies in physics, math, and logic, and by the age of twenty-one he was an accomplished and practicing physician.

He is believed to have written about 450 works, about a third of them dealing with philosophy. One effort-called the Kitab al-s.h.i.+fa' Kitab al-s.h.i.+fa' (or Book of Healing)-was a compendium of math, logic, and the natural sciences and is considered by some scholars as the single largest work of its kind written by one man. He also auth.o.r.ed (or Book of Healing)-was a compendium of math, logic, and the natural sciences and is considered by some scholars as the single largest work of its kind written by one man. He also auth.o.r.ed Al-Qanun fi'l-tibb Al-Qanun fi'l-tibb (The Canon of Medicine), which for centuries was one of the most authoritative medical texts in the world. (The Canon of Medicine), which for centuries was one of the most authoritative medical texts in the world.

I prefer a short life with width to a narrow one with length.-Avicenna, to friends who had asked him to take things easier

In addition to his scientific smarts, Avicenna was also such a gifted bureaucrat that he was sought out by various political leaders for help in running civil matters.

Somewhat unfortunately for the brilliant scholar/doctor/administrator, the part of Persia in which he lived was politically unstable for much of his life. For a fair part of his adult life, he wandered from village to town, practicing medicine or working as a civil servant by day and churning out treatises on everything from music to mechanics to metaphysics by night.

And he did it all despite being intermittently ill during the last few years of his life, which ended at the age of fifty-eight.

The ABBs

Here's something they didn't teach you on Sesame Street. Sesame Street. In 862, a guy named Prince Rostislav of Great Moravia (modern day Czech Republic) asked the Byzantine emperor Michael III to send him some missionaries to help Christianize the Slavs. The emperor looked around and chose two brothers from the Macedonian province of Thessalonica, named Constantine and Methodius. In 862, a guy named Prince Rostislav of Great Moravia (modern day Czech Republic) asked the Byzantine emperor Michael III to send him some missionaries to help Christianize the Slavs. The emperor looked around and chose two brothers from the Macedonian province of Thessalonica, named Constantine and Methodius.

The brothers were noted scholars (both of whom eventually were canonized) who had an affinity for languages. They also decided it would be easier to teach the Scriptures in the Slavs' native language, and invented, or helped invent, an alphabet to use in the translation. The alphabet was called the Glagolitic, which later morphed into the Cyrillic alphabet.

The Cyrillic alphabet, with some slight modification over the years, became the national script for all kinds of Slavic peoples, including the Russians, Serbs, Bulgarians, and Ukrainians. It also became a source of controversy in the Christian Church, because some Church leaders objected to the use of anything but Latin when it came to liturgical matters.

And where did Cyrillic Cyrillic come from? From come from? From Cyril Cyril, which is what, for unknown reasons, people started calling Constantine shortly before his death.

A Fishy Fairy Tale

Have you heard the one about the young girl who had a wicked stepmother and an ugly stepsister, was forced to wear rags and do all the ch.o.r.es, and in the end got to marry a dream guy?

Sure, everyone knows the story of Yeh-Shen. "Who?" you ask. Ah, you're forgiven for thinking it was Cinderella. After all, the story line has shown up in folktales from Africa to England to the Algonquin of North America.

The earliest-known version of the tale was first recorded by a Chinese author and folktale collector named Tuan Ch'eng-s.h.i.+h, who put it down on paper about 850 CE. In his version, the heroine's only friend is a ten-foot-long magical fish, which lives in a nearby river. Yeh-Shen's evil stepmother finds out about the fish and kills it. An old man advises the girl to collect the fish bones and make a wish. Her wish is to attend a festival, and her rags are turned into a gorgeous outfit. Fleeing the affair after b.u.mping into her stepmother, Yeh-Shen loses a slipper.

NO SUGAR? NO FRYING? YOU CALL THAT A DIET?.

Sugar was so rare in the Medieval European diet that it was kept under lock and key. Animal fat was usually reserved for making soap and candles, and for greasing wagon axles. As a result, most food was boiled rather than fried.

The slipper winds up in the hands of the richest merchant in the district, who launches a search and...yada yada yada. In the end, the girl marries the merchant, and the stepmother and stepsister are killed in a rockslide. No singing mice, no pumpkin coach, no bibbidy-bobbidy-boo. But still a pretty good story.

Salty Goodness

It's hard to believe, but mankind has not always had the pretzel as part of its larder. It appears that we have some well-behaved children and a kind-hearted monk in seventh-century Europe to thank for its creation.

In 610, a monk-baker in what is now northern Italy was baking unleavened bread for Lent when he hit upon an idea to reward local children who had learned their prayers. He twisted the dough so it looked like arms crossing the breast in supplication. Then he baked it and named the creation pretiola pretiola, Latin for "little reward."

Judging by their appearance in numerous works of art and literature, pretzels were pretty popular in the Not-So-Dark Ages, and were soon thought of as symbols of good luck and long life. One contemporary ill.u.s.tration of St. Bartholomew, for example, shows him surrounded by pretzels.

Pretzels also helped save the city of Vienna in the early sixteenth century from invading Turks. It seems the Turkish army was secretly digging tunnels under the city's walls late at night. Viennese pretzel makers who were working the midnight s.h.i.+ft to ensure their product's freshness heard the digging and thwarted the attack. A grateful king awarded the bakers with their own coat of arms, featuring a pretzel, which many Viennese bakers still display outside their shops.

