How and Why Do We Do That? (Romans, Egyptian, Chinese)

[jtur88]

This is actually pre-history, and as such, it might fall outside the scope of this forum.

I was wondering, while shaving this morning, Who was the first human being that ever shaved, and Why, and How?

That made me recall an interesting conumdrum a friend once asked me. It seems the southwestern Indians have a cactus that has hallucinogenic properties, but only when used as a supppository. How did they discover that? (The obvious way, of course, but WHY? Especially, a cactus!!!)

[Thyra]

Leave it to you to think of that
I think some of it was cultural...The American Indians plucked their beards, and the Romans plucked or had someone else pluck ALL body hair...Fashion??
While other cultures such as the Chinese cultivated facial hair into beards and long moustaches.

[MICoastieMom]

Originally Posted by Trudy Rose

The American Indians plucked their beards

Have I been laboring under a false impression all these many years.... that Native Americans had no facial hair to pluck? Pretty sure I ran across that fact in several sources.

[j_k_k]

Originally Posted by jtur88

I was wondering, while shaving this morning, Who was the first human being that ever shaved, and Why, and How?

Here's an idea. You're probably familiar with the kind of edges obsidian flakes can have. When I test a knife sharpening job, I use it to shave a patch off my arm. (Haven't put a razor to my face since 1996. I look like a Visigoth. If I have to depilate a body part, I have to steal one of my wife's pink shavers.) If it shaves the area slick in one pass, the knife's sharpness is satisfactory, and it only needs a couple more passes on the hone. So we might presume/guess that some prehistoric people tried flint flakes the way I test my knives.

It follows, then, that someone might have done that with an obsidian flake and found out: Whoa! Slick as Ugga's baby's butt! Such an event could lead to experimentation using the flake to shave any area of the body. Ugga! Check this out! I look like a teenage girl! And she probably said, Disgusting. Doog, you're a lout. I'm not doing it with you until you look like a man again. Now go do something useful with those flakes, like making a new spearpoint and getting us some aurochs for dinner. And for totems' sakes, pick up your loincloths you left laying around. What do I look like, your slave?

Of course, that's just a conjecture.

[jtur88]

I guess it could be one of the progressive stages of body ornamentation. Starting with painting, advancing (?) through varieties of mutilation, and somewhere along the way, shaving hair. Cutting hair probably preceded it, as long locks got in the way of butchering a mastodon.

Here is the sum total of all Wikipedia has to say about the history of shaving, which is not very illuminating, but more than they say about hallucinogenic suppositories.:

"Before the advent of razors, hair was sometimes removed using two shells to pull the hair out.[4] Later, around 3,000 BCE, when copper tools were developed, copper razors were invented. The idea of an aesthetic approach to personal hygiene may have begun at this time, though Egyptian priests may have practiced something similar to this earlier. Alexander the Great strongly promoted shaving during his reign in the 4th century BCE".

[Exitus Acta Probat]

Originally Posted by jtur88

That made me recall an interesting conumdrum a friend once asked me. It seems the southwestern Indians have a cactus that has hallucinogenic properties, but only when used as a supppository. How did they discover that? (The obvious way, of course, but WHY? Especially, a cactus!!!)

Somebody may have been running, and for some reason, was knocked unconscious and fell on such a cactus. Then, upon waking, found themselves to be hallucinating moreso than somebody should be for being knocked unconscious. Or, perhaps some people will just stick anything up their wazoo -- BTW, Richard Gere is part Indian if I'm not mistaken.

[poconoproud]

that was also the first need for a proctologist ...one in a million shot, doc...

[Grandstander]

Was the discovery of cooking food a matter of accident, or did someone just decide to experiment with burning up the day's catch? If you had lived for 20 years having never eaten anything but raw meat and wild plants, would it dawn on you "Hey, this might taste better if I partially burned it.?"

Maybe it was some deal where lightning killed some forest creature and left portions of it well done. A group of hunters finds this free kill and decide to capitalize on the opportunity, discovering that there was improved cuisine when eating the roasted parts.

[John Walmsley]

I've always wondered who the first person was to finally figure out that the raw, poisonous variety of manioc (cassava) could be detoxified by peeling the tubers, grating the pulp and squeezing to expel the juice and process the pulp into a usable flour. I would imagine there were more than a few who didn't live to run further tests. It's kind of like the old saying: "There are old mushroom hunters and bold mushroom hunters, but no old, bold mushroom hunters."

[tcrackly]

I think it was the Aztecs that found when they could no longer consume any alcohol by mouth, they could utilize an alcohol enema. Waaaaay beyond the normal buzz.