Ancient traditions that aren’t

fermatas-theorem:

funereal-disease:

glassmaker:

disexplications:

disexplications:

house-carpenter:

stumpyjoepete:

I’m fascinated by the respect commanded by (ostensibly) ancient things. Especially when the supposedly ancient is, in fact, quite modern. A couple requests for my (not terribly numerous) readers:

1. What are some examples of this phenomenon that I don’t already know about?
   
2. What’s a good tag for this topic?
   

List of things along these lines that I’ve read about or posted before below the cut.

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• I’ve posted before about “nations” (in the sense of a state-sized population bound together by a common language and high culture) being comparatively recent.
  
• I recently read some stuff that @nostalgebraist linked about the history of the study of literature / “the english major”.
  
• I’m aware that yoga (in the way we understand it) is a 20th century phenomenon (related to nascent Indian nationalism?).
  
• That whole thing about ancient greek and roman statues originally being painted (gaudily). Same thing about temples in Japan.
• Ancient Chinese poetry actually just rhymed (and sound change is why it doesn’t, not some aesthetic consideration).

There’s a classic book about this sort of thing, Hobsbawm & Ranger (eds., 1983), The Invention of Tradition. (I haven’t read it myself.)

Scottish clan tartans are a well-known example.

Years ago, I went to a lecture by the historian Juan Cole in which he argued that modern Islamic extremist groups practice this extensively. The Taliban, for example, strictly and literally adheres to every obscure Islamic law they can find, even those that were never actually followed by anyone, anywhere, prior to the existence of the Taliban.

I second the Hobsbawm book. I haven’t read the whole thing but I’ve read excerpts and they were insightful.

Like Disexplications said, the middle east being traditional/conservative is thought of as a holdover from past centuries but is a recent reactionary movement. A hundred years ago it had a reputation for being completely accepting of same-sex relationships. The West saw it as a sexually uninhibited place, and showed up in a lot of old-timey Western smut. (shieks and harems, etc.)

Off the top of my head, pretty much everything to do with wedding ceremonies in the modern-day US is a recent invention that people think of as being part of their heritage.

On the topic of weddings and sexuality: the Western ideal of women as gatekeepers of sexual purity was pretty much a Victorian invention. Puritans harshly condemned premarital relations, but within marriage, they enjoyed healthy sex lives. There’s evidence that they considered female orgasm essential to conception as well.

In the early colonial period, sexual norms were enforced externally, through the family and the community. There was a legally enforceable framework of right and wrong that might have been oppressive, but at least it let you know where you stood. It was largely the collapse of Puritan theocracy that gave us the wilting Victorian female. Men who impregnated unmarried women were no longer required to marry them, so the burden of preventing pregnancy switched to individual women rather than their communities. Teaching girls to repress sexual desire at all costs was the (very crude) solution.

Source: *Intimate Matters: A History of Sexuality in America*, which is an excellent read.

Lots of US holidays, like Thanksgiving and St Patrick’s Day, are younger than most people think they are.

On the flip side (not that you asked for this) player pianos are impressively old.

(via fermatas-theorem)