Medieval facts

[Tk'ya'pyk]

Is Slovenia part of Europe?

This ^ is in Slovenia.
It’s like those Cliff Dwellings in Arizona...but it’s a Castle.

Want. So very very want. But I don't want to move to Slovenia, and I doubt I could afford to own a castle, so moot point.

Speaking on odd laws, I cannot find this anywhere, but I read once that it was illegal to fire a catapult within the city limits in Toronto, Canada. Now, I don't know if this is true, but if it is, two questions are generated. 1: WHO DID WHAT to make them decide to pass this law, and 2: what other odd laws were generated regarding medieval weapons in the modern world?

 

[Scalenex]

I am a late comer to this. Enjoy the like bombs everyone. Now for me to add my two cents to various things.

- were medieval castles bare stone?

They had wooden parts, they had medieval equivalents to concrete (which date back to Roman times and before). Every castle was different, usually reflecting the availability of local materials.

- was medieval armor heavy?

Yes and no. The most important thing is often how it fits. Perfectly fitted fifty pound is generally much less constrictive to movement than poorly fitted twenty pound armor.

- could a Rapier cut?

If it's sharpened to cut then yes. But for the most part it was a waste of time to sharpen rapiers that much. A big problem with ueber sharp blades in general is that you lose a lot of sharpness as soon as you start hitting things.

- was a Greatsword a heavy and unwieldy weapon?

Not as much as people thing. Most modern humans have only swung a blunt replica sword. These are generally heavy and less balanced than a real fighting sword.

- could a Warbow shoot arrows over half a mile?

I don't know. I do know that the distance an arrow travels is based on the strength of the archer, the angle of the shot, the elevation of the shooter, the weight of the arrow head, the direction and strength of the wind and a bunch of other things. I'm guessing that in ideal situations an archer could fire an arrow a half mile.

- were sail ships faster than ox carts?

I have a friend who really dived deep into naval history. The literal answer is, sometimes the ship is faster, sometimes the ox is faster but at the end of the day, if you goal is move large amounts of cargo from point A to point B, water travel is pretty much always better when available. Even if you have oxes towing a barge loaded with grain up river against the current, that's generally more economical than moving the grain over land in wheeled carts.

- were medieval horses small?

I've heard there were once breeds of horses larger than cyldsdale that are not longer around. I guess I would say look at all the dog breeds and how different they look. Most dog breeds came from seletctive breeding in the last few centuries. Horses have been carefully bred for thousands of years. They can be bred for all sorts of sizes.

- were Berserkers crazy?

That's subjective. Psychology is a fairly young science.

- were Knights rich?

Compared to most peasants. Yes. I would say, owning a horse in medeiveal Europe put you in in the top 20% of medieval society. Horses trained for battle were pretty expensive. Armor was fairly expensive. More people have swords and other weapons but they still aren't free. Most knights either had a parcel of lands with peasants to work the land or they got a stipend from their lords. So yeah, I'd say they are rich. They couldn't really often sleep on feather beds and eat steak every day, but they were comparatively rich.

"The war is over, go home. We are done paying you."
...
"Oh crap, there are a bunch of highly trained and heavily armed warhardened soldiers that miss their old lifestyles!"

Though you could have knights that have horses, weapons, and armor and very little else to their name. These knights often would become robber knights that put the "dark" in the Dark Ages.

Generally speaking: Yes, the bullet can go through. Firearms are one of the reasons why heavy armor disappeared from battlefields at some point.

In some cases if the metal warps around the bullet and pierces the skin again, a person who is wearing metal armor is more vulnerable to firearms than a person who is not wearing armor because if they weren't wearing armor the shot would have been cleaner.

From what I understand for the internet videos I've seen, if I was being shot at by musket balls I wouldn't mind wearing metal armor to cushion the blow but against guns modern riflling, antique armor is a liability.

Something well thought about swords or a video about swords.

Are ______ better than swords? I'm not an expert but I do like to watch Youtube videos about medieval weaponry and one thing that I got from Shadiversity which was echoed from other Youtubers goes along the lines of.

Knights fought with lances
Pikemen fought with pikes.
Archers fought with long bows.

But all of them carried a sword as a backup weapon.

Even in the Samurai era of Japan, Samurai were likely to fight with polearms (nagatas!) and bows on the battlefield rather than their katanas even though katanas are so iconic to samurai. Katanas were mainly for self-defense, not the war. Same in medieval Europe. Men who wanted a weapon for self-defense generally carried a sword.

When you factor that swords were carried by everyone and that swords were the self-defense weapon of choice until the invention of firearms, this means swords were more visible, so that's why swords are probably more iconic in historical fiction today.

- were medieval castles bare stone?

They had wooden parts, they had medieval equivalents to concrete (which date back to Roman times and before). Every castle was different.

- was medieval armor heavy?

Yes and no. The most important thing is often how it fits. Perfectly fitted fifty pound is generally much less constrictive to movement than poorly fitted twenty pound armor.

- could a Rapier cut?

If it's sharpened to cut then yes. But for the most part it was a waste of time to sharpen rapiers that much. A big problem with ueber sharp blades in general is that you lose a lot of sharpness as soon as you start hitting things.

- was a Greatsword a heavy and unwieldy weapon?

Not as much as people think. Most modern humans have only swung a blunt replica sword. These are generally heavy and less balanced than a real fighting sword.

- could a Warbow shoot arrows over half a mile?

