Why were notched sticks so important in medieval times?
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- Опубліковано 1 тра 2020
- Jason Kingsley OBE the modern knight, discusses medieval record keeping. #medieval #tallystick #accounting #records #disaster
Credits:
Production, Direction, Camera, Sound, Editing Kasumi
Production, Presenter Jason Kingsley OBE
/ rebellionjason
/ modernhistorytv
/ rebellion
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Finally some historically accurate reenactment kit i can actually afford.
do you also despretly need a sword but cant afford it at the moment .?
@@florianreuter8178 Do you know what a joke is?
Truth
I don't know,have you seen the price of sticks today?!?
@@jasonflay8818 "All natural organic artisanal hand pulled stick, only $89.99" on Etsy.
So the branch manager, literally looked after branches.
Brilliant!
Hilarious
Stick it to them might have had a different meaning.
Good call.
What about the assistant to the branch manager. Was he called a twig?
So when they claimed you hadn't paid your taxes, you would stick it to the man by showing him your tallywacker 😏
We still do this today, right?
Lol
The gentleman who kept his account records on his personal tally-wacker discovered the miracle of compound interest when the amount of his investment increased.
Proof
You wise fool, it’s glorious!
Admitting you're a grown up: watching a 8 minute video about sticks and genuinely being interested in it.
The clickbait thumb did mention tallywhackers. I thought it was about dicks.
Stick around
Doubly so as a writer. Secondary sources like these are monstrously helpful for ideas and research.
I've heard the term tallywhacker all my life and never knew what it was. Now I know.
Kids watch this stuff all day
Parliament: "Burn the records"
The records: "Burn Parliament"
In 19th century England, you don't burn records, records burn you!
Truth
Everybody gangsta til the stick records starts chanting "remember, remember! The 5th of November..."
*yannick martens*
You've spelt 'evidence' wrong *_; P_*
🎶Flashlight🎵
All I can think of now is in medieval time, when someone wanted to rob a bank. They would shout “nobody move, this is a stick up”.
😄
Aha I twigged what you did there
Very good!
A rudimentary tallystick was accepted in a Canadian court as proof in an employment dispute when I was younger. The owner of the stick used it to keep track of the number of days he worked (he was illiterate). His employer was trying to rip him off for some of his wages claiming the man worked fewer days.
Notched one up on his boss. I like it when the underdog can stick it to someone trying to shaft them.
@@cozmcwillie7897 [vigorous forceful clapping]
@@FeedMeMister (Like)
@@cozmcwillie7897 just take the like
I remember that case, we had a three month discussion in one of the Autistic adult groups in Facebook.
I thought I was rich. Turns out I had the wrong end of the stick.
That term comes from the Roman toilet brush. It was a stick with a sponge at the end of it you would wipe your butt with, it was also communal. If you grabbed the wrong end, you’d be sorry. It was also “shit stick”
@@djericanthony Eric - sorry, I liked his version better :-)
@@djericanthony 🤢 how on earth & why did they think it's perfectly fine to share the same sponge????
Disgusting 🤮
@@motog4-75 Yup, that's disgusting. Nice way to spread bugs.
What have the Romans ever done for us?
@valleywoodworker phew we can relax now 😏
"Regional treasury branch-manager" takes on a whole new meaning.
I lol`d
I did too
😂👌🏻
Regional. Regi = King, On = Light, AL pertain to God.The King Reigns in the Light under God.
😀👍 it took a sec before branch registered with me 😄
Westminster destroying historical tax-records led to Westminster nearly being entirely destroyed.
>TFW dead taxpayers got the last laugh.
That was funny!
The British Museum put out a video detailing how traders deprived the customs men and wine factors of their ill gotten gains as part of their curators corner series.
@ Well, yes, but at least we get something in return for it.
Still not enough, but at least something...
@@GorinRedspear people back then also got something for their taxes, too. Nowadays we are being taxed more and more for ever growing, encroaching, and bloated government.
@@HolyFurryFish1998 No, they got NOTHING. I like your complete ignorance, back then taxes went straight to noble's pocket. And the second part is even more idiotic, taxes funded between others healthcare, 80s live expectancy, education, internet, and million other nice things. Stop parroting right wing propaganda written by rich and educate yourself.
I confess that the question of record-keeping in a largely illiterate society is something I never thought about before - this is brilliant!
