[HN Gopher] What's wrong with medieval pigs in videogames ___________________________________________________________________ What's wrong with medieval pigs in videogames Author : _emacsomancer_ Score : 542 points Date : 2022-10-24 15:45 UTC (7 hours ago) (HTM) web link (www.leidenmedievalistsblog.nl) (TXT) w3m dump (www.leidenmedievalistsblog.nl) | TillE wrote: | Ever since sophisticated real-time 3D graphics became a thing, | I've often heard the idea expressed that we could learn about | history by experiencing it "first hand". An incredible VR | experience, surely. | | The problem is that a meticulous recreation is _really hard_ even | if you have a bunch of historians doing the work, and very likely | to reproduce a ton of modern biases without good documentation of | every tiny detail. For medieval Europe, it 's probably simply | impossible to get right. The written record just isn't good | enough. | rsynnott wrote: | There's also an aspect of "reality is unrealistic". A modern | audience would likely be baffled, by, say, brightly painted | ancient Roman statues and buildings; while that was the | contemporary reality, it's not at all what people expect. | DrewADesign wrote: | I can only imagine it's incredibly difficult and would require | quite a bit of subjectivity, even for academics. I don't have | any insight into that. However, being a game designer, I have a | related point to make: "game" output should be separated into | two distinct categories when considering accuracy. They are: | | 1) Video games geared towards entertainment: | | Historical accuracy will ALWAYS take second fiddle to providing | a great gaming experience, as it should. | | 2) "Serious" games and simulations: | | Some of the same academics that do all of the other research on | these topics are now using game engines and 3D modelling tools | to make accompanying models, and though I haven't seen any | personally, probably more involved simulations. They're no more | or less likely to be accurate than any other academic work on | the topic. Critique by other academics seems like a pretty | traditional way to advance a field even if the medium is pretty | new. | | Assessing the historical accuracy of an entertainment-based | medium seems to me a bit like assessing jokes for factual | accuracy: perhaps useful as a qualitative study, but probably | missing the point if it's a quantitative measure of value. That | said, if the marketing copy makes specific claims, then those | claims absolutely deserve to be evaluated for accuracy. | landhar wrote: | Although I agree with the problem you've framed. I still think | the idea of building VR experiences to learn and educate about | ancient times has a lot of potential. | | Since, to a great extent, the problem you've outlined extends | to every medium. And I still believe that movies and books that | try to capture the state of the art in our understanding of | previous civilizations play a major role in getting people | interested and to care about digging deeper into the topics. | AndrewOMartin wrote: | Defile what I defile, Lisa. | acomjean wrote: | Assasin's Creed odyssey actually has a "Tour Mode" where you | can get a tour of Athens or other open world locations. They | tried to make it accurate. | | https://www.polygon.com/reviews/2019/9/10/20859403/assassins... | | Of course then you get a bunch of historians on youtube | complaining that this or that detail isn't 100% correct ... But | thats just people | jdtang13 wrote: | Great article. Loved the illustrations and references to specific | medieval laws. A good example of how an earlier generation's | "common sense" was totally different from ours today. | adultSwim wrote: | _videogames are the perfect medium for breaking with the | stereotype and bringing academic insights to the larger public_ | tnorthcutt wrote: | I'm not sure we should trust medieval artwork to provide | anatomically correct depictions of much of anything. See, for | example, the Bayeux Tapestry [0]. | | [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bayeux_Tapestry | myself248 wrote: | Imagine if there was a whole group of people who specifically | study historical records and have figured out ways to tell how | accurate the depictions of various things may be. | hnbad wrote: | You mean Laravel and VueJS developers, right? | TrevorJ wrote: | Those people are going to have fun with our era, now that AI- | generated images are a thing. | anigbrowl wrote: | Excellent work, and a great point that games' educational | potential is often wasted. Modern agriculture tends to select for | monoculture or prioritize one particular variety that maximizes | something (Holstein cows for milk volume, or yellow bananas, or | russet potatoes). We have abundance, but often of lowest-common- | denominator options whereas periodic scarcity often means richer | variety and greater resilience. | | It's also startling how focused on system sustainability medieval | legal systems were, and how profoundly enclosure/privatization | laws cannibalized formerly common resources. | [deleted] | mixmastamyk wrote: | This reminds me of the other day at a "medieval" festival we were | offered turkey legs, which I have seen before on TV perhaps, and | didn't ponder at the moment. A few hours later thought... wait a | minute, turkeys are from North America? Why are these faux | Europeans walking around with turkey legs? | boomboomsubban wrote: | The proper noun "Turkey" is very different from a turkey leg. | | A turkey leg fits our perception of medieval people walking | around eating a huge chunk of flesh, though that is also a | misnomer unless you're thinking of the nobility. | mixmastamyk wrote: | I thought it looked funny, but couldn't put my finger on why. | nullc wrote: | Imagine it's a wood grouse leg instead. | gwbas1c wrote: | I had a similar experience. (Turkey legs are delicious, BTW.) | | I suspect the turkey was quickly introduced as a domesticated | bird in Europe shortly after contact with the Americas. | | Otherwise, the turkey may be the closest cost-sensitive | equivalent of whatever bird people at a lot of back then. Maybe | it was a goose? | mixmastamyk wrote: | Hmm, medieval period was over by 1492. No mention of Vikings | returning with them that I have found. | | Wikipedia says the rumor is that Spain brought them to the | middle-east, where they came back to England with a "meat | from Turkey" label. Perhaps before the English settlements of | 1620- expanded trade from the region. | Ekaros wrote: | And where is rest of the animals? Meat didn't preserve well, so | you eat more of it at time to not waste it. | Tyr42 wrote: | Wait I thought Turkeys were from near Turkey. | gwbas1c wrote: | They're native to Northeastern United States and Southeastern | Canada, although there is a peninsula in Mexico that has a | different species of turkey. | | The reason why turkey is traditional at the US Thanksgiving | holiday is to honor the first Thanksgiving, celebrated in | Plymouth, MA. I live near Plymouth and there are tons of wild | turkeys running around here. (Yesterday there were 11 grazing | in my back yard.) | | It's a very beautiful animal, the male makes a display | similar to a peacock. | Pxtl wrote: | Disclaimer: IANAF, this info comes from pure curiosity and | reading. | | He was describing wild boar interbreeding as being the source of | fur and tusks but AFAIK _any_ hog allowed to mature in nature | instead of captivity will develop fur and tusks. I haven 't found | clear explanations as to _why_ the fur happens (weather? Food? | Sessile vs active lifestyle?), but any hog allowed to go feral in | the wild will look like a hairy, angry, dangerous animal. edit: | The tusks differ just because of trimming and age. | | Which fits with the description of the pigs being allowed to roam | in captive forests. | | One thing that stands out is the timeline - the article describes | 3 years to mature enough to be allowed into the forest. | | In modern factory farming, pigs are generally slaughtered at 6 | months, and if they're being bred they start breeding at around a | year. Treating pigs as immature at below 3 years is a staggering | difference. | Sol- wrote: | Very interesting. It's good to be often reminded how things pop | culture representations of historical times can present something | that I as a layman would consider plausible (pig rolling in the | mud in a medieval town? checks out!), but is not really accurate. | Of course the pig is just one symptom and there will be many more | such things. | | Probably increasing use of AI to generate art may amplify such | things. Not quite the same, but think AI colorization of | historical photographs that just need to look plausible - | correctness is not the objective. | rebolek wrote: | If anything, A"I" would make the problem worse as it depends | only on prior art and is not capable of any critical thinking. | kibwen wrote: | This doesn't deserve downvotes. AI just regurgitates what | it's been taught. It doesn't care about "correctness" in any | capacity, only in conformity to the training set. | jeandejean wrote: | Very interesting article, but as these games are fiction, they do | not necessarily need to be accurate, otherwise there are many | more utter inaccuracies to be corrected, not to mention the fact | that a young girl can freely hang around with her little brother | in the 1300s while having her haircut always perfect. Let games | be and enjoy the wonderful pictures. | throwaway5752 wrote: | It should be pointed out that other animals are famously | distorted in medieval artwork: https://daily.jstor.org/why-are- | medieval-lions-so-bad/, https://mossandfog.com/the-comically-bad- | way-medieval-art-po... | | Otherwise, fascinating details on communal foraging, laws, and | husbandry. | ClumsyPilot wrote: | I can't help but feel we've entered into a perverse loop where we | make movies / games only pander to stereotypes of their viewers, | and we breed ignorance. | | First of all art seems to be obsessed with medieval European, and | all other periods and places are forgotten. The only other period | that gets showtime is antiquity in rome/egypt/greece (which is | more or less one period). | | We have a catch 22, that noone knows whats been happening in | ancient China or India, and so movies about them are few and far | between. | | Art is meant to elevate and educate. | | Perhaps this has entered terminal stage because holywood and AAA | studios cant even bothered to write a new plot any more, they | just make endless remakes | | Insert some grumble about late stage capitalism | ng12 wrote: | What's crazy to me is Hollywood is more focused on casting non- | white actors in medeival fantasy roles rather than actually | making culturally diverse movies. Chinese, Indian, and African | history is fascinating and I would love to see more media | exploring those settings. | hot_gril wrote: | Just setting something in a powerful nation of early medieval | or pre-Roman times would make it naturally non-Eurocentric. | Eastern Roman empire, Sasanian or older Persian empires, | Alexander's Asia, Ethiopia, Pontus, Artaxiad Armenia, | Baktria, pre-delenda'd Carthage, golden age Islamic empires, | archaic Mesopotamian kingdoms, (further eastern empires that | I'm honestly not educated about), ... | | "Cordoba was a city that had street lighting and paved | streets while London was still just a village." - Prince | Faisal in _Lawrence of Arabia_ | volkk wrote: | My wild guess is that most AAA/Hollywood creators are | completely clueless about those cultures and histories and | the effort required to do research to hit a level of | accuracy outweighs the budgets they have, so we're stuck | with culturally diverse medieval ages. furthermore, i | imagine the PR agencies that tell them that they're going | to be wrecked and dragged all over the internet if they do | some Persian themed thing and get something wrong. add that | all up and they probably decide it ain't worth it. | hot_gril wrote: | I'm sure they can figure out the history well enough to | depict it, or punt on the accuracy. They probably figured | it wouldn't be a popular enough setting for the intended | audience. | | It's been done a few times. _Prince of Persia_ was set in | a fantasy land without a real attempt at historical | accuracy, but it was sorta Sasanid Persia. Similarly, | _Aladdin_ in Iraq. There was also the 2004 _Alexander_ | which was quite accurate, but it wasn 't a good movie. | And _Lawrence of Arabia_ , sorta fictionalized but | accurate in spirit, which was the best. | | _300_ was interesting cause they made it clear the story | was being told from the Greek perspective by having | Dilios narrate it, and he hyped it up even more than the | actual Greek historians did, instead of the movie | presenting it as a factual view. The movie still pissed | off the Iranian government, but whatever. | hot_gril wrote: | Oh yeah, _Mulan_ too. | salmo wrote: | I have a thing for filling in gaps in my knowledge. | Eventually one will bother me and I'll have to learn. Just | before COVID started, it was non-Eurocentric history. I | realized I knew the world as seeing the Persians as the | decadent outsiders and didn't know anything "east" of there. | | I've spent a lot of time learning about China, the Mongols, | Persia, and actual Ancient Egypt. I've dabbled in general | Islamic history. I have so much more to cover, but it's what | I could find thorough work on easily. I like to start with | pre-history and go forward where I can. | | It's crazy to me. There are so many compelling stories. And | what we have in our media is so insanely off-base. | | Side request: Any recommendations for podcasts and resources | for some of the various Indian cultures and Russia would be | much appreciated. I prefer a bias of "from their eyes" to | "from a Western perspective." | majormajor wrote: | Are movies about ancient China or India made in China and | India? Is the claim that they aren't made, or that "noone" | knows about it, itself myopic? | | Obviously trying to get Hollywood stories to cover broader | things is a big topic, and one I think is important for people | in the US, but Hollywood is also not the be-all-and-end-all of | the world. | drstewart wrote: | > rome/egypt/greece (which is more or less one period). | | That's like saying Moghul India and Raj India and British-era | Hong Kong were "all one period" because they kind of sort of | overlapped in space and time. | hot_gril wrote: | When people think of Rome, they tend to unknowingly think of | a period of Roman expansion from like 200BC to 1AD where | Egypt and Greece were independently ruled for some time | before Rome conquered both, which also happens to be near the | start of Christianity. That's why "Rome/Egypt/Greece" is a | thing. | kixiQu wrote: | https://witcher-games.fandom.com/wiki/Baked_potato | | The same kind of "and not even _accurate_ medieval Europe " | complaint as the article, when I do agree with you that the | myopic focus on Europe is more important, but... the | introduction of the potato was so influential to social | relations that it is kind of appalling to consider how casually | it's used in supposedly pre-Columbian settings! | aetherson wrote: | Isn't the Witcher set in a wholly fantastic, non-European, | realm? Like, obviously to some degree inspired by European | fantasy, but it's not like there's an America to go to and | bring back the potato from. | kixiQu wrote: | The Witcher is my specifically chosen example because | people famously lost their minds about the Netflix | adaptation moving to cast characters in it as nonwhite. | ...because It Is Supposed To Be Based On Medieval Poland, | Of Course. So you can see the weird tensions around the | "historical accuracy" of fantasy - people have strong | reactions, pretty high-stakes stuff. | | If you hadn't heard of this, there's a lot of press | coverage, but here's a petition with 50k signatories. | https://www.change.org/p/lauren-s-hissrich-don-t-limit- | ciri-... | | (If anyone is considering commenting about their opinions | on this kind of casting being Good or Bad, let's not - the | point is that the Witcher's "historical accuracy" is | something people have a lot of feelings about.) | lrem wrote: | Which is a hilarious detail to protest about. Given the | whole antagonist fraction was changed from a corporatist | technocracy to a theocracy. | hardolaf wrote: | Fun fact, Andrzej Sapkowski only specified a few | characters' skin color when it was important to note that | they were from the same region as Geralt of Rivia. | Otherwise, the only big note is that Zerrikanians have | sun-blackened skin (as in deep black like you'd find in | many parts of central Africa). Everything else is | basically just commentary on hair styles and especially | hair dyes. Very little time is spent in his books | discussing natural hair colors or skin color with the | exception of people very far to the north, Geralt, and | the Zerrikanians. In interviews back before the video | games were made, (I'm going to paraphrase here), he | basically said that the skin colors and hair colors were | as diverse if not more diverse than Earth and because of | the ease of travel for anyone aided by magic users, you | could expect to find tons of diversities in any of the | cities and even in large towns. As for the magic users | and witchers, they'd be as diverse as the world itself as | they were trained from all parts of the world. | colechristensen wrote: | Correct, it makes as much sense to complain that Hobbits | like potatoes. | hot_gril wrote: | When the media is based around folklore from a particular | region, it's understandable to want it to match the | region. I don't care about the casting, but if there were | redcoat musketeers and samurai-looking warriors in a | movie loosely based on old German fairy-tales, it'd be | weird. | hot_gril wrote: | And the Romans are British-looking people who wear nothing but | red, while Egypt's contemporary Ptolemaic period often gets | mixed up with some much older era. | | Btw, there are 11 Spiderman movies by now. Wtf. | colechristensen wrote: | There are plenty of films produced in China and India about | historical periods in China and India... watch them? | | Likewise there are few films in those markets set in historical | European eras. | | A place tends to make films regarding their own cultural | heritage, is this a problem or are you going to start | complaining about the lack of Bollywood productions about King | Arthur? | salmo wrote: | India has booming film industries, but I haven't looked into | historical film. I'm normally there for the escapism. The | fact that it's considered A place or A heritage is another | problem. It's more diverse than Europe. Heck, often languages | are closer to European languages than they are to the | neighboring region. I wish I knew a lot more about that than | I do. | | China has some pretty serious issues with the government's | projection on their own history and their ability to dictate | what is or is not made. Minor example: a Tang period film | required a change to not period-accurate clothing because it | was too immodest. Sorry, I can't remember the name. | vintermann wrote: | I would bet China and India's film industries aren't great on | historical accuracy either. The past tends to be a strange, | different country, where people care about a ton of unsexy | stuff which we don't care for, and vice versa. | | That's not ideal for engaging stories, let alone courting | nationalist audiences. | tabtab wrote: | Those aren't chubby pigs in modern video games, they're humans! | DeathArrow wrote: | I'd venture to guess that the way pigs looked in the Middle Ages | is not the only historical oversight in video games. | bayesian_horse