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Medieval "Lingerie" From 15th Century Castle Could Rewrite Fashion History
fangmcgee writes "Archaeologists have unearthed several 500-year-old bras that some experts say could rewrite fashion history. While they'll hardly send pulses racing by today's standards, the lace-and-linen underpinnings predate the invention of the modern brassiere by hundreds of years. Found hidden under the floorboards of Lengberg Castle in Austria's East Tyrol, along with some 2,700 textile fragments and one completely preserved pair of (presumably male) linen underpants, the four intact bras and two fragmented specimens are thought to date to the 15th century, a hypothesis scientists later confirmed through carbon-dating."
to the exact same article....
I'm rather more interested in WHY all this was hidden under floorboards in the first place. "2700 textile fragments"? Must've been a lot of space under there, enough for a nice big hoard of gold bullion. Instead we find... clothes?
I know a chick named Donna Matrix who goes for the whole Medieval Lingerie thing.
Tends more toward leather and chainmail than lace. Probably due to the crude manufacturing technology of the times.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Those "(presumably male) linen underpants" look more like a g-string.
Perhaps those bards got up to more fun in the taverns than we know.
The Wolfpack Project: BitCoin + Crowdfunding = Political Accountability
Nerds, bras, carbon dating ... dating .. dating
Nerds, bras, dating
Nerds... Bras
Nerds... Bras
hmmm
What can possibly go wrong?
When nerds are involved? Wet pants!!!
These aren't bras. They are medieval "sexist comments" left in the Da Vinci code.
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
Didn't some fashions have the breasts completely out?
I don't know if I'd be ready to jump to the conclusion that the invention of bras was a racy improvement, rather than a censorious one.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
I think this of interest to /. readers, as most have never seen a bra that has been successfully removed from a woman.
the patterns of the seams were shared by numerous ancient civilizations, separated by centuries, that had no contact with each other. and yet, they all share the same markings.
What looks at first glance like a descending backstrap is, in fact, the edge of a missing descending section - look at the lace holes, and the lay of the fabric.
The entire lower front of what I assume to be some kind of "control garment" (like those combined bra/corset things you sometimes see in catalogues) is missing. Bodice, or corset, with built-in cups, yes. Brassiere, in the modern sense, no.
I'm betting on costumes for a game of "The Naughty Pirate rips the Farmer's Daughter's Bodice".
Why do women wear bras anyways? They don't need them. :P
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
...that even in the 15th century, you still had to ensure you protected your washing line from underwear fetishists.....
Donte Alistair Anderson Roberts - hi son!
Karma: Chameleon
In fact, I'd go further. certainly valuable clothes at the time. And yet another reminder that "trickle down" works so far as that, as the economy develops, the privileges of the rich extend to wider society. If this is "news for nerds" it is a reminder that what probably took a skilled seamstress a week in the 15th century is almost disposably cheap in the 21st, due to factory automation.
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
Why am I being a pedant? It narks me, very slightly, that the GPP post is off-topic and gets modded +5, while on-topic posts are ignored. Come on guys, I know this is Slashdot, but have you really never seen a bra before?
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
You know the song "Gaudeamus igitur"? The one they used to sing in some US colleges? It starts "Jam nox stellata volumina pandet, nunc, nunc bibendum et amandum est" - "already night unfolds her starry veil, now is the time to drink and make love". If that isn't enough, read Rabelais, including his interesting proposals for how to build a new wall round Paris. Rabelais was a 16th century medical doctor who wrote humorous books to amuse his patients (and piss off the Pope). At one point he lists the best sound in the world as being bollocks slapping against a woman's bottom. With all the worries nowadays about the spread of pornography, we tend to forget that the 19th century and the rise of fundamentalist Protestantism was actually a very aberrant period of human history.
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
(unleashes longsword) ...Before I cut it off thee!
Since when are nerds *not* interested in the fates of stranded time travelers from the future?
Ezekiel 23:20
The White House.
This scientific achievement clearly ranks right up there with discovery of the Higgs Boson. Is there a Nobel prize for underpants?
When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
Many cultures do put the most absurd expectations on women. The desire of (mostly old men and women) to control female behaviour is quite uniform and quite depressing.
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
While they'll hardly send pulses racing by today's standards, the lace-and-linen underpinnings predate the invention of the modern brassiere by hundreds of years.
(Emphasis mine.)
Talkin' about jumping to conclusions!
I hadn't the slightest objection to his spending his time planning massacres for the bourgeoisie... (P.G. Wodehouse)
Once again /. editors can't get even the basics correct. They refer to 500 year old bras while the article says 600 years old...
