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Oct. 27, 2020 - Skeptoid
24:54
Skeptoid #751: Pop Quiz: Myths of the Middle Ages

How well do you know the Middle Ages? Can you tell what's fact and what's fiction? Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Transcriber: nvidia/parakeet-tdt-0.6b-v2, sat-12l-sm, and large-v3-turbo
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Randy's Personal Magic Trick 00:07:17
Think of a village scene from the Middle Ages.
Absorb the sights, the smells, the sounds.
What are people wearing?
What are they doing?
What do their buildings look like?
Now, consider how much of what you're imagining is based on real history, and how much of it might be completely false, informed only by popular fiction.
Today's pop quiz will set you straight.
That's coming up next on Skeptoid.
Hi, I'm Alex Goldman.
You may know me as the host of Reply All, but I'm done with that.
I'm doing something else now.
I've started a new podcast called Hyperfixed.
On every episode of Hyperfixed, listeners write in with their problems and I try to solve them.
Some massive and life-altering, and some so minuscule it'll boggle your mind.
No matter the problem, no matter the size, I'm here for you.
That's Hyperfixed, the new podcast from Radiotopia.
Find it wherever you listen to podcasts or at hyperfixedpod.com.
This episode is dedicated to the memory of James the Amazing Randy, 1928-2020, mentor, hero, and friend.
It may sound cliché, but it's absolutely true.
Skeptoid and your other favorite skeptical podcasts and programming would not be here if it wasn't for Randy.
He was the one-time professional magician, but later full-time exposer of charlatans and frauds, who made such an impact on so many of us.
In 2006, I started Skeptoid, and there's one reason.
Randy was the compass that pointed the direction I took my life.
As a magician, he toured the world, escaping from straitjackets while hanging upside down from helicopters and all manner of defiances of death.
But he was also a great defender of the downtrodden.
At times, he risked life and limb for real in his refusal to perform for segregated audiences in the American South.
He became known to most people for his many appearances on Johnny Carson's Tonight Show, where he dramatically laid bare the failures of hucksters like Uri Geller, whose powers suddenly vanished when Randy applied even the most basic scientific controls on live television.
He was a founding member of PsyCop, along with Carl Sagan, Isaac Asimov, and many other scientific luminaries.
Psycop did great things, revealing the scams employed by fraudsters like televangelist Peter Popov.
But lawsuits, mostly from Uri Geller and their inevitable fallout, caused Randy to split from PsyCop and face Geller with his enormous financial resources alone.
The wisdom and merits of that decision are a valid debate, but what's not debatable is that it showed nobody was more personally committed and willing to risk more for the cause of protecting the public from fakers.
Randy continued his work as the JREF, the James Randy Educational Foundation, most famous for its million-dollar challenge for anyone who could prove any sort of paranormal abilities.
Many tried, all failed miserably, simply due to basic scientific controls.
It was this commitment to protecting victims and placing himself in harm's way to protect them that struck me most about Randy and that I always try to keep in mind.
Among the many marginalized groups he defended are LGBTQ people.
Randy himself came out as gay, but very late in life.
I still remember his appearances at his earlier Amazing Meeting conferences, where he perennially quipped that if there were any wealthy old ladies in the audience to please give him a call.
Then, at the age of 81, the lies stopped, and he publicly introduced his husband, Davy, a Florida artist whom I'm also proud to call a friend.
Randy knew as well as anyone how hard life can be for any member of any group marginalized by the mainstream.
And that is perhaps as good a reason as any for his fierce, lifelong commitment to defending victims against bullies, whether they're customers of a fraudulent product, grieving victims of a predatory psychic, black Americans in the South, or hopeful parishioners of a radio headset-wearing televangelist.
I will share one small personal story.
A group of us were at the J-Ref headquarters in Florida a few years ago for a reception the night before embarking on The Amazing Cruise, a skeptic-themed shipboard cruise in the Caribbean.
Out of the blue, Randy tapped me on the shoulder and had me follow him.
A few people tried to tag along, but he shooed them away.
He led me through the office and then into a private office beyond, and I started to wonder if I was in some kind of trouble.
Then he closed the door and sat me down.
The next thing I knew, he was holding a die.
I called it a dice, and he abruptly corrected me.
Die!
Evidently, magicians are sticklers for precision in terminology.
And then he taught me how to do a trick.
It's a simple little sleight-of-hand trick where you rub the die on a person's palm and it changes its sides.
He had me perform it a dozen times, carefully correcting the way I was holding it to not give anything away.
I'm not a magician by any stretch.
In fact, before that day, I only knew one trick.
And after that day, I still only knew one trick.
It was the same one.
Randy took it upon himself to personally teach me a magic trick.
And it was the one trick I already knew.
If you're going to have a private moment with Randy, you're all the more fortunate if that moment is cloaked with some inexplicable dark mystique.
And for me, the memory is infinitely richer for it.
I've always wondered if bringing people into his private office and teaching them a trick was some kind of rare honor or something he did with everyone.
Whatever it was, I choose to always feel honored.
It just so happens that today's episode is not a deep and profound one, worthy of a dedication of such gravitas.