I don't know. I do know that the distance an arrow travels is based on the strength of the archer, the angle of the shot, the elevation of the shooter, the weight of the arrow head, the direction and strength of the wind and a bunch of other things. I'm guessing that in ideal situations an archer could fire an arrow a half mile.

- were sail ships faster than ox carts?

I have a friend who really dived deep into naval history. The literal answer is, sometimes the ship is faster, sometimes the ox is faster but at the end of the day, if you goal is move large amounts of cargo from point A to point B, water travel is pretty much always better when available. Even if you have oxes towing a barge loaded with grain up river against the current, that's generally more economical than moving the grain over land in wheeled carts.

- were medieval horses small?

I've heard there were once breeds of horses larger than cyldsdale that are not longer around. I guess I would say look at all the dog breeds and how different they look. Most dog breeds came from seletctive breeding in the last few centuries. Horses have been carefully bred for thousands of years. They can be bred for all sorts of sizes.

- were Berserkers crazy?

That's subjective. Psychology is a fairly young science.

- were Knights rich?

Compared to most peasants. Yes. I would say, owning a horse in medeiveal Europe put you in in the top 20% of medieval society. Horses trained for battle were pretty expensive. Armor was fairly expensive. More people have swords and other weapons but they still aren't free. Most knights either had a parcel of lands with peasants to work the land or they got a stipend from their lords. So yeah, I'd say they are rich. They couldn't really often sleep on feather beds and eat steak every day, but they were comparatively rich.

That also doesn't mean that knights didn't struggle. My favorite foreign movie is Twilight Samurai which chronicles the life of a samurai that is a member of the ruling class on paper, but in reality he is far closer in lifestyle to the peasants under him.

"The war is over, go home. We are done paying you."
...
"Oh crap, there are a bunch of highly trained and heavily armed warhardened soldiers that miss their old lifestyles."

Though you could have knights that have horses, weapons, and armor and very little else to their name. These knights often would become robber knights that put the "dark" in the Dark Ages.

Generally speaking: Yes, the bullet can go through. Firearms are one of the reasons why heavy armor disappeared from battlefields at some point.

In some cases if the metal warps around the bullet and pierces the skin again, a person who is wearing metal armor is more vulnerable to firearms than a person who is not wearing armor because if they weren't wearing armor the shot would have been cleaner.

From what I understand for the internet videos I've seen, if I was being shot at by musket balls I wouldn't mind wearing metal armor to cushion the blow but against guns modern riflling, antique armor is a liability.

Something well thought about swords or a video about swords.

Are ______ better than swords? I'm not an expert but I do like to watch Youtube videos about medieval weaponry and one thing that I got from Shadiversity which was echoed from other Youtubers goes along the lines of.

Knights fought with lances.
Pikemen fought with pikes.
Archers fought with long bows.

All of them carried a sword as a backup weapon.

Pretty much what @LizardWizard said.

Throughout history in most cases swords were sidearms, not the main weapon.

Okay, so I’m not the first person in this thread to say that...but I must continue spewing my own two cents.

Even in the Samurai era of Japan, Samurai were likely to fight with polearms and bows on the battlefield. Katanas were mainly for self defence, not the war. Same in medieval Europe. Men who wanted a weapon for self defense generally carried a sword.

When you factor that swords were carried by everyone and that swords were the self-defense weapon of choice until the invention of firearms, this means swords were more visible, so that's why swords are probably more iconic in historical fiction today.

Also there were a lot more swords that were created as works of arts than there are axes and spears that were created as works of art.

Swords were used for a long time, but most of the time swords actually were not primary weapons. Just because spears are so good.

Yeah. This is especially true when you consider all the weapons that are derivatives of spears. Even Bayonets are sort of a derivative of spears. As armor got better this opened the field to warhammers and military picks. Not very efficient weapons on the whole, but these can pierce heavier armors more than spears or swords.

Oh and btw something else that many people don't know:

The uniform look that we see in many movie armies.... wasn't a thing for the most part of history, especially in the medieval period. People would bring whatever weapons and armor they could afford, and wear their normal clothes (nobles might wear certain colors but they might not).

True on the whole, but I was under the impression that nobles wanted to make their noble status very obvious. That way if they lose the battle, they are kept alive and ransomed. Common born soldiers didn't often get that privilege.

I thought the Persians had tall rectangular wicker shields with more eastern designs on them, compared to the Greeks’ round shields.

That was one of the historical reasons the 300 killed so many Persians. The Greeks’ weapons could cut right through the Persians’ shields.

Sometimes I like Shad, sometimes I don't. Lately I often don't, but I'd still like to include him here because sometimes he does cover cool topics.

Get out of my head! This is my opinion EXACTLY. I will add that Shad seems to be more accurate when talking about castles and least accurate when talking about not castles. I do like his Fantasy Rearmed Series if I don’t agree with all of it. Fantasy Rearmed is right up my alley because I am trying to create my own fantasy setting and I’d like it to make as much sense as possible considering my world has dragons and pixies in it.

True, for any period of time where civilization had an organized army structure they would produce the weapons needed. Though I am not sure the equipment was cheap for that time period standard, i.e. looking at if a peasant could afford it.

In medieval periods, most peasants couldn’t afford the best weapons but in the 21st century, we have billion dollar bombers and we now have smart bombs that individually cost many times more than the buildings they blow up.

You can always count on large quantities of resources going to the best weapons in every era even as basic needs are barely met. Huzzah!


