Late Middle Ages

In those days, people knew stringed instruments like the harp, lyre, lute and the hardy-gurdy. The blown instruments they knew were horn, trumpet, bagpipes and flute. And then the percussion instruments: drums, timpani, rattle, clatter, bells, cymbals and tambourines.

In this region, there is a long history – since the 16th century - of protected forests. Wood was very important because of the vicinity to the open sea and the „woodless“ marshlands. This had the consequence that there was no agricultural use in younger times in this region!

The many - often very tiny - bones of a displayed skeleton can be very confusing. But nowadays people know a lot of the human skeleton and people know all the bones. With help of specially trained people, the anthropologists, skeletons are assembled correctly.

The earliest known loch-dwellling in Scotland goes back 5,000 years to Neolithic times. This is on the island of North Uist, Scotland.

Medieval shoes had merely a thin sole. To prevent this from wearing out too fast, but also in order to prevent the feet from getting wet, people wore wooden shoes called "trip". These are a kind of wooden slippers which could be worn over the shoe. Experiments show that such shoes are worn out after a couple of months. Probably the medieval people then bought a new pair or had the old ones fixed.

Probably, there were already tradesmen in iron and coal. Iron came form Germany, Sweden and the UK. Here there are locations where iron ore is found at the surface. Coal came from Germany...

Contraception aids are hardly known from Prehistory. The Greek and Romans used different ways of not getting pregnant: medicines, special positions, periodical abstinence, as well as amulets. If this failed, even then they already used abortion...

In the Middle Ages, every house needed to have a secrete (toilet). Ordinary folk usually had it in their back yard. Underneath, a hole was dug which regularly needed to be emptied. The contents was used by farmers as fertiliser...

That is difficult to answer because: what is stinking actually? It smelled different in a medieval town than nowadays. Almost all houses had a fire place where wood was burnt. Poor people would burn turf (smells more)...

Medieval people wanted to be buried as close as possible near the relics of a saint or a church altar. Rich people were buried inside the church, in a monastery church or monastery hallway...