Human-animal relations in history
Added 2024-10-09 18:41:32 +0000 UTCHuman societies have always depended on animals in their economies and warfare. I discuss some of the ways that relationships between humans and animals have affected history.
Comments
Delighted to hear reference to the Tlingit in this video- I live in a very Tlingit part of Alaska and I was immediately thinking about their culture when you began talking about abundant food sources!
Sam Woolsey
2024-11-14 02:24:26 +0000 UTCThanks for taking the time to answer!
Karl Voelker
2024-11-13 02:17:52 +0000 UTCI'm afraid there's no easy answer. For a long time medievalists said there definitely wasn't any special concern or expectation. Recently some historians have disagreed and argued that there was millenarian expectation. To be fair, every generation in the Middle Ages had people convinced that the Last Judgment was about to happen, but it might have increased around the year 1000 (and nearby years like 1033). Unfortunately the sources for the social/cultural history of that period are really thin.
Premodernist
2024-11-10 02:18:09 +0000 UTC(This question has no relation to the video, sorry. I just can’t get it out of my head.) Did people attach a special cultural significance to the coming of the year 1000? I was thinking about growing up in the late ‘90s and how “Y2K” was such a big deal.
Karl Voelker
2024-11-08 01:57:57 +0000 UTCThat's a good question. I don't know. I know that medieval books sometimes have little doodles in the margins of animals doing human things. Not really the same thing though.
Premodernist
2024-10-21 19:23:28 +0000 UTCPerhaps a weird/dumb question. I've seen "cat memes" so to speak from the early 1900's, but I'm curious if there's any documentation that showed people pre-industrialization anthropomorphizing their animals (specifically cats and dogs) in the same way that a lot of modern people tend to do? Baby voices, cute "pet" names, giving your pet a "voice", treating them like babies etc.
gallachobaer
2024-10-17 11:52:34 +0000 UTCWhat a cool idea for a monument. I'd never heard of it, but if I ever make it back to London I'll have to go see it.
Premodernist
2024-10-11 21:44:18 +0000 UTCThat might be a good idea for a Patreon video!
Premodernist
2024-10-11 21:40:47 +0000 UTCI think the most affecting monument I have ever encountered was the one in Hyde Park in London, to Animals in War. A simple procession of donkey, horse, and dog, through a small break in a wall with a bas relief of more animals across history ... with the simple inscription: They Had No Choice I did not know about this monument before I saw it, and thus did not seek it out. But something about the notion of building this monument, and the acknowledgement that went into it, moved me like almost nothing else has
Peter Marino
2024-10-10 14:14:14 +0000 UTCGreat video! Im sure people have said this before, but I would love to see a video where you recommend book/ talk about your favorite books. I always see the big bookshelf and wonder whats on it!
Thomas
2024-10-10 11:19:33 +0000 UTCGreat!
ty zj
2024-10-10 02:40:31 +0000 UTCI would be very curious for more detail on what sort of weirdness or cultural oddities emerged with the rise of urbanization. Horses were a huge part of the economy, and horses were a status symbol at the start of the 19th century. But there are a lot of problems like sanitation that come from having lots of horses in cities, and eventually carriages were gradually supplanted by motor carriages. But I imagine that transformation was a lot more gradual than we think.
John H
2024-10-09 19:20:04 +0000 UTC