'Hey Mr. Tallyman, tally me banana, daylight come and I wanna go home'
My first thought too
And me want go home...
You beat me to it. I was going to 🎶quote Harry Belefonte too.
ha ha ha
Thank you I used to tell people that’s what he was saying before google . They’re measuring the bananas
Ah, the shame of it. Losing all of those records, kind of like memories on sticks... which we have today, actually! One of the common names for a USB flash drive is "memory stick," and they kind of work in a similar fashion, just "notches" in an electrical field representing numbers... the more things change, the more they stay the same.
They stay the same on the level of concepts because humans need to use them and humans as the whole group are not good at finding new understandable concepts. We are still running our millenia old software on much older hardware.
so you could put a painting, a musical band, a library and a theater on a stick? your “notches” analogy is sentimental but seriosly flawed xd things dont stay the same, we literally evolve and advance our knowledge, understanding, way we think - its out of fear of the new/unknown or fear we wont adapt as well/fast that we are slow/resistant to change.
A very insightful analogy. Thank you.
@@iv4nGG of course you can put any of those things on a stick. You just need to use small enough notches.
Do you know how phonographs work, for example?
@@iv4nGG who is to say you can't with small enough notches.
He is relating the 1 and 0 in binary as notches within it's digital stick memory.
If there was a documented way of notching sticks to binary there is no reason we couldn't Transcode it with enough time
This channel never, ever fails to fascinate me on the slightest of everyday things. History is just cracking, isn't it
Was looking to place a comment but couldn't have put it better myself.
Agreed.
Absolutely!
Yep. Never thought I'd be so entertained listening to a fellow talk about sticks.
Just cracking indeed, Sir Fintan!
I had no idea tally sticks were stored so recently in such quantities then disposed of so carelessly. That story was both fascinating and tragic.
They’re STICKS! Hoarding tendencies
@@debbylou5729sticks that encode dated, notarized taxation information for hundreds of years. Historians could learn so much from them!
Amazing that they're effectively a basic bar code system. Not super different to the EAN/UPC barcodes on your groceries.
I always thought it was impressive that they came up with bar codes in the 70's, but hearing that they were in use in mediaeval periods is mind blowing.
Great thought, I shall change the thumbnail as that's a brilliant observation!
Really the biggest differences between these tally sticks and a modern barcode is that modern barcodes use fixed-width positional symbols, (numbers, etc;) and are meant to be machine readable.
These little "mundane" bits of history are my favorite.
YES
That was the medieval equivalent to your boss asking you to delete a Word file and you throwing away the entire computer.
I took my tally stick to the IRS office, but they refused to see me and called security. What's wrong with this people?
Uncouth bastards at the IRS.
LOLOLOLOLOL!!!! 🤣🤣🤣🤣
🤣
XD
lmao!
Surface area is very important in chemistry and now you know why.
I too almost managed to burn down a house like this. Lived in an old house, heated by a wood stove. Since fire wood is expensive and we were poor students, we asked a local carpenter for waste parts. Unfortunately the waste parts were very small and therefore had huge surface area. So they produced much more heat, than a similar amount of logs and overheated the water in the pipes to about 130°C, the whole plumbing was vibrating and we had to cool it with snow...
There is nothing this channel won't cover about medieval everyday life. Cooking, eating, hand hygiene, animal handling, lighting, the list goes on. It's a delight to see such great information
Our pleasure.
This is 100 times more interesting that I though it would be. This channel is amazing!
Thanks!
@@ModernKnight we learnt about this in our introduction to Bonds (part of our guild exams), good to see it getting a wider airing
John Hughes
What kind of guild, and where?
Totally accurate, it’s one of best channel on YT. Please continue your great work.
@@ragnkja England the Charted Institute for Securities and Investments - perhaps not 'technically a guild' but given that they help to set industry standards, oversea examinations in the Industry and you have to be a member to make in the industry they pretty much act like one.
"...The width of a swollen barleycorn..."
"How much over a barleycorn is that?"
"One swole."
Some barleycorns are bigger than others...
If we were still using tally sticks today to record the paying of our taxes we would need to drag around a entire sequoia tree for proof.
If fossil fuels hadn't been exploited there would probably be no trees in North America to make tally sticks from!
more like a giant redwood
😄
@@waynekolvoord968 A Giant Redwood IS a Sequouia
This man just talked about literal sticks for 8 minutes and somehow made it interesting and thought provoking. Clearly doing something right on this channel, well done.