But rather, it's the one that just happened to be the next one in the queue, and it's a light-hearted pop quiz episode.
Is that an appropriate way to remember Randy?
Well, I thought about that question for about five seconds.
The answer is yes.
Randy was not one given over to superstitions and religious notions of reverence.
If I'd told him I was going to rearrange the show to pair his dedication with a somber subject, he'd have wrinkled up his face and given me a look of grave disappointment bordering on anger.
And those of you who knew him know exactly the look I mean.
And so, enjoy this episode of Skeptoid.
It may have been written and recorded by me, but the human most responsible for it is James the Amazing Randy.
He may be gone, but you haven't lost him.
His mission lives on in the ongoing work of all of us whom he inspired.
You're listening to Skeptoid.
I'm Brian Dunning from Skeptoid.com.
The Flat Earth Myth Debunked 00:04:04
Pop Quiz, 13 Myths of the Middle Ages.
The Middle Ages, that period from about the year 500 to 1500, are the source of so much Western culture.
Everything from great works of fiction to popular traditions to Monty Python jokes.
It's painted in our heads an image of what we think the average medieval person looked like and did all day.
And when we examine that image, we find that it is informed at least as much by fiction as it is by fact.
Today we're going to do one of our famous pop quizzes, this time on myths of the Middle Ages.
And just to make it a little more fast and fun, this one's a simple true or false quiz.
Are you ready to test your knowledge of popular Middle Ages myths?
Let's go.
And just so I don't get hate emails later accusing me of being unaware that people other than Westerners exist, I'm telling you up front that this quiz focuses on medieval Europe.
Myth number one, the flat earth.
It is said that prior to Columbus proving the earth was round by reaching the east by sailing west, it was generally believed by Europeans that the world was flat.
Experienced skeptoid listeners should know this one, so it should be an easy start for most of you.
True or false?
False.
People didn't think the earth was flat.
Columbus thought he reached the east by sailing west.
Believing the islands of the Caribbean to be the East Indies is why indigenous Americans came to be called Indians.
But he never would have set off on such a journey, nor would expensive ships have been provided to him if people thought the earth was flat.
But as discussed in episode number 338, prior to Western biblical literalists devising the concept of a flat earth in the 1800s, no educated class of people anywhere in the world thought the earth was flat, though a sort of pop culture belief that ancient people thought that had existed for some time.
This includes Columbus and nearly everyone before him, going back more than 2,000 years to ancient Greek measurements.
Myth number two, London Bridge Fell Down London Bridge's Falling Down is not just the lyric to a familiar nursery rhyme, it's also a reference to an actual case from the Middle Ages, when London Bridge did fall down.
True or false?
True.
Although the origin of the nursery rhyme is too old to know who wrote it or what they had in mind, there were several times when London Bridge did actually fall down and had to be replaced.
The bridge is traditionally believed to have been destroyed by Vikings in about the year 1000.
Within the next couple centuries, the bridge was destroyed at least twice more, once by a tornado in 1091 and once by fire in 1136.
There were various other major fires on the bridge and its buildings for the next 500 years, requiring multiple repairs.
Myth number three, Primo Nocta.
The doctrine of primo nocta gave titled nobles the right to sleep with any peasant women subordinate to them, especially on their wedding nights, as seen in Mel Gibson's Braveheart.
True or false?
False.
Primo Nocta is broadly agreed among historians to be purely a literary myth.
There's no evidence that such a practice ever existed.
Whatever isolated incidents did take place would have been regarded no differently than any other rape.
There is a minority of scholarly opinion that the right may have existed somewhere in some form, but that is a fringe view.
Nobles making such demands of their subordinates have often appeared in fiction, so it's unclear when the first references appeared.
Myth number four, there was no medieval science.
Horned Helmets Are Hoaxes 00:10:39
Under the church, science and technological innovation ground to a virtual halt during the Middle Ages, which is why we also refer to the period as the Dark Ages.
True or false?
False.
The growth of innovation continued its upward curve throughout the Middle Ages, stretching from Rome to the Industrial Revolution.
The Middle Ages were rife with innovation, particularly in agricultural technologies.
Windmills and water mills appeared, bringing us the first industry and mass production of grain.
Plows of all types appeared.
Mechanical clocks were invented and saw constant improvement.
Great universities popped up everywhere throughout the Middle Ages.
Eyeglasses were invented.
Sailing technology allowed Europeans to reach the entire world.
And the universally acknowledged most important invention of all time, the printing press, appeared in the medieval workshop of Johannes Gutenberg.
And even that stood on the shoulders of people around the world who had been developing woodblocks and movable type for centuries.
In a world that can feel overwhelming, spreading thoughtful, evidence-based content is one of the best ways to make a positive impact.
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Myth number five, goofy, curly shoes.
We've all seen medieval caricatures where men wore jester-like shoes with long points that curled up as much as half a meter.
Is it true or false that these were an actual fashion?
True, long-toed shoes were indeed a real thing, reaching the height of style in the 1400s.
They were called krakows, as it was believed they originated in Poland.
What's not clear is whether people ever tied the long tips up to their legs, as is often claimed, a practice supported by only very scant documentation.
