10 reasons why past disgusting than you think

The stench, cif * parazityPredstavte foxes and a second that turned out to be at your disposal a real time machine, and you are ready to fly toward adventure. Where would you go first? In Ancient Rome? In ancient Greece? And maybe, in Renaissance Florence?

Hate to say it, but the correct answer to this question is "not in one of the locations listed above." We often romanticize the past, but the following are a few examples of what it was not romantic, but simply disgusting.

1. Pompeii was a huge svalkoyDo of Pompeii were buried under layers of volcanic ash, were the ancient equivalent of the French Riviera. It was a place where the rich Romans came to rest on the challenges of building the empire. But between the Riviera and Pompeii was one major difference. Pompeii was literally littered with debris.

Rather than create a semblance of a program for the collection of waste, or at least organize elementary landfill, the residents of this city just throwing garbage where the likes.

Streets, alleys and even cemeteries were filled with shards of pottery, scraps, rubble, rotting horse carcasses. There is a mass of evidence that the inhabitants of this city considered their housing as a large bucket full of rubbish and rotting food remnants stored next to the drinking water. Allison Emmerson (Allison Emmerson) of Tsintsinnatskogo University says that the debris was in Pompeii as part of everyday life that even the graves of their ancestors were considered the best place to waste. All this led to the fact that in the summer months, the city smelled to heaven.

2. Vikings parazityZhizn tormented Vikings was heavy, and it's no wonder. After all, they spent a lot of time on the ships sailing the Northern Seas and engaged in looting. But even the most insightful people appreciating their lives are likely to miss one detail: the inside of the majority of the Vikings have been infected with parasites.

Due to the fact that their culture was taken to live near the cattle, most of the Vikings got parasites in the young age. And by the time of adulthood in their internal already crept nightmarish creatures from the books of HP Lovecraft. Researchers studying the remains of a Viking, showed a chronic infection of Ascaris and Fasciola hepatica.

And the worst part was whipworms. They were found in piles of excrement Vikings relating to 1018, and these parasites Vikings made life unbearable. In addition to bouts of diarrhea and flatulence, infection with whipworm could be accompanied by growth retardation and impaired cognitive development.

3. Medieval London stank to nebesDopustim, you decide to send your time machine to the medieval London. At the same time you are sure to get ready for the fact that the London of that time will be much dirtier than this. But prepare yourself completely, you still can not, because the difference is enormous. Medieval London unbearable stink!

Its streets were filled with excrement, and people threw the remains of food and animal entrails from the windows, where everything is and remains to rot. In some places because of these blockages streets were almost impassable.

On the river bank fared no better. Butchers dumped rotting meat directly into the Thames, and the blood of the animals remained on the beach under the sun. In the 14th century, the stench became so terrible that the king was forced to ban the slaughter of animals in the city. In addition, in the city were tanning workshops, round the clock to boil the skin, causing a stench arose from which the city is literally gasped.





4. Syphilis was the scourge of Europe in the VozrozhdeniyaSlovosochetanie "Florence of the Renaissance" is associated with an absurdly dressed people who walk through the beautiful city, discussing the secrets of the universe and inventing scientific methods of cognition. But what it is not associated with is sick with syphilis poor, writhing in pain on the streets, and their faces, which were falling apart before our eyes of others. This is seen by Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo, strolling through the city.

Now known as syphilis, the disease was in the Renaissance equivalent of AIDS, but even worse. Her symptoms were terrible. Pus oozing pustules on the faces of people, falling hair, and in the most severe cases - rotting flesh to the bone. And since there are no hospitals and nursing homes simply were not, those who caught a terrible disease, just throwing in the lurch.

5. The Greek wine was actually otvratitelnymVino revered in ancient Greece. People wrote poems about him, worshiped the god of wine and wine Homer used as a metaphor to describe almost all of the animals to the ocean. Thus, the first thing that comes to mind at the mention of ancient Athens, the wine, is not it? Yes, but only if you want to completely destroy your taste buds.

Because the ancient Greek wine was disgusting. The problem was that in those days no one knew how to keep the wine for a long time, so the ancient winemakers used to do a variety of tricks. Resin or marble dust in the wine were common. Some tired of fighting with nature, and they just left the wine in the open air until it began swarming bacteria. As a result, the wine was, or thick, tar-like substance, or turned into vinegar, undrinkable.

Things get even worse when it comes time to drink this "wine". To make it "better", the Greeks often diluted it with seawater.

