The invention of locks shows that society had reached a level where people where able to keep a surplus of goods large enough to make thievery a career rather than a necessity.
There were not only things to steal, there is also food. And after eating it, nobody would say "hey, that looks like it once was my bread that got stolen yesterday"
My father always said that "A lock only stops an honest man" Always liked that phrase, funny thing is if you change the word lock to law, its still true.
I think the lock is one of the most *human* of human inventions. Weapons are just an extension of teeth and claws etc, nothing that animals haven't done before. A lock, however, is unique in that it transforms information into a physical barrier - very simply. It takes a pattern from the human brain, and directly transforms it into an impassable barrier in the physical world. Hugely important invention, if not *the* most invention in human history (maybe apart from the wheel)
Interesting. Jays (corvids - a type of bird) bury nuts/seeds for later retrieval and consumption. Sometimes they will watch another jay bury its horde, wait until it has gone, then swoop down and steal it. Experiments have shown that if an individual jay has a history of stealing from other jays, it becomes more cautious about how it buries its own horde. If such a jay knows that it is being watched while burying its horde, it will return a few minutes later, dig it up and rebury it somewhere else. This seems to be evidence of the jay empathising - understanding what the other jay might be thinking - and changing its plans accordingly in order to ensure that its "treasure" is secure. In a way, this is similar to what you have described with people taking the idea and creating the barrier to protect their own property.
A lock isn't a barrier, it is the thing that removes the barrier by the only people who has the key. Barriers is nothing new; humans and animals builds different kind of walls, or as people pointed out, burying thing (the top soil is a barrier). Burying is also a different kind of hiding, a lock isn't hiding things; you know it's there, you can't just access it. So I don't think any reply refuted your idea of a lock being the most *human* of human inventions. It's a thing that removes the barrier without needing a guard. No hiding being done.
@@Liggliluff I guess #TheVino3 meant that lock enables barrier which can be easily removed by owner, but not by anybody else. If I bury something I will have to use about the same amount of energy and time as anybody else to get it back, but unlocking chest or door or whatever is usually much easier and quicker than other ways of getting in. So maybe personalized barrier would be more accurate description.
To the argument 'Locks only stop an honest man': Still a deterrant. It's like if you go to a lower-end part of town and seeing a small-time crook checking car doors to see if the owner forgot to lock them. Won't stop everybody, but it might stop quite a few more opportunistic ones.
Exactly - I used to know a guy who was a career criminal - did a LOT of B&Es. And most of which were "opportunistic" - he'd spot an open window, an unlocked door, etc. If someone is so determined to get into a place, that they'll get through any lock because they are set on getting past - then the chances are it's a premeditated assault on a location based on past information or interaction (like they had a tip-off about a stash of jewelry in a certain house, or they were getting revenge against a specific person, etc). If you can do your best to eliminate easy opportunities for people to 'get one over you' - then you'll eliminate the vast majority of the risk of being robbed. Make it so anyone who wants to break into your house, has to be super determined and take a great amount of effort to achieve such an end. Then you're pretty much safe against almost anyone other than someone who's specifically out to get you, no matter what.
Yea. After watching some Lockpicking Lawyer, you can see that any lock can be cracked. The better the lock, the more time and skill it takes. So that means more of a hassle for the burglar and a greater chance of being cought.
@@Katerspacedopwater Altho sometimes, with the right tools/skills, its faster than using the key. I personally had a VERY cheap lock on my locker when I was in college and sometimes I would just forced it open if my keys were in my backpack or something. You literally just had to pull on it hard enough and it would open lol, a child could do it. It wasnt much more effective than a "please don't open" sticker. Just saying it only really becomes a hassle if the lock has a minimum of quality XD
I figure this might be interesting to you, Lloyd, and some of your viewers. About a year ago I got to play with a leaf spring lock, bought by an antiques dealer friend of mine a long time ago in Morocco. She asked me if I could figure out the lock and how it opened, I did, and made her a guide for the future owner of the lock to use to open it if they liked. I took plenty of pictures to do this and figured I would share it with this little community. I'm sure some of you might find it neat. Have you seen many locks like this one Lloyd? I don't know a terrible amount about them myself. teawithmuses.tumblr.com/post/117926414299/leaf-spring-lock
Lindybeige I was afraid of that. Sometimes this site attempts to be "convenient", and resize the images for easy viewing. These links might work better. 41.media.tumblr.com/a1f0b65f23ee23919843f31b9d709a1f/tumblr_nnpvaqvMIb1rhbl08o1_r1_1280.jpg 40.media.tumblr.com/d8fd7c5cffa0e03f0e46b8a9c538d809/tumblr_nnpvaqvMIb1rhbl08o2_r1_1280.jpg
Scroll's Adventures That's a really neat lock! I own a lock that works in the same way, but it's basically only the last unlocking step of yours; 3 pieces total including the key. I'm fascinated how there are multiple extra locks that locked around the other locks in that way; very unique and definitely something I've never seen before, thank you so much for sharing!