wrote: | Those pigs aren't inaccurately modeled. Of course they are just | time travelling pigs! | peterkelly wrote: | Next article will be about how the inventory capacity of ancient | warriors is grossly misrepresented. | jrockway wrote: | You're missing the difference between being unrealistic to | improve gameplay, and unrealistic because someone forgot to | check the historical details. Everyone knows that video game | characters have an unreasonable ability to carry stuff; they do | that not because they imagined that ancient people had larger | pockets, but because the game would suck to play if they didn't | do it. The wrong pig model doesn't affect gameplay, it's just | something that nobody thought to check. If they had used the | right one, it would still be the same game. | jszymborski wrote: | Medievalists are going to medieval, but I can't help but feel | like the framing is strange... | | An article that describes how today's pigs are different from | yesterpigs is indeed interesting, but do we particularly care how | medievally our video game pigs are? Surely Assassin's Creed holds | more important factual errors than the correctness of its pigs; | neither of which detract from the game. It's probably a much more | entertaining game for them... | mcv wrote: | > do we particularly care how medievally our video game pigs | are? Surely Assassin's Creed holds more important factual | errors than the correctness of its pigs | | Of course, but this particular author chooses to focus on the | pigs. Possibly because of personal expertise? The fact that | other errors exist does not mean this one should be ignored. | | In any case, it's an interesting thing to learn about. | mortenjorck wrote: | _> do we particularly care how medievally our video game pigs | are?_ | | Details like this are a big part of what makes historical | fiction compelling! The more things one encounters that diverge | unexpectedly, yet believably from the present day, the greater | the sense of immersion. | jonny_eh wrote: | And the more we can learn from it! Ubisoft has shown an | interest in using this series to teach history, with museum | modes where you can harmlessly walk around, appreciate the | architecture, and talk to locals about what life was like at | the time. | tomcam wrote: | Having done tech support I think it's possible they made the | decision deliberately on the assumption that users would | complain the (period correct) swine looked wrong. | regentbowerbird wrote: | The way we perceive the past informs our perception of the | present. Of course there are elements of fantasy in fiction, | but the conceit is that outside of what is clearly fictional | everything is real. | | In the case of Assassin's Creed, there is a special draw | regarding historical accuracy since the game purports to tell | the "real" story, so everything that's immediately outside the | fiction should be accurate -- and in fact the games have been | noted as arousing interest in history among players. | | This is why this kind of approximation can be problematic: if | you play the original game from 2007, sure you'll disregard the | conspiracy theory story, but will you notice that there are | buildings in Jerusalem that didn't appear until centuries | later, making the city look much more "arabic" looking than it | historically was at the time? And if you think the modern pig | is in its natural state, won't you have a subtly different | outlook on modern animal husbandry? | bcrosby95 wrote: | I like to start from historically accurate then go from there | in my hobby games. | | My friends ask why I care about accuracy. It's really simple! | The world 1,000 or 2,000 years ago was VERY different than | today, and trying to replicate it is usually enough to create | an interesting and foreign world. | | If you want to morph things for gameplay's sake, you still can. | But there's a difference between purposefully introducing | inaccuracies and ignorantly doing so. | GuB-42 wrote: | My opinion is: make it correct unless it distracts from the | story/gameplay. Most people won't notice but those who do will | be happy. On a AAA game, you can afford to hire a couple of | medievalists and get these details correct. | | Sometimes, factual errors are actually deliberate in order to | improve gameplay. For example, accurate architecture may take a | back seat to level design. Weapons may react in completely | unrealistic ways, but it is understandable because in real | life, people didn't fight with controllers. People go much | faster than they should, distances are shortened, there is | either too much or too little variety because having too much | of the same thing is boring and having variation is every small | detail is too expensive. All that is not just excusable, it is | actually good design, it is a game, not a history lesson. | Sometimes, though it is more relevant in movies, there is a | deliberate inaccuracy just because that's what people expect | and doing it differently would make the audience focus on an | unimportant detail or mess with the pacing. And sometimes, it | is just to save money that is better spend elsewhere. | | I don't think having period accurate pigs is any of these, so | for me, it is a mistake, no more, no less. Not the worst, but | it deserves a "bug report". | insane_dreamer wrote: | > Weapons may react in completely unrealistic ways | | And your character is also likely carrying more of them than | their period counterparts, or in some cases, is humanly | possible | anigbrowl wrote: | Loadouts in most RPGs are so absurd even with limits. I'm | surprised no game (that I know of) capitalizes on this | issue by giving you access to stuff but making you stage it | strategically, eg leaving ammo along your line of retreat | so you can surprise your pursuers. Maybe designers have | found that it's too much prep and planning whereas players | want action, but then again the From Software * _Souls_ | games suggests many players enjoy having to work at it. | marginalia_nu wrote: | Most weapons are fairly light. Could easily lug around a | diablo inventory of swords in a large sturdy backpack. | insane_dreamer wrote: | For how long? Over what type of terrain? How would it | impact your stamina level? Could you fight with the | backpack on? When you set it down to fight, could an | opponent steal it? | crtasm wrote: | > it is a game, not a history lesson | | In the case of recent Assassins Creed games, it's both. | | "...freely roam Ancient Greece, Ancient Egypt and the Viking | Age to learn more about their history and daily life. | Students, teachers, non-gamers, and players can discover | these eras at their own pace, or embark on guided tours and | stories curated by historians and experts." | | https://www.ubisoft.com/en-us/game/assassins- | creed/discovery... | baud147258 wrote: | Regarding the latest Assassin's Creed, that reminded me of | a (long) blog post [0] by a historian, though it deals more | in themes than all the historical inaccuracies present in | the game. He then did another post on Expeditions: Rome, a | game that claimed historical verisimilitude and all the | mistakes it made [1]. | | [0] https://acoup.blog/2020/11/20/miscellanea-my-thoughts- | on-ass... | | [1] https://acoup.blog/2022/04/15/collections-expeditions- | rome-a... | ajmurmann wrote: | Among things that if done realistic, might take you out of | the game experience, I'd also expect dialog. Leaving out how | any given vocabulary and pronunciation has radically changed, | I'd also expect just the flow of a conversation, what people | valued and what they took for granted for things like social | hierarchy and everyday customs would be completely | alienating. I have no concrete examples, but I am sure that | just observing interactions within a family or between a | store keeper and a customer would be totally alien to anyone | playing a modern video game. | 0cf8612b2e1e wrote: | >... what people valued and what they took for granted for | things like social hierarchy and everyday customs would be | completely alienating | | One such historical custom which has gone by the wayside: | an entire family used to share a single bed. If you had a | stranger over, they were likely to hop in as well for the | night. | q-big wrote: | > On a AAA game, you can afford to hire a couple of | medievalists and get these details correct. | | The financing of AAA titles is actually rather tight; the | fact that AAA titles hardly ever do experiments in gameplay | and the fact that in many studios crunch time happens show | how tight the financial planning of AAA titles has to be to | work out. | kcexn wrote: | This is not because the publishers can't afford to spend a | bit more. But because they would rather capture every last | dollar of profit. | | There's an argument to be made that getting some of these | details right would improve their profitability. For sure | people will be talking about the strange pigs wandering | around outside the villages. | 0cf8612b2e1e wrote: | I would love to know what percentage of that budget has | anything to do with development vs advertising. I see ads | for games on buses, billboards, tv commercials, etc that do | not seem cheap. | prox wrote: | For Kingdom Come Deliverance I thoroughly enjoyed the focus on | historical detail. It gives the game a creative edge and for me | also an educational edge "a glimpse of medieval life." | karolist wrote: | This is my all time favorite game. Every few months I | remember to look if they've announced KCD2 yet. | inglor_cz wrote: | I know the leader of the project, Daniel Vavra. | | They dedicated a lot of time to getting all the details | right. | phist_mcgee wrote: | Yesterpig is a _great_ word | LegitShady wrote: | no one cares about medieval pigs, and it won't get clicks, so | the video game angle is there to draw interest from more normal | people. | frostburg