@Aginor, Of all the videos, the medieval food videos are my favorite videos from this thread.

Alright I have a very serious question: what about me and lefty brethren in warfare? How would we be placed in units and what would they do with us, or would they just say “f u” and force us to fight as a righty?

I think it’s interesting that in pre-modern times (even as recent as the early twentieth century) left handedness was viewed as backwards or sinful.

Now left handedness can be an asset in physical contests. In baseball a mediocre left handed pitcher can strike out about as many batters as an exceptionally skilled right handed pitcher.

I noticed HEMA people talk about lefties having advantages in certain circumstances. Same thing with southpaws and professional boxers.

Well now, that's a good question. Depends on your status and where you lived. If you were a knight, fighting left-handed was often considered to be dishonorable. If you were a duelist, not only did nobody care if you fought left-handed, but it often gave you an advantage. If you were a peasant conscript in someone's militia force, you usually had a spear and a shield or some cheap-ish polearm or pike. Shield-and-spear required you to fight in formation, spear was usually in your right hand, so you're boned. Pike or polearm meant you were using both hands, so it wouldn't matter as much if you were right- or left-handed.

He said it better than I would have.

Also, I have a question, I've recently been on holidays in the mountains and I started wondering. Why aren't mountainholds like the dwarfs build more of a thing historically?

There are difficulties carving fortifications in solid rock but the main limiting factor is food. The rugged terrain may make near unassailable fortresses but you have to feed the people in the castle or fortress. Thats why you got a lot of castles and fortresses built in the middle of excellent farmland.

Underground is even worse. No sun, no photosynthesis. Because my fantasy world has magic in it, I've created things called lifestones which allow underground plants to flourish without the sun. This keeps my dwarves alive, though most of them still import food when they can.

 

[Scalenex]

Now my own questions.


Pre-Renaissance it was pretty uncommon for ships to sail out of sight of sight of land. Was the main reason for this a need for fresh water and provisions or was the main reason for this fairly primitive compasses and crude maps.

For instance, in my fantasy world, it is relatively common magic to turn a modest quantity of salt water into fresh water. Would having someone like that on your ship be a large boon to medieval sea travel or only a mild boon to medieval sea travel?


Along the lines of sea travel. I know that modern freighters can ride pretty low in the water. They cannot stop just at any coastal port. They need deep water ports.

My fantasy world has a lot of places where the sea overtook the land and the sea is relatively shallow. How deep does water have to be to allow the largest medieval ships to navigate them safely?


When did the fact that you can purify water by boiling it become common knowledge?


Where did most fabric for clothes come from in the medieval? I looked up that flax and cotton was cultivated in ancient times but they were until the industrial revolution, luxury goods for the rich.


Barring magical hand waving, how many specimens for complex mammals, amphibians, or reptiles do you need to have viable genetic diversity for a sustainable breeding population? Mainly I’m concerned about big things like dragons and unicorns.


How do you properly factor realism, ease of playability, and the Rule of Cool into an abstract system of combat represented by dice rolls?

(That last one is half in jest, but it is something I’ve working on a lot).

Generally when designing rules I try to favor playability over realism and the Rule of Cool but when making snap decisions in the middle of game play I like to favor the Rule of Cool.

 

[LizardWizard]

Pre-Renaissance it was pretty uncommon for ships to sail out of sight of sight of land. Was the main reason for this a need for fresh water and provisions or was the main reason for this fairly primitive compasses and crude maps.

Ships were awful at weathering storms. Keels were all relatively shallow and this made capsizing common in sever weather. Also the reasons you mentioned.

How deep does water have to be to allow the largest medieval ships to navigate them safely?

It really depends how laden the ship is and what type of vessel.

Where did most fabric for clothes come from in the medieval? I looked up that flax and cotton was cultivated in ancient times but they were until the industrial revolution, luxury goods for the rich.

Skins/furs, wools, cotton, & linen. Silk if you were wealthy.

Barring magical hand waving, how many specimens for complex mammals, amphibians, or reptiles do you need to have viable genetic diversity for a sustainable breeding population? Mainly I’m concerned about big things like dragons and unicorns.

This would be heavily impacted by generation span. If it is a species that reproduces infrequently then you would need less of it to prevent genetic diversity issues.

How do you properly factor realism, ease of playability, and the Rule of Cool into an abstract system of combat represented by dice rolls?

Personally, I DM screen it.... I lie, more often than my players would want to know. If you use a D20 system then it is pretty easy to gage the "needed" roll for a skill check.

 

[Scalenex]

When did the fact that you can purify water by boiling it become common knowledge?

Hmm, Google says that some ancient societies thought boiling water made it taste better, but it was only discovered that boiling water was the safe way to drink water in the nineteenth century.

Mahrlect. I wonder where we would be today if earlier man knew this.

Personally, I DM screen it.... I lie, more often than my players would want to know. If you use a D20 system then it is pretty easy to gage the "needed" roll for a skill check.

Me and my friends are big fans of White Wolf Games which is based on d10 dice.

I like the simplicity where you never to have ask what dice you need but the down side of using d10s intead of d20 is you don't have a lot of room for nuance. There is a huge difference beween difficulty 7 and difficulty 9. Even a one point difference is huge.

But I'm sticking it with, because d10s and d6s are most of what I own and d6s 90% of which are Lizard themed dice which just seem wrong to use elsewhere.

via Imgflip Meme Generator

 

[pendrake]

Now my own questions.

