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:
- What are some examples of this phenomenon that I don’t already know about?
- 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.
- 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.
pink is for girls and blue is for boys is an extremely recent marketing thing, solidifying as tradition only in the 80′s. it seems like it goes further back because modern media about earlier times generally still adheres to the custom, even when it would be ahistorical.
“knitting is for old ladies” dates back to the 1950′s. up until ww2, knitting was just one of those chores you should probably know how to do, and while the bulk of sitting-down work often fell to grandmas, it was also common among men with jobs that required warm clothes and hours of sitting around, such as sailors, soldiers, shepherds and cowboys.
during ww2, knitting for the troops was promoted as the patriotic duty of people who stayed home, primarily women. afterwards, as rationing stopped and factory knits became cheap, some of those women stuck to it as a hobby, and everyone else kind of dropped it.
you can watch these women age in media from the 1950′s, when knitting was associated with fresh young expecting mothers, to the 1960′s and 70′s, when it was a Mom Thing, and thereafter it became a Grandma Thing, because it was the same women keeping it alive since the 40′s.
now, as that generation dies out, knitting’s been resurrected as part of the 21st century crafting renaissance. the fact that even so, it’s still widely seen as a female thing, and more specifically as an old lady thing, is simply due to us all growing up surrounded by media depicting the ‘greatest generation’ aging normally with their knitting in hand.
Ancient traditions that aren’t
Published
just moving along like everyone else 