wrote: | You have no idea about how much Tuscan municipialities care | about medieval pigs, especially if they can get a protected | designation of origin out of them (also not everyone is | willfully ignorant, but I support accurate medieval pigs in | videogames, too). | LegitShady wrote: | if you have to live off selling articles that only Tuscan | municipality staff care about, you're going to be eating a | lot of beans and rice. | wartijn_ wrote: | Well, it's not exactly the only blog post on this site about | medieval pigs. At the bottom of the post there is a link to | their other posts about those animals[0], of which there are 12 | at this moment. It seems like some medievalists at Universiteit | Leiden are interested in pigs, and that looking at medieval | video game pigs is just one of the ways they talk about them. | | [0] https://www.leidenmedievalistsblog.nl/tags/medieval%20pigs | HeyLaughingBoy wrote: | Some people certainly will. | | My wife trains horses. It irritates her to no end seeing | characters in movies who supposedly spend their lives in the | saddle, played by an actor who has clearly never been on | horseback before. | mirko22 wrote: | Don't think this is important for gameplay at all, not like I | expect skyrim to be historically correct, but as a random | trivia and kinda of a tongue-in-cheek article I find this super | interesting. | Someone wrote: | FTA: _With their ability to digitally animate fantastical | fauna, videogames are the perfect medium for breaking with the | stereotype and bringing academic insights to the larger | public._ | | I agree. | | Even ignoring that, there's a relatively broad interest in | movie bloopers, where people complain about such things as | _"2011 Chargers were replaced by the earlier models. You can | easily tell it by the taillights"_ | (https://www.carthrottle.com/post/alqlmmp/) or _"Both | Apatosaurs and Stegosaurs went extinct before the point of | divergence of this alternate history"_ | https://m.imdb.com/title/tt1979388/goofs/). I think that | naturally extends to game bloopers, and this is one. | forgotusername6 wrote: | They state with only a few examples that medieval pigs were | different. Pigs come with such variety it is hard to say that | current depictions are wrong based on such a small sample. | hardolaf wrote: | They also state that the games are wrong despite many of these | games having put in farm more period and location specific | research than the author. The author cites a few translations | of a few summaries of laws and a bunch of stuff about England, | Wales, Scotland, and Ireland and then extrapolates across the | entire medieval period and all of Europe. | barry-cotter wrote: | No. Modern intensive training of pigs is a change that's well | within historical periods with extensive records. I guarantee | you pigs are like dogs in that the huge majority of modern | breeds are less than 200 (250 to be conservative) years old. | Before that there were landraces and we know what they look | like, at least roughly. | | Using modern pigs gives a false impression _even if I'm wrong | about that_ because until after WW2 pigs in the West that were | raised industrially were raised for lard more than lean meat. | There have been huge changes in what most pigs look like in | living human memory. | tptacek wrote: | It's wrong if modern pigs are the result of modern breeding and | breeding techniques. Modern pigs are often (usually? almost | always?) purebred, for instance, which isn't something you're | going to get with pigs that wander around the woods herded like | sheep. | NaturalPhallacy wrote: | What might even be weirder is if you take modern pigs and let | them run wild for just a few weeks they'll start looking very | feral. It's bizarre. | chongli wrote: | Definitely an example of the Coconut Effect [1]. If they had | consulted a historian versed in swine culture and produced | period-accurate pigs it would have been a meme about how weird | and alien the pigs look. People don't care about period accuracy, | they care about art that matched their expectations. | | Suspension of disbelief is the operative word here. Trying to | fight against it is tilting at windmills. | | [1] https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TheCoconutEffect | ziml77 wrote: | The kung-foley point is the best example for me because I've | seen fight scenes in old films that didn't have any of the | sound effects. It was unsettling how quiet it was and it | actually felt (more) fake. | quickthrower2 wrote: | Not a gamer, but aren't games trying to differentiate | themselves? A weird pig would be good thing. | btilly wrote: | The phrase "tilting at windmills" is an interesting one. | | It is a reference to Don Quixote attacking windmills because | they were giants oppressing the people. Which, today, just | seems ridiculous. | | However the main reason to switch from hand mills to windmills | was that it was far easier for the miller to collect taxes when | the grain was milled than for tax collectors to go to every | peasant and collect taxes there. Not only was it more | efficient, but lords who forced their peasants to switch often | raised taxes simply because it was easy to do so. | | This was all current events when Cervantes wrote Don Quixote. | And therefore his audience would have been expected to | understand that windmills truly WERE "giants oppressing the | people"! | | No point. Just fun trivia about how different a modern phrase | looks when looked at from the point of view of its history. | Bakary wrote: | Reading Don Quixote was fairly mindblowing in general because | the humor seemed so modern... in a time when the novel as we | know it was itself a recent invention. | | Now your fun fact makes it even more mindblowing. | lupire wrote: | Are you sure? If the windmill didn't make milling more | efficient, and if hand milling at home was an effective tax | dodge, people would avoid using the windmills. | | And the tax collector coming to the house is just as | oppressive as being taxed at the windmill. | | A quick web search suggests windmills increased grain | production by a factor of 5. | Someone wrote: | > However the main reason to switch from hand mills to | windmills was that it was far easier for the miller to | collect taxes when the grain was milled than for tax | collectors to go to every peasant and collect taxes there. | | I think you're mixing cause (larger windmills are more | efficient, making it a win to centralize them) with effect | (that makes it easier to tax flour production). | | If that were the main reason, we would have stories about | people clandestinely milling at home. I'm not aware of any. | | (I also think, but am not sure, milling already was | centralized before the introduction of wind power) | stewbrew wrote: | I assume people didn't have mills at home for the same | reason most people of today don't have full blown data | centers at home. People did have mortars though like | today's people have PCs and smartphones. | | I think you're wrong to assume that of two things that co- | evolved, one thing had to cause the other. | Gordonjcp wrote: | You'd have a quern at home, at least in Scotland, | probably most of England too. | dllthomas wrote: | People didn't have giant millstones at home, but (IIUC) | had various forms of handmill at home at various times | and places. | | Interestingly, per | https://acoup.blog/2022/07/29/collections-logistics-how- | did-... several Mediterranean cultures equipped their | soldiers with handmills, with the Romans also including | sickles so they could process grain from the fields they | were marching near, allowing an earlier campaign season | then were they forced to wait for it to be harvested. | dllthomas wrote: | > If that were the main reason, we would have stories about | people clandestinely milling at home. I'm not aware of any. | | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quern-stone#Laws_against_use | | Laws against a thing often indicate that it was common | enough to be a problem, although there are exceptions. | Someone wrote: | Thanks! | insane_dreamer wrote: | Home mills -- that were small enough to keep hidden from a | surprise inspection -- might be fine for small amounts but | unlikely efficient enough for full harvests. | galt_drakkor wrote: | Flour spoils much faster then unmilled grain. So the bulk | of the grain would always be left as grain for storage. | Armies would be the ones who would want to bulk mill an | entire harvest taken from a region. | | For those without access to windmills, the daily grind | would produce flour/ meal for that day. | jlawson wrote: | People did clandestinely mill at home. It was treated as a | serious crime. There are specific historical laws about | this and the punishments were pretty severe. It was | something the lords were quite concerned about. | scarmig wrote: | It'd be interesting to see if the initial windmills when | introduced were more efficient, post-tax and capex, than | traditional methods. | | There's a parallel with grains: staples like rice and wheat | are more legible to states than other alternatives like | legumes, tubers, and starch plants, even though the latter | were comparable in terms of calories generated by unit | labor. E.g. many roots are buried and hidden from tax | collectors. States which enforced cultivation of the | legible grains had a greater tax base and outcompeted those | that didn't. | adwn wrote: | That's not very convincing. Before the introduction of | the potato, there were no below-ground alternatives that | were superior to cereals in Europe and Northern Africa. | | > _E.g. many roots are buried and hidden from tax | collectors._ | | Those roots tend to be attached to green stuff that's | above ground and very visible. Why should that be any | less legible to tax collectors than wheat or rice? | scarmig wrote: | > Those