Pre-Renaissance it was pretty uncommon for ships to sail out of sight of sight of land. Was the main reason for this a need for fresh water and provisions or was the main reason for this fairly primitive compasses and crude maps.

Roman grain ships ventured across open seas, but they did navigate by island-to-Island short hops.

Navigation was the worst problem, vulnerability to storms next, and though they could and did carry plenty of water casks the first two problems could lead to a run out of water situation which could be fatal.

Vikings were bad-ass open water navigators, they crossed the North Sea, the North Atlantic to find Iceland...

Que Led Zeppelin: “....we come from the land of ice and snow!!...”

For instance, in my fantasy world, it is fairly (common? difficult?) magic to turn a modest quantity of salt water into fresh water. Would having someone like that on your ship be a large boon to medieval sea travel or only a mild boon to medieval sea travel?

That would be huge! How huge depends on crew size and needs per Man per day. Stuff you can easily lookup.

Along the lines of sea travel. I know that modern freighters can ride pretty low in the water. They cannot stop just at any coastal port. They need deep water ports.

Medieval and Roman ships rarely had a draft (and draft is the term) of more than 25 feet.

Modern ships, fully laden, can easily need 50 feet; some tankers it is more like 100.

Modern ships do not ride low in the water. They might look it. But even fully laden they boast freeboards of 25-30 feet.

(Freeboard is the distance from the waterline to the main deck or its railing.)
(Draft is the vertical distance from waterline to the keel.)

My fantasy world has a lot of places where the sea overtook the land and the sea is relatively shallow. How deep does water have to be to allow the largest medieval ships to navigate them safely?

A 20 foot deep harbor would accommodate all but the biggest ships.

When did the fact that you can purify water by boiling it become common knowledge?

About the same time the microscope and the germ theory of disease happened. 1670s?

Where did most fabric for clothes come from in the medieval? I looked up that flax and cotton was cultivated in ancient times but they were until the industrial revolution, luxury goods for the rich.

Linen (plant based) and Wool (sheep).

Barring magical hand waving, how many specimens for complex mammals, amphibians, or reptiles do you need to have viable genetic diversity for a sustainable breeding population? Mainly I’m concerned about big things like dragons and unicorns.

For Dragons two mating pairs safe from dragon hunters ought to be able to repopulate an area with draconic life.

Unicorns: like horses you’d need three or four small herds consisting of one stallion and a squad of mares (a bevy? a harem?, a group?) for each herd.

How do you properly factor realism, ease of playability, and the Rule of Cool into an abstract system of combat represented by dice rolls?

(That last one is half in jest, but it is something I’ve working on a lot).

Generally when designing rules I try to favor playability over realism and the Rule of Cool but when making snap decisions in the middle of game play I like to favor the Rule of Cool.

I always have a sense of.... None-of-That-Nonsense, which often tames the Rule of Cool.

 

[Scolenex]

Get out of my head! This is my opinion EXACTLY. I will add that Shad seems to be more accurate when talking about castles and least accurate when talking about not castles. I do like his Fantasy Rearmed Series if I don’t agree with all of it. Fantasy Rearmed is right up my alley because I am trying to create my own fantasy setting and I’d like it to make as much sense as possible considering my world has dragons and pixies in it.

But Shad answers the questions on everyone's mind.

 

[Canas]

Pre-Renaissance it was pretty uncommon for ships to sail out of sight of sight of land. Was the main reason for this a need for fresh water and provisions or was the main reason for this fairly primitive compasses and crude maps.

Mostly a matter of a lot of ships not being seaworthy enough to go into the deeper bits. And the deeper you go the rougher the sea becomes. As for navigation, there were plenty of civilizations that were good at navigating by the stars quite early on. There's some serious theories about Greeks reaching the UK & India (by ship). And there's obviously the vikings going whereever they please.

Also in the mediteranian they did go far enough, mostly cuz they knew what was on the other side of the sea. So long as they could keep their bearings using the sun and such they'd know they'd get back to land. On say the atlantic this'd be much more complicated.

Another big factor was probably that there just wasn't much reason to go that far out unless you knew there was something there. After all as far as they were concerned there wasn't much interesting in say the atlantic. Just more ocean. And with it taking moths to get to the America's it's not like an occasional brave explorer is going to find anything worthwhile by sailing out a few days before running out of supplies and going back.

For instance, in my fantasy world, it is relatively common magic to turn a modest quantity of salt water into fresh water. Would having someone like that on your ship be a large boon to medieval sea travel or only a mild boon to medieval sea travel?

Depends on how much water he can provide easily and how common the skill is. If there's only 1 sailor who can do it an expedition wouldn't be able to depend on and it's just an emergency measure. If half the crew can do it you could depend on it actually replacing your supplies. Then there's the question of how easy it is to create large quantities. If he has to spend the entire day just to keep the crew hydrated it wouldn't change much, If however he can supply the entire crew by waving his hand and then be done it'd be fairly massive as it'd effectivly remove the need to carry water supplies, and removes the risk of the water going bad. Freeing up a lot of hullspace and vastly increasing the distances you can travel.

Where did most fabric for clothes come from in the medieval? I looked up that flax and cotton was cultivated in ancient times but they were until the industrial revolution, luxury goods for the rich.

Depends on the area and what happens to be available. Hemp, linnen, cotton, flax, silk, animal skins, leather, fur etc. Whichever is easiest to get in your empire will be what the poor wear.

