Blue Gems In Teeth Illuminate Women's Hidden Role In Medieval Manuscripts (abc.net.au) 127
brindafella writes: The jaw bone of a woman who died around 1000-1200 AD has specks of precious lapis lazuli (mineral) in the plaque of her teeth. This indicates that this woman would have licked the brush used in preparing precious illuminated manuscripts at the women's monastery in Dalheim in western Germany. The study by researchers from German-based Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History and Britain's University of York showed that women, as well as men, were part of the production of the valuable manuscripts. "The researchers said this challenged long-held beliefs that women had played little role in the European Middle Ages in producing literary and written texts which came largely from religious institutions," reports the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. "Researcher Christina Warinner said this finding from the 11th century was unprecedented in showing more women were literate, educated and encouraged to read at that time."
Literate? (Score:4, Insightful)
I don't see why this implies literacy or even real education - many male monks were barely able to do more than copy what was in front of them and lots of priests in non-Italian countries could read out texts to their congregations without actually understanding Latin.
Manuscripts were produced in production lines - does someone assembling radiator grills for Ford know how to design a car?
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"Manuscripts were produced in production lines - does someone assembling radiator grills for Ford know how to design a car?" = How do you know all this? And why would you assume they don't as a default without evidence?
Being in a convent and making fleurs and caligraphy all day was a pretty high honor and privilege of the few, comparatively. You're kind of going off the reservation to imply you know something about them that you don't really.
It's a pure assumption on your part, perhaps a little more educ
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So you were told that it's a great honor that you are allowed to do your work.
Yup, I believe you that you're in a convent, story checks out.
Re:Literate? (Score:5, Interesting)
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It's pure assumption despite your single cherry picked example, egotist moron who thinks it's easier to land in Melbourne Australia than on Mars, lol.
Say that after you visit Moorabbin Airfield, boofhead.
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-or you could say they didn't know shit. Funny how that can mean the exact same thing as "knowing shit", but at least knowing *your* shit is unambiguous.
Re:Literate? (Score:5, Insightful)
"Manuscripts were produced in production lines - does someone assembling radiator grills for Ford know how to design a car?" = How do you know all this?
Because I am literate.
Monks were doing this into relatively recent times - it was a major source of income for many monasteries - and some of the workshop are still intact. In short, it wasn't a secret.
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Do you have a nice blue smile to prove it?
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Do you have a nice blue smile to prove it?
Not since I stopped sucking the ends of Bics.
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The image in TFA shows the stained tooth encrustation. If the image is anything like true-colour, then the actual dye content is probably less then 10%.
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Citation? I assume you're not just making this up without one, right?
Google what was done in a scriptorium you uneducated, lazy, cynical fuck in an age where nearly all of human knowledge is at your disposal with fewer keystrokes than you have already used to let everyone know you are an uneducated, lazy, cynical fuck.
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Citation? I assume you're not just making this up without one, right?
Google what was done in a scriptorium you uneducated, lazy, cynical fuck in an age where nearly all of human knowledge is at your disposal with fewer keystrokes than you have already used to let everyone know you are an uneducated, lazy, cynical fuck.
Exactly.
Re: Literate? (Score:1)
Funny as that might be she might have literally sucked the lapus off his priestly dong in some twisted sex thing. Here go scientiests: she must have been literate. Lol
Re: Literate? (Score:4, Funny)
"Most people still could not"
I'm extremely skeptical about the implication that people know more about how cars work on average than people in the 70's, 80's, and even 90's... when everyone knew about and worked on cars or their dicks would fall off.
Re:Literate? (Score:4, Interesting)
Indeed. The Chinese Room thought experiment shows why copying text verbatim says nothing about comprehension of said text. Similarly, a photocopier doesn't understand the words and images it makes copies of.
Re:Literate? (Score:5, Interesting)
Speaking of Chinese and copying, I've seen (fake) western antiques produced in China by people who were obviously unfamiliar with the western alphabet, in that they copied shapes of letters in things like latin inscriptions without knowing what the letters were. The result was sort of a Chinese tattoo fail [blogspot.com] in reverse.