Great Divides

An undated Tang Dynasty doc.u.ment unearthed in a Dunhuang cave in China's Gansu Province in about 1900 indicates that the people of the age were pretty darned civilized when it came to divorce.

The doc.u.ment, ent.i.tled "Agreement on Letting the Wife Go," says that when a couple become antagonistic toward each other, "it'd be better for them to meet their respective relatives and return to their respective original way of life.

"The man said: 'I wish that you, my wife, after divorce, would comb your beautiful hair again and paint your pretty eyebrows, and thus present your gracefulness and marry a man of high social status. Then we put an end to our enmity, refrain from resenting each other. Henceforth, we will feel relaxed after separation and will enjoy happiness.'"

Plus, if she got married again, it would likely let him off the alimony hook.

AND TO GO WITH THOSE PRETZELS...

Around 850, monks in the Kaffa region of Ethiopia apparently begin using a drink brewed from the red berries of a local bush to help them stay alert. According to a popular story, they learned of the berries from a local goatherd, who had observed how frisky his animals got after eating the "berries"-which eventually became known as coffee.

AND THANKS, BUT NO THANKS, FOR...

One Hot Weapon

Tired of five years of blockades and attacks on their capital of Constantinople by Arab forces, the Byzantine navy came up with a new-and definitely secret-weapon in 677 for the Battle of Syllaeum, which was fought in the inland Sea of Marmara in what is now Turkey.

The weapon was...well, we're not exactly sure what it was. We're pretty sure it was invented by a Greek-speaking mathematician and engineer named Kallinikios. He was either a Christian or a Jew, and he fled his native Syria after the Arabs invaded it. His invention was a highly incendiary liquid that was pumped onto enemy s.h.i.+ps and troops through large siphons mounted on the Byzantine s.h.i.+ps' prows. The liquid apparently would ignite on contact with seawater, and was extremely difficult to extinguish. The ingredients of what eventually would become known as "Greek Fire" were a closely guarded secret, shared only by the Byzantine emperor and members of Kallinikios's family. Historians think it was some unholy mixture of naphtha, pitch, sulfur, lithium, pota.s.sium, metallic sodium, calcium phosphide, and a petroleum base.

The substance was first used a few years before the Battle of Syllaeum, but it was in that fight that it came into its own as a terrifying weapon. The Arab fleet was defeated, and coupled with a subsequent land victory, the Byzantine win resulted in peace in the region for almost three decades.

Other nations eventually came up with their versions of the stuff. The Arabs even used it themselves during the Crusades. But its instability often made it as dangerous to its users as to its victims, and it went out of military fas.h.i.+on by the mid-fifteenth century.

Serfs Without Turf

The term feudalism feudalism is usually used to describe what pa.s.sed for a system of government in the Europe of the "Middle Ages." Like the term is usually used to describe what pa.s.sed for a system of government in the Europe of the "Middle Ages." Like the term Middle Ages, Middle Ages, however, feudalism has become a subject of intense debate among historians, some of whom say the system it describes was not widespread, or that it existed in way too many variations to warrant using it as a blanket description of the way things worked back then. however, feudalism has become a subject of intense debate among historians, some of whom say the system it describes was not widespread, or that it existed in way too many variations to warrant using it as a blanket description of the way things worked back then.

With that caveat in mind, here's a blanket description of feudalism: Rulers such as Charlemagne needed the support of the various powerful n.o.bles. The kings, therefore, traded to the n.o.bles some of the land they controlled, in return for economic, political, and military support. The n.o.bles then swapped some of that land to lesser n.o.bles in return for their support. The lesser n.o.bles contracted with the peasantry to work the land in return for a place to live and food to eat.

The serfs also got the protection of the lords of the manors when Vikings or Magyars or other raiding groups showed up. Everyone did okay in this system, except of course the peasants, who were virtual slaves, and whose labor kept everyone up the ladder in munchies.

Feudalism also didn't do much to establish a more centralized government, because as time pa.s.sed, the n.o.bles came to look on the land as their own and therefore felt less allegiance to any old king.

And as the pandemic plagues of the sixth, seventh, and eighth centuries ran their courses and agricultural production methods improved, Europeans produced more food, and reproduced with enthusiasm. By 1000 CE, the continent's population had reached about thirty-five million, and towns and cities began to get bigger and more numerous. Markets for surplus products appeared. Landowners found it was cheaper to hire labor than support a laborer and his family as tenants.

Gradually, the feudal system gave way to a system based on exchanging money for labor or services. Nowadays we call it capitalism, even though it still frequently makes us feel like serfs.

BY THE NUMBERS.

0.

useful number whose utility was described by mathematicians in India between 500 and 900; borrowed by Arab scholars and eventually shared with Europeans

1.

number of women who ruled as empress of Tang Dynasty China 210 estimated percentage of candidates who successfully pa.s.sed civil service exams in Tang Dynasty China

5.

number of times each day faithful Muslims were supposed to pray

15.

number of years older than the Prophet Muhammad his wife was 114.

number of chapters, or suras, in the Koran