When did the fact that you can purify water by boiling it become common knowledge?

About 5 minutes after the discovery of fire. Admittadly it took far longer before anyone knew why it worked. But the fact that boiling/cooking stuff made you less prone to getting sick from it was very common knowledge.

Barring magical hand waving, how many specimens for complex mammals, amphibians, or reptiles do you need to have viable genetic diversity for a sustainable breeding population? Mainly I’m concerned about big things like dragons and unicorns.

Given that you can keep chickens healthy with only 2-3 roosters and only a handfull of chickens, not that many. Idem with stuff like cows or horses. A couple of males with a handfull of females each tends to result in a fairly healthy population.

Also, it's fantasy so some freedom is allowed. I'd say you'd probably need to keep population around 20-ish adults who can mate with eachother with about 4-6 females for every male (at least in a small population like that) for a relativly realistic healthy small "herd". Or at least, realisitc enough that noone will really question it. And from say a 100 adults onwards the division male/female will become less relevant. This'd work for most "realistic"-sized creatures (so basicly anything upwards of the size of an elephant). Once you go for mythical creatures the size of a mountain you can just make up whatever rules you'd want without people quesitoning it much.

There are difficulties carving fortifications in solid rock but the main limiting factor is food. The rugged terrain may make near unassailable fortresses but you have to feed the people in the castle or fortress. Thats why you got a lot of castles and fortresses built in the middle of excellent farmland.

Underground is even worse. No sun, no photosynthesis. Because my fantasy world has magic in it, I've created things called lifestones which allow underground plants to flourish without the sun. This keeps my dwarves alive, though most of them still import food when they can.

If you can supply a city above ground you can supply a city below ground as well. Keep in mind I wasn't talking about an entire underground civilization, or so high up in the mountains there's no longer any possibility for farming. Just the one castle/fortifcation/city with a supporting network of regular farmers/villages/townships/etc. around it to supply it with the needed food. After all it's not like a city with millions of inhabitants like Rome at its height relied any less on its surrounding areas for food, hell the Romans had several provinces as breadbaskets providing a majority of food for the other provinces..

 

[LizardWizard]

If you can supply a city above ground you can supply a city below ground as well. Keep in mind I wasn't talking about an entire underground civilization, or so high up in the mountains there's no longer any possibility for farming. Just the one castle/fortifcation/city with a supporting network of regular farmers/villages/townships/etc. around it to supply it with the needed food. After all it's not like a city with millions of inhabitants like Rome at its height relied any less on its surrounding areas for food, hell the Romans had several provinces as breadbaskets providing a majority of food for the other provinces..

City planning, or its lack there of, could be a large factor in why we don't have any Mountain Hold Cities. Most cities did not have have their site and layout chosen on an empty slate. They happen organically as people gathered around an abundance of resources. Although there are certainly some examples of cities, even in antiquity, that had more than the average amount of designed city lay out. Something like a Mountain Hold would require the desire, imagination, planning, and available resources to create.

The benefits gained don't seem equal to the resources expended. Like, consider the amount of time it took to build standard masonry. A lot of the time expense was due to the cost of quarries (when loose stone wasn't used). Now instead of having to quarry enough stone to build the walls and columns you have to quarry out a negative space. That is significantly more stone that has to be quarried as you're now dealing with volume instead of surface area (plus whatever the thickness of the constructed wall would be). The only time expense you save is transporting the stone to location. And I imagine you lose much more labor to cutting stone than you would to moving it in those quantities. Maybe that is why the dwarf race is so long lived in fantasy.

 

[Aginor]

For instance, in my fantasy world, it is relatively common magic to turn a modest quantity of salt water into fresh water. Would having someone like that on your ship be a large boon to medieval sea travel or only a mild boon to medieval sea travel?

Along the lines of sea travel. I know that modern freighters can ride pretty low in the water. They cannot stop just at any coastal port. They need deep water ports.

My fantasy world has a lot of places where the sea overtook the land and the sea is relatively shallow. How deep does water have to be to allow the largest medieval ships to navigate them safely?

If the lack of depth is known then special ship types might have been developed, like they were in the Netherlands for being used on the Ejsselmeer or the Wadden Sea. In German those ships are called Plattbodenschiff (flat bottom ship). Not sure how they are called in English.
Those are - sometimes fairly big, up to 30m long - cargo ships that need only 6 feet of water under them. Very impressive.

Other medieval ships will most likely need something between 15 and 25 feet, depending on their size.

When did the fact that you can purify water by boiling it become common knowledge?

As @Canas said: people did know that, even though they only did know why a lot later, in the 17th century.
They might not even realize it is the boiling water. They might "make tea" because "tea is more healthy than pure water" and think that the herbs are doing that, while in reality it is the boiling and the herbs do nothing.

Where did most fabric for clothes come from in the medieval? I looked up that flax and cotton was cultivated in ancient times but they were until the industrial revolution, luxury goods for the rich.

Contrary to what many people think leather, especially big parts of leather, were rather expensive, because breeding an animal and kill it for its skin is more expensive than planting some hemp or having some sheep. Depending on the society hunting might only be allowed for nobles, so that's where most of the leather goes, too.

Barring magical hand waving, how many specimens for complex mammals, amphibians, or reptiles do you need to have viable genetic diversity for a sustainable breeding population? Mainly I’m concerned about big things like dragons and unicorns.