So yeah, you could get people copying manuscripts who had little or no education, as long as they had good artistic skills. My guess as to why they had women do it is that they're better at precision work, which is why they were employed as recently as a few decades ago to do things like string ferrite core memory, and a few decades before that to paint watch dials.
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While crude, I think I think a valid point was made. This discovery could just as easily and more plausibly be explained by the woman performing sexual favors for a monk.
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Chinese metalworkers trying to be gunsmiths cloned a lot of western firearms from around 1890 to 1935. Many of them have reverse Chinese tattoo fails to some degree as well as silly, surprising, and frightening design choices while simultaneously demonstrating great ingenuity and patience. It was like whoever made these things obviously knew how to make things out of metal, but had very little understanding on how to make a modern firearm. There are lots of show-and-tell videos on Youtube by Forgotten We
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It does not. The Chinese Room shows that some thought experiments are just really shitty.
Go ahead, ask your Chinese Room to answer these questions and think about the implications:
- "How many fingers was I holding up 10 seconds ago?"
- "Do you think Stacy likes me?"
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The answer to both would be "I don't know of these things" or else a guess or vague statement, since the box has no sensors to acquire answers to those questions (and isn't expected to). In any case, the output would imply comprehension of the input despite no actual comprehension.
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That is a terrible defense.
It would not imply comprehension (ever had a conversation with a chatbot?). With the Chinese Room only able to answer encyclopedic questions, it is blatantly obvious that the Chinese Room would not even come close to passing the Turing test, so to imply (as the CR does) that it would 'simulate understanding' is retarded. The CR has no (artificial) state, mental modeling or any of the things required to actually understand things and as soon as you start adding those into the thoug
Re:Literate? (Score:5, Interesting)
I don't see why this implies literacy or even real education - many male monks were barely able to do more than copy what was in front of them and lots of priests in non-Italian countries could read out texts to their congregations without actually understanding Latin.
Manuscripts were produced in production lines - does someone assembling radiator grills for Ford know how to design a car?
Uhhh... no. The church regularly cracked down on education and what they called ‘feral latin’ among the clergy. Bishops and commissions of scholarly monks conducted regular visitations in parishes to judge and report the state of affairs. Plus, lapis lazuli was imported from Afghanistan and was at times more valuable than gold so this woman was an illustrator of some very high end texts. What is important about this discovery is more than anything else that it constitutes proof of the fact that women, presumably nuns, as well as monks were involved in the production of the most splendid manuscripts of the time because nobody except a first rate illustrator would have something as obscenely expensive as lapis lazuli in their dental plaque.
Re:Literate? (Score:5, Informative)
What is important about this discovery is more than anything else that it constitutes proof of the fact that women, presumably nuns, as well as monks were involved in the production of the most splendid manuscripts of the time because nobody except a first rate illustrator would have something as obscenely expensive as lapis lazuli in their dental plaque.
Which is already a well known fact since sometime they signed their works. [blogs.bl.uk]
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"But wait, this article says nice things about how women were treated and that triggers my insecurities and the researchers might be feminists"
Saying nice things about how women were treated and especially suggesting that women were educated and literate is definitely NOT consistent with the bias of feminists. Granted these agendas have no problem with contradictory positions "equal orgasms, women have sex drives just as strong as men" vs "men are obviously the primary drivers of all the sexual assault and
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Uhhh... no. The church regularly cracked down on education and what they called ‘feral latin’ among the clergy. Bishops and commissions of scholarly monks conducted regular visitations in parishes to judge and report the state of affairs.
They had to crack down on it because it existed. And of course they were 100% uncorruptable and diligent, like all clergy everywhere are renowned as being.
