(Vavavooom!) 600-year-old bra and underwear discovered in an Austrian castle

IO9 ^ | Jul 18, 2012 | Annalee Newitz

[DogByte6RER]

600-year-old bra and underwear discovered in an Austrian castle

Contemporary bras are more comfortable, modified versions of corsets — or so it was believed, until a 2007 discovery changed the way we see women's underwear. Working with a team of her colleagues, archaeologist Beatrix Nutz recently publicized her discovery of several linen bras and some underwear in a medieval castle.

Nutz has presented academic papers about her discovery, and even analyzed the underwear for DNA (see picture). But the public didn't hear about the medieval bras until a BBC history program showed pictures of them. Nutz and colleagues also found a pair of men's underwear (pictured below) — apparently medieval women wore no panties.

What this means is that women were wearing bras long before the invention of corsets. So corsets have been revealed as the uncomfortable, restrictive version of bras. Does that mean the middle ages were actually a more liberal time than the corset-obsessed eighteenth and nineteenth centuries?

[DogByte6RER]

The perfect lady for this 600-year-old lingerie ...

[dfwgator]

“PANTY RAID!!!!”

[Ken522]

... I wonder what the panties smell like?

[goseminoles]

Those panties are kinda hot..

[DogByte6RER]

Just to keep this thread on topic ...

[One Name]

The EPD’s for milk production were not yet developed but an association with progeny growth and mammaries was empirically recognized and valued.

The rest is Western Civilization History..

[DogByte6RER]

ping ...

well, maybe

[bunkerhill7]

Das nennt man die Wunderbar Wunderbra, Ja!

[dfwgator]

Ja...she haf der kleinen sitzen und der grossen titzen.

[DogByte6RER]

I've seen these garments before ...

[dfwgator]

She’s wearing garments?

[AD from SpringBay]

My wife has a set looks about like that.

[PapaNew]

That lab picture reminds me of something out of an old Woody Allen movie, "Sleeper," as if they're checking the cell structure of the bra in order to clone the girl back into the bra.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9qdB0g3cCSA

[brytlea]

I’m trying to follow the logic in the article. The discovery of bras told them that the Middle Ages were more liberal than the 18th and 19th centuries. How do they know these bras were indicative of anything? Maybe they were the only ones. Who knows? I suspect underwear was primitive. Period.

[arderkrag]

No panties, huh? Well, that settles it, if we ever develop time travel, I’m jumping back to the “First Bra Age”.

[arderkrag]

well, having studied history, I may be able to help here. Follow if you can: It’s the medieval era. You are a woman and live in a castle. You share rooms with other people, some you may not be related to. You bathe and change clothes (when you do) in front of these other people. You wear a bra for these events but no panties. This is less liberal sexually than the Greeks and Romans (who let it all hang out regularly and had sex in the common rooms of their houses with other people around, probably all through their rise and fall) but more liberal sexually than the corset-wearing bodice ripping renaissance when lingerie was developed and women only bathed and dressed in front of other women - many times only close relatives, who probably don’t share your room.

[bunkerhill7]

You can`t miss the castle.

[thecodont]

They look curiously modern, don’t they?

Also, how do they know those are men’s underpants and not women’s underpants?

That garment apparently has seen better days. Look at all the mending.

[DogByte6RER]

"600-year-old bra and underwear discovered in an Austrian castle" ... on 600-year-old corpse journalist (This is her sexy boudoir photo) - My last post on this topic ... I promise

[ElPaseo]

600 years ago some guy got lucky.

And hid the evidence from his wife very well.

[Slump Tester]

Helen Thomas has been looking for them!

[citizencon]

She looks medieval, even Neanderthal.

[goat granny]

they wore something during their periods.. Blood dripping down the legs were quite uncomfortable I am guessing..

[Valpal1]

Posting w/o reading? Those are man panities. Medieval women went commando back then.

[Mier]

No offense but... I for one am not buying it! 600 years old you got to be kidding me! IMHO it would be a stretch to say that this came from maybe just maybe the civil war era. But I’d say closer to the turn of the last century??

I think this kind of stuff belongs in the tabloid news myself. Given the the level of distraction, misdirection, lies and half truths it would probably make front page on most left wing rag newspapers across the country and headline news on NBC,ABC,CBS,CNN and pMSNBS.

[Isabel C.]

No panties, huh? Well, that settles it, if we ever develop time travel, I’m jumping back to the “First Bra Age”

I hope you realize that people bathed very infrequently back then and feminine hygiene was crude at best

[seowulf]

Working with a team of her colleagues, archaeologist Beatrix Nutz recently publicized her discovery of several linen bras and some underwear in a medieval castle.

With a name like Nutz, I'd think she would be studying medieval jock straps.

By the way, I don't think those were Wonderbras she found; probably Iron Maidens.

[JaguarXKE]

600 year old skid marks!

[martin_fierro]

(Vavavooom!) 600-year-old bra and underwear discovered in an Austrian castle

Ich bin ein bralearner.