The term you are searching for is this one:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minimum_viable_population

The short answer is: below 500 is extremely dangerous, and below 50 means almost certainly that the species is done.
There are exceptions to that, but they require a lot of luck/and or modern knowledge of genetics.
A pretty safe bet is 5000 individuals or so, at least for vertebrates.

Edit; that's why many post apocalyptic scenarios are so cringe inducing to me. If only a few hundred humans are left then they are basically extinct, they just don't know it yet.

Edit: example: Tigers are considered a very threatened species, their overall population is around 3800.

 

[Canas]

City planning, or its lack there of, could be a large factor in why we don't have any Mountain Hold Cities. Most cities did not have have their site and layout chosen on an empty slate. They happen organically as people gathered around an abundance of resources. Although there are certainly some examples of cities, even in antiquity, that had more than the average amount of designed city lay out. Something like a Mountain Hold would require the desire, imagination, planning, and available resources to create.

The benefits gained don't seem equal to the resources expended. Like, consider the amount of time it took to build standard masonry. A lot of the time expense was due to the cost of quarries (when loose stone wasn't used). Now instead of having to quarry enough stone to build the walls and columns you have to quarry out a negative space. That is significantly more stone that has to be quarried as you're now dealing with volume instead of surface area (plus whatever the thickness of the constructed wall would be). The only time expense you save is transporting the stone to location. And I imagine you lose much more labor to cutting stone than you would to moving it in those quantities. Maybe that is why the dwarf race is so long lived in fantasy.

There are examples of pre-planned cities though, especially colonies. Especially if a colony would be made in a location specificly to create a quarry (or mine) I wouldn't find it odd to plan it in such a way that you end up with the mountainside on one side of your quarry and it's fledgeling city and a surrounding wall protecting the other sides. Possibly even purposely picking the first spot to mine based on the assumption you'l use the opened space as a basis for your fortifications for this new city. And if nothing else eventually the exhausted quarry/mine could be repurposed. Which is another thing that has happenend surprisingly rarely. There's a few examples of them becoming storage areas, mushroom farms, and the occasional hiding spot in times of war. But it's rare for mines to get a second life.

But yeah, I guess planning is a big one alongside technological difficulty. Building into a mountain/the ground requires purposefull planning. It's not like most cities which sorta appeared on accident around a convenient location as people happenend to gather there naturally.

Contrary to what many people think leather, especially big parts of leather, were rather expensive, because breeding an animal and kill it for its skin is more expensive than planting some hemp or having some sheep. Depending on the society hunting might only be allowed for nobles, so that's where most of the leather goes, too.

The biggest issue with leather is that quality leather takes quite some effort to make. Not only do you need to find a suitable animal and either raise or hunt it, but also the tanning of the leather and the consequent tailoring is a lot more effort than is involved in certain other fabrics. The availability of the leather itself would probably not have been as much of an issue as you'd expect as there'd usually be plenty of animals getting slaughtered for food anyway. People often think that a farmer would have say 1 cow, and although that would be true for poorer farmers living on the outskirts of society, there'd also be larger cattle farms near the wealthier and more populous areas of an empire. It pales in comparison to the current scale of husbandry, but it was plenty to supply a decent supply of leather.

​

The term you are searching for is this one:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minimum_viable_population

The short answer is: below 500 is extremely dangerous, and below 50 means almost certainly that the species is done.
There are exceptions to that, but they require a lot of luck/and or modern knowledge of genetics.

That refers to a population as a whole though, not just an occasional herd. You can easily keep a herd of cows healthy as long as every few generations you introduce some fresh blood form a second herd. I was at a farm recently and if I remembered correctly they told us that every third generation they introduce a new bull to breed the next generation to keep them healthy. So as long as you have a couple of seperate herds preferably with different evolutionairy pressures (e.g. slightly different enviroment, predators etc.), even fairly small ones, and occasionally the herds swap out some members you'l be fine, even with relativly low numbers.

 

[Aginor]

That refers to a population as a whole though, not just an occasional herd. You can easily keep a herd of cows healthy as long as every few generations you introduce some fresh blood form a second herd. I was at a farm recently and if I remembered correctly they told us that every third generation they introduce a new bull to breed the next generation to keep them healthy. So as long as you have a couple of seperate herds preferably with different evolutionairy pressures (e.g. slightly different enviroment, predators etc.), even fairly small ones, and occasionally the herds swap out some members you'l be fine, even with relativly low numbers.

Indeed, especially when you think of some herd animals that require a very low number of males and a high number of females. As long as your new bull is not related to one of his predecessors (at least four or so, to be on the safe side) then that should work.
It does require a number of populations to do so, though.

So that's basically more like the first number of the 50/500/5000 rule.
And yes, if you do it carefully you could maintain a race of cows that has a total of only a few hundred members in a handful of sub populations if you always swap bulls between the herds.
That's what I meant with knowledge of genetics. If you know what you are doing then you can save a species that has less than 300 members. It is hard though, and in the wild they would be gone.

An example is the Giant Panda. It was already at some 1000 individuals or so, only a massive effort saved it - for now at least. But there are now more than 2000 around again it seems, so they might make it.

And without wandering too deeply into genetics: there are of course species that can take it more easily than others. Insects or rodents for example are a LOT more stable than gorillas for example. High production rates and low damage by inbreeding is nice to have when there aren't many options for mating.

