List of anachronisms

autumnleaf · Aug 7, 2018

I thought it would be useful to draw up a list of potential anachronisms that might trip up the unwary writer, especially those everyday things that we all take for granted. Obviously, no such list could be remotely comprehensive, but it could avoid embarrassing "potato rage"* incidents.

I'll start (open to correction):
- New World plants (potatoes, tomatoes, etc.) or animals (such as turkeys) in Europe or Asia before 1492. Old World plants (carrots, onions, etc.) or animals (such as horses) in the Americas before 1492. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Columbian_Exchange for other examples.
- Rabbits in Britain before the 12th century (introduced by the Normans).
- Tea in Britain before Catherine of Braganza brought it from Portugal in 1662 when she married Charles II (and it was a luxury drink for a long time after that).
- Glass windows for ordinary people before the 17th century (they existed before that, but only for the rich).
- Clothespins before 1800. See https://medium.economist.com/the-curious-history-of-the-clothespeg-3f8615519c61
- Hay bales before the invention of baling machines.
- Chicken as cheap food before the invention of battery farming.
- Lobster and oysters as expensive food before the 20th century.
- Most modern breeds of dogs before the 19th century.
- Spring matresses before the late 19th century.
- White as the standard color for wedding dresses before Queen Victoria (some brides wore white before that, but it wasn't nearly as common).
- Germ theory as accepted fact before the mid-19th century (and even then, it took a while to be the predominant theory).
- Zippers or Ferris Wheels before 1893 (both launched at the Chicago World Fair).
- "Pink is for girls, blue is for boys" before World War I (and it didn't become overwhelmingly so until the 1980s). See https://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/when-did-girls-start-wearing-pink-1370097/

* "The rage that overtakes the reader when a blatant and easily researchable anachronism pops up out of nowhere. Like potatoes (a New World food) being served to a Viking." Source: http://smartbitchestrashybooks.com/2011/11/the-bitchery-glossary/

benbenberi · Aug 7, 2018

Beer in England before the 1520s. Hops were a continental crop, not imported or grown in England till then. Previously, the brew was always ale. (Generally brewed by alewives and drunk in alehouses.)

"Turkeys, heresy, hops and beer
Came to England all in a year."

Siri Kirpal · Aug 7, 2018

Sat Nam! (Literally "Truth Name"--a Sikh greeting)

Prior to the introduction of legal reliable contraceptives, whether or not to have children was not much of a choice for a sexually active woman. (I've seen a few novels that act as if it were.) Contraceptives predate the pill and include such things as IUDs.

Pink for girls and blue for boys was highly prevalent by the '60s, though not universal.

Blessings,

Siri Kirpal

snafu1056 · Aug 8, 2018

Yeah I was surprised by the age of zippers too.

I can only think of one at the moment

-onion domes in Russia before the 16th century (mostly Byzantine architecture before then)

Elenitsa · Aug 8, 2018

benbenberi said:
Beer in England before the 1520s. Hops were a continental crop, not imported or grown in England till then. Previously, the brew was always ale. (Generally brewed by alewives and drunk in alehouses.)

"Turkeys, heresy, hops and beer
Came to England all in a year."

Which is the difference between beer and ale? Because in the dictionary for my mother tongue, they are both translated with the same word, so I have always considered them synonyms.

And I know it (beer or ale, as for me they are synonyms) is old since Antique Egypt. Vikings had it too, together with mead.

Siri Kirpal said:
Prior to the introduction of legal reliable contraceptives, whether or not to have children was not much of a choice for a sexually active woman.

As far as I know, old healers knew what plants to use in this purpose since antiquity. Just that they didn't share the knowledge so widely - who asked for a remedy against having children, might have received it, usually "a remedy to bring delayed periods".

autumnleaf · Aug 8, 2018

Siri Kirpal said:
Prior to the introduction of legal reliable contraceptives, whether or not to have children was not much of a choice for a sexually active woman. (I've seen a few novels that act as if it were.) Contraceptives predate the pill and include such things as IUDs.

The condom (made of chemical-soaked linen and held in place by a ribbon) was first mentioned by an Italian physician in the 16th century, but it took an inordinate amount of time to become readily available to the general public. According to Antonia Fraser in The Weaker Vessel, condoms were mentioned in French aristocratic circles in the 17th century but didn't come into use in England until the 18th century. And for long time after that, they were out of reach for the poorer classes, either because they didn't know about them or they couldn't afford them.