Plus, lapis lazuli was imported from Afghanistan and was at times more valuable than gold so this woman was an illustrator of some very high end texts. What is important about this discovery is more than anything else that it constitutes proof of the fact that women, presumably nuns, as well as monks were involved in the production of the most splendid manuscripts of the time because nobody except a first rate illustrator would have something as obscenely expensive as lapis lazuli in their dental plaque.
Sure. None of which has any bearing on literacy.
Re:Literate? (Score:5, Informative)
Uhhh... no. The church regularly cracked down on education and what they called ‘feral latin’ among the clergy. Bishops and commissions of scholarly monks conducted regular visitations in parishes to judge and report the state of affairs.
They had to crack down on it because it existed. And of course they were 100% uncorruptable and diligent, like all clergy everywhere are renowned as being.
Plus, lapis lazuli was imported from Afghanistan and was at times more valuable than gold so this woman was an illustrator of some very high end texts. What is important about this discovery is more than anything else that it constitutes proof of the fact that women, presumably nuns, as well as monks were involved in the production of the most splendid manuscripts of the time because nobody except a first rate illustrator would have something as obscenely expensive as lapis lazuli in their dental plaque.
Sure. None of which has any bearing on literacy.
It has a bearing on what TFA is about, I.e. that women were involved in the creation of some of the most exclusive illustrated manuscripts of the period, real masretmaster pieces like the Codex Aureus made for the emperor himself. When the radiator grill costs its weight in gold and the car the the grill is going into costs the yearly revenue of a whole county you do not let just any hack handle the assembly work. TFA made no claims about having proven that medieval women were literate. It has been well documented that women were literate since very ancient times. The literacy issue is a straw man you created. Also, I have read period documents written by clergy involved in visitations during the Middle Ages and these people took their work really seriously. Your completely unsubstantiated claim they all were corrupt is unfair. Ecclesiastical corruption did happen but it also regularly led to reform movements within the church and demands for reform among the civilian population. The biggest manifestation of this being the Protestant reformation.
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TFA made no claims about having proven that medieval women were literate. It has been well documented that women were literate since very ancient times. The literacy issue is a straw man you created.
"Researcher Christina Warinner said this finding from the 11th century was unprecedented in showing more women were literate, educated and encouraged to read at that time."
Also, I have read period documents written by clergy involved in visitations during the Middle Ages and these people took their work really seriously. Your completely unsubstantiated claim they all were corrupt is unfair.
Just as well that I didn't claim that, then. I implied that coverage was patchy.
Ecclesiastical corruption did happen but it also regularly led to reform movements within the church and demands for reform among the civilian population. The biggest manifestation of this being the Protestant reformation.
Yet the reformation came out of frustration at the lack of reform over the previous 200 years. This is the same as the Latin point earlier - there was a revolt because there was a need for it. You're trying to have it both ways/
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TFA made no claims about having proven that medieval women were literate. It has been well documented that women were literate since very ancient times. The literacy issue is a straw man you created.
"Researcher Christina Warinner said this finding from the 11th century was unprecedented in showing more women were literate, educated and encouraged to read at that time."
This has been a well known fact for centuries, the whole point of TFA and the significance of the discovery is actually presented in TFS which states: "The researchers said this challenged long-held beliefs that women had played little role in the European Middle Ages in producing literary and written texts which came largely from religious institutions,"
Also, I have read period documents written by clergy involved in visitations during the Middle Ages and these people took their work really seriously. Your completely unsubstantiated claim they all were corrupt is unfair.
Just as well that I didn't claim that, then. I implied that coverage was patchy.
You dismissed my argument with the rather broad claim that most if not all clergy were universally corrupt and open to bribery: And of course they were 1
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No you made the sweeping claim that all clergy everywhere is 100% corruptible And of course they were 100% uncorruptable and diligent, like all clergy everywhere are renowned as being. ... which is demonstrably a boldfaced lie.
Yeah, you need to work on your own literacy level.
Firstly: I specifically challenged the claim about literacy being linked to the use of Lapiz for artwork - which is completely spurious. I have made no comment on the supposed belief that nuns did not make written texts as it's a field I don't know well, although I'm aware that nuns did do work so I'm not wildly surprised if they did some manuscript work, which was a good earner.