I'm not an anti-social hermit or something, but there is something about the endless stream of strangers that one comes across pretty much anywhere in civilization which kind of freaks me out. To me the idea of living in a village of 100-200 people with the occasional trips elsewhere/visitors seems much more comfortable and natural.
Calgach V. Yeah, but it's scary in its own way. In this modern society you can do whatever you want, as long as you have money. In a small community, you are overwhelmed by custom and folklore, to the point that you are just another cog in the machine. Your neighbours would control your life: who comes to your house, at what time do you come and go, etc. In a religious town you' be condemned to "be like them" or be an outcast. Don't get me wrong I like the idea of small communities, but boy, some towns would make you go crazy. Btw the fact that you'd rather lived like that, would not make you anti-social, quite the opposite. It means you are willing to engage in close relationships with 200 people, smell their feet and all that.
Pau Nuns I agree. I live in a city in Europe, but I've spent some time in a small village in Africa which where most people would only ever come into contact with each other. Mind you, they were all really nice and welcoming to me (being an outsider an all), but it was a very new cultural experience: The lack of outside influence made them close-knit, but the gossiping and social control and endless ways in which you always had to watch your step (even at home) or find yourself on the receiving end of social judgement was the thing of old-fashioned literature (that I didn't really understand prior to that experience) and did not seem appealing to me at all.
***** Well yes, but still...you would know all your neighbors, and they'd know you. If you beat your children or get horribly drunk at the local bar, people will know...And since you will meet these people almost daily, you have to be very careful about your privacy, which could lead to hermetic, isolated families. There's this play called The House of Bernarda Alba, it deals with some of this stuff and I'd sincerely reccomend it.
***** Oh I wasn't making a case against little towns, and you're right about politeness, my only experience is a couple of months every year for about 3 years, I got a little taste, people would just walk past my door, say hello and start a conversation, which I found so weird (they were far relatives) This was possible because doors remained unlocked of course. To me it felt like time slowed down, it's another pace.
Calgach V. I grew up on grandmas farm some kilometres outside of my home village of 300 or so To me, this place i am living in now was the big city where you could get anything en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kalix When i am old now i see that cities are the root of all evil
When large armies were mobilized to fight in foreign territory, how were they all fed? If you had to march your troops some distance or sail them over an ocean (the English channel maybe), how would you feed them en route and how would you feed them when you arrived at your destination? Was food constantly shipped from home? Would they try to forage for food in the local area? What about water?
I went to a special Viking exhibit in Chicago recently, and - this, I suppose, is only somewhat relevant - it said one of the best ways to gauge how wealthy and influential a Viking noblewoman was was to count how many keys she had been buried with. The greater the number of keys she had, the more she and her husband owned and had to protect with locks.
There once was a quite thoughtful crook (If it wasn't locked up, he partook) But despite the poached wealth He felt bad 'bout himself 'Cause it was freedom he actually took
Excellent. Only found you about a month ago and have watched many of your videos, you're already in my top five subs, keep up the good work and thanks for entertaining me for hours, I even watch your dancing videos.
Just as a side note, the town I grew up in had just about no locks. I never once remember my house ever being locked. I don't ever remember a friends house that was locked or any family members. I never encountered a locked car. I can always remember seeing the keys in the ignition in every car I had ever been in, and when we got to the place...they stayed in the ignition. I imagine the town bank was locked, as well as a few business. But never our church. It was open 24/7/365. And this is a small town in rural Indiana from 1970 to 1978. Not all that long ago. Now, I won't leave my car unlocked if I run into a 7/11 and I can see it the entire time or leave my apartment unlocked when I run down to the mailboxes. Strange.
