This is what always sticks out to me. I’ll admit I don’t know anything about how people lived thousands of years ago, but I do know many people died even just 150-200 yrs ago due to poor hygiene. Did the people have better knowledge of good hygiene 4-5000 yrs ago? Or did they do these things because of God’s commands? Did they know about
ecoli and trichinosis? Just wondering.
I’m no expert on the history of hygiene, either, but I do know that frequent bathing was a practice in ancient Athens and Rome, for example. By most accounts I’ve read, a typical European during the Middle Ages would bathe perhaps one or twice a year (!)
There is all kinds of speculation as to the reason for this change in hygienic standards – nakedness as such was considered a source of temptation; Roman bath houses were considered places of immorality, etc.
Yet, for some reason, it was “self-evident” to the ancient Greeks and Romans that bathing should take place frequently; for a European in the time of Columbus, however, it somehow was not self-evident.
I also vaguely remember that, at the time of the Black Plague, Europeans were afraid that stripping down to bathe would make things even worse (therefore, indeed, they avoided bathing “like the plague”
).
Finally, I had read that native Americans – in and around the Jamestown settlement-- were known to have bathed daily, sometimes more than once a day.
I suppose cooking our food was partially a hygienic measure, as well. Perhaps raw meat gave our ancestors a stomach ache, if not worse! Just as with knowing which mushrooms were poisonous, or which plants to stay away from, it was a matter of trial and error.
)…why does going against this law cause so much destruction in abortions, unadopted children and unwanted children.