Secondly: I used irony to attack your rather contradictory claim there was no pr
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This has been a well known fact for centuries, the whole point of TFA and the significance of the discovery is actually presented in TFS which states: "The researchers said this challenged long-held beliefs that women had played little role in the European Middle Ages in producing literary and written texts which came largely from religious institutions,"
The interesting thing about this challenging of long held beliefs is that while on the surface, those who would claim women's oppression might be saying "see. See, SEE?! Muh oppression" - one of the fundamental drivers of modern feminism is that the Christian Church is one of the primary drivers of institutionalized patriarchal oppression of women.
Some further thought into this matter might lead one to think that it is a strange oppressive patriarchy that elevates women to prestigious positions based on
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Perhaps even more interesting than the story is how desperate some people are to deny it. It's the same with what is widely accepted as the first ever novel - written by a Japanese woman. People will bend over backwards to find some reason why it wasn't first or why she was actually just a front for a man.
Still going on too, happens all the time with female engineers on YouTube.
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LOL. You two are talking right past each other. Neither one of you is fully understanding what the other has to say. Stop being invested in being right and try to honestly figure out what he is talking about. The same advice goes to the person you are addressing. Seriously, you BOTH have great points to discuss, but the intended meaning keeps getting sidelined by... stupid ego bullshit?
An example:
Your completely unsubstantiated claim they all were corrupt is unfair.
Ecclesiastical corruption did happen
The person you are responding never used the word "all". He said there was corruption and you even confirmed tha
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Plus, lapis lazuli was imported from Afghanistan and was at times more valuable than gold so this woman was an illustrator of some very high end texts. What is important about this discovery is more than anything else that it constitutes proof of the fact that women, presumably nuns, as well as monks were involved in the production of the most splendid manuscripts of the time because nobody except a first rate illustrator would have something as obscenely expensive as lapis lazuli in their dental plaque.
All it proves is that women licked the brushes. Knowing the way that men have mistreated women over the centuries, I would not be surprised if a talented artist who didn't like to lick his own brush was given a woman to do the unpleasant task for him. I'm not saying that they did not have many female illustrators back then. Obviously no one has any idea how prevalent it was back then if this is such a big finding. But I think its silly to draw any sort of conclusion from this finding. Women had very fe
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All it proves is that women licked the brushes. Knowing the way that men have mistreated women over the centuries, I would not be surprised if a talented artist who didn't like to lick his own brush was given a woman to do the unpleasant task for him.
This is the dumbest thing I've read all day. Are you getting some sort of weird sexual thrill imagining a bevy of beautiful naked women tied to posts, being forced to lick the male artist's brushes, and heaven knows what else?
Because that's exactly what the bullshit you just wrote reads like.
You must have flunked art class. Artists over the millenniums have all licked their own brushes, and there are a number of different points that can be placed on a brush. No way the artist doing the work would have
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The practice is pretty much discouraged today, as many of the pigments are poisonous.
And if they had an inkling of that, which they probably did, it could explain why they had presumptuously expendable women lick the brushes; congratulations, you played yourself.
Besides, with the patriarchy being what it was, why would they allow women to participate in such significant works? Surely it would have been an affront to their toxic masculinity. Or are you suggesting women were often treated with respect and held in high esteem in the middle ages? That's ridiculous. You sound like an male apol
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The practice is pretty much discouraged today, as many of the pigments are poisonous.
And if they had an inkling of that, which they probably did, it could explain why they had presumptuously expendable women lick the brushes; congratulations, you played yourself.
Evolution shows that men are the expendable sex, and humanity evolved in that direction. This is the great irony of modern feminism. As modern women try to emulate men, feminism has convinced them that they actually want to downgrade to the lesser sex.
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This is the dumbest thing I've read all day. Are you getting some sort of weird sexual thrill imagining a bevy of beautiful naked women tied to posts, being forced to lick the male artist's brushes, and heaven knows what else?
