Greg Jenner > Quotes

“The wonderful thing about asking questions is the answers often contain the seeds of yet more questions, producing a lovely feedback loop of constant curiosity.”
― Greg Jenner, Ask A Historian: 50 Surprising Answers to Things You Always Wanted to Know

“According to one theory, fermentation was the whole reason the Neolithic Agricultural Revolution took off in the first place. Alcohol wasn’t a fun by-product of growing crops; crops were a handy offshoot of making alcohol!”
― Greg Jenner, A Million Years in a Day: A Curious History of Daily Life

“I grew up believing that drinking cow’s milk was normal, and that those who can’t – because it gives them painful flatulence – are the odd ones. But, it turns out that milk-slurpers are the new kids on the block. Our prehistoric ancestors were hunting animals millions of years ago, but it wasn’t until the Neolithic era that humans actually consumed their milk. Is it simply that it hadn’t occurred to us before? Were we too busy hiding from cave lions? Well, maybe. But in reality it’s biology that determined the success of the switchover, not lack of effort. Until about 7,500 years ago, our adult ancestors simply couldn’t process the sugary lactose in milk, just as 70 per cent of the world’s people can’t today. It was only random mutations in the MCM6 gene that produced an enzyme called lactase that stops the uncomfortable build-up of stomach gas.”
― Greg Jenner, A Million Years in a Day: A Curious History of Daily Life

“The Reuters News Agency, established in 1851 by the German-born Paul Julius Reuter, was the first major news-gathering organisation to acquire scoops and sell them to other newspapers, relying on carrier pigeons and the electric telegraph to deliver the reports speedily.”
― Greg Jenner, A Million Years in a Day: A Curious History of Daily Life

“You can’t see me, but I’m doing my suspicious face.”
― Greg Jenner, Ask A Historian: 50 Surprising Answers to Things You Always Wanted to Know

“Lowbrow isn’t bad culture, it’s just different; it’s vibrant, immediate, accessible, and fun.”
― Greg Jenner, Dead Famous: An Unexpected History of Celebrity from Bronze Age to Silver Screen

“natural farming’ is an oxymoron; farming is a human-made invention and even the crops we think of as organic are themselves the product of our tinkering. Each time you nibble corn on the cob, you’re enjoying the selective horticultural meddling of an ancient Mexican farmer who died 3,500 years ago. Nor was it just crops that defined this new age of food production.”
― Greg Jenner, A Million Years in a Day: A Curious History of Daily Life

“Being a historian is hard. There's the learning of foreign and/or dead languages; the remembering of archaic legal terms; the decoding of scrawled handwriting; the contextualising of long-forgotten slang and jokes; the traipsing off to faraway archives; the frustration of lacking key sources, or of having way too any; and the constant nagging doubt that there's both too much to know and so much we'll never know.”
― Greg Jenner

“So, when people claim ancient monuments were built by aliens, they’re not only denying the engineering ingenuity of non-European civilisations – stripping these people of their own proud history – but they’re also drawing ideas from a poisoned well; one polluted by the toxic ideology of the Third Reich.”
― Greg Jenner, Ask A Historian: 50 Surprising Answers to Things You Always Wanted to Know

“After all, the nomadic bushmen of the Kalahari only spend 19 hours per week hunting and gathering, and the rest they dedicate to leisure. If we told them to start growing crops, they’d stare at us in puzzlement and ask ‘why bother?”
― Greg Jenner, A Million Years in a Day: A Curious History of Everyday Life from the Stone Age to the Phone Age

“the Indian entrepreneur Sake Dean Mahomet brought traditional Indian champu head massages and vapour baths to Regency Britain, becoming ‘shampooing surgeon’ to King George IV.”
― Greg Jenner, A Million Years in a Day: A Curious History of Daily Life

“In China, this simple technology was once called Zhu, but is now known as Kuaizi, meaning ‘quick sticks’ or ‘fast fellows’ –both fantastic names for hockey teams, just in case you’re thinking of setting one up.”
― Greg Jenner, A Million Years in a Day: A Curious History of Daily Life

“inquisitor’s stick, beginning with the bizarre claims of Mary Toft, the Englishwoman from Surrey who in 1726 tricked doctors into believing she’d given birth to rabbits. Though the hoax was eventually unmasked, the king’s own credulous doctor was embarrassed by the scandal and the wider medical profession also emerged with egg on its”
― Greg Jenner, Dead Famous: An Unexpected History of Celebrity from Bronze Age to Silver Screen

“The celebrity is a known individual who has become a marketable commodity.’24”
― Greg Jenner, Dead Famous: An Unexpected History of Celebrity from Bronze Age to Silver Screen

“All of these other people threw themselves into the challenges, yet we don’t remember their names. The razzle-dazzle process that transforms nobodies into exemplary heroes is a curious one because sometimes it celebrates valour while simultaneously ignoring it in others. None of these forgotten people were any less altruistic than the eventual superstars bathed in limelight, but it was only Darling, Nightingale and Seacole who emitted the right sort of narrative charisma. The media found them intrinsically fascinating, and so only they were forged into public heroes, while their comrades in risk slunk back into anonymity.”
― Greg Jenner, Dead Famous: An Unexpected History of Celebrity from Bronze Age to Silver Screen

“between the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries. The modern toothbrush probably owes more to a certain William Addis who rediscovered the idea in 1780 while serving time in a London jail for inciting a riot. The story goes that, after becoming understandably disappointed with the cleaning power of tooth rags, Addis drilled holes in a pig bone left over from his dinner and affixed bristles from a handy sweeping brush into the recesses. A mere thousand years after the Chinese had invented the toothbrush, Addis had invented the toothbrush. Of course, he was much better at marketing it, and the company he founded is still making hygienic products today.”
― Greg Jenner, A Million Years in a Day: A Curious History of Daily Life

“She was a twenty-first-century Socrates in hotpants; a Socra-tease, if you will.”
― Greg Jenner, Dead Famous: An Unexpected History of Celebrity from Bronze Age to Silver Screen

“Lincoln was sent a letter by an eleven-year-old girl called Grace Bedell, in which she’d dissed his weird face and suggested he grow some whiskers if he wanted people’s votes. Lincoln did as he was told, and met her in her hometown a few months later, whispering: ‘Gracie, look at my whiskers. I have been growing them for you.’ It’s extraordinary that his iconic look was the result of a hilariously blunt child stylist.* However, though news of Lincoln’s new beard quickly spread, he didn’t immediately pose for an updated portrait, so newspaper artists were initially forced to improvise what they thought his bearded face looked like, making him a sort of e-fit president better suited to a ‘Wanted!’ poster.40”
― Greg Jenner, Dead Famous: An Unexpected History of Celebrity from Bronze Age to Silver Screen

“Also, historians will silently murder you with their
eyeballs if you say ‘Dark Ages’ unironically.”
― Greg Jenner