"Andy, where did you put my receipts?"
"You mean those firewood?"
Imagine how many kids got beat for this.?
🤣🤣🤣
I've dug, researched, and adored medieval and classical history forever. Somehow I have never come across this information. I had heard about receipts of clay enclosures in more archaic times but never heard of the notched stick. Thanks for this. Fascinating :)
Fascinating little glimpse back into how records were kept! Can you imagine if a little kid found one of these receipt sticks in the house and started playing tug with the family dog with it! “No Junior!! What are you doing!!!”
Same concept of flushing dad's phone down the toilet ;)
I wonder if the origin of the phrase "getting the short end of the stick" is related to the use of the shorter half of a tally stick being used as the receipt? If you got the short end of the stick, you were the one paying money rather than receiving money.
I think that's quite likely.
I think it's very unlikely, as the phrase is 'getting the shit end of the stick'. I think it comes from when sticks were used in various tasks such as muck-spreading and stirring night-soil for nitrates and, of course, the Roman tersorium. 'Short end' seems to be a later version of the phrase, presumably coming into use as a euphemism when the word 'shit' became more taboo among polite society.
Robert Jackson indeed! A very good question!? Seems logical! Hmmm?
@@Grim_Beard I've heard that before and I think you're probably right about the euphemism modifying like that.
@@ModernKnight Actually Metatron did a video on this and it most likely is coming from the roman toilet sponge stick. The short end of the stick, being the one which was used to wipe your behind. But this also seems perfectly plausible. Here's the video for anybody interested: ua-cam.com/video/liQzjMmciPI/v-deo.html&t
In the year 3020, history would be like this: "They used notepads to record grocery lists, telephone numbers, and other things. Some had sticky backs so you can stick your note on the wall, or on your desk, thus you would never forget them. Ideally speaking, of course. Lots of people still forgot their notes."
They where kept in use after electronic writing devices where invented. Records from that time show people sometimes even covered screens with non-rewritable paper massages. Why this practice was in use we don't have any explanation up until this day.
Historians will lament the unfortunate loss of millions of these "sticky notes" in the great spring cleaning.
"then they decided to dispose of them, but they accidentally shredded the whole white house."
I’m not so sure that it’s going to take that long. Cursive is becoming a lost art so many kids cant decipher a letter written in cursive it’s like some secret code. Land lines have all but disappeared, what the heck is a typewriter and who would have ever thought that in our time we would have seen the advent of self driving cars. I think technology is fabulous but I also love history, you know how things were done years ago.
So, in other words, I should keep all of my sticky notes because they might become priceless relics someday?
The "swollen barley corn" was probably barley that had been soaked/germinated/dried in preparation for beer making. Speaking of which, do you have any videos on medieval beermaking? Nice work!
I am going to utilize this in my next D&D game the Dm, loves this kind of bits of middle ages history that are forgotten in most conversation to be found and used in the game maybe it will give me the edge in some disputes of payment to a Wiley beholder I'm endeavoured to suffer with in the group as a cleric. Huzzah!
Excellent, have fun!
"Honey, the tax man is here, he wants the receipt for when we paid our taxes last week, where did you put our stick?"
"I accidentally used it as kindling for last nights fire." 😬
I am pretty sure that happened more than once in history.
@@equinoxomega3600 probably used as an excuse more often than it being true, though
Except that where many now would see it as a stick, to them it was an important tax document. They likely stored it away, where it wouldn't get lost, the same as people stored their hardcopy tax documents (until recently for most that is).
Some likely still lost it over the years, but the cost then would be far worse than now, as they would owe all of the prior year's taxes once again.
many claimed them to be lost in boating accidents
My dog ate it?
There is actually an old saying in German: "etwas auf dem Kerbholz haben" (Having something (carved) on the tally stick) which means being in debt / having a dark secret / generally being a shady type of person.
Its not used much today in everyday life but everyone still recognizes it. I never thought about what it really meant / where the saying originated from!
(I even had to consult wikipedia that Kerbholz does indeed translate to tally wood)
It also exists in Dutch/Flemish: "Iets op je kerfstok hebben". kerfstok = "carve stik"
@@oliviermelis5704 Iets op je kerfstok hebben = you've done something wrong or evil...
But now at least we know its original meaning!
Damn, you have beaten me to that comment. Well done.
Except that my mother taught me where the saying came from. We are weird like that.