I think you have the title for the dumbest thing anyone has written all day. And you are obviously the one who has weird sexual fetishes about women licking things. I am merely stating that women were most often treated as property and, while female artists have existed over the centuries, how many of them have created works that are considered to be fine art? I do not mean how many have created fine art, but how is their art perceived? Because the artistic work of women has been underappreciated even int
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"so this woman was an illustrator of some very high end texts"
Or her mouth interacted with the illustrator of some very high end texts.
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I don't see why this implies literacy or even real education - many male monks were barely able to do more than copy what was in front of them and lots of priests in non-Italian countries could read out texts to their congregations without actually understanding Latin.
Manuscripts were produced in production lines - does someone assembling radiator grills for Ford know how to design a car?
But ... but ... women! Women and ... er... "tech"? Ancient tech anyway. You go girl!!!
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There is a reason why it was not called "writing" but "book painting" in medival times.
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Relax. This is just a "feel good" piece for women. It allows the dominated and helpless but ever so strong woman of today feel better about her lowly position in life. She can now say, "see? women have been respected in the past, you should respect me now."
Of course, all of this shit is insane. We make true what we believe to be true. You can never escape: if you act like shit, you will get treated like shit. if you act respectfully, you will be treated respectfully. The problem is that people want to be re
It's pretty amazing (Score:2, Interesting)
how much can be extrapolated starting from a few blue flecks on an old tooth.
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I'm not sure how to interpret this. For example suppose somebody tried to collect evidence of the afterlife by collecting testimonies of people with near death experiences. Would the burden of proof then be on me to show their testimonies were not evidence of the afterlife? If I couldn't prove (as opposed simply providing alternative plausible narratives) that they were not really experiencing a supernatural event, would I be forced to accept this as evidence of the supernatural? Would my hands be tied
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Meh. It is how most crimes get "solved". All evidence that we have points to X person doing this. Someone has to be punished. X person gets punished... all without ever fully validating that the assumptions based on the evidence are incontrovertible.
Beyond a Reasonable Doubt? ROFLMAO. Being "right" is all that matters. Being correct is not relevant.
Really? Impressive. (Score:5, Insightful)
A woman in a woman's monastery wrote manuscripts? Who would have thought..
"The researchers said this challenged long-held beliefs that women had played little role in the European Middle Ages in producing literary and written texts which came largely from religious institutions,"
So the long help belief was that women's monasteries, which they obviously knew existed, just sat there twiddling their thumbs? I suspect people are projecting their modern biases pretty damn hard there. Back then life was hard, and it is pretty solid common sense that gender was much LESS of an issue, as survival was a little higher up the priority list.
There would seem to be a lot of navel-gazing going on here, and very little common sense being applied, on both sides given that a few flecks on a single jawbone would hardly be statistically significant either.
Doesn't stop them applying the spin cycle to it though it seems.
"Researcher Christina Warinner said this finding from the 11th century was unprecedented in showing more women were literate, educated and encouraged to read at that time."
All that from flecks in a single jawbone. Impressive(ly spun)
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His "accusation" is more of exposing brutal bias flaws leading to clearly wrong conclusions. He's not attacking women, put your white knigh hat on the table again. He's only showing how stupid this research seems to be from start to finish. These are probably just yet another agenda-advancing fake news.
Nice captcha by the way: "signaled".
Re:Really? Impressive. (Score:5, Informative)
So the long help belief was that women's monasteries, which they obviously knew existed, just sat there twiddling their thumbs? I suspect people are projecting their modern biases pretty damn hard there. Back then life was hard, and it is pretty solid common sense that gender was much LESS of an issue, as survival was a little higher up the priority list.
Really, I googled "women monasteries illuminated manuscripts" and I found a book from 2009 [jstor.org] about the subject (fifth result, the four before that were all about this article). Its introduction reads: "Although the majority of scribes who can be affiliated with women’s monastic manuscripts were themselves, in fact, women monastics, a number of their male contemporaries also contributed to monastic manuscript holdings". So it is actually the other way around: we knew about women scribes.
