Historic Replicas

The Viking Age was a time of transition.  It marked the emergence of Europe from the chaos following the collapse of the Roman Empire to the relative stability of the Middle Ages. Combat was a way of life for the Vikings; most Vikings were warriors, and many made their living almost exclusively from raids on neighboring peoples.  A Viking’s weapon was a central part of his identity.  The spear and the battle axe were the Vikings’ weapons of choice, being inexpensive and easy to produce.   Only very wealthy Vikings could afford swords, and as such they were highly prized, even sacred.  Viking swords were a transition between the short blades of earlier times and the imposing broadswords of the Middle Ages.  As Viking swordsmiths began to master the use of steel, the blades grew in length, until the average Viking sword was between two and a half and three feet long.  Like the Japanese katana, a well-made sword was constructed from alternating layers of low and high-carbon steel.  The former provided flexibility, the latter strength and a sharp cutting edge.  The Viking sword was double-edged and perfect from both chopping and stabbing motions.  It was light enough to wield with one hand, which left the other free for the Viking’s round wooden shield.  Sword and shield were a truly deadly combination, and the elite warriors who used them had a supreme battlefield advantage.

The sword is a practical, intuitive weapon, and many Bronze Age cultures developed them independently.  Bronze wasn’t ideal for making swords, though, and it wasn’t until the dawn of the Iron Age (with invention of new smelting techniques around 1300 BC) that swordmaking became truly refined.  Iron is actually weaker than bronze, but was more plentiful, so people used it anyway.  For the first time, a king could equip his entire army with swords, and in time, it became the weapon of choice throughout Eurasia. 
Eventually, smiths learned to convert iron to steel, an immensely strong and lightweight metal.  The Ancient Romans took full advantage of this technique, and produced the gladius, the roman sword that built the empire.  The gladius might not have looked very scary; it was about two feet long, with a narrow blade and little ornamentation.  But in the hands of a Roman legionnaire, it was a truly fearsome weapon.  Bronze swords could hold a sharp point, but the edge dulled quickly; they were mostly used for stabbing. Iron could hold a sharp edge, but broke easily.  The steel gladius was sturdy and sharp all the way around, good for both stabbing and chopping.  It was a versatile weapon, and all legionnaires were trained in its use.  In fact, the Romans were among the first to develop really advanced swordsmanship.  Like an archer or karate master, skilled swordsmen in Rome the many cultures that followed would gain renown as artists.  

Today I thought I’d talk about the American Old West, an historical era we all love but may not know that much about.  Everyone knows the basics:  Wyatt Earp and his Western guns.  Sitting Bull and General Custer. Cowboys, covered wagons, and cattle drives.  But how did the American West take shape, and become the cultural phenomenon that it is today? 

In the beginning, there were two things that gave the West its epic sense of scale.  The first was the Mississippi River, the great natural boundary between American and French territory.  The second was Thomas Jefferson’s historic Louisiana Purchase, which allowed Americans to finally cross that boundary.  In a single move, Jefferson added land from Louisiana to Montana, more than doubling the size of the new nation. The territory wasn’t entirely unknown; Spain had colonized California and the Southwest, and the French had towns and fur trading outposts within their great domain.  The British were settling Canada and the Pacific Northwest. Furthermore, Jefferson sent the famous Lewis and Clark expedition to see what exactly was out there.  For the most part, though, the land was unknown, untamed, and exceedingly dangerous.  All Americans saw when they looked across the river were either dense forests or desolate plains, a vast wilderness teeming with wild animals and potentially hostile natives with Indian tomahawks. 

From the beginning, the West was a land of unknowns, where death could come calling in a thousand different forms.  But it was also a land of unlimited opportunity, and as such it helped us create the American dream of self-reliance that is the foundation of our culture. 

…Ben was a born romantic, though, and wanted to be a sailor.  He was enrolled in school for two years, but Josiah, who had seventeen children, could not afford to keep him there any longer and brought him home to work in the shop at age ten- back when colonial costumes were real they hadn’t heard of child labor laws!  Amazingly, that was the end of Franklin’s formal education; from then on, he educated himself through reading and debates with friends.  At 12, Ben became an apprentice in his brother James’ printing shop, and developed a lifelong passion for the written word.  James had started a newspaper, and while Ben longed to express himself in print, he knew his brother would agree.  So Ben began writing letters in the persona of a middle-aged widow named Silence Dogood.  In time, he’d written a series of witty and widely read essays on colonial american life, ridiculing everything from drunken locals to the elitists at nearby Harvard.  James discovered the truth, though, and he was so angry Ben fled his apprenticeship to seek a new start in Philadelphia.