roots tend to be attached to green stuff that's | above ground and very visible. Why should that be any | less legible to tax collectors than wheat or rice? | | It's a combination of factors. Cereals like wheat and | rice tend to ripen seasonally and simultaneously. They do | so visibly, and must be harvested soon after. So a state | sends its tax collectors around when the grains are ready | to be harvested, and the amount that was generated is | immediately visible. They also keep well: tubers go bad | relatively quickly (and can be kept underground until | actually needed for consumption), while rice and wheat | can be transported over long distances and times with an | order of magnitude less loss. | | Consider the case of the Incas. As a civilization, they | relied on two crops for calories and nutrition: maize and | potatoes. Despite that, efforts at taxation primarily | focused on maize, because it was so much better suited | for taxes and commerce (though they did eventually invent | a way to freeze dry potatoes). | dllthomas wrote: | Do you have a citation? I'm not nearly confident enough to | think you're wrong, but I'm surprised early 1600s Spain | wasn't already provisioned with wind- or watermills and I'd | be curious to learn more of the context. | TrueSlacker0 wrote: | Today in the US the 3 music industry giants tax(via legally | required license fees) the venues where musicians play | instead of taxing the musicians for the exact same reason. | The venue doesn't come and go as quickly and has a set | location. Musicians change band names, people, etc often and | are harder to track. | rapind wrote: | > tax collectors to go to every peasant and collect taxes | there | | I suspect that this individual collection raised the risk of | getting a beating if the peasantry was in dire straits. | (drought, raiding, over taxation, etc.). | | Inefficiency isn't all bad. | ericbarrett wrote: | I love this. | | Similarly, the expression "pull yourself up by your own | bootstraps" was originally used ironically or mockingly, as | it is physically impossible. Some time in the early 20th | century it began to be used as an unironic exhortation. | Loughla wrote: | I do love these. I wonder if there is a collection of these | sayings that have shifted entirely to mean something else. | | Like "blood is thicker than water" was originally "blood of | the covenant is thicker than water of the womb." The | meaning is literally the opposite, but it got co-opted and | changed at some point. | | These things are fascinating. | oxfeed65261 wrote: | A pair of examples: "bought a pig in a poke" and "let the | cat out of the bag." "Poke" is an archaic term for "bag" | [0], related to "pocket." | | Apparently a common medieval scam was to try to sell a | cat as a suckling pig, concealing the cat in a bag [1]. | One who buys such a pig in a poke is cheated. One who | lets the cat out of the bag reveals a secret too soon. | | Note however that [2] argues that this etymology for lack | out of the bag" is not plausible. | | [0] Etymology 2, https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/poke | | [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pig_in_a_poke | | [2] https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/let-the-cat-out-of- | the-bag..., referenced from https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wi | ki/Letting_the_cat_out_of_the_b... | meheleventyone wrote: | Poke means bag in Scotland. You get a poke of chips for | example. | scarmig wrote: | I wonder if there's a name for this phenomenon. Eggcorns | aren't quite right, as they're more about mishearing a | word or phrase in a way that still makes sense in context | (e.g. Alzheimer's disease -> old-timers' disease). | Mondegreens are about mishearing a word or phrase and | substituting them for something different. Those are | errors in interpreting phonic elements, but there's no | misinterpretation of the words for these phrases/idioms; | it's just disregarding the meaning entirely and | substituting a new meaning. | [deleted] | dllthomas wrote: | I am often amused and frustrated at the common | institutional excuse of misbehavior being due to "a few | bad apples" as though the saying were "a few bad apples | are no big deal, get rid of them (or hide them elsewhere | in the barrel) if anyone happens to notice them." | | I've heard that "a rolling stone gathers no moss" tends | to differ in sense between the UK and the US as to | whether "moss" is desirable. | yellowstuff wrote: | That seems to be a popular internet myth, but without | much evidence: | | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blood_is_thicker_than_water | Nition wrote: | Another one I've seen recently circulating on the | Internet is an idea that "The customer is always right" | was originally "The customer is always right, in matters | of taste". Also not true. | Loughla wrote: | That might be even better! Now there's no meaning other | than what you, individually, choose to attribute to it. | | I love living languages. | yamtaddle wrote: | "Gangbusters" has become a sort of generic intensifier | but the original phrase was something like "to come on | like Gangbusters", referring to a radio show with an | obnoxiously-noisy intro (it's on Youtube if you're | curious). Increasingly distant metaphorical use and | people falling out of familiarity with the origin of the | phrase led us to modern constructions like "my tomatoes | are going gangbusters!" which don't _really_ fit with the | original usage. | foobarian wrote: | Pretty sure the origin of this in tech came from compilers, | where it actually is almost magical which the analogy does | drive home pretty well (though exaggerating a tiny bit). | hnbad wrote: | Don't know about that but the origin I'm aware of for | "pulling yourself up by your bootstraps" are the tales of | Baron Munchhausen, who is supposed to be a fantastical | liar telling tall tales that are clearly ridiculous. | Specifically I think he retells an adventure that | involves him pulling himself out of quicksand (which btw | also does not behave in reality as it does in fiction) by | pulling on his own bootstraps. | | So I guess the original use does kinda resemble "an | incredible feat that strains belief" with the difference | that it is supposed to be incredible because it's | physically impossible to pull off. The current use for | "making sensible spending decisions" seems to be the | result of the phrase being overused to the point where | the feats it describes become increasingly mundane. | ouid wrote: | I think it's still used that way. Exclusively. Someone | saying "pull yourself up by your bootstraps" is not | claiming that it is possible to do so, they are cynically | disclaiming their own responsibility in the act. | Negitivefrags wrote: | I have never heard that expression used unironically. I | feel like the idea that there are people out there saying | it in earnest is itself a meme that was never true. | s1artibartfast wrote: | At least according to a few internet sources, it was in | initially invented as a critique with the irony intended. | | Over time it became idiomatic speech for initiating | something difficult | jlawson wrote: | It can and is used with both opposite meanings. | | The same as how "literally" means both "literally" and | "figuratively", depending on the context. | dllthomas wrote: | > The same as how "literally" means both "literally" and | "figuratively", depending on the context. | | I disagree with that analysis. It's true that "literally" | is often used when the modified phrase is figurative, but | that's not quite the same thing is it _meaning | "figuratively"_ - were we to remove the "literally" the | utterance would not be more likely to be interpreted as | literal. The role it's serving is as an intensifier, and | I contend that it's a fairly ordinary example of | hyperbole. In the same way, when someone says "you left | me waiting for days" we don't say that sometimes days | means a handful of minutes depending on context, but that | sometimes people exaggerate. | | (And I recognize that at least one sufficiently respected | dictionary disagrees with me; I think they got it wrong.) | mark_undoio wrote: | I believe it's the origin of "bootstrapping" as a verb, | in which it immediately becomes unironic technical | jargon. | | i.e. as in getting a start-up off the ground or, when | shortened further, "booting" a computer. | s1artibartfast wrote: | I think you're correct about the origins. That said, a | typically ironic idiom can still give rise to non-ironic | derivative words. | bena wrote: | I don't think it's entirely non-ironic. I think the term | acknowledges the inherent risk in the situation. You are | attempting something statistically impossible. So many of | these ventures do not pan out. | s1artibartfast wrote: | I think we are obviously quibbling, but that's okay. I | think it's not about risk but the meaning is simply | making something from nothing, or making much from very | little. | | I don't think booting my computer is inherently risky or | statistically impossible | bena wrote: | Sorry, I was referring to the term bootstrapping with | regards to startup companies. | | I agree that in reference to computer startup, it's just | being cheeky. | jakereps wrote: | You've never heard of a bootstrapped startup? On this | site? | Bakary wrote: | The term itself is not sarcastic but the concept | acknowledges the inherent sarcasm of it, since the chain | of programs must have an initial mover | jaclaz wrote: | On a similar theme I always liked Sir Winston Churchill on | taxes: | | >We contend that for a nation to try to tax itself into | prosperity is like a man standing in a bucket and trying to | lift himself up by the handle. | moffkalast wrote: | Well that's pretty wild, I can now add "windmills were a tax | thing" to the pile of random facts I never