^interesting! 1) a lot of people died in the black plague, which
only lasted a few years. 2) All the money from the dead people
had to go somewhere, so the few that were left over got very
very rich 3) They needed stuff to spend their money on - clothes
are always good. 4) Those who weren't rich - the peasants, made
lots and lots of linen out of flax (which is cheap and easy to
grow anywhere) 5) Lots of linen, lots of disposible income -
suddenly, UNDERPANTS are invented. 6) Old underwear had to go
somewhere, so the guy that used to collect bones after the black
plague, now collected old underpants, which there was a lot of.
7) Mills got them for free, so they decided to make: PAPER. Lots
and lots of paper. 8) a decent printing press was born 9)
Information revolution. Out of old underpants. Love it. oh! that
was the interesting part: the underpants happened in the age of
properity AFTER the black plague was over. 40 million died. The
survivers, who were perfectly fine, got the money (relatives,
etc) from those who died, so there was a generation of "noveu
riche". The underpants were born simply because they had more
money than they knew what to do with - so why not cover the
naughty bits? Underpants get discarded after a time, and instead
of wasting good linen, turn it into a pulp, make paper. Free
paper easily available = lots of stuff to print on. gutenberg
invents movable type - bingo, free paper, flexible printing, new
educational information coming from the greeks who ran off after
the fall of constantinople and immigrated (that's where the "new
old greek stuff" all came from in the Rennaisance... all a neat
chain of events that happened within a few short years.