It is either (post)modern bias or just marketing ("look, we found something new, something none could believe"!) or probably both.
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Back then life was hard, and it is pretty solid common sense that gender was much LESS of an issue, as survival was a little higher up the priority list.
You do realize that women were considered property during this time, yes? First of their father and, upon marriage, of their husband? Most of the women in these monasteries were bastard children of upper class men. Others were the extra daughters that upper class men did not want to take care of financially. Fathers were expected to pay a dowry when their daughters were married. So to avoid that they stuck them in monestaries. But you are right, there was total gender equality back then.
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Peasants were serfs, that is property already.
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Nope. Fake news.
Women and men worked side by side in a lot of peasant life. Which accounts for most of humans throughout most of recorded history. And before recorded history we can assume they worked their separate roles as well, not as master slave. Do you see apes using a master slave hierarchy with their females?
Most countries during most times didn't treat women as property.
Sounds like a catchy phrase from a movie, doesn't stand up to logic or history though.
I don't know where you get your history from but most people in this era were property of their king and their lord. They were serfs who had almost no rights and could be treated as they wished. Your lack of historical knowledge does not translate into my being a misogynist or thinking that women are garbage. And never did I say that all men were complete primates and treated women like shit. But you go ahead and think whatever makes you happy. You can go ahead and pretend like practices like jus prima [wikipedia.org]
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If i had mod points i'd give you some. Thanks for pointing out the holes in the 'paper'.
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I suspect we need a few more clones of you.
No agendas? No twisted thinking? Critical thought? Honest analysis?
What the fuck are you doing on this planet. They are going to send someone to kill you soon. We are all supposed to be insane. Russian Interference! Trump! Hillary! No time to think, act now!
Can I go home now? Please?
Re: oh come on (Score:2)
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"Monasteries and convents didnt have "serving girls"
At least that is what their PR was all about. A monastery which handled works using lapis lazuli might well have allowed exceptions for rock star artists. This is how things have worked from the dawn of time. Also there are other perks that might well have been unofficially afforded such a monk as well that would explain how something he handled ended up in her mouth.
fascinating (Score:1)
Reading the comments here, both pro and con, notice how the reactions are clearly only extrapolation from the commentator's bias, pro/con women/s lib or right/left. Almost no comments constitute a rational examination.
Are we as a species too stupid to survive? We buy religions from a huckster sci/fi writer who wrote "the way to get rich is to start a religion' and vote for politicians who write "the art of the deal is to tell them what they want to hear" or sloganize with "I'm with her."
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Again women's contribution is being minimized. (Score:5, Funny)
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It would seem to show prior art.
Re:Again women's contribution is being minimized. (Score:5, Funny)
Pray excuse me. I meant "prioress art".
I cannot _believe_ I failed to make that pun.
Re:Again women's contribution is being minimized. (Score:5, Funny)
Sorry to spoil your chronology, but she postdates Harald Bluetooth.
My Jawbone Identification Skills Might Be Wrong (Score:1)
But I'm pretty sure that's Saint Scholastica.
Jumping to conclusions (Score:2)
Not an unprecedented discovery (Score:2)
Case in point, the following https://art.thewalters.org/det... [thewalters.org] is a work of noun Claricia, in 12th - 13th century.
And this is a list of female copyists: http://edu.let.unicas.it/womed... [unicas.it] from year 750 to 1550.
Note: the attribution to a male or to a female is difficult because copyist and miniaturist rarely signed their works, especially in the earlier centuries. One can try to trace the monastry of production of
Two rather more detailed sources. (Score:2)
The original paper is at http://advances.sciencemag.org... [sciencemag.org], and is Bronze Open Access with the PDF at http://advances.sciencemag.org... [sciencemag.org]
A skim read (because I'm more interested in the mineralogy than the politics that is obsessing most commenters) tells me :