Herbs and potions were used as either contraceptives or abortificants, but they were frequently unreliable and/or dangerous to the woman. Coitus interruptus was a common method of trying to avoid pregnancy, but notoriously unreliable. I'm guessing that non-intercourse methods of intimacy were popular among couples trying to avoid pregnancy.

None of this contradicts what you said, just expands on it

.

Lakey · Aug 8, 2018

autumnleaf said:
The condom (made of chemical-soaked linen and held in place by a ribbon) was first mentioned by an Italian physician in the 16th century, but it took an inordinate amount of time to become readily available to the general public. According to Antonia Fraser in The Weaker Vessel, condoms were mentioned in French aristocratic circles in the 17th century but didn't come into use in England until the 18th century. And for long time after that, they were out of reach for the poorer classes, either because they didn't know about them or they couldn't afford them.

What about sheepgut condoms? I thought those dated to antiquity, but I could be wrong. I know they were used in Stephenson’s Baroque Cycle (late 16th - early 17th c. Europe) and his research is pretty thorough, but obviously that’s not a citation.

One anachronism I’ve seen is the use of the word “teenage” or “teenager” before the 1950s. The idea of adolescence as a separate identity (or separate marketing category, if you want to get cynical) between childhood and adulthood is mostly a 20th century one, and the word “teenager” really didn’t enter the lexicon until the ‘50s.

I’ve complained before about the hearing the word “Interstate” in a movie set in 1952; I think some folks don’t realize that the Interstate highway system was established in the late ‘50s.

angeliz2k · Aug 8, 2018

A few I've run into recently that particularly bugged me:

Stores did not work the way they do now. When you walked into a shop, there weren't rows of goods that you browsed, choosing and picking up what you wanted; there was a counter with a storekeeper, whom you asked for the things you wanted and who collected them for you. This was true until probably the early-mid 20th c.

Also, the Germans in WW1 were not Nazis (or like Nazis). That bugged me about the Wonder Woman movie. While a lot of the people who fought in one war went on to fight in the other, and while there was certainly a through line, the Germans of WW1 did not have the same aims and outlook as the Nazis. Did they have their own issues? Yes. But they weren't the pure evil of the Nazis.

Lakey, I figured it was pretty common knowledge that the Interstates didn't come about until the 50's. Maybe not.

Someone else will have to answer about the difference between beer and ale!

benbenberi · Aug 8, 2018

Elenitsa said:
Which is the difference between beer and ale? Because in the dictionary for my mother tongue, they are both translated with the same word, so I have always considered them synonyms.

And I know it (beer or ale, as for me they are synonyms) is old since Antique Egypt. Vikings had it too, together with mead.

Beer is a more generic term, esp. in modern usage. Originally the word was used just for lager-type brews, ale for the others. Beer (lager) is made with hops, which both adds flavor and acts as a preservative. Ale has no hops. They're also made with different types of yeast -- ale is top-fermenting, lager (beer) is bottom-fermenting. Ale is older, and there are a lot more varieties of it.

Elenitsa said:
As far as I know, old healers knew what plants to use in this purpose since antiquity. Just that they didn't share the knowledge so widely - who asked for a remedy against having children, might have received it, usually "a remedy to bring delayed periods".

In the ancient Mediterranean there was an herb "silphium" that was considered a reliable contraceptive. It grew exclusively in north Africa (Libya), was extensively traded, and went extinct in the time of Nero. AFAIK all the known medieval European herbal remedies that have been examined are not actually contraceptives. To the extent they work at all they're abortifacent, and mostly, like pennyroyal, they're very toxic.

TellMeAStory · Aug 8, 2018

Pink for girls and blue for boys was a thing in the 1950s too. I remember.

autumnleaf · Aug 8, 2018

Lakey said:
What about sheepgut condoms? I thought those dated to antiquity, but I could be wrong. I know they were used in Stephenson’s Baroque Cycle (late 16th - early 17th c. Europe) and his research is pretty thorough, but obviously that’s not a citation.

