Hot chicks in Antiquity?

**ziegenpeter** · 09-02-2008, 12:54

I know this is an old thread and I haven't read it entirely but there are 2 things I'd like to mention about the germans (the people(s) of antiquity I'm most interested in).
Maybe the hygene standards in the mediterranian area was very high but nevertheless, they had no soap. It was used by germans and afaik some celts (you can guess it because even in modern roman languages it's the germanic root. compare germ. "Seife" french "savon").
And meat was not an every days meal for the germans. I think this belongs to the old clichées of the bearded barbarian, wearing a winged/horned helmet, laying on his bearskin, sipping mead out of a huge horn and grilling a whole pig over a campfire...
My literature tells me that the mostly eat grain-food. But other grains, and thats also problably why they were talller.

PS: Yeah I'm a german

**Abokasee** · 09-03-2008, 13:03

-Ignore, wrong thread I fear, silly me-

**rider** · 09-03-2008, 22:07

What about Messina or whatever Claudius' wife was named?

She was reported to have done, what, a hundred and fifty men on one afternoon or something...

**Lusitani** · 09-03-2008, 23:08

Originally Posted by rider

What about Messina or whatever Claudius' wife was named?

She was reported to have done, what, a hundred and fifty men on one afternoon or something...

What!?!?!?!

**blitzkrieg80** · 09-05-2008, 19:46

Originally Posted by ziegenpeter

I know this is an old thread and I haven't read it entirely but there are 2 things I'd like to mention about the germans (the people(s) of antiquity I'm most interested in).
Maybe the hygene standards in the mediterranian area was very high but nevertheless, they had no soap. It was used by germans and afaik some celts (you can guess it because even in modern roman languages it's the germanic root. compare germ. "Seife" french "savon").
And meat was not an every days meal for the germans. I think this belongs to the old clichées of the bearded barbarian, wearing a winged/horned helmet, laying on his bearskin, sipping mead out of a huge horn and grilling a whole pig over a campfire...
My literature tells me that the mostly eat grain-food. But other grains, and thats also problably why they were talller.

PS: Yeah I'm a german

One of the few things said by Tacitus which were very true was that there was no ability for effective farming techniques in the cold Northern climate of Germany without the technology of heavier iron plows, ect. Yes they farmed, but no, they did not eat mostly wheat/corn(the true one as in cornmeal, a grain not maize), rye and/or barley. They DID eat swine which could be cultivated from the forests and left to their own, a much easier food source than farming, which was also not something they especially enjoyed or reinforced culturally. Milk was important to their diet, as well as fishing such as herring on the coasts. The lack of localized, high populations in single settlements points to a lack of farming, which was invented and used for such a purpose... hunting and gathering then might be quite a bit undeestimated, such as with deer- despite not completely adhering to a nomadic lifeway. The closer the Germanics got to the steppe also they more and more they would have returned to their original pastoralist practices as part of the IE cultural heritage, although rainfall agriculture and rye (which can be grown in harsher climates) would have still been in use.

Wheat would not account for height- that is a protein based development, if considering nurture over nature. The carbs would allow the protein consumed to not be burned for energy, but by itself, cannot do what meats and high protein diets can. The only way vegetarians even survive today is with artificially engineered soy that has more amino acids than found in the environment. Mankind would have never developed the high brain mass it has without hunting and meat-consumption- it's a fact of life. Similarly, the population of Japan is quite a bit taller than it has ever been because they are eating more than just rice. The Netherlands has the tallest people on average in the world, but I do not know if that is nec. related