 

[Canas]

Fortunatly the initial question was about fantasy creatures, so you can just claim they're 1) fairly stable/resilient to inbreeding and 2) have an inherent understanding that causes them to spread out a bit (a lot of real life animals do this too to some extent by refusing to mate with their direct sliblings and parents or males leaving to form their own herd/pack/etc. once they come of age).

 

[The Red Devil]

I've heard there were once breeds of horses larger than cyldsdale that are not longer around. I guess I would say look at all the dog breeds and how different they look. Most dog breeds came from seletctive breeding in the last few centuries. Horses have been carefully bred for thousands of years. They can be bred for all sorts of sizes.

Yes, the horses we have today are breed for something completely different than in the old days. I would assume that the warhorses would be from the largest workhorses, as you would want a horse that can handle the weight and basically become a steam locomotive, not necessarily very fast speed.

Our national breeds of workhorses are almost extinct, and those that exist are now just used for joyriding, etc. My grandfather was the last one that used horses for the work at the farm I grew up, and he said that just between he was a kid and until they stopped with the horses, the sizes were getting significantly smaller (i.e. breed smaller), due to the need for a large horse was not there anymore like before, and a smaller horse need less feed.

 

[ChapterAquila92]

A bit of a chime-in from a thread over on SpaceBattles about things Medieval writers often forget:

In medieval artwork, dragons were usually on the small side. Depicting them as sub-kaiju to kaiju size is very much a feature of modern fantasy.

Compare this...

To this...

Our familiarity with things like guns means it takes a lot more for a predator to scare us than it would have for a medieval farmer. Any predator would have been terrifying, particularly something as alien as a big snake or monitor lizard.

The basis of medieval justice, ultimately, boiled down to the question of "How many angry guys with pointy things will come to your defense?"

Keep in mind that most nobles didn't abuse their powers too much, because doing it too much would result in a peasant revolt, which not only is costly to put down, but if it cuts too deep into your taxes, your king might start to take notice. The king might not come over there for a few dead peasants, but if you're not able to answer the call to arms or aren't paying your taxes, well, he might just have to.

Another aspect of this medieval thing is, people go out of their land basically never, unless you are a merchant or a cleric or something. That means that, unless you live on a city or a capital, there's a more than fair chance everybody knows everybody.

So justice is not as we treat it today, is less an affair of meticulous laws and more an affair on how much you pissed off the neighbours. And while the king doesn't have that much incentive to act, the nobles also have fairly good reasons not to be dicks.

That takes me to another point of this whole medieval thing. The concept of nation-state died with Rome, and while the darks ages are not doom-and-gloom, everything became smaller, more localized for a long time. The outside world became some sort of background thing, with Viking raids here and moors there and Mongol hordes yonder.

 

[Canas]

Travel was not as limited as that Phazon makes it seem. The easiest two ways would've been pilgrimages & joining an army. And there's also the occasional craftsman traveling to go and work on something on location (e.g. a big cathedral drew in craftsman from afar while being build). Plus the occasional errant that required someone to go to a major city. It was not uncommon to have done at least one of those as long as you weren't a slave (or a serf of a particularly demanding lord).

It did depend a lot on how safe and rich your particular area was though, and obviously few people would undertake something as impressive as a pilgrimage to Rome or join a crusade multiple times in their lifes. But it wasn't exactly unheared of for even lowly commoners to do something like that.

 

[pendrake]

Boiling water question:

This is the first Boil Water Notice, 1854, London, based on the ideas of Dr. John Snow. (Who was just about totally correct regarding Cholera.)

 

[Scalenex]

It did depend a lot on how safe and rich your particular area was though, and obviously few people would undertake something as impressive as a pilgrimage to Rome or join a crusade multiple times in their lifes. But it wasn't exactly unheared of for even lowly commoners to do something like that.

You don't have to go to Rome to go on a pilgrimage. There was a joke that 19 of the 12 apostles had their remains in one country. Pilgrimages routes and destinations had a lot in common with modern tourist traps. Pilgrims would get tacky souvenirs, vendors sold them junk food, and inns jacked up their prices. Some people would try to fill up booklets or backpacks or jackets with badges from all the pilgrimage sites they got to.

 

[ChapterAquila92]

Some more lifted from the thread I mentioned earlier:

I also feel that the position of serfdom is misunderstood in how good it is for your well-being to be a serf of moderate land ownership in the middle ages compared to say, a laborer. In all honesty if shot back to the middle ages in the 13th century and given the choice between being a serf in England or a citizen of a city, I'd choose the serf life. Why? Virtual guarantee of food first of all. With enough land to your name you'd have to experience a total crop failure to be threatened by starvation courtesy of not having to buy food in the first place. That alone is a major bonus for your survival in these times when starvation is typically the thing you have to worry about the most. Secondly there isn't the risk of disease so much. Cities up until the modern era, and by modern I mean 1880 or so, are literal shitholes which serve as a spawning ground for all manner of biological horrors which lead to a large turnover of citizens in the form of them dying constantly. Cities keep up their population through a high birth rate and constant immigration. Compared to your average manorial village there will be a lot more plagues sweeping through the population every decade or so, constantly risking the survival of you and your kin.

Meanwhile the main threat in the countryside is some enemy knights sworn to an enemy lord of your overlord torching your fields and/or killing you over some dispute they're skirmishing over. And that threat still exists for cities, they just have a wall and a town guard to prevent it from being effective.