+Six String Löve my parents have told me stories about growing up in Glasgow, Scotland (a major industrial city) in the 60s where nobody locked their doors because everybodys neighbours looked out for each other... plus nobody really had anything worth stealing anyway haha! its a shame that so much has changed
There may have been another reason, albeit at a later time, to sue locks: standardization in making the goods. If my knife is made of flint it is unique, probably quite distinctive. If I buy (or barter) a brass or iron knife from the local blacksmith, chances are that he makes them quite similar to one another, so it would be more difficult for the legal owner to spot his stolen one.
When they found Otzi thawing in the Alps, and found all his stuff plus that he'd been shot and died from it, it was a bit of a mystery why his valuables were still with him. I thought, his stuff is uniquely his, and anyone found with any of it would immediately be asked why they had it. Small population. I think he had badly offended some people and they were after him for it.
One of my Dad's friends worked for a company that made locks. He told me something when I was a kid that I thought was brilliant. "Locks are made to keep honest people honest". Which is very true. Someone who is determined to be dishonest will always find a way to do dishonest things.
But Lindy, you are so silly. Locks had nothing to do with cities. Locks were invented because having a latch or a bolt in a chastity belt just doesn't work.
I'm sure you've heard the saying, "a lock only keeps out a honest man." Locks won't stop a good thief. All you can hope for is to slow him, or her (must give the ladies equal billing) down. Most don't want to hear this but 90% of residential doors open with on swift solid kick. Once had a copper advise me to leave $20, a pack of smokes and a six pack of beer by the back door. He reasoned most of the B&Es occured between 3 to 6. When the teenagers are out of school and working folks are gazing at the clock at work. Said teenagers are looking to find cash for drugs, smokes or booze. Often if there's nothing there that forwards their agenda, they'll trash your home. He figured if a kid kicked in your door everything he might want is right there, they'll be on their delinquent way sparing your prized possessions that hold no value for them, say a big ole grandfather clock. The best thing you have going for you is their lack of brainpower. Knew a guy in highschool. He'd been absent a while so I asked where he'd been. Locked up after a B&E. How'd they catch you? They matched the glass in my shoes to the broken window. Several months go by and again, he disappeares. Where were you? Locked up. Did a B&E. How'd they get you? They matched the glass in shoes........ Need I say more? I could share a great number of similar tales that I heard after I got caught with glass in my shoes. Just kidding. I was at, as the British say, Her Majesties pleasure for something different. I did hear some many funny stories of capers gone very wrong. I could scribe a small book with all the material I heard. Thanks again for sharing your knowledge. You'd make a brilliant teacher.
Another factor would be whether or not there are people in the house at all times. With large families who do not travel, there is no need for a main door lock that can be locked from outside, so a latch is sufficient. Shops which are not residences would also require a mechanism to lock it from the outside.
Whole family is over. Creeping down Hallway, headphones in. Clicks on video. Finds out hard way that headphones are unplugged and volume is all the way up.
Even without large cities and/or communities, there's quite a few uses for locks. 1) to keep slaves/prisoners from running away 2) to keep other raiders from nicking your stuff while your campaigning far from home (strongbox) That's why the Vikings were quite adept at making locks. They didn't live in very large communities but they sure as hell didn't trust their neighbours.
Speaking of things we take for granted: What of cloaks? Why did they go out of fashion? My first thought is that cloaks are not very practical for automobiles, but while that's true, cloaks were on their way out at least a century before the invention of the automobile. Sewing technology, perhaps? Or maybe a more widespread mercantile industry?
***** before automobiles, carriages were widespread (though not as widespread as cars are now). What makes a cloak cumbersome in a car makes it cumbersome in a carriage as well.
***** I would guess sewing tech, fashion and the changing needs of civilisation. The older styles of cloak were pretty unstructured garments that could be easily re-purposed as needed to blankets and whatever else you could use them for. Later on they acquired sewn in shoulders, collars, clasps, chains, buttons etc, which limited their applications, mainly because the people using them only needed them for a warm garment and not too much else, since they mostly lived in towns and cities (farmers might still use the other styles). Later they acquired arm holes. In the 18th century the riding garrick was a popular style of coat which is a good representation of the final transition of a cloak into a coat- it's big and wide and multiple cape-like collars. Structured cloaks hung around as a decorative anachronistic dress item of clothing all the way until about the 1930s. There were still practical versions on them in use in the military in the 19th century all the way to the Vietnam war in the form of rain and cold weather protection.