thought I'd know. | axiolite wrote: | > period-accurate pigs it would have been a meme about how | weird and alien the pigs look. | | That apparently wasn't a problem for the listed counter- | example: "Kingdom Come: Deliverance" | squeaky-clean wrote: | I don't know how truthfully they've handled it, but | historical accuracy is one of the main selling points of | KC:D. I've only heard about the game through word-of-mouth, | but that's been the most repeated detail I've heard. Less | fantasy and hollywood, and a more accurate representation of | the time period. | | One of the main features listed on their Steam page: | | > Historical accuracy: Meet real historical characters and | experience the genuine look and feel of medieval Bohemia. | hnbad wrote: | It's worth pointing out that the "historical accuracy" | comes less from a medievalist perspective and more of an | appeal to tradition. The characters and setting are often | amazingly historically accurate in some parts while | following the same old revisionist tropes in others. Given | some of the political statements of the developers, this | isn't all too surprising. | | It's a bit like reconstructing a vision of the 1950s US by | exclusively looking at 1950s TV ads. Yes, you'll get a lot | of details right to an astonishing extent but the result | will not at all be representative of what living in the | 1950s was actually like. | njdvndsjkvn wrote: | TheRealPomax wrote: | Except of course the very coconut that this effect is named | after has long since died: TV and film doesn't use cococnuts | for hooves anymore except when warranted, and people aren't | weirded out by horse tread sounding like what horses sound | like. | | The coconut effect exists as a self-reinforcing problem that is | easily broken but for people going "but the coconut effect!". | Repetition familiarises: if all the games you play start | showing period-accurate pigs, then after a few games that force | a bit more realism into your experience you stop going "my | immersion!" and instead go "oh neat, this is what they looked | like in the era this game is set in?" and then immediately move | on because you're not here to start a period-accurate pig | farming business. | | ...usually... | insane_dreamer wrote: | Representations of computer screens in movies generally fall | under this category | pjungwir wrote: | That is a fun article, but they left out my favorite: the dial | tone when someone hangs up. | | Speaking of phones, it's interesting to see movies' choices | about the UI on mobile phones. Do they try to show something | like a real phone, or do they give a simplified UI that the | audience can read at a glance? | | I remember seeing the Net as a teen, and in the climactic scene | when the bad guys were trying to break into the room, and | Sandra Bullock was hacking their computer and waiting tensely | for a progress bar to finish, while it slowly crept towards | completion and the bangs on the door got louder, the audience | could see it and read . . . "resolving IP address." | nottorp wrote: | I believe Matrix 2 had an actual proper hacking scene. All | command line, showing a script exploiting some ssh | vulnerability that was actually real at the time they filmed. | detaro wrote: | https://www.theregister.com/2003/05/16/matrix_sequel_has_ha | c... | Macha wrote: | > But then, the film does take place in the future. Is | Zalewski surprised to see unpatched SSH servers running | in the year AD 2199? "It's not that uncommon for people | to run the old distribution," he says. "I know we had a | bunch of boxes that were unpatched for two years." | | Zalewski here is a security analyst. | | At least that's one thing that's improved, but I suppose | this was the era of SQL injections in every second | website. | javajosh wrote: | DNS resolvers can be slow, ya know. | whoknew1122 wrote: | Period accuracy, especially in the context of medieval | settings, is championed by a very small-yet-vocal minority of | gamers. But it's a essentially a bad faith argument used to | criticize the existence of non-white characters in a game. | | Basically, 'period accuracy' is to racists what 'ethics in | gaming journalism' is to misogynists. But a Venn diagram of | these two groups is pretty much just a circle. | jsight wrote: | Its kind of funny, but that article itself has some | misconceptions. Bullets flying overhead don't sound like that. | Its more like this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VTuuOiWgVZ0 | Kye wrote: | I want my spaceships to rumble and whoosh. | DeathArrow wrote: | >People don't care about period accuracy, they care about art | that matched their expectations. | | Then let's not educate people as they might get upset to | discover their assumptions were false. | | What if people start believing 2 + 2 = 5? | dathanb82 wrote: | Unless the purpose of the game is educational, I don't think | it's incumbent on them to educate their players about | anything. Just like I don't expect everyone who sells | something at the Renaissance Faire to use medieval furnaces | for their blacksmithing or to eschew lathes for turning wood | bowls. It's not their responsibility. | andrewflnr wrote: | But the education will happen, whether you mean it to or | not. Most people have nothing but what they see to base | they're expectations on, so if they see your game, and | don't specifically read about pig herding in the middle | ages, your game comprises the total information in their | head on the topic. Congratulations, you're an educator! Now | take some responsibility. | | Your point about authentic fabrication methods is entirely | orthogonal. It's really hard to see why you brought that | up. | cgriswald wrote: | Perhaps you didn't mean to, but I think you've made an | even stronger claim than @DeathArrow was trying to make. | Following your logic, you have an obligation to all the | English-learners who may believe your English errors are | the proper way to write in English. | s1artibartfast wrote: | That responsibility is optional and it's fine for people | to decline. It is also fine for someone like the author | of this blog to highlight the topic so that some people | may make choices to accurately depict pigs. | | It Is entirely unnecessary to bring morality into it. | DeathArrow wrote: | I wasn't saying video games should educate people, I was | referring about not meeting demands of the people with | absurd expectation about reality. | njdvndsjkvn wrote: | squeaky-clean wrote: | If everyone believes 2+2=5 and a video game tells them | otherwise I think they would rather trust their gut than | assume a video game of all things is correct. | virusduck wrote: | Total off topic, but I followed the link to read about the | Coconut Effect. Not looking at the URL, I ended up about 10 | tabs deep before I realized it was friggin tvtropes!! I haven't | been over there in a while, but I'm glad to see that site still | has that effect on people. | anyfoo wrote: | But just like we've now come to accept again, through modern | productions, that horses' hooves don't sound like coconut when | running on dirt, we might start accepting that medieval pigs | looked different. | | The question is rather how feasible that is to depict with | consistency. | pasquinelli wrote: | the period accurate pigs don't look that weird. | jvanderbot wrote: | Off topic, but this is why all guns sound like they are just a | bucket of screws being shaken around. It may surprise movie | goers to realize that guns don't make noise unless you cycle | the action or fire them. | dathanb82 wrote: | "I wouldn't use a gun that sounded like that" - me to my wife | just about every time we watch an action movie | majormajor wrote: | I can't think of an example of this off the top of my head, | do you have one? | | I'm just coming up with a lot of counter-examples - anytime a | character with a gun is sneaking around in silence, when not | actively using the gun. Like, I can't think of a time a | character tried to sneak around but took a step and their gun | rattled... | yamtaddle wrote: | Guns being handled (picked up, shifted to the other | shoulder, handed out, just any time they're being handled) | tend to make lots of little clacking noises in movies and | TV, as if all the parts are really loose and rattling | against one another. | smcl wrote: | It's the little subtle clacking sound that some games play | when player moves around or a gun is handled in some way. | Like here: | https://twitter.com/intellegint/status/1576087308121432065 | - when the player starts running there's a rattling noise | jvanderbot wrote: | This is one of those things that's hard to recall, but | impossible to miss once it's pointed out. In that respect, | I'm sorry. Watch this video from the otherwise-on-point | John Wick. | | Everything just .. rattles. Even the magazines, like | they're just bags of bullets or something. | | Nevermind the noises the knives make when he picks them up. | | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qIalODmFrZk | | or | | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3IDtenBMN0o | majormajor wrote: | The noise when he tilts the rifle is a really good | illustration, thanks. | | Some of the other ones I honestly never even noticed, | like picking it up off the stand - I would've thought | that was just the stand shaking from having it taken off. | orthoxerox wrote: | It's the sound they make when they are picked up or handed | out. | Pxtl wrote: | I think he's referring to the ka- _clack_ of gun cocking | noises that is used when a weapon is drawn, even if it 's a | weapon that doesn't have to be cocked. | mcv wrote: | Sometimes, if the other person doesn't get the hint, they | cock it again! | Pxtl wrote: | The simple "punch" sound is even more obvious example of | movie sound design tropes. I remember getting into a fight as | a child and being surprised at how quiet