Very few people have ever set foot in a real medieval castle, especially unless they live in Europe. But the reality is that we all still mention them to some degree in our everyday conversations, even in the 21st century. When we invoke moats, drawbridges, dungeons, and even catapults, we almost always do so figuratively – assuming we are not active members of a historical reenactment society – and yet we have no problem seeing them as things that can be felt perfectly clearly before our mind’s eye. Difficulties arise when trying to integrate all these haphazardly absorbed images from folklore and popular culture into a working whole.
In fact, people in the Middle Ages actually lived and worked in castles, and sometimes had to defend them or actually attack them. With 3D rendered replicas built to reflect how these structures were built in fragmented Europe between the 11th and 14th centuries after the fall of the Carolingian Empire. of demolished video above We’ll tell you all about how they worked in about 20 minutes.
This tour begins at the Barbican. Not London’s famous Brutalist complex, but an outer fortified passageway “designed to expose attackers to defensive fire before reaching the main gates.” And it gets even harder from there for anyone trying to capture the castle.
Notched parapets through which archers could shoot arrows, moats that made mining mines (common in the modern language and few people aware of their origins) nearly impossible, drawbridges that could be raised, sloped walls to repel battering rams, spiked piers that could be knocked down: these are just some of the countless defenses that made life difficult for the invaders. A “murder hole” was involved. (Now there’s a term waiting to be added to our lexicon.) The examples built here represent the pinnacle of castle design, the culmination of an evolutionary process that began in the 10th century with structures called mottes and baileys. For those who don’t know this term yet, other contextsperhaps you just don’t have enough tongue-lashings on the internet.
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Based in Seoul, Colin Mbemust write and broadcastIt’s about cities, languages ​​and cultures. he is the author of the newsletter books about cities books as well Home page (I won’t summarize Korea) and korean newtro. Follow him on the social network formerly known as Twitter. @Colinbemust.
Source: Open Culture – www.openculture.com