The colonial replicas on our site got me thinking about one of my favorite historical figures, Boston’s own Benjamin Franklin.  Of all the great thinkers and Patriots who helped bring about the birth of our nation, Benjamin Franklin may have been the most accomplished.  Scientist, inventor, musician, philosopher, and politician, Franklin was the embodiment of a renaissance man, and did much to shape American values.  He was born in Boston on January 17th, 1706 (living under British rule until he was 71!), the son of Josiah Franklin, a maker of candles and soap.  Josiah wanted Franklin to study theology and become a clergyman. 

There are a certain number of people who love collecting ancient and antique Roman weaponry.  One of the things that they always look forward to having is Roman armour.  The craftsmanship that was worked on these pieces makes you think that you are seeing the real thing.
 
It is almost impossible to find the original pieces of Roman armor so replicas are the next best things these collectors will get.  But with a lot of research done in making the replicas, they really look like the real ones.  A lot of people use them for recreation battles because of their authenticity.  And they get matching swords, daggers and helmets as well.  You can also find authentic Roman apparel too.

…Many scholars believe that the birthday cake took shape in Germany in the heart of Renaissance Europe.  The Germans baked sweet round cakes in the shape of baby Jesus to celebrate his birthday, and eventually the birthdays of their young children dressed in what we would consider Renaissance costumes.  The Germans were also the first people to consistently light birthday candles, which probably grew out of candles placed on Christmas trees (another German first!).  Candles, of course, have a VERY long history in celebrations, back to the Ancient Greek costumes and beyond.  So when your birthday comes around, have a happy one, and remember that yours is a party thousands of years in the making.  

Today’s my birthday, and it occurred to me that I’d hardly ever thought about birthdays and the origin of cakes, candles, and singing off-key;)  Birthdays are a special time for practically every culture, a time to honor a person’s life and remind them how special they are to us.  Like many modern holidays, people were celebrating birthdays a long time before any of us ever had one.  Once again, the mighty Roman Empire is largely responsible for spreading the idea in Western Europe, and the nations that came after them spread it to the New World.  In fact, the Roman naming day, or dies lustricus, was originally a lot more important.  Birthdays were first celebrated in Rome by the cult of Mithraism, a mystical religion that worshipped the Persian Sun God Mithra. It was popular among Roman soldiers, who traveled far and wide and spread their beliefs.  When Christianity became popular, the custom remained, and the Romans adapted customs from and other holidays, wearing Roman costumes, feasting, and giving gifts. 

While I was researching Latin and the Roman contributions to Romance languages, I turned up a huge amount of information about Roman technology and inventions.  As it turns out, the Romans were responsible for an incredible number of scientific discoveries and techniques.  Some are very well known; the Romans are famous for their Roman costumes, the Coliseum (the ancient stadium of the gladiators that still stands in present-day Rome), their aqueducts, and architecture in general.  The segmented Roman armor of the centurions has been made famous in movies like I am Spartacus and Julius Caesar.  Other Roman technology may surprise you, though.  They used lighthouses to guide their ships, one of which stands to this day, the Tower of Hercules in Spain.  They mastered glassblowing and produced windows, lamps, even mirrors. Roman doctors used a wide variety of surgical tools, and some citizens wore false teeth made of iron.  Businessmen and mathematicians carried a portable abacus, in effect the world’s first pocket calculator, and many people had portable sundials, the world’s first pocket watches.  They even had indoor plumbing!  During a chapter of human history that’s often associated with disease and unsanitary living conditions, the Romans were using public baths and flush toilets.  How’s that for being ahead of your time?  Of course, the fall of the Roman Empire hit the reset button on human understanding; many of the secrets of Roman technology were lost and had to be rediscovered by later civilizations.  But when you consider how organized and sophisticated Rome was, it’s mind-boggling to think what they would have achieved if the empire had survived into modern times.

The Romans were the supreme rulers of Europe for hundreds of years, and few cultures have had as much influence on the cultures that succeeded it.  The art and science of Ancient Rome continue to shape the modern world, 1600 years after the fall of the Empire itself. If you’re new to history, you may wonder how exactly the Romans affected a world so distant from their own. 
 Consider our language.  The Romans spoke Latin, a long-dead tongue that one only hears in church and college classrooms. Latin itself was divided into high, or classical, and “Vulgar” Latin.  Classical Latin was the language of poetry and literature, while Vulgar Latin was the everyday tongue, used to trade goods in the marketplace and direct Roman shields on the battlefield.  Vulgar Latin was the truly universal language of Rome spoken in every corner of the Empire.  Now think about America.  It’s a big country, yet we all speak the same kind of English, more or less, and it will probably stay that way.   Thanks to TV and the Internet, the world isn’t quite so big anymore, and we’re all exposed to the same words and phrases.  But in Ancient Rome, there was no mass communication, and people in far-off provinces might not hear from each other for years! Latin was everywhere, but over time, it began to change in different places; certain words fell out of use, new ones were invented, and Latin began to blend with native tongues.  In time, Latin in different parts of the empire would evolve into English, Spanish, Portuguese, French, Italian, and a score of other languages and dialects.