Part 1 of 5 · freeIntroduction
The Middle Ages have a bad reputation: we imagine people who lived briefly, badly and in filth. One number seems to confirm it, a life expectancy of about 30 years. It is misleading: that average is dragged down by infant mortality, because so many children died young. It does not mean that most people died before 30.
To understand life more than 1,000 years ago, historians no longer settle for these statistics. They read court records and household accounts, excavate dwellings and study skeletons. These sources tell how people worked, ate and died. What do they reveal about the daily life of a medieval peasant or townsperson?
The rest is in the Sophia app.The remaining parts, the open-book quiz and the full glossary. Free to start; Premium unlocks everything.
- 2Working with the seasons
- 3Bread, but not only bread
- 4Washing without a bathroom
- 5A thousand years, a thousand lives
Open-book quiz8 questions whose answers are in the text.
Glossary6 terms explained in a tap.
30 languagesThe same course, from French to Japanese.