I'm glad to see you getting more and more subscribers. Like so many others I came to know your videos by your most popular, the one about the katana, but I have stayed for the brilliant wit and writing. But please please please upload more. And never stop. Ps what is your occupation?
Depending on what material the lock/key is made out of it can be rather expensive. If you think of the middle ages for example, when wealthy persons wore big, ornamental keys on their belts to show off just how good they are doing. So... key and lock, especially in the early days of bigger societies, must have cost a fortune themselves, therefore whatever they were used to protect must have been very very valuable. Richer people who, of course, settled in bigger cities, possessed those, mostly made of iron. However, you do find some made of wood, dating back to times even before bronze age. I conclude that the making of big sturdy iron locks and keys started with the founding of the first bigger societies as a necessity to prevent theft and robbery. Just wanted to throw this in. Sorry for my english, hope it's understandable. And Lindy, this channel is awesome, keep it up.
I can think of a city without locks where wealth is guarded by shifts of trusted armed guards all the time. Very possible. And indeed there's plenty of examples of cities without locks. Other people have already pointed out examples in previous comments. Mesoamericans didn't have locks, but had big cities.
jaocheu None at all? Interesting point. They also had fantastically brutal regimes and the death penalty for almost every transgression. I wonder if that's a coincidence.
That's true they say of regimes like North Korea you can drop your wallet in the main square in the morning and come back and pick it up at night untouched, people being in such fear it was placed there as bait by the secret police. However houses in proto-cities like seem to have had no locks too, so at the very development stage of cities locks were not playing a role. I have never heard of aver age houses in ancient Mesopotamian cities having locks either. Perhaps another thing to remember in lot of ancient cities, and even in India till recent times (I saw some myself), the really poor hovels where you would imagine crime was rife, had makeshift doors or even just curtains pulled across entrances.
jaocheu Yes I think this video is not true. The main form of security is the eyes of family, housemates, and neighbors there is usually someone around and a bounty for catching a thief. Even in a large city filled with strangers the neighboring residents in your street should be known to you and look out for each other, until the invention of TV then neighbors became strangers too.
jaocheu I think you're thinking of locks in a different way. Back in these days you would probably not have locks on your front door, even though we see it as a given today. Think more like chests for example. Also consider that metal was more valuable and rare back then, many locks were probably made out of wood. There are even records of pin tumbler style locks in ancient Egypt entirely made of wood. So my guess is that a lot of these locks just rotted and withered away. *Edit: "lack of evidence is not evidence of lack"
"Locks and fences keep good men honest." A small physical barrier, and the potential of evidence, is often enough to dissuade the snooping, or outright opportunist urges we all feel. They don't stop criminals, but it's enough of a reminder and a hindrance to make most people say: "Oh right, I shouldn't go after that."
Also the criminal cannot say "it was just laying there, doing nothing" to defend his actions. And if there is world of locked and unlocked doors with more or less same valuable items behind, I guess most thiefs would go with unlocked door.
Before locks, people had guards. If you had enough wealth (in items or currency) such that it is worth locking it away, then you keep a record of it, take inventory, and hire a guard to ensure that said inventory never shrinks. Hell... this is exactly how modern shopping markets work. You aren't stopped from stealing because of locks. You are stopped because there are people ensuring you don't steal the goods. Further, the local population acts as a defacto guard. Your neighbors know your place. They also know who is regularly allowed in your place (yourself, your family, friends, etc). The "eyes on the street" concept of neighbors watching out for eachother ensures that if a stranger were to enter your place, they would most likely be noticed right off and stopped. Locks help, yes. But they only help in situations where the relatively poor (unable to hire a guard) live in places without close neighbors (rural situations or places where you don't know your neighbors). Other than that, they are in reality just a form of psychological deterrence.