hitting a dude was. | jaclaz wrote: | As a side note, the apex of coconut use is in Monty Python and | the Holy Grail: | | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monty_Python_and_the_Holy_Grai... | | >Originally the knight characters were going to ride real | horses, but after it became clear that the film's small budget | precluded real horses (except for a lone horse appearing in a | couple of scenes), the Pythons decided their characters would | mime horse-riding while their porters trotted behind them | banging coconut shells together. The joke was derived from the | old-fashioned sound effect used by radio shows to convey the | sound of hooves clattering. | baud147258 wrote: | And on the same subject, quoting the tvtropes article linked | above: | | > Ironically, in a major sense-of-humour failure, Monty | Python founder Eric Idle threatened to sue an independent | film-maker who used the "that's not a horse - you're using | coconuts!" gag, claiming he had originated it for Monty | Python and the Holy Grail. Saner counsel prevailed, when it | was pointed out to him exactly how old the gag was, and that | (for instance) a radio comedy show Idle himself had written | for had used this gag way back in the 1960's - ten years | before the Holy Grail movie. And the BBC radio comedy | archives preserved older examples still... | LegitShady wrote: | Comevius wrote: | It's a legitimately interesting observation that we think that | domesticated pigs always looked like they do now, when they | didn't, and without people like him researching these things we | would be equally wrong about many things concerning history. | | He plays an important part in preserving history. I don't know | how we ended up in a situation where selling advertisement on | the internet is a more respectable job than preserving history, | but it explains a lot. | coldpie wrote: | Worked on me and I learned something interesting. Seems like a | win-win! | xkbarkar wrote: | Oh come on. Fun read. | MichaelCollins wrote: | > _Most notably, however, the medieval pig was not naked and pink | at all, but covered in long dark hairs. In appearance, it was | therefore not dissimilar to a boar with which it was often cross- | bred. Even in the seventeenth century - long after the middle | ages - domestic pigs retained some of these traits, as the | drawing below from 1610 shows._ | | This seems uncomfortably close to perpetuating falsehoods about | modern pigs, which are not uniformly "naked and pink" but in fact | often are covered in hair and come in many colors. And I'm not | talking about cross-bred boars. I'm talking about pigs. I've seen | pitch black pigs with more hair than a bear. Hairy pigs spotted | like dalmatians. Pigs with hair as red as a ginger's. Pigs that | are mostly pink with black splotches, or mostly black with pink | splotches. | | As for pigs being fast, pig racing is a sport today. Some pigs | today are athletic with long legs and move very fast. The fat and | lazy ones are probably that way due to their lifestyle as much as | their genetics. | rubyist5eva wrote: | One video game pig I really enjoy is the giant hog enemies in | Bloodborne, the first you encounter being in a sewer of Central | Yharnam. Imagine my surprise when I found out that this pig was | actually based on an urban legend from the era of feral hogs in | the sewers of London (victorian era London being the model for | Yharnam in the game). It's these kinds of details in From | Software games that really make me appreciate the lengths they go | to and the effort involved in creating the worlds for their | games. | mykowebhn wrote: | kotlin2 wrote: | lordnacho wrote: | acoup blog is great for this kind of thing, I've spent hours | reading about all the inaccuracies in historical stuff. | erikig wrote: | https://acoup.blog/ - For those as lazy (or lazier) than I | bashmelek wrote: | The article mentions pigs wouldn't be wandering the village | streets, but as a counter example there were the "St Anthony's | pigs" owned by the friars that were legally protected and had | free run of the city. Dante alludes to these in Paradiso, where | they took on a metaphor of some friars' greed. | Contax wrote: | And you can still find loose pigs in some places. I personally | know the one in La Alberca, Salamanca, Spain, named San Anton | (from Antonius/Anthony), the pig wanders the streets for months | being fed by random villagers until it's raffled on San | Antonio's day. | kixiQu wrote: | I have read that perceptions of pigs as dirty differing in | various cultures comes back to whether pigs in that region were | raised as garbage-scavengers or as wild-feeders. Fun to think | about! | pmayrgundter wrote: | Total tangent, but you just made me realize how fast humans could | have lost our fur in our past. This is a contentious issue in the | debate between hypotheses of savannah and semi-aquatic ecological | orgigins. But wow, it could have happened quick. | jhbadger wrote: | And it is clear we still have the genes for full-body fur, they | are just turned off normally. They can still be turned on in | some cases (hypertrichosis) | | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypertrichosis | dTal wrote: | Note that pigs are sexually mature around 1 year old, so their | generations are rather shorter than ours (especially | domesticated pigs, which we tend to kill young). If it took | pigs 500 years to lose their fur, it might have taken humans | 10,000. | cultofmetatron wrote: | 10000 years is not that long in evolutionary terms either. | waffle_ss wrote: | The common ancestor from which all of today's Homo sapiens | can trace a shared lineage to (i.e. the oldest branch | point) is thought to be only 5,000 to 15,000 years ago: htt | ps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Identical_ancestors_point#Of_H.. | . | MichaelCollins wrote: | But not unprecedented either. Tibetans got their high- | altitude adaptation in perhaps as short as 3000 years. | Andeans have a different high altitude adaptation which | took no more than 11,000 years. | hathym wrote: | [deleted] | WJW wrote: | It's cold plenty often in Europe, but no fur is needed. We | just wear clothes. | hathym wrote: | It was a joke | ambyra wrote: | Reminds me of a passage in Jesse Schell's game design book. | Playtesters were confused seeing flags of pirate ships blow | forward, toward the front of the ship. They were told that | sailing ships have the wind at their backs, so everything blows | forward. However, so many playtesters were confused and made | comments that they just made the flags blow back. | | Maybe it was the same with the pigs; people just want to see pigs | squealing around town, adding to the atmosphere of the game. | PeterCorless wrote: | Pigs were recorded in Domesday as having woodland to support | them. Note that woodlands supporting pigs was primarily comprised | of oak, since the pigs fed on the acorns they dropped. | | Source 1: https://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/domesday/discover- | domesd... | | In the modern world, you can manage about 5 pigs per acre. You | should be able to do that many pigs or more per acre in the | medieval world since the animals were physically smaller for the | most part. So in an 80 acre pannage woodland, expect about 400 | swine. | | Some tree types are far more damaged by pig foraging than others | since, if they don't get the yummy acorns, they tend to dig up | roots, eat the saplings and do other damage. So the oak and the | pig are good neighbors. The elder or the olive tree, or even the | wild apple tree, all tend to suffer far more damage when used as | pannage. | | Source 2: https://acrcd.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/Pigs-and- | Trees.... | unnamed76ri wrote: | Slightly off topic, but it makes me wonder if free range forest | pigs could help prevent major forest fires by keeping brush down. | exhilaration wrote: | They don't stay in forests hence "feral pigs are widely | considered to be the most destructive invasive species in the | United States": https://nyti.ms/3TLKZRy | | Check out this video: | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JeGyVrcS9eo | shitpostbot wrote: | [deleted] | roywiggins wrote: | Similar pig lifestyles found a second wind: | | Hogs of New York https://qz.com/1025640/hogs | cmauck10 wrote: | I think this strikes a common theme throughout much of the gaming | and production industry. | jaclaz wrote: | Well, we do have the Cinta Senese breed: | | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cinta_Senese | | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cinta_Senese#/media/File:Il_Pa... | | that is (still today) actually very similar to what the Author | describes as "medieval pigs". | matthewfcarlson wrote: | I thought one of the most interesting points of the article was | towards the bottom. Part of inaccuracy is that you'll be | wandering around the village in the game and you'll find adult | pigs in pens. It sounds like pigs were mostly free-range and in | the woods for their adult life. Later on, as the "wilderness" | shrank they transitioned to more of a farm animal. | skybrian wrote: | It sounds a lot like sheep and shepherds. Hopefully, modern | ideas of how sheep were taken care of are more accurate? | GiorgioG wrote: | Not medieval times, but when my grandfather was a kid (nearly | 100 years ago now), the pigs would roam his Sicilian town and | its outskirts. He was about 6 when he decided to piss off a | sow in a field. It mauled him and near killed him. | masklinn wrote: | That's still standard in Corsica (and I think Sicily though | less sure), local pigs are partially feral. | usrusr wrote: | Parts of Corsica, other parts seem to be run by a small | breed of cattle who keep pockets of human tenders around. | | Observing the pigs at the Col de Vergio I imagined to | notice a pattern of the bigger/older