I know a chick named Donna Matrix who goes for the whole Medieval Lingerie thing
Is that you Lone Starr? This is her sister Dot, we will have none of that mister; unless you want me to set off my virgin alarm again!
0xB16B00B5
Maybe they found one of the first versions of a bra with a modern design, but already some Roman mosaics showed women wearing two-piece clothing, which isn't so different from a modern day bikini.
karma police: arrest this man, he talks in maths; he buzzes like a fridge, he's like a detuned radio. [radiohead]
I've really been underestimating how desperate nerds are for companionship.
If you are not a nerd then WTF are you doing here?
Not so sweet dreams.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Being gay != not having sex with women.
Being gay == having sex with men.
You are on slashdot, you are not gay or hetero.
Eunuch you probably would have noticed but the life style is much the same.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
I'm sure you meant to say "prior art"?
This is just another crossdresser hiding his panties..
This is EXACTLY what I was thinking.
certainly not you.
Mostly students and I suspect mostly medical students. Some things hardly change.
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
I was writing about someone writing cod-15th C English. An English person writing contemporaneously about Austrian fashion would have been writing in late Middle English. Yes, of course the Austrians would have been speaking a version of German, if not Italian.
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
First, it's archaeology. That's science. Science news is news for nerds. Second, they found something 500 years old that they thought had been invented in the 20th century. That's engineering, also news for nerds. Plus there's the patent troll aspect, and you know as well as me that most folks here are interested in patent abuses. I'd say something that had been invented by a 14th century man should be pretty obvious to a 20th century man.
Free Martian Whores!
Let's face it, when it comes to history, man judges it based on where we are at. We think people are stupid because they lived in the past and they didn't have modern plumbing or an iPad, or anything like that. bah.
Why wouldn't someone think of making a bra 500 years ago? 1000 years ago? Fuck, man has been around for millions of years, and been making their own clothes for that long. How hard is it to come up with a bra design? Not fucking very. Underwire, ya, I can see that being a modern invention, but the bra? Nope.
People were just as smart as we are now (based on most the world, that isn't saying much, i'm sure), and they solved the same fucking problems we did. If we could travel back in time, we'd be surprised by all the stuff we think are "modern" inventions aren't.
Truth is, man is very conceited and thinks he's all that, when in fact, we've been all that for 1000's of years. We aren't doing anything new.
Be seeing you...
Yea but the Manzier wasn't patented until the late 90s.
It was a joke. Something I thought would be self-evident by how facetious it sounds. I thought it was far-fetched enough that the frequenters of /. were interested in pursuing the affections of 500-year-old women that it would not be taken seriously. That subject is apparently an exposed nerve, though. Sheesh.
Looking at those pictures, I'm reminded of the undergarments in the Elder Scrolls games. For those who aren't familiar, they're a series of video games in a fairly generic fantasy setting (the gameplay is fantastic and unique, they're great games, don't get me wrong, but the setting could be mistaken for many other Tolkien knock-offs).
Anyways, one of the things you commonly do is loot the bodies of bandits and whatnot that you kill. And if you take their clothes, they're left laying there in their underwear (not removable for ESRB reasons). In the case of females, it looks almost exactly like the ones in the article. I had always thought it a bit anachronistic for the time period the games were portraying - obviously modern designs made using old materials don't fit "Generic Medieval Fantasy Europe" - but it turns out it may not be.
Which doesn't explain how the game developers knew, of course, but they seem to have been right by accident.
..if I hadn't given him a reasonable starting joke, he wouldn't have been able to deliver a punch line.
Donte Alistair Anderson Roberts - hi son!
Karma: Chameleon
s/though/thou/
Next time, use Microserf Word 1534 for your writing and spellchecking needs.
Donte Alistair Anderson Roberts - hi son!
Karma: Chameleon
They hid them under the floor boards so their parents wouldn't see them?
We know that women have had breasts for a long time. We even know that people have enjoyed looking at them, both from the bawdy songs of the Renaissance and from the fashions. The style that modern reenactors call "boobs on a plate" would be pointless unless breasts were a point of visual interest. We also know that supporting the breasts has been done for a while; corsets and tight bodices both perform that function. Corsets, by nipping in the waist, also serve to enhance the womanly shape; women (on average) have more contrast between waist and hip size than men do and corsets exaggerate that contrast. But that's another discussion. What we had no evidence of was any undergarment resembling a modern bra - that is, something with cups to support the breasts and shoulder straps to hold up the whole thing. Based on the evidence, we had to assume that only bodices and corsets were used to support the bosom. Now, for the first time, we have a historical example of another kind of support garment. This is certainly of interest to fashion historians and reenactors - and if you don't think that reenactors are nerds, just talk to one some time.
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