In the first instalment of his exciting new column, acclaimed historian and writer Justin Pollard reveals his top tips for unwinding like our ancestors – from throwing a party to going on holiday
As advertisers never tire of telling us, we all need to relax – ideally by buying whatever it is they’re selling. But can history help us to relax a little, well, cheaper?
Undoubtedly part of feeling relaxed is getting the right work/life balance. Our hunter-gatherer ancestors in the Mesolithic period worked 15 to 20 hours a week, far less than early farmers, begging the question: was it a good idea to move from living off venison and lobster and take up eating grass?
But the agricultural revolution was not to be stopped, and with it we all bound our lives to the growing seasons. So we needed some sort of distraction – and the agricultural year brought that in the form of festivals. For the Egyptians, party time was nine times a year, with events linked to the cycles of life, death and rebirth on the Nile. The longest of these, the Khoiak ceremonies, lasted for 18 days. Then there were another 50 or so smaller festivals in between, my favourite being the Feast of Drunkenness (Tekh).
Deadly fun
Of course, any day can be a private festival – or a party, as we call them today – and few did them better than the Persians. According to the Greek historian Herodotus, the Persians not only drank a lot at their parties, but they also used them to make their most important decisions. The next morning they reviewed their verdicts in the grip of a hangover. But do be careful, as too much partying can be bad for you. Attila the Hun was having so much fun celebrating his latest marriage in AD 453 that he passed out and choked to death on his own blood – probably from a nosebleed. Perhaps try something a little less dangerous? Some of the earliest references to meditation are found in the late Vedic Sanskrit texts known as the Upanishads, from around the seventh century BC. These techniques spread through India in the Jain, Buddhist and Hindu religions and beyond, even being practised by the Jewish patriarch Isaac. Today, psychiatrists still try to help us relax using these techniques under the banner of ‘mindfulness’.
But what if we can’t calm our mind? In that case, there’s a long history of getting out of it. The oldest vine seeds from archaeological contexts come from Georgia and date to 7000–5000 BC, suggesting we’ve been enjoying a drink for longer than is good for us. According to the Book of Genesis, one of the first things Noah did after the flood was plant a vine, make wine and get drunk. Not that I can blame him. The Chinese have been enjoying a nice relaxing cup of tea since at least the third century BC.
Inhalation therapy
How about a smoke? Tobacco was first discovered by the people of Mesoamerica, although Roman sources talk about people smoking hemp seeds. But, due to the effects of smoking on those around us, the habit has always had a troubled history. The first Romanov tsar, Michael Fiodorovich, ordered that the lips of smokers should be cut off, while the Ottoman sultan Murad IV prescribed cutting off their heads altogether – not very relaxing. Some regimes took the opposite approach, however. Under the aegis of foreign secretary Viscount Palmerston, Britain went to war with China in 1839 to force it to import highly addictive and illegal opium.
Perhaps we could relax with a nice holiday? In the US the average leave allowance is 10 days a year, which is half that in the UK and, bizarrely, around 50 days less than that of a medieval peasant (assuming they could take every holy day off). This begs the question as to whether our modern time-saving, labour-saving world is really working for us. Perhaps we could ask the San people of southern Africa, many of whom wisely never gave up hunter-gathering and still only work 15 hours a week?
This article was first published in the June 2023 issue of BBC History Revealed