Living in a more-or-less clean, hygienic society as we do, sometimes we forget that our ancestors didn’t have any of our modern conveniences. Or the concept of germs. Or self-respect. Because sometimes, people in history did some really, really, disgusting things. Here are some things that our ancestors did (and if your ancestors aren’t listed here, don’t get cocky – I will get to them eventually):
Drinking reindeer pee (and human pee too)
Everybody knows someone who loves to get high. Some stoners will do a lot of things to get their buzz. This includes the peoples who lived in ancient Scandinavia and Northern Eurasia. Fortunately for them, hallucinogenic mushrooms grew a-plenty. Unfortunately, the mushrooms were poisonous, and humans can’t digest them. Eating them can make someone violently ill. Many of these people were reindeer-herders, and soon they noticed that reindeer can eat dodgy mushrooms without any ill-effects.
I cannot imagine who first discovered this, and under what circumstances, but the psychedelic compounds in the mushrooms pass mostly unchanged through the reindeer’s body and concentrate in a purer form in the urine. Drinking the urine can give you all the benefits of being high, without the vomiting – at least until you realize what you are drinking. What’s more, often the urine would need to be concentrated by drying or freezing in order to be effectual. In these cases, a shaman would drink all of the reindeer pee, trip for a while, then tell everyone in the tribe what they had seen in the spirit world. The shaman would then collect his or her pee, and everyone else would drink it to get high themselves. Not that there aren’t other uses for pee. For example:
Pee also makes a good hair dye
Much like today, the ancient Celts admired blonde hair. Unlike today, they did not have peroxide to bleach it blonde. You know what they did have? Ammonia. You know what their source of ammonia was? Cow pee. Cow pee is actually a perfectly viable way to bleach your hair – it wasn’t even limited to the Celts. Some cow-herding tribes in Africa also did this, and some people do to this day. In fact, pee can be used to dye more that hair. It can be used to bleach clothes, or to fix a dye into cloth. The Roman emperor Vespasian introduced a tax on pee, which was used a good deal in the cloth industry (He wasn’t taxing people who had to pee, he was taxing the dyers who wanted the pee). When his son complained about how disgusting this was, Vespasian answered, “Money doesn’t stink.” Of course, the Romans weren’t very clean in other ways:
Sauce made out of rotten fish
Garum was an extremely popular sauce eaten in ancient Rome. It was made by throwing a bunch of fish into a vat and letting it “ferment,” and by ferment I mean rot. In fact, they wouldn’t even use the nicer meat of the fish – garum was made of the guts and other un-appetizing parts. For some reason, this was one of the Roman’s favourite foods. It must be really delicious, considering that there is still a version of it eaten today: surströmming, a dish made of fermented Baltic herring, is still eaten in Sweden. Of course, it is mostly eaten outdoors, and is illegal on airplanes. (No, really. Surströmming is banned by major airlines, who claim pressurized cans of the stuff are potentially explosive.) Meanwhile, back to pee…
Pee can be used in medicine
Some ancient Roman doctors had the absolutely correct idea that a patient’s pee can be used to help diagnose their illness. Unfortunately, they didn’t have chemical tests, and some doctors decided to do a more primitive urine test. By this, I mean they drank it. Again, they weren’t wrong – some conditions, such as diabetes, do change the taste of a patient’s urine. However, some doctors took their practice a step further and began prescribing urine to their patients as a treatment. More sensibly, some Chinese doctors used to use urine for treating minor wounds. Urine is actually pretty clean, so … you know what? Blech. Forget it. This is just too much. Let’s talk about something that isn’t pee.
Necropants
Remember what I said about people who will do almost anything for drugs? Well, they will do absolutely anything for money. Case in point: Icelandic witchcraft. Possibly the most horrifying thing about necropants was that their making had to be consensual, or it wouldn’t work. You had to get the dude’s permission before he died… Necropants were trousers made of the lower half of a human skin. When your friend was dying (and it had to be a man, for reasons that will be clear in a minute), you first had to ask him: “When you die, is it okay if I take the skin from your legs and wear it as pants?” I cannot imagine any scenario where this ends well, but apparently it happened at least once, as the Icelandic Museum of Sorcery and Witchcraft has a pair dating from the 17th century.
So, when your friend dies, you bury him first. Then you dig him up, skin the entire lower half of the body (including the genitals, because at this point you are pretty much going for the creepiness record), tan the skin, and put the pants on. If you ever take them off again, they will lose their power, so if you want to give them to someone else, you should take them off at the same time as he climbs in, one leg at a time. So where does money come into this? Well, your work is only half over. Next, you need to steal a gold coin from a poor widow. Then you draw a certain magical sign on a piece of paper. Take both of these things and – remember how the friend had to be a dude? – you put them inside the scrotum. If you follow all of these steps correctly, the scrotum will be filled with magical money that will never run out. Say what you want, but this would have made Harry Potter so much better.
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