Our Legal Heritage: King AEthelbert - King George III, 600 A.D. - 1776: June 2011 (Sixth) EditionReilly, S. A.
History
Our Legal Heritage: King AEthelbert - King George III, 600 A.D. - 1776: June 2011 (Sixth) Edition
Reilly, S. A.
Law -- England -- History
Women usually stayed at home caring for children, preparing meals, and
making baskets. They also made wool felt and spun and wove wool into a
coarse cloth. Flax was grown and woven into a coarse linen cloth.
Spinning the strands into one continuous thread was done on a stick,
which the woman could carry about and spin at anytime when her hands
were free. The weaving was done on an upright or warp-weighted loom.
People of means draped the cloth around their bodies and fastened it
with a metal brooch inlayed with gold, gems, and shell, which were glued
on with glue that was obtained from melting animal hooves. People drank
from hollowed- out animal horns, which they could carry from belts. They
could tie things with rawhide strips or rope braids they made. Kings
drank from animal horns decorated with gold or from cups of amber,
shale, or pure gold. Men and women wore pendants and necklaces of
colorful stones, shells, amber beads, bones, and deer teeth. They
skinned and cut animals with hand-axes and knives made of flint dug up
from pits and formed by hitting flakes off. The speared fish with barbed
bone prongs or wrapped bait around a flint, bone, or shell fish hook. On
the coast, they made bone harpoons for deep-sea fish. The flint ax was
used to shape wood and bone and was just strong enough to fell a tree,
although the process was very slow.
The king, who was tall and strong, led his men in hunting groups to
kill deer and other wild animals in the forests and to fish in the
streams. Some men brought their hunting dogs on leashes to follow scent
trails to the animal. The men threw stones and spears with flint points
at the animals. They used wood clubs to beat them, at the same time
using wood shields to protect their bodies. They watched the phases of
the moon and learned to predict when it would be full and give the most
light for night hunting. This began the concept of a month. Circles of
stone like Stonehenge were built with alignments to paths of the moon.
If hunting groups from two clans tried to follow the same deer, there
might be a fight between the clans or a blood feud. After the battle,
the clan would bring back its dead and wounded. A priest officiated over
a funeral for a dead man. His wife would often also go on the funeral
pyre with him.
The priest also officiated over sacrifices of humans, who were usually
offenders found guilty of transgressions. Sacrifices were usually made
in time of war or pestilence, and usually before the winter made food
scarce.
The clan ate deer that had been cooked on a spit over a fire, and
fruits and vegetables which had been gathered by the women. They drank
water from springs. In the spring, food was plentiful. There were eggs
of different colors in nests and many hare to eat. The goddess Easter
was celebrated at this time.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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