Not related to tally sticks but I hard another phrase working for someone from Germany he said something like "ah, hexenschuss.." while grabbing at his back and he explained the origins meaning to shoot or cast a spell on something, sayings basically that it's been cursed, which to me I found interesting.
I kind of makes me wonder what other things exist in other languages like that.
(I may have used the wrong word too as I don't speak German but it sound like hexen-shoots when he said it)
@@edwhatshisname3562 yeah, you are spot on. It's a commonly used phrase for a certain kind of back pain that goes back to 'a witch cursed my back'.
Learning different languages is the best way to understand people I would say (literally and figuratively).
Thank you for the peace that watching this video brings tonight. I hope you and yours are all well.
I guess this counts as duel-entry bookkeeping, or the precursor to it at any rate. That's awesome.
I'd heard of keeping a tally, but didn't realize that it meant a physical piece of wood with markings.
VosperCDN same here. The more you know
In German there still exists a figure of speech: Etwas am Kerbholz haben (to have something on the tally stick).
Usually it means to have done something wrong or have a debt, guilt.
@@wolfgangkranek376 Oh yeah right, almost forgot about that saying! Also funny that the german word for stick is Stock. :)
@@MaxxMcGeePrivate Stick and stock are only different in the vowels I versus O.
German and english are related. "Anglo-Saxon" Comes from the names of two germanic tribes.
Kerbholz litterally means notch-Wood
@@ulrichkalber9039 I know :)
The disposal of the tally sticks story is both sad and hilarious at the same time... though more sad than funny...
I always wondered where my dad got the "quit playing with your tally wacker" saying. Never knew that there was actually a stick used to tally or keep records of things. It has a different meaning in the States.
Same here. "Tally Wacker" is not something you'd want to cut notches in where I'm from on the East coast of the US.
If it whacks the tally, and the tally is debt, then you might call the tally whacker a "money maker."
@@enjerth78 trump ski
Yup ...tally whacker meant something different in the south when I was growing up.
Lol, the comment I was looking for! Tally whacker has a very different meaning in Boston 😂
A "swollen barleycorn" might be a barley seed which swells up with moisture just before it germinates. Barley sprouts are roasted in the malting process to make beer, so swollen barleycorn would have been a very common sight in Medieval British households and communities.
Yep. In an era before water purification, most people drank beer as a general hydrant, and everyone brewed. A "swollen barleycorn" would be as familiar to everyone as, say, the width of a #2 pencil.
The Greco-Roman world was, indeed, quite familiar with the tally stick: there's actually a hypothesis that the strange figures we call, "Roman numerals" started out as the kind of marks used on tally sticks!
I wouldn't be surprised, the roman numeral system seems designed around carving things, good point!
That actually makes a lot of sense.
oooh
I'm a very unemployed accountant, and I've had a lot of time to pursue my historical study passion. A few days ago my head was hurting trying to imagine what kind of internal controls existed in medieval times. The existence of these tally sticks in fact confirms that rudimentary (but critical) controls did exist, and actually the importance of this cannot be understated. This is the type of behind-the-scenes thing that made countless advances possible. Confidence in the financial system is critical to any advanced economy!
and in an arguably less literate society.
@@ModernKnight indeed. No doubt it was seriously precarious work managing a powerful man's money in those days. The tedium of it all would be immense. Thank God for software engineers. Anyhow, it's easy to forget how we got here - clever people making those big steps for us!
Sorry if I'm the only one geeking out on this, haha, but the scenery is just stunning! The flowers in the first scene were absolutely gorgeous
haha
This is so engaging, a small piece of information that in the end has a large impact
Archaeologically, we also find tally sticks made from animal bone such as elephant or camel. They are rarely found on antler or even ivory. That they were used until 200 years ago is rather surprising.
Comparatively few people were literate in the early 1800s. Magazines etc for the "lower classes" only appeared at the end of the century because they had only recently become able to read in sufficient numbers for them to be viable.
I think we often automatically envision late-Victorian Britain when we think of the 19th Century, possibly because there is more surviving information, and popular cultural references, about that period. But the beginning of the century was very different.
Most people had tally sticks, Ancient CVS, here's your tally tree.
Cvs employee here. the tally tree is not only true, but also 90 percent of the tally tree is still worthless coupons.
So glad I watched this, I almost didn't but I did and now I can't tally how much happier I am for it.
