Seeing somme 2000+ year old earrings at the museum got me thinking. How did we our ancestor started thinking Let’s poke a hole in your ear, and then keep a piece of silver inside to make-sure the hole stay open Already by today standard’s it sometimes feel a bit crazy.
Bonus question, how did they even prevented infection/allergies. Even today, people still have allergies/infection from earring. But in an era before modern hygiene and medecine, how wasn’t it more dangerous ?
First of all, I want to point out that 2000 years ago was essentially still the height of the Roman Empire, who were far from unknowledgeable about a number of topics, including the human body. In fact, the Romans are actually closer to us modern people than to the first humans who wore body jewellery - any type of jewellery that required body modification (such as, a needle cutting through flesh to create a tunnel).
The oldest ear piercing evidence for example goes back 7000 years, around 5000BC, pre-dating even the Egyptian and Mesopotamian cultures. The oldest mummy ever found had its ears pierced.
As to how this came to be… I think it’s pretty straightforward. Humans have liked pretty jewellery since the dawn of time, and there’s even proof that such items were used to barter, as a pre-currency, pre-coin form of money. This includes gold and silver and other precious metals, but even pretty shells and stones.
However the main issue with jewellery is that it’s easy to take from your body. How do you make it harder? By embedding it in your body.
What I think happened is that a group of humans discovered the generally antiseptic properties of silver (potentially a silver arrowhead or similar item embedded itself into a human, it wasn’t removed due to fear of bleeding out, and the wound didn’t get infected days later, allowing it to heal around the item), and began utilising it as a way to provide more protection for their jewelry - after all it’s much harder to remove an ear, nose, lip, or nipple ring than a bracelet or necklace.
Such practices spread easily with trade, so it’s no surprise that in a few hundred years it was all over the place that you can, in fact, cause a bit of pain to yourself to have some permanent value added to your body.
Some fun facts:
- Romans did indeed wear nipple rings as a symbol of status (no, not as a way to attach their otherwise quite heavy cloaks!)
- while in India, nose rings were more common (both septum and nostril rings)
- in (mostly sub-Saharan) Africa, lip rings, lip and ear stretching were “the big thing”
- in the furthest parts of SE Asia - modern day Indonesia, Malaysia, Papua New Guinea - a number of tribes marked adulthood and other major life achievements with genital piercings, primarily for men (mostly foreskin and frenulum piercings), but also some women (labia and clitoral hood piercings).
- In the western world, piercings fell out of fashion between 1400-1600, partly because of the discovery of the Americas, where more intricate body piercings (tongue piercings for example) were used in religious rituals that the Europeans considered barbaric or even downright demonic.
- Their popularity was restored partially by the unsubstantiated rumours of Queen Victoria I’s husband, Prince Albert, after whom the piercing was named, having a ring in his glans to contain his enormous size in the back then fashionable trousers (the Victorian equivalent of skinny jeans). Mind you these rumours started a solid hundred years after his death… in the 1950-1960s
- the 1960-70s were the resurgence years in western culture for body piercings, in part thanks to the hippie movement, and in part thanks to the gay subculture (which was already pretty big on body piercings as a differentiating factor) becoming more mainstream (Stonewall etc.).
Boredom?
Probably the same reason I did it. They saw the hot ancient goth girls in the smokers corner and wanted to impress them.
You are joking, but I wouldn’t be surprised if the first people to use any form of body piercing did to look tough to impress women.
Absolutely had to be a factor. Pain and the evidence of it is a right of passage into adulthood, it shows strength, discipline, perseverance. This would absolutely be attractive to many ancient cultures. I’m sure the reasons were different depending on the society though.
But at least one of them had to have been to impress the local chicks who thought piercings were sexy.
Pain and the evidence of it is a right of passage into adulthood, it shows strength, discipline, perseverance.
Ironically, these are seen as masculine trait, making actually weird that it is (used to be ?) a woman’s thing in modern western culture. Looks like one of the many gender norm anomaly
And now another girl would get piercing done to impress then a guy would do a piercing to impress her, propagating over millenia until today and our cool earrings to impress our crush/SO
Are you really into ancient girls, or are we just having different views of the term ancient ;-)
I’m into women my age. And I’m kind of old now so. Yes.
Do you think it worked?
I mean it did for me. So probably.
Who knows why we start doing things. But lucky for our ancestors, silver is a good antibacterial.
As for “modern”, piercings have been around in modern times just as much as historical. You may have grown up and/or live in a more conservative (i.e. puritanical) area where it’s less common.
What archæological evidence would you expect to find about how an idea entered a person’s head?
I’d guess some form of documents, I mean Cuneiform is pretty old. The the reason was significant it wouldn’t be unreasonable
There are archeological objects that are most likely piercings or earrings that are over 10 thousand years old. By the time writing was invented they were already very old news.
Otzi had ear piercings- ~3300 b.c.e.
so yeah. that checks out.
originally, it could have been not consensual, in point of fact.
Frequently, piercings were ways of marking people as being property or similar. Frequently, also, it was a way of marking tribal affiliations.
Life was way way more dangerous.
Most likely, people were sadistic, but also accidents happen. You just happen to get hurt in some way, make the best of it, and someone wants to copy it. The sadistic part is likely branding and slavery. Marking people so they cannot escape without getting caught.
how did they even prevented infection/allergies
Well, they either got lucky or died. But also, alcohol probably already existed at the time.
Not at the proof level needed for it to disinfect, at least not the earliest body piercings.
Alcohol is a disinfectant only at certain v/v percentages (or proof) - specifically between 60-90% (120-180 proof). 40% (such as vodka, whiskey, and most spirits) works in a pinch as well.
However the earliest alcohols were 10-15% ABV at most. We’re talking about beers and wines that came from accidentally allowing fruits, bread, etc., ferment in water.
Now, mind you, even a 5-7% beer or winde won’t have much microbial life in it, but that’s because of constant exposure to an alcohol-ic environment.
Now, distillation for alcohol didn’t come around until 1000CE-ish (distillation itself has been available since Ancient Mesopotamia, but was primarily used to clean water, or to concentrate perfume). Medieval monks were actually the first to distill wine into aqua vitae (a form of fortified wine)
So no, people ~2000 would not have had access to high enough potency alcohol to be used as a disinfectant.
Just getting lucky, then
Probably a mix of drugs and crazy got it started and then it became like the lambchop song. Just sheer inertia. “Tradition” is just dumb cultural inertia.
They’re called “memes.”
My guess is; to imitate birds. I’ve seen some early piercings that weren’t metal, but long sticks. If you find something that looks like a cool feather, the only sensible thing to do is jam it into your body and strut
