BookLust: Read My Shorts

(I confess I stole that headline from The Globe online – just too cute!)

Underpantsbooks

Ok, hold on a minute, Gutenberg. You can't take all the credit for spreading literacy with the invention of moveable lead type – there's a dirty little secret that's finally seen the light of day. It seems that discarded medieval underpants had a part to play in the spread of literacy, too.

From today's Globe and Mail:

Whereas rough and ready peasants thought little of wearing nothing under their smocks, the practice became frowned upon in the burgeoning towns and cities, leading to a run on undergarments. And when the underwear was worn out, it provided a steady supply of material used by papermakers to make books.

"The development of literacy was certainly helped by the introduction of paper, which was made from rags," said Marco Mostert of Utrecht University in the Netherlands, who was one of the conference organizers.

"These rags came from discarded clothes, which cost much less than the very expensive parchment which was previously used for books. In the 13th century, so it is thought, as more people moved into urban centres, the use of underwear increased - which caused an increase in the number of rags available for paper-making."

Click here to read the article in full.

So there you have it. The more you soiled your undies, the better chance you had of being a smarty-pants. This might explain why some pompous people, like say... Conrad Black, who likes to throw around his wealth of knowledge as proof that he is indeed better than us hoi polloi, are often thought to be full of shit.