The right angle shape of the notches in the museum pieces is probably due to a basic woodcarving technique. First a "stop cut" is made straight into the media (wood, wax, soap, etc) and then a relief cut is made from a short distance away and the blade tends to stop traveling at or near the stop cut. Continue making relief cuts to make the notch longer and/or deeper.
Interesting the etymology for things like "foil" and "stocks". Also puts some light on the phrase, "getting the short end of the stick". This is why I love this channel.
"Also puts some light on the phrase, "getting the short end of the stick"." Except that the phrase was (and often still is) 'getting the shit end of the stick', which has a much more obvious derivation.
@@Grim_Beard and that phrase originates from the Roman poop stick they used to wipe their backsides.
You're correct on the origin. English speakers often confuse "got the short end of the stick" which relates to paying tax's and "grabbed the wrong end of the stick" an ancient Roman phrase.
Counterfeit
Yeah, that phrase has nothing to do with tally sticks.
In Germany there is a saying that goes: "etwas auf dem Kerbholz haben" translating to "having something on the tally" originally meaning having depts unpaid, because when you paid your dept the tally would be destroyed.
Same in Dutch : iets op je kerfstok hebben.
I've heard of that saying but never knew about it being a German saying or how to say it in German. Good to know information. I live in the u.s.
Ich mag es
@@jybuys sounds like "Platt", a dialect spoken in northern germany
Isn't "stock" also a word still used today as "stock trading", interesting thing about it is that "stock" is the german word for the english "stick".
Wonder if there is any relation between those?
Foil and counterfoil are also terms used in literature. I never knew this is where they originated, though. Very interesting!
I use that pun in the kitchen sometimes when I drop the kitchen foil roll. “Dang foiled again”
@@thomashughes2710 clearly not a counter foil when it lands on the floor...
Yet another example of how UA-cam has better shows than cable TV.
Modern History TV > History Channel
Liked this video and already subscribed earlier today.
Dude you are a great teacher. You have a wonderful way of telling a story and providing good information
Thanks, it's nice to get positive feedback.
I never knew about this until now
Never heard of tally sticks before. I've learned more about history from youtubers like you than from the university, thanks.
Our pleasure.
Im thinking like my step dad. As soon as you mentioned they were stored all over in different rooms, my first thought was it sounds like a fire hazard.
I just discovered you. This medieval history is much more interesting than what we learned in school and college.
welcome
Amazing that such a basic and primitive piece of technology was used for so long through our history.
Brilliant and simple concept since every single piece of wood that has EVER existed is unique.
Interesting to learn something new. Honestly never heard of the tally stick prior to now, and to think they played such an important part in our history.
So is this where "The short end of the stick" came from?
Absolutely brilliant video, I just love learning of things like this, you sir are jem of this community.
Thanks Shad! Love your new castle backdrop by the way.
@blue100000 so wheres your "Real" History?
@blue100000 just bitter because USA history is 200 years of shit and that's it.
@@cryptomoneyuk american history is 200 years of interesting, same as european history :P
@@tharpbilly2396 200 years of shit. You guys are Brazil now. You don't even know your own history, and are actively taught misinformation by the current ruling class.
The interesting and thematic presentation of info really makes it stick!
Get it? Stick? I laughed :D
Master educator, he Should stick to it!
Dude made all his money developing video games. Sniper Elite being the biggest one I think. So it's safe to say he's pretty good with the thematic presentation.
Oh god you made me roll my eyes.
I'll get your coat...
Imagine someone in 2020 thinking about someone 1000 years from now being interested in their tax returns.
Genealogists do this all the time.
In 1,000 years they'll still be trying to get Donald Trumps tax returns.
@@jpweb5632 Ha Ha Ha!!! Sad and probably true but hilarious!
IRS ?
@@fredgervinm.p.3315 I was going to say something about them but thought I'd check comments first. The IRS never rests. Everyone would like to give them the short end of the stick!
Absolutely "top notch!" A cut above! Your charming presentation was fun and informative, According to my sturdy little stick, you, sir, have scored very high marks!
Goofball :D
@@ryans756 Goofball is my middle name! 🤣🤣🤣
@@SwedeProof Hehehe ❤️
"The kings guard are looking for the person who keeps whacking people with his tally stick. He goes by the pseudonym Tallywhacker"
"The short end of the stick"
@@uncbadguy No that comes from the stick used to knock down the crap in a latrine!