My mother, born 1950, lived most of her childhood through young adult life never locking her doors. She lived in places which were rural and/or neighborhoods where people watched out for each other. She was neither poor, nor was she rich. "Small Town America" is famous for not locking their doors. It is a situation where the population knows each other and watches out for each other. Locks are a foreign concept to my friend who lives in the boonies of the Carolinas. Who would steal anything from me? What would they steal? In metropolis situations, the anonymity of daily life and the shear "noise" of activity make for easy theft, however. This is when and where guards or barriers are required to secure belongings.
I was born in the very early 60s and I live in a small town where we don't have to lock our doors either. One of the reasons we have a low crime rate in my sleepy little town is that everytone knows everyone and nothing can remain a secret for long. SOMEONE is going to brag or get mad and squeel or say something just a bit to loud and the perpetrators get caught. Mind you, that doesn't stop the random 'suicide' where you shoot yourself in the chest 3 times; or at least that's what the family claims so that the favorite cousin doesn't go to jail for murder.
I think the small town example is kind of bad because while you probably can't get away with nicking your neighbor's favorite shirt, if you steal something immediately consumable like food then you'll be fine as long as no-one sees you. There's also nothing stopping you from raiding the other town five miles down the road, so locks would still be of use to small communities concerned about raids from nearby settlements, looting by armies passing through or theft by itinerant people like Gypsies who don't have to hang around and suffer the social consequences of stealing.
First, if someone in a small town makes a habit of stealing food you can bet people would find out about it eventually. Second, a lock would be of no use against someone willing to kick down your door in a raid. Finally, this is why itinerant people were often scorned and made to camp away from the town itself.
in Small communities, everyone knows each others business. folks would know if you went next town over and came back with a bunch of stuff they had not seen you with before. in regards to food, the phrase "Don't shit where you eat" applies. there are only so many people in a small village, if food goes missing, they'll know who it was before too long. Why risk everyone knowing you're a theif and winding up in the stockade or worse in that scenario?
When I was a lad, I lived on a farm on the side of a major Federal highway in the US. Hundreds, if not thousands, of strangers from all over the country passed our house and farm buildings every day. We never locked our house or our outbuildings. We did however lock our gasoline (petrol to you, Lloyd) tank. The fuel was coloured, because we paid no tax on it, but an auto would run quite nicely on it. The temptation might have been too much for the travelers on the highway!
the thing i dislike about talking about ancient locks is that it overlooks the internal door locking mechanisms. you only need locks if you leave the place empty and UNATTENDED. For most family houses with extended family living together, someone was ALWAYS home to lock the door from inside so locks werent really that needed. Locks only became needed to close buildings like fortresses and temples so they wouldnt need to be constantly guarded.
150 is the estimate limit for close friends, people you actually know, what you may be looking for is the gossip range. gossip is a great tool to allow people to trust each other, but it also has a limit (which i don't recall). perhaps when this 'gossip limit' was crossed that the locks became necessary
I don't think the point about no stealing in smaller towns really flies. I mean I can see why a stolen spade could maybe look familiar to the owner but surely there us less obvious stuff people could steal? Coins, leather or food for example? Also people could steal stuff and go to another town and sell it right?
dalem04 true. But stealing consumables would indeed be possible. Especially in small amounts it'd not be easily noticed that someone suddenly has more than he used to. Of course if someone who used to have 10 coins yesterday today is buying a horse costing 200 it'd raise suspicion. But Lloyd is right that the larger the group, the more the need for locks, and other means to create a secure, private space. We didn't dream of locking the doors to our rooms in the 4 person apartment I rented room in as a student, there was no need to. My sister, living in a dorm complex with several hundred others, kept her door locked at all times and with good reason. They even had locks on the doors of the kitchen cabinets to prevent other floors from "borrowing" pots and pans.
Sander btw in those small towns you have the issue of everybody knowing evrybody, thus perhaps nobody would recognize that small insignificant thing you just stole, but if somebody saw you, your life in that town won't be that pleasant. and if I think that doing it without being seen isn't the most easy thing to (if the houses are close to each other), because many people do their work at home, especially children and women. (not as in mom and dad are of hunting and the children are at the cavemancare next town up)
Sander I'm not sure how much coins were used in the smaller villages on a daily basis. Also, if it's a small kind of village where everybody knows everybody else, I think the more natural thing to do would be to just ask for stuff that's needed, ask for favours in return for future favours. "Oh no, I'm all out of leather and my kids need new shoes! I know, I'll ask Paulie, see if he can lend me some now..." - in a small place, getting a reputation for being the guy who's always borrowing and never paying back would be pretty easy to get (and difficult to get rid of) - and it'd also be fairly difficult to thrive there with that kind of rep, I imagine.