It seems like there's some evidence of condoms existing in ancient Egypt/Greece, and some kind of penis-covering recorded in Medieval Asia. Materials included linen, animal intestines, and (in China) "oiled silk paper":
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_condoms

I remember something in the Baroque Cycle about Eliza making something out of a bit of animal gut before getting busy. It's certainly plausible that upper-class and demi-monde types of that era would know something about preventing pregnancy and disease. According to wikipedia, "the oldest condoms ever excavated were found in a cesspit located in the grounds of Dudley Castle and were made from animal membrane, the condoms dated back to as early as 1642." It does seem to have been very hush-hush knowledge for a long time, though, with a lot of pushback against them either for moral reasons or doubts about their reliability.

benbenberi said:
In the ancient Mediterranean there was an herb "silphium" that was considered a reliable contraceptive. It grew exclusively in north Africa (Libya), was extensively traded, and went extinct in the time of Nero. AFAIK all the known medieval European herbal remedies that have been examined are not actually contraceptives. To the extent they work at all they're abortifacent, and mostly, like pennyroyal, they're very toxic.

I only recently figured out the meaning behind that Nirvana song:
Sit and drink Pennyroyal Tea
Distill the life that's inside of me

:Wha:

TellMeAStory said:
Pink for girls and blue for boys was a thing in the 1950s too. I remember.

I think these things go in cycles. I was a '70s baby and in my earliest photos I'm dressed in gender-neutral colors, as are my brothers. Whereas today, the toys and children's clothes departments seem awash with pink and blue.

angeliz2k · Aug 8, 2018

I seem to recall the pink/blue thing being mentioned in Little Women as the "French style". So it may not have been all the rage, but it might have been a concept earlier than noted here.

eldergrantaire · Aug 8, 2018

Incorrect titles- for example, Cora in Downton Abbey is referred to as 'Lady Cora', which is only correct for a woman who has her title by right (which she obviously doesn't, being American). She should be referred to as 'Lady Grantham', because she derives her title from her husband- it is a courtesy title that she gets because she is married to an earl.

This stuff is really REALLY complicated (intentionally so- it was/is a tool used by the upper classes to distinguish the 'in group' vs 'out group', the 'in group' being the people who knew all the rules), so I understand why people get it wrong, but there are quite a few guides available (see this thread)

Siri Kirpal · Aug 8, 2018

Sat Nam! (literally "Truth Name"--a Sikh greeting)

Babies were often dressed in gender neutral colors because no one knew what the gender was going to be. I was dressed in both blue dresses and red dresses in the mid-50's...and later.

Oh, and girls did not wear pants to school, period, end of discussion, until the mid-60s and then it was culottes. (Exception for gym shorts, but nobody wore those things going to and from school.) Not that I've seen this little item in books. But in case anyone's interested...

My problem with the contraceptives has been with Westerns; the Wild West wasn't likely to have any of the things mentioned upthread.

Blessings,

Siri Kirpal

Masel · Aug 8, 2018

I wouldn't get after someone for using the word beer for a fermented grain drink. It totally conveys the idea of what is being drunk without an anthopological essay. One might say is ale has no hops but there are other herbs that can provide bittering, flavor, and perservative qualities. (If you want a fancy word that is a gruit but I'd probably side-eye someone tossing that word around.) My spouse does history based homebrewing and I pulled Beer in the Middle Ages and Renaissance by Richard Unger off the shelf for this answer. I think in a premodern setting I'd see effervescence in beer as an anachronism.

Underclothing is often anachronistic.

AW Admin · Aug 8, 2018

I wouldn't be

if someone used beer, either.

Ale was the common word used for fermented beverages made from grain/malt in Old English and in Middle English until c. late 15th/early 16th century. As the OED says (s.v. beer):

a. An alcoholic liquor obtained by the fermentation of malt (or other saccharine substance), flavoured with hops or other aromatic bitters. Formerly distinguished from ale by being hopped; but now the generic name of malt liquor, including ale and porter, though sometimes restricted and used in contradistinction to ale. The word occurs in Old English, but its use is rare, except in poetry, and it seems to have become common only in the 16th cent. as the name of hopped malt liquor. Not in Chaucer or Piers Ploughman.

So for instanced Bald's Leechbook, a mid tenth century medical ms. written in Old English has several recipes calling for eala or ale.

There are some OE references to beer or really, ber or beor, in OE. They generally seem to be poetic, i.e. beer was the fancy word for a beverage made from malt.

Once Hops arrived in England (15th century) beer generally referred to fermented beverage that included hops. You don't see beer as a word used much until the 16 century, when it starts being common. The word beer is used, but not a lot. It's in some obscure OE poetry. Ale seems to have been the preferred word, though you can see ber in Layamon's Brut, c. 1208, for instance. When you do see beer, it's generally an idiom:

c1000 West Saxon Gospels: Luke (Corpus Cambr.) i. 15 He ne drincð win ne béor [Lindisf. and Rushw. bear].
a1250 Owl & Nightingale 1009 Hi nabbeth noth win ne bor.
c1275 (▸?a1200) Laȝamon Brut (Calig.) (1963) l. 4051 Weoren þa bernes i-scængte mid beore.
c1400 (▸?c1390) Sir Gawain & Green Knight (1940) l. 129 Good ber & bryȝt wyn boþe.