😅😂🤣
A tallywacker is that piece of cloth on the back of a sailors blouse. It was to keep his tarred " tailey from sticking to it when the temps got hot...
Actually known as a tar flap
Tax collector: where’s your stick? Me: honestly, my dog ate it.
Stick with dog teeths marks on it.
"Citizen, It would seem that you were charged way more than you owe, we're very sorry about this, you'll receive a refund asap"
@@fedegibsonlespaul More like we appreciate the extra donations within your tax peasant.
IIRC Classical Greek armies used small sticks as dog tags for soldiers. One half would be kept in camp, the other would be found with the body, so the army could keep a good tally on what happened to their servicemen: missing, accounted for, wounded or fallen. Pretty cool!
Twenty five years ago I ordered a custom made flintlock musket from a small semi custom shop. It was going to take seven weeks to arrive. I had an interesting stick chewed clean of bark by feeding beavers. I made a tally stick of weeks.
I made neat half circle cuts and put dark dye in notches to stand out.
Ended up with a tally of ten weeks and a beautiful French flintlock musket.
Funny how it came to me so naturally to cut notches on a stick as a way to measure.
Thanks for making this video.
Subscribed.
Here in Finland we still use the expression ”päivä on pulkassa,” lit. ”the day is in the pulkka,” (an abbreviated form of the more archaic world ’pulikka’ which is our name for the tally stick) to say that ’the day is done.’ 😊
Yama Satru I doubt it, Finnish and Sanskrit belong to two different language families. Most likely just a coincidence.
I was today years old when I figered out what " hey mister tally man, tally me bananas " means lol
Good catch, lol.
Oh damn
Tally ho?
@@hamnchee Unrelated to tally sticks, it's apparently a corruption of a French fox-hunting call. Here's a link to a source on this, Pg 408 - books.google.co.uk/books?id=m7KxyQ1lSy0C&pg=PA408&lpg=PA408&dq=%22La+Venerie+de+Jacques+du+Fouilloux,+a+Paris+1573.%22&source=bl&ots=oc2s5VYCZy&sig=ACfU3U1MvFrmLHjBHHCbqBIWfFRJgY2hbg&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjd1pSqrpfpAhWVonEKHWxFBRoQ6AEwAHoECAkQAQ#v=onepage&q=%22La%20Venerie%20de%20Jacques%20du%20Fouilloux%2C%20a%20Paris%201573.%22&f=false
ua-cam.com/video/6Tou8-Cz8is/v-deo.html Harry Belafonte: Banana Boat Song
That was an amazing video on a little known topic that in their time must have been as important as any contract today.
My god that story about the sticks burning everything down is so interesting. Thanks man.
I want to see that old timer in the 1800's getting mad that he can't use his tally sticks, and complaining about he needs some fancy paper or parchment to pay his taxes now.
Lol I can imagine that was quite a scene during the time
Damn kids and their papyrus.
Confounded , New-Fangled Parchment and Quill . What's wrong with Traditional Stick and Knife . The World is going to Hades .
As someone who has to fill-out paperwork with multiple carbon copies for work:
Oh God, this is historical paperwork
DickEnchilada
This has an advantage that is only shared with literal carbon copies: it is easy to tell if someone has altered their half.
Ever had some pillock forget to make sure they'd slipped something between the pages? I've seen one with every other page marked because an idiot forgot to slip a piece of card in the book.
"woodwork"
What a rich history lesson! So many things all tied together. Thanks!
Glad you enjoyed it!
This has been used all over the world in just about every culture. My Great-uncle Woodrow, who was an ayuni (memory-keeper among the Cherokee), kept this tradition relevant to our culture. We never paid taxes, of course, but kept records of goods traded, food gathered or distributed, and treaties negotiated.
how fascinating, thanks for sharing.
In the Netherlands we have a saying “ hij heeft iets op zijn kerfstok “ = ‘he has something on his notch-stick’ for someone who did something wrong. Originally it said ‘he didnt pay his bill at the inn’.
Interesting, thanks.
We in Germany have a similar quote: "Er hat etwas auf dem Kerbholz." "He has something on his notch wood."
Lol, brilliant, part of the reason for doing this channel is that I find new things out from the comments.
In Iran there's the saying "چوبخطت پر شده" meaning "your tally stick has no more room", which is said usually when refusing someone's request for forgiveness or for a loan because they have asked for it many times before.