6. Personal Hygiene in the 18th century left much luchshegoPredstavte that you live in a society in which people fart in public, pick your nose, spit on the floor in the rooms and defecate in front of others. It sounds a nightmare? But you would see it is, if it went back in time to England of the 18th century.

For the vast majority of people at that time was hygiene simple words that they could hardly utter the syllables. At the time the average person mouth bore so that the walls get off the paint, but the rules of etiquette there is generally no one heard. It was thought at first to eat a normal hands, then wipe his hands on the clothes, and then a loud fart and spit on the floor with relish.

Representatives of the "high society" were no better. Speaking after dinner, men often fetched pot and defecate right in front of the guests.

And even if you made every effort to avoid contact with people of the time, this would have turned out a little good. The products of human activity were literally everywhere, so that any food, water, milk or other products, upotreblёnnye you would be contaminated by all conceivable ways.

7. Ancient Mesopotamia swarmed vreditelyamiKak in Pompeii and in medieval London, in ancient Mesopotamia does not care about sanitation and waste management. The inevitable result of this was the huge number of pests. Unlike London, in Mesopotamia wild animals does not surprise anyone. And what's more, they had their own social task: recycling waste.

Stray dogs and pigs were in all the cities of Mesopotamia and to the best solve the problem of waste in the streets. And the question now is not about the outskirts of cities and other slums. Teeth and bones found by archeologists in the expedition, says that these animals roamed literally everywhere. Wild pigs were even in the royal palace.

The abundance of debris meant that every square meter of the city teemed with large rats, fleas and other pests, suffering the disease. This resulted in the plague and other infectious diseases, as well as the emergence of an extremely dangerous food parasites, such as a three-term.





8. British stuffed their mouths teeth mertvetsovV 1815 two greatest armies in the world met at the Battle of Waterloo. During the clashes killed about 50 000 people. In addition to the formation of European history, this battle is strangely reflected in one of the areas of medicine - dentistry.

Before Waterloo rotten teeth have been one of the most dreaded diseases in British society. In the absence of regular check-ups and appropriate treatment bad teeth ruined many lives. But when the war ended, Europe is suddenly discovered that in her possession was a lot of dead bodies, and each had a mouthful of healthy teeth. What followed then was one of the major breakthroughs in dentistry. Dentures from the jaws of the dead suddenly become a commodity available to everyone. One and a half decades, people wore the teeth of the fallen on the battlefield. This terrible fashion died out only in 1830, when Claudius Ash started the production of dental porcelain.

9. Use the toilet paper was very neprostoLyudyam growing up in an era of normal toilets, which provide the ability to flush excrement, and in the epoch of toilet paper, sold under the slogans of "incredible comfort," it will be very difficult to assess how difficult was the daily process of defecation our ancestors.

100 years ago, the use of the restroom was extremely unpleasant thing. Most often used to wipe away the old newspapers or magazines. The publication, known as the "farmer's almanac old" even comes with a special hole, so the magazine could be hung on a nail in the lavatory, it interesting to read in the pages, and then wipe them well. And using the toilet paper of the time, you could get a whole bunch of splinters.

This lasted until 1935, when the company Northern Tissue (now called Quilted Northern) hit the jackpot by launching an advertising campaign of the new toilet paper, which was held under the slogan "No splinters!».

10. Roman toilets were uzhasnyEsli you are one of those who are shy to go to the toilet in the presence of strangers, then rejoice that do not live in ancient Rome. Because in those days, the term "public toilet" understood too literally. Imagine a group of 50 people, seated in a circle of holes, almost shoulder to shoulder. When they finish all their affairs, then wipe with a sponge general, which was the same dirty and infested with bacteria, as does the toilet.

You think that's all? No, this is just the beginning. Although the Roman sewage system was quite advanced for its time, up to modern standards, it still falls short. No one then had not heard of the tubes with a U-shaped bend, and the dark hole led directly to the drains of which periodically climbed a variety of insects. In addition, due to the accumulation of methane could suddenly explode a toilet that turns the simple act of defecation in one of the varieties of Russian roulette.

So it is not surprising that the usual trip to the toilet was a very frightening experience for the average Roman. In the course of archaeological excavations on the walls of public restrooms often found scrawled magic spells that were to exorcise demons, there came across the image of the goddess of fortune, bringing good luck.

via listverse.com/2015/02/21/10-reasons-the-past-was-way-more-disgusting-than-you-realized/