Those long points on the shoes even have a name.
Want to guess what they're called?
No?
Well, they're called pulens, meaning Polish style.
Myth number six, horned helmets.
As those Vikings were torching London Bridge, at least some of them may have worn horned helmets, much as we see when we go to a Wagner opera today.
Is it true or false that this was indeed a real Viking helmet style?
False.
No marauding Viking ever wore a horned helmet, and certainly not during the Middle Ages.
We have tons of evidence of what Vikings wore, and zero of it suggests horned helmets.
This famous belief probably stems from other civilizations that did have horned helmets, although they were generally rare oddities and usually only ceremonial.
There is even a pair of horned helmets from Scandinavia, though they predate the Vikings by thousands of years.
They were called the Veksu helmets, are made of bronze, are believed to have been purely ceremonial votives that were likely never worn by anyone, and date from the Nordic Bronze Age.
Also, the horns are long, uniformly thin, and curved with round tips, not at all like the bull-type horns usually depicted.
Myth number seven, chastity belts.
Women were sometimes obliged to wear chastity belts to prevent any sexual activity, voluntary or otherwise, usually when their husbands were away.
True or false?
False.
Chastity belts did become a bit of a thing later during the early modern period, and mainly as an entertainment device or political statement.
But there's no evidence they were ever used during the Middle Ages.
The few written references to them are regarded as ironic humor.
The chastity belts that exist today, and are said to be from the Middle Ages, are modern hoaxes, often constructed in support of kitschy museum displays meant to exaggerate the horrors of medieval Europe.
Myth number eight, life expectancy of 30.
People usually only live to about the age of 30, and someone as old as 40 would have been considered very aged indeed.
True or false?
False.
Statistically, it's true that average life expectancy was only around 30 or so during the Middle Ages, but this is because the average is thrown so far off by the high infant mortality.
Prenatal care was not yet really a thing, and there were many childhood diseases that killed a huge number of infants and children.
But if you survived your early years, you could expect to live to nearly as ripe an old age as we do today.
Medievals in their 60s or 70s were not at all uncommon.
Myth number 9.
Bad habits and hygiene.
Although we often hear of medieval people eating with their hands or knives and never bathing, people actually took about as much care with their personal habits and hygiene as we do today.
True or false?
True!
Museums are filled with medieval eating utensils and personal toiletry items, and not just from nobles.
The average person certainly washed themselves and their clothes to the extent they were able, and ate with place settings very similar to today's.
The idea that medievals were disgusting and stinky comes mainly from fiction about rogues and highwaymen and thuggery.
Myth number 10.
Women's Rights Women had the right to own property and do business in medieval Europe.
True or false?
True.
Although women were clearly subordinate to men, women's rights actually increased over the duration of the Middle Ages.
One unexpected factor in this was the Black Death, which killed so many people that women were allowed to step into virtually any role vacated by a male victim of the plague, due simply to necessity.
Women's rights reached a historical high at the end of the Middle Ages, at which point restrictions began to be implemented by men whose positions were threatened.
This decline continued essentially until suffrage movements began to see some success in the 20th century.
Myth number 11.
Burning Witches Many women were burned as witches in the Middle Ages.
True or false.
False.
Although at least 40,000 people, about 80% of them women, were executed in Europe for witchcraft, estimates vary widely.
This didn't start until the Middle Ages were ending.
The prevailing view among medievals was that witchcraft did not exist.
It was considered superstitious nonsense.
Witch hunting was even illegal in many places.
In fact, it was belief in witchcraft that was treated as heretical by the church.
Now there were exceptions, of course, but by and large, hunting and executing witches was an aspect of the early modern period, not of the Middle Ages.
Myth number 12, small doors equals small people.
Medieval door frames look very small to us, and the reason is that people were shorter back then.
True or false?
False.
It was common back then to simply make doors no bigger than they needed to be, because they were sources of drafts and they lacked our technology for heating.
However, it is true that people were shorter then, but not by nearly so much as we see in the change in door sizes.
Generally throughout history, but by no means universally, changes in average height have corresponded to industrialization and economic status.
People in industrialized nations today are up to 10 centimeters or 4 inches taller today than they were at the beginning of the Industrial Revolution.
But prior to that, there had been no real changes since the first agricultural revolution.
Myth number 13, the Iron Maiden.
The famous Iron Maiden torture device was largely fictional.
True or false.
True.
Iron Maidens first appeared in 19th century fiction.
They're part of a sort of gothic genre called neo-medievalism, which depicts Middle Ages imagery as brutal and uncivilized.
But clearly, you can tell they're not a practical torture device.
Being enclosed in one would obviously cause a rapid and unpleasant death.
Very little torture actually involved.
Iron Maiden Torture Fiction 00:02:49
So that's it.
How did you do?
If you got all 13 right, I dub thee King Arthur.
Which is one medieval myth we didn't include, though he did get a question dedicated to him in another quiz episode, number 138, on people who were either real or fictional.
Go check that one out next.
Until next time, keep your skeptical radar turned on, and always be ready to tell fact from fiction.
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