Wonderful!
Where is “Muley”!? I’m so intrigued by the mule!!! 🐎
This is brilliant. It's the first time I have seen someone explain tally sticks. If been to lot of museums, but I never before understood or noticed these sticks.
That is fascinating - I had never heard about the burning of the tally stick archive, nor the disastrous (and one might say, karma-appropriate) result of taking the building down with it!
Exchequer's servant: Oooh great! there's plenty of firewood and kindling here!
Exchequer: ...WHAT!?
I’m sitting here thinking that there’s no way this man can make me listen to how a stick was used. I was wrong.
Much more interesting than the stuff we got at school. I was much more curious about commoners than nobility !
This turned out to be way more interesting than I expected
As I begin to watch this with my dinner in front of me, I sincerely hope those sticks werent used for poop stuff
Edit: This man making me realize I never really thought about how taxes were paid and information was documented in the medieval ages
Oh, different sized sticks. The taxpayer was quite literally given _the short end of the stick._ Wow.
More like the short side of the stick.
I’m a contracts lawyer and I’m in awe right now. The agreement recording device self-verifies authenticity!
Have you come across indentured documents? The jagged cut edge(s) of such a document was a way to match up the copies, to prove that the were written at the same time, to contain the same information, on the same sheet that would then be cut up so each party to the agreement would get a copy.
Just goes to show how utterly sht law is now, and how not designed for the people it is.
this is freaking ingenious, we need something like this more commonly!
-Me never knowing notched sticks were important to them: hm, yes, good question.
I remember about hearing in history classes that ancient Greeks used such sticks when they made deals or loans. But to know they used the very same method for so long is fascinating.
And if you think about it, it makes a lot of sense.
They had to prove somehow they payed their taxes, or completed their end of a bargain even in those times.
Mass production of paper didn't existed yet and I can imagine pergamen made from animal hide was too expensive to use for such minor things, but they had massive forests with lots of sticks.
Not to mention the fact that most of the population was illiterate, so it was easier for them to learn and understand the different cuts on a stick than the alphabet.
I'm here for the tallywacker knowledge
This reminds me of (and could easily be made into) the Connections series by James Burke. Loved it.
Fond memories.....
Never thought I'd find the history of sticks so fascinating!
I find myself wondering how on earth they filed the sticks so that they could find any given one when they needed to
Write the persons name like have them sign it
Maybe each person had their own named container and there was a sort of alphabetical order to all the containers' placements? Seems like that might work since most people in medieval europe (to my knowledge at least) didn't do a whole lot of moving around.
While just writing on the stick might be a good alternative for the accountant who can read and work numbers, even up to the 1800s there would be a significant portion of the tax base who was illiterate. Probably fair to say that if you can teach a farmer to count different kinds of cuts in a stick to figure out his debts, surely he can just learn numbers - that makes sense to me. But by later dates, maybe having two parts of a stick was just the established standard. It does seem like it would be a fucking hassle to forge by either party at least.
@CalvinSomething The fact that the natural wood is unfalseable, so you can change the writing on the stick, but never the rings, and if the rings didn't match the stored talle, you were falsifying records.
CalvinSomething Think of it as the equivalent of a receipt.
Very informative. This vid brings to mind story-poles. Going back to the Stone Age, wooden poles were used as long "yardsticks" when building houses. A storypole would have a mark for every measurement needed to build the house. In some cases,they are still used today.
Thanks for this little snippet from history.. it’s a real privilege learning new interesting things like this.
X
It's so interesting how terms like tally, foil (counterfoil), and stock are still used in banking today.
It makes sense. Those words are linked to a concept. Rather than applying new words and relearning what is essentially the same system with a new face we may as well use the old language. It's similar to how many militaries still refer to their tank Regiments by old cavalry or artillery monikers. Indeed they still 'mount up' and 'ride out'. Why learn more new terms when there's enough to learn already?
The next time I'm audited by the IRS I'm showing up with a bunch of sticks
😂
I suggest having an attorney just as a backup.
@@philipmalaby8172 I tried paying my attorney with sticks and now he won't answer my calls
Reminds me of the books (scrolls) lost in the burning of the library at Alexandria.
Were not lost but stolen, fire made too destroy that fact and as cover too say, I was putting out the fire.
Aren't we lucky that you just decided to film this videos? This is such a beautiful storytelling! From the precambrian to the Big Ben! Thank you so much!