pigs venturing | further away into the wild, as if they eventually | developed a certain nagging suspicion but were too | trusting minds to really act on it. | yreg wrote: | I visited Georgia (the country) a few years ago and their | pigs were roaming freely around the villages. | | Here's a photo I took: https://imgur.com/a/ehETWOK | ClumsyPilot wrote: | oh boy, arent they like 200 kg of angry meat? | wahern wrote: | As a kid I briefly lived in a rented trailer on a | smallish farm which grew mustard greens and raised hogs. | The owner was missing half an ear, taken by a hog. At | least, that was the story he told when he caught me one | day about to stick my hand into the hog pen. True account | or not, the lesson is true all the same: hogs eat people, | and angry or hungry hogs are not to be trifled with. | GiorgioG wrote: | Big enough that when the cousin he was with returned with | adult help, the sow had shredded all of his clothes and | he had bites all over his body. | brezelgoring wrote: | I've seen wild hog videos of them charging forward, full | tilt against much larger animals. Things that would eat | pigs for dinner, I tell you, they don't care and their | charges mess you up. | bee_rider wrote: | It is a funny quirk of evolution that herbivores or | mostly herbivorous omnivores often end up being more | aggressive than predators. The predator would prefer | dinner that doesn't fight back! | sequoia wrote: | On an extended visit to a small village in Mexico where the | pigs would wander, I made a sport of stalking the piglets | and attempting to pick them up. I achieved my aim once and | the mother sow came charging at me & thereby convinced me | to yield up the piglet toot suite. No mauling ensued thank | goodness. | wincy wrote: | FYI, tout suite is a French term meaning immediately. The | toot suite sounds like where the hogs go on holiday. | sequoia wrote: | "toot suite" is slang in English, an intentionally | incorrect derivation from the French. But it probably is | where the hogs go as well :) | bigiain wrote: | > The toot suite | | Claiming as my band^h^h^h^hMastodon app name. | palata wrote: | I did not know it was a thing in English! This said, in | French it is "tout de suite", but apparently both are | correct in English. | tempestn wrote: | Since the second 't' in tout isn't voiced and the 'de' is | very quick and blended in, "tout de suite" sounds like | "toot suite" to an English ear, hence the 'de' often | being dropped (as well as spellings like the above). | palata wrote: | Yes, in French it tends to be pronounced "tou tsuit" (if | I can spell it this way :D). | robnado wrote: | If I may invoke Muphry's law, the french term is "tout de | suite" | Beldin wrote: | Then I'll happily contribute my second improvement of | french: suivite. | | (For the curious, the first one is "toujourd'hui". And | yes, this is tongue-in-cheek -- until these catch on and | I'm celebrated by the Academy Francaise. Then it's Very | Serious Business and was always intended as such, this | post notwithstanding) | emmelaich wrote: | It's actually "Toot Sweets" :-) | | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IMFha1nmeXc | | The song "Toot Sweets" from "Chitty Chitty Bang Bang" | jaclaz wrote: | Not exactly "roaming in the town", but just last week I was | talking with someone that remembered how - in the late | 1950's or early '60's - her family (in Tuscany countryside) | had usually three or four pigs that were routinely brought | (by her, at the time 8 or 9 years old) to the nearby woods | and it happened more than once that one of them would flee | and get to the village, and be later brought back by this | or that neighbour. | hardolaf wrote: | I suspect that Kingdom Come: Deliverance has the pigs in | their work accurate to what it was at the time and the author | is taking sources about specific regions and then | extrapolating over all of Europe. Yes, there are inaccuracies | in most games, but I suspect that the author is also | themselves inaccurate. | girvo wrote: | What do you base that on? This seems like a pretty long bow | to draw; pigs didn't look like they do now, that's a pretty | accepted fact, even if you might quibble with their other | points. | yonaguska wrote: | Probably based on the sheer level of detail and research | that went into making that game. | PeterCorless wrote: | Part of this is because without full-time pig herders, the | pigs tend to go feral and cause a hell of a lot of damage. | There are huge numbers of feral pigs in America. They can be | quite dangerous: | | https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/01/us/pigs-san-francisco- | cal... | ummonk wrote: | I once read about a medieval case where a sow and her piglets | attacked and killed a random villager. The medieval court | sentenced the mother to death but concluded that the | offspring were too young to know right from wrong and were | acting under the influence of their mother, ruling them | innocent. | unglaublich wrote: | That's a better role model indeed. | | But the author doesn't say that medieval-looking pigs are | uncommon around the world right now. | | They say that pigs in medieval themed games are represented by | pigs as seen in intensive pig farming: confined, fast growing, | furless and pink. | jaclaz wrote: | Yep, they (the videogame designers) got the wrong models, in | case any of them read the comments here (and accept the | critique in the article), the Cinta Senese is proposed as an | alternative model. | | To be fair, if you quickly look for pigs breeds, you will | probably find images like this one: | | https://www.breedslist.com/wp- | content/uploads/2022/03/Types-... | | where all breeds seem rather chunky and short-legged. | dcuthbertson wrote: | Aw. The Gloucestershire Old Spot looks kind of like a | floppy-eared puppy. Very cute. | wincy wrote: | Also they're delicious. Our local farmer had some of them | and it's the best bacon I've ever eaten. | 411111111111111 wrote: | Purely from a visual standpoint it's also pretty much the | only one that still looks to have somewhat natural | proportions and skin. The rest just look adipose and/or | at risk of sunburn to me. | ClumsyPilot wrote: | these look much cuter than the farm variety | stcredzero wrote: | Di Young - Pixel Pig | | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TiC7_167hQ0 | btilly wrote: | That article also includes | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cinta_Senese#/media/File:Ambro... | which is an actual medieval picture with a very recognizable | Cinta Senese pig in it. Which is a testimony that at least some | medieval pigs looked exactly like that. | TrevorJ wrote: | Domestic pigs will grow tusks and thick hair if left to go feral. | Curious how much of the visual change in medieval pigs is due to | the fact that they were free range, more or less. | natural20s wrote: | Looks like a great opportunity for a community driven patch to | provide period accurate pig renderings... wait that didn't come | out right =) | yieldcrv wrote: | knowing the gaming and mod community, it would just be 3D | models of Blizzard execs | hot_gril wrote: | Most old food is going to be inaccurate. Everything has been | selectively bred since then, and it's easy to forget how many | plants were only found in the Americas. | tuatoru wrote: | Yeah, breed improvement was a major landowner hobby in the | seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.[1] Britain's King George | III was nicknamed "Farmer George" because he understood the | importance of food for national security. | | There's also a story about a German prince trying to get his | subjects to grow potatoes, and when they wouldn't, he made | potatoes a royal vegetable, only to be grown in one royal | garden. The garden was carefully arranged to be laxly guarded. | Sure enough, potatoes took off. | | Most of our modern farm animals (and crops) look a lot | different to their medieval forebears. | | 1.https://georgianpapers.com/2017/01/19/farmer-georges- | notes-a... | darknavi wrote: | Google says potatoes are from South America and only came to | Europe in the 1500s. | | TIL! | Scarblac wrote: | And tomatoes! | supermatt wrote: | My understanding is that domesticated pigs quickly revert to | growing fur and tusks within months when feral - effectively | becoming more like the pictures in the article. | | I wonder what causes this change to their "natural" appearance | when raised in captivity. | Loughla wrote: | It's not that they revert, it's that the care and feeding is a | part of this. Most hogs grow tusks, but they are docked or | trimmed in some fashion. All pigs, even the "classic" pink cute | ones you might think of when you think farm pig are covered in | coarse "fur" though it is not as thick as you find on a feral | hog like a razorback or some other such thing. | | Source; was a farmer. | | Edit: also, I didn't even think about this when I first wrote | this, but we also butcher hogs VERY young, so they haven't had | time to develop those "wild" traits yet by the time they are | market size. So that might be part of it, too. | Pxtl wrote: | That explains the tusks, but AFAIK even very young wild hogs | have proper feral fur, not the thin coat of bristles you get | on a farm pig. I wonder if there isn't an environmental | component there, not just age... or it might just be genetics | from interbreeding with wild species. | Pxtl wrote: | Yeah, I've always been curious about this too. The article | describes 3-year-old pigs roaming the forest, so that sounds | very close to a wild lifestyle compared to a modern pig that | spends its whole life in a small pen and is slaughtered at 6 | months old. | | I wonder is it just age that causes fur growth? Hunger? Not | having 4 walls an siblings to rub against? Exposure to the | elements? ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2022-10-24 23:00 UTC)