Beer and wine seem linked, in most of the attestations in late Old English and in Middle English.

The fact that neither Langland nor Chaucer use the word beer while both refer to ale is telling.

Sonsofthepharaohs · Aug 8, 2018

autumnleaf said:
- Rabbits in Britain before the 12th century (introduced by the Normans).

The Romans brought rabbits to Britain - they just weren't established in the wild, because they kept them in enclosures and reared them for eating

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1487787/Romans-introduced-the-rabbit.html

Sonsofthepharaohs · Aug 8, 2018

I will add some ancient ones to this list:

Camels in Egypt before the Persian invasion
Horses in Egypt before the Hyksos invasion
Ancient Egyptians wearing cotton before the Persian invasion
Egyptian peasants having wooden beds / furniture
Ancient Greeks wearing trousers (the BBC series Atlantis basically had everyone, even the women, wearing trousers, but they got a pass because... fantasy)

I'm sure I could go on...

snafu1056 · Aug 8, 2018

Beer has it's own patron saint, BTW. King Gambrinus. Not technically a saint, but serves a similar role, at least in the west.

Alessandra Kelley · Aug 8, 2018

Coffee before the sixteenth century. Fifteenth if you want to be generous.
Sweet oranges outside of China before about 1500 (in China the first mention is 314 BCE)
Chocolate outside of the Americas before the sixteenth century
Chocolate candy before 1847 (prior to that almost all chocolate was drinks)
Milk chocolate before 1875

Flicka · Aug 9, 2018

As regards pink and blue, you also had the concept that pink was a boy's colour and blue for girls in the early 20th century, as described in this article:
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/when-did-girls-start-wearing-pink-1370097/

I remember reading a biography of Princess Astrid of Sweden (later Queen Astrid of Belgium) and when Baudoin (later King of Belgium) was born in 1930, they decorated the entire nursery in pink, because that was the "boy colour".

Alessandra Kelley said:
Coffee before the sixteenth century. Fifteenth if you want to be generous.
Sweet oranges outside of China before about 1500 (in China the first mention is 314 BCE)
Chocolate outside of the Americas before the sixteenth century
Chocolate candy before 1847 (prior to that almost all chocolate was drinks)
Milk chocolate before 1875

I made a list on my blog with sweets that are still sold and when they were launched. Some were a lot earlier than I imagined, like Toblerone in 1908 and Snickers in 1930.

http://www.theragsoftime.com/?p=464

mrsfauthor · Aug 9, 2018

This is a great thread with valuable information. There are so many print culture things in the Victorian age...i.e. the poor mostly read the Bible and the wealthy read classics so their frames of reference/moral choices often relied upon those texts.

Cobalt Jade · Aug 9, 2018

Babies were often dressed in gender neutral colors because no one knew what the gender was going to be. I was dressed in both blue dresses and red dresses in the mid-50's...and later.

Childrens' clothing up to the 1980s was pretty subdued compared to today. In the 1960s most of my clothing was primary colors like red or blue or in neutrals like brown or tan. Special occasion dresses for girls were usually in pastels. There were exceptions though... some girls' clothes were modeled after the adult ones of the time. I vividly remember a poison green nehru-collared dress that was passed down from my cousin to my foster sister and then to me.

Baby clothing might have been neutral, but cigar boxes were not. I still have the box that was passed around after my birth with "It's a girl!" emblazoned on the inside lid in pink with a little native American girl wearing a pink feather.

Lil · Aug 9, 2018

Scones, the kind that are served for tea, before the 1840s, when baking powder came on the market. Eggs and yeast were the only leavenings before that, and while they will make a cake or bread rise, it won't be anything like what we think of as scones.
The word was around long before that, but it referred to a flat cake made of water and oat or barley meal, cooked on a griddle.

snafu1056 · Aug 9, 2018

Flicka said:
I made a list on my blog with sweets that are still sold and when they were launched. Some were a lot earlier than I imagined, like Toblerone in 1908 and Snickers in 1930.

http://www.theragsoftime.com/?p=464

That's a great list. Those root-beer barrel candies are pretty old too. I wonder what the first successful pre-packaged candy was.

List of anachronisms

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