Our entire history is only the history of waking men.
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
The night is no man's friend," attested a proverb during the middle ages. Many residents of urban and rural communities, when navigating the dark, learned to rely on local lore, magic, and their knowledge of the natural universe.
Time, place, and weather became critical concerns while treading abroad. The quality of moonlight (called by some the "parish-lantern") varied greatly, as did the nocturnal landscape, which children learned to negotiate early on "as a rabbit knows his burrow." Most people, robbed of their vision in a world of face-to-face relationships and hence their ability to discern gestures, dress, and facial expressions, depended heavily on hearing, smell, and touch (feet as well as hands). They also resorted to charms to ward off evil spirits.
And although the cost of candles—tallow as well as beeswax—remained prohibitively high for most households, early modern folk relied on a broad range of more primitive illuminants, including rushlights and candlewood, for small measures of light.
To forestall thieves, propertied households prepared for bed as if girding for an impending siege. "Barricaded,“ "bolted," and "barred,"were their homes on the "backside and foreside, top and bottom." Nighttime saw quarters made fast, with doors and shutters locked once dogs had been loosed outdoors.
So it doesn't come to much of a surprise that the first impression the Polo brother Niccolò and Maffeo had about China would also be the most lasting one. While many more wonders would await them in this distant, exotic Empire, the brightly shining skyline of Guangzhou illuminating the night would never be upstaged.
[FONT=Times New Roman, serif]Notes and Sources[/FONT]
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This will be a very short timeline which gives a small glimpse of the China the Polos visit and its back story. The timeline wil[/FONT]l mostly focus on the technology that is making the industrialization possible, so expect many dead butterflies when it touches any other aspects of history.
One key inventions here is the early discovery of coal gas and its utilization but there is more. This project is not meant to be in competition with any other similar timeline attempts, although it might be a little bit inspired by them ;-).
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A. Roger Ekrich: [/FONT]
Sleep We Have Lost: Pre-industrial Slumber in the
British Isles.