Sander Keep in mind that there wasn't such a thing as mass production, and coins for peasants were very rare. Vast majority of people, for instance, made their own clothes. It is difficult for us to understand it, but they had very little "stuff". The life was hard, with very few conveniences. Incidentally in old villages in Europe, there are still places where idea of a lock is foreign. I've been to a farm that was pretty much same as it has been for centuries (That was in Poland), electricity was unknown, and outhouses was the end of Technology, with wells providing water. In this village nobody bothered to lock their doors. At the same time, using a wood fire stove, no heating, electricity, no toilets, or running water, would drive most people insane. So, personally, I take my locks :)
Last year I nicked a Mark IV Thingamybob from my Scottish cousin "Ooh" Jimmy Flip (he starts all sentences with "ooh" thus his nickname). And you were absolutely right: We recently had a family get together at my place, and everyone kept asking me "Isn't that..erm..'Ooh' Jimmy Flip's Thingamybob"?
One quick point: i lived in a small town of about 2000 growing up and many people.. most people.. didnt lock their doors. but they did have locks. :) so it may have been when a town reached larger than 2000 or, more likely in my opinion, had many people coming to the town from elsewhere to trade.
Realize also that a lock is a hindrance and not a barrier. Any kind of lock can be picked, though modern ones are pretty tricky. Locks that were common up to the industrial era could be picked in minutes if not moments by any trained person. So using locks doesn't entirely deter theft, merely restricts it to those desperate or skilled enough to get around them. A society that widely uses locks still largely depends on social mores and interactions to keep crime down.
Rural households had a nightly practice called "shuttering in." This was bolting doors and locking shutters. All this necessary to keep people from breaking in and stealing from them.
further to the "locks are a social construct" idea, may i recommend the lecture on Schuyler Towne's channel entitled "why do you lock your door" which talks about the history of the subject and the 4000 year old lock
The Odyssey describes the treasure room of Odysseus having a lock and key. Other than that, they just thought locks belonged on boxes not doors. They had a Suffolk latch with a leather thong instead of a thumbplate for doors which allowed you to secure them inside by pulling the leather thong in through the hole in the door. The translater makes the mistake of saying "bolt" where he should say "latch" which makes it hard to spot in the book unless you are really paying attention.
What about the option of having your offspring (the ones who survive infancy, offset by lack of contraception at the time) guard your territory, or someone always being present? Coupled with laws, a witness testimony would be discouraging to potential thieves. Social prosperity can also discourage thieves, as it's really too much work and a bit of a risk to steal. And most of the time, you don't want to kill when stealing, which even makes stay-at-home grandmothers statistically viable guards. While it looks like the Assyrians and Romans had locks, what about the earlier Greeks(/Minoans), and what about the native American civilisations, such as the Mayans? Indus Valley seems to have existed a couple thousand years prior to Assyrians?
A faction from a rival territory might undergo raiding their neighbor, so a lock might be a way to discourage them from thinking they could get away unnoticed, because while a lock can be bypassed, doing so usually makes a bit of noise. Guards, being human, are prone to human fallacies. However, locks were expensive, thus if you can afford a substantial lock back then, you probably had the influence to keep your guards loyal.
This Theory is cool n' stuff but what I really have been waiting for is your theory that explains how sharks swim efficiently without sinking, why they have flat undersides, and why they have asymmetrical tails. I mean its been awhile since you hinted at releasing it to the world and I think its high time you delivered.
An alternative to locks is to use a tabu instead, which seems something that our minds take to quite readily. Meaning tabus have an evolutionary purpose. So, you could see locks as a testimony of weaker social conditioning (I do believe more in Lindybeige "expanding society" explanation, just wanted to mention something more). Also, even in ironage comunities or even stoneage ones, there is always a benefit of stealing food. Which people will have done throughout the ages. Since starvation has been the most common cause of death.
As a security professional who's trained in locksmithing: Yeah, pretty much. Door and window hardware matters a lot more nowadays. Most locks are "padlocks on paper chains" when you think of how little actually secures the door jamb from forced entry.