If it's a trade city, Iberia, Southern France, Sicily, or Venetian territories; you're going to see a lot of North Africans or people of North African descent loitering about. Traders will frequent the port cities and they may even settle if they find it more to their liking than Moorish lands. And converting if they held any different faith of course. I think the most apt description of the middle ages is that nobody back then was racist. They were xenophobic certainly, but of absolutely everything, and more often feared the land ambitions of their neighbors than some far-off people they would never make contact with. They were faith-ist. If a North African or Arab man converts to Christianity while living in a European settlement, any abuse he would suffer should drop off dramatically or even enter non-existence. People may remain suspicious of him, but life back then is based upon familiarity, and thus the nicer you are and the longer you socialize with the population, the more they like you.

But if you're a North African or Arab man who wants to remain a practicing Muslim and like in "Christendom"? Not a fucking chance. Your only options would be the glorious and cruelly short-lived Kingdom of Sicily up until Manfred's death in 1266 or a progressive/greedy Venetian port city.

Medieval people weren't super-tolerant in the modern sense, but neither were they exactly racist in the modern sense. Part of that is if you were a typical Medieval French, Swiss or Castilian person, you would simply not have enough exposure to other "races" to form preconceived hatreds. But you sure as shit would have something negative to say about those dirty Albigensians, Lombards or Moors living next door.

Also people kinda forget the fact that the Normans inherited Roman logistics in terms of nuttery. Prior to the invasion Guillaume II ordered the construction of a motte and bailey castle in Normandy. They built it in lego-style pieces, marked the pieces, disassembled them, and then rebuilt it in one day upon landing in England.

Europe was rural to an extent starkly unthinkable for the modern mind and American writers seem to have particular issues grasping the fact that outside of the true "megacities" of the time (which in some exceptionally rare cases, like Cordoba at its height, or London and Paris sometime later might have crossed the hundred thousand denizens mark), even major towns are by our standards utterly po-dunk places.

Take Laredo, something of a second string urban center for the Crown of Castille, but nonetheless one of Castille's major Atlantic ports for the totality of the Middle Ages with some significant trade connections with ports in the North Sea and even Scandinavia.

This is what it looked like.

Spoiler

That is, what it looked like in the 16th century, after growing some beyond its medieval boundaries.

[...]

Some three to four thousand souls living there, according to what extremely limited censal data we have available.

Which makes it a "not that small" place, considering that Toledo (capital at various times and one of the largest cities in the Iberian Peninsula at the time) had something along the lines of thirty thousand.

[...]

[Why so small?] The carrying capacity of medieval agriculture and the costs of transporting foodstuffs, mainly. Laredo was built in a region that offers poor terrain for cereal cultivation and therefore was super-limited in those terms.

Also, pirates. They were a thing.

If you want another place, let's talk Urueña, built in comparatively great cereal country.

Spoiler

Today, it is only remarkable because of the good state of conservation of its historical boundaries and the number of bookshops, but back in the day it was a major stronghold and market town in the borders between Castille and Leon.

Most medieval cities were fucking tiny.

Kings had much less power than you think they did, generally. If two English nobles wanted to go to war against each other, there wasn't too much the king could do about it, unless he wanted to declare war on both of them or something. Also, the king generally could only levy taxes on the lands he owned, not on any of his nobles' lands. The nobles all swore fealty to the king but often their oaths were the main thing keeping them in line, which meant they really weren't kept in line.

One of the main ways a king could exercise power over his nobles was to visit them. This partly let him keep a closer eye on them. But the main thing is that there was a strict code of hospitality in those days. Peasants were expected to take random strangers into their houses, giving them food and shelter. As for lords, well if the king came by you fed him and his family. And his retainers. And their servants. And the king's bodyguard of however many troops he was traveling with. and their servants. And so on. It got expensive fast.

I'm generalizing about two centuries of history across most of Europe, but this is generally the case I think.

Oh, speaking of kings, the French and English nobility were related. You weren't going to war against those foreigners led by that one guy you hate, you were going to war against your cousin.

 

[Canas]

You don't have to go to Rome to go on a pilgrimage. There was a joke that 19 of the 12 apostles had their remains in one country. Pilgrimages routes and destinations had a lot in common with modern tourist traps. Pilgrims would get tacky souvenirs, vendors sold them junk food, and inns jacked up their prices. Some people would try to fill up booklets or backpacks or jackets with badges from all the pilgrimage sites they got to.

There's a famous route going from roughly the Netherlands to somewhere in Spain which you can still follow nowadays. Still just as tacky. But yeah, Rome is just the most well known

The remark about a serf's life being relativly good is another one that people often get wrong. And even slaves were often fairly well off untill the renaissance. Life wasn't all doom and gloom and working 24/7 for a paltry meal until you broke your back. People had loads of holidays (especially by modern standards, plus there's plenty of natural rest-moments harvest and planting season might be extremely busy, but in between you're mostly just waiting for plants to grow). And there are historical records of people refusing to work if they had made enough money that year there's several ledgers from castle-lords that've been found in which they complain they can't find anyone to take in the remaining harvest cuz this year happenend to be particularly well paid for farmhands so people just didn't want to work anymore (which would've meant they were "free" from around august till the next year's work started again). People also had far better food than what people often consider "medieval" food & noone walked around in drab grey and brown colours. As for cities being worse, that'd depend a lot on the city and if this particular civilization understood the concept of sewers as well as how big the city was. Though even then there'd always be much more squallor in cities than in small villages.