I should be more grown up than this

[minoanmiss]

But I have been charmed all my life when science is written in a storytelling way, despite the many dangers of that style.

The origins of soap:

https://time.com/5831828/soap-origins/

Comments

[acelightning73]

Oh, what a charming story! It's fairly obvious that throughout prehistory, women discovered and/or invented an awful lot of important things. Let's say a hunter-gather had more berries than she could carry in her two hands. She took a big wide leaf and folded it into a container. And the woman who knotted strings together to make cloth. And the one who heated rocks in the fire and dropped them into a container of water to boil it to make soup. The ones who discovered that the water you boiled meat in tasted good an could be filling and norishing. The ones who discovered that boiled meat was soft enouf for old people with bad teeth to eat.

The ones who discovered dyes that would make their cloth prettier. The ones who strung ropes between trees to make clotheslines to dry things on. The ones who remembered to save some dough from today's batch to use as a starter tomorrow.

I suspect most of everyday life in the world was invented by women in the course of their daily chores.

[minoanmiss]

Oh women have invented lots of things. The idea of men being the only inventors is quite thoroughly disproven in current history and anthropology.

[acelightning73]

Well, women invented a lot of useful things for daily use because necessity is a mother*. And we invented cooking.

2

[acelightning73]

I got your postcard! Thanks . Looks like a Victorian halloween card, just spooky enough.

[bikergeek]

I thought it was invented by Tyler Durden in 1999.

[minoanmiss]

That was his special human fat recipe.

[james]

Side note: I got your postcard! Thank you!

[cmcmck]

Funny- I'm reading a book on civil war (ours) spying and smuggling (the amazing Jane Whorwood) and it mentions using soap for smuggling purposes- gold.

[acelightning73]

The late Isaac Asimov was very good at making scientific information into a story. So was Carl Sagan, and so is Neil DeGrasse Tyson (who was mentored by Sagan) So was Don Herbert, Mister wizard, on TV back in the early days of educational TV.

I also prefer my history lessons in the forms of stories. For that matter, teaching stories pass on informaton better than simple lectures,