[martin_fierro]

What this means is that women were wearing bras long before the invention of corsets.

Wunderbra!

[martin_fierro]

[Mad Dawgg]

Looks like something Janet Jackson would wear on the Super Bowl Halftime Show.

[Rocky]

I knew I would come across a picture of Helen of Troy in this thread.

[Rocky]

It was just a wardrobe malfunction.

[varyouga]

Women of child-bearing age were starving and/or pregnant their entire lives up until very recently in human history. They usually died well before the age of 40 and often during one of their many pregnancies. Periods were the exception in a female’s life rather than the norm.

Barren women may have had periods but they were usually killed or abandoned. Especially less attractive ones that wouldn't be taken care of by a powerful man with multiple fertile women to make up for it. No babies or eye candy meant the woman was a drain on resources.

Also, people were far less clean so some blood on the legs would have been barely noticed. No running water, no toilet paper, lots of flies, fleas, etc. In some societies people never bathed at all. Even in the Europe of a couple hundred years ago, people took a bath once a year and it was a huge occasion.

We truly have come a long way, baby...

[Taffini]

since fabric was hard to come by your clothes usually rotted off you. they used wool and linen a lot which, at least, are good fabrics. when the industrial revolution started and fabric was produced on the big looms and not by hand on the small looms, fabric was a lot cheaper. people started to be cleaner because they had a change of clothes, but nothing like today. We have so many advantages over our ancestors—they must have been a hardy lot, the ones that survived. Many people are alive today who would have easily died 200 plus years ago.

[arderkrag]

I’ll take a fire truck with me and hose everything down. Failing that, a thousand pressure washers should take care of the problem. Maybe I’l change the course of history with - GASP - shampoo.

[SunkenCiv]

GGG managers are SunkenCiv, StayAt HomeMother & Ernest_at_the_Beach	join list or digest view topics view or post blog bookmark post a topic subscribe
Thanks DogByte6RER. Please, I beg all of you, no Helen Thomas jokes. To all -- please ping me to other topics which are appropriate for the GGG list.

[SunkenCiv]

archaeologist Beatrix Nutz

[bert]

———but no panties-——

The fallacy in the article is that the fact panties or pantaloons were not found does not mean they did not exist.

[jughandle]

Don’t think they shaved legs back then either.

[csvset]

Austria? Probably something like this.

[TalBlack]

We have so many advantages over our ancestors—

Newsday (LI NY)did a story on the actual medical/physical condition of our founding fathers and their level of common daily discomfort. It was shocking how much pain these people suffered even as they were founding our country.

[PoloSec]

“Das nennt man die Wunderbar Wunderbra, Ja!”

“Ja...she haf der kleinen sitzen und der grossen titzen.”

Stopenzie Floppin!

[Taffini]

People keep talking how stressful life is now...I say look back in time and I doubt that anyone would want to go back to the days when clothes were washed and wrung by hand in a wooden tub, we had no flushing toilets or modern sewer systems, no modern dental equipment, no deodorant, no cars, no planes, no paved roads, no antibiotics, no modern “lady” products, no sewing machines, no air conditioning, no right and left shoes, and on and on. We don’t know what stress is compared to those who came before us.

[Dr. Sivana]

I hope you realize that people bathed very infrequently back then

I hope you realize that that is a myth.

http://www.gallowglass.org/jadwiga/herbs/baths.html

Like the nonsensical idea that spices were used to disguise the taste of rotten meat, the idea that bathing was forbidden and/or wiped out between the fall of Rome and the Enlightenment has been touted by many gullible writers, including Smithsonian magazine.

However, even the Smithsonian in the person of Jay Stuller has to admit that "Gregory the Great, the first monk to become pope, allowed Sunday baths and even commended them, so long as they didn't become a 'time-wasting luxury' . . . medieval nobility routinely washed their hands before and after meals. Etiquette guides of the age insisted that teeth, face and hands be cleaned each morning.

Shallow basins and water jugs for washing hair were found in most manor houses, as was the occasional communal tub..."

"In the first volume of Janssen's History of the German People there are many details concerning the popular use of baths in Germany during the Middle Ages.

Men bathed several times each day; some spent the whole day in or about their favorite springs. From the 20th of May to the 9th of June, 1511, Lucas Rem bathed one hundred and twenty-seven times, as we may see by his diary" (p. 291-292).

[Dr. Sivana]

Women of child-bearing age were starving and/or pregnant their entire lives up until very recently in human history. They usually died well before the age of 40 and often during one of their many pregnancies. Periods were the exception in a female’s life rather than the norm.

That is a gross generalization that does not apply to much of Europe. At very least you recognize that there were convents filled with non-pregnant, fertile women. I know of no Christian society that tolerated the killing of women for being barren or living past child-bearing years. The Christian rules regarding fasting would make no sense in a starving society. You should read more about medieval Europe.

[mikrofon]

Apparently for utility these were all nursing bras...

[Monkey Face]

Free, I told you not to pass that photo around! LOL!

‘Face

[wildbill]

Sound this out:

Be a trix Nutz.