7 ปีที่แล้ว
We have lock on our door to the basement even we are not afraid for thieves stealing some rusty tools and bags of sand, we have it locked to prevent the kids to play down there for it can be dangerous, so I think locks had same function back then, just to be able to lock places where you did not want folk poke around, I can see how the female of the house had the keys to prevent men from sneaking around in pantry in hunt for something extra, or to prevent the kids from opening a coffin just to play with the extra nice quilt and so on.
Locks may be "presence" extenders. If I have a lock, I can lock my stuff up here and then because I don't have to hang around stopping other people form stealing it, I can go somewhere else and do something else. I can use my time more efficiently and effectively be in two places.
I think the price of a lock was high enough that hiring guards or creating hidden stashes was more efficient for a long time. Shepherds guard the flock all day, and there is evidence all the way up to the 1800's of people burying valuables in the fireplace masonry for safe keeping.
What you had in large societies is large families with servants living under the same roof. And somebody always was inside. Door barred, latched and secured. And coming in and out was controlled from the inside.
Once you get large enough it is not even strangers, it is people you have never seen before. once your shop is to large to keep watch over people are going to take things that are not being looked over and just travel through your town
99% Invisible recently made an episode regarding locks that was quite interesting. Would definitely suggest listening to that episode as it also gives a take on "perfect security" which incidentally the episode is called.
You said that it would be rare for theft to happen because the world was so small in the iron age. Two points: traveling merchants have been around for a while. Also, lots of folks used money for a long time back. You might recognize an object as belonging to a specific person, but what about a coin?
Interesting. The idea of "trade", as we understand it, requires an exchange of goods between strangers, for the most part. Therefore, you have to keep those goods under some kind of control until the deal is completed. Either you have a lot of heavy buddies guarding your stuff, or you have a place you can keep it that potential customers can't get in to. There is the counter-argument that you might want to do repeat business, but I suspect casual thievery was invented first, then locks.
At the "If you discover a lock" part, I honestly thought you were going to, "But on the other hand it's a valuable people want to keep me from. Too bad I have a pick."
People used violence against one another to keep each other in line, as well as common courtesy. A lock is useless when someone can just push extra hard on your door to pull the hinge from its socket. Common sense also plays a role in keeping your stuff safe(e.g. don't leave it around).
I know this isn't really a course on philosophy nor would i watn to start a political argument about this question (that really seems miles away from the idea of this channel to me), but it still came up in my mind after watching this video: If the invention of the lock was crucial in preserving one's property, then at what point in time did the idea of property of individuals even emerge? Did neolithic hunter-gatherers care, which member of their tribe struck the killing blow to an animal to procure ownership of its meet or something like that? I'd like to guess, no, they might probably have shared everything they had at least within their own clantribe or whatever, so that eventually everyone would have enough to eat to survive the winter and so forth. Now to me that actually rises the question, when the idea of individual property actually came up first and whether or not big societys could've been build with out it, and if not, then why not? Is it because humans just have a kind of egocentrical view on life, so at some point (if they were not longer in danger of starving immediatly, probably after invention of Agriculture) they decided it be better to keep everything for themselves? Of course, in modern terms of economical systems this could translate to the question whether the lock wasn't just a tool to implement capitalism, and you could argue, that in a hunter-gatherer society the 'means of production', i.e. hunting and gathering, might be kind of shared within a tribe/clan or something, such that this system might be more akin to the idea, that was first formulated in the 19th century as communism. So all in all you could ask: When did the concept of individual property actually come up and could a hunter-gatherer 'primitive communism' society build large 'citys' or groups of people or whatever without the need of locks? I don't know if this goes beyond the scope of this channel (which at some point i'm sure it does), but maybe some interesting information on what archeology knows about prehistoric economys and how they evolved or something might be suitably. At least thats what I think, let me know what y'all think about that please. :) @Lindybeige PS: I love Lindy Hop! If you ever come to Germany, maybe we might run into each other at some social dance or so. :D
Been watching your videos for a while now Lindybeige, trying to make my roleplay in World of Warcraft a little bit more logical. Sadly I can't have two handed weapons hanging from my belt on WoW, it's forced to stay on my back but I guess it's alright for an mmo where the weapons are too huge to be practical. I also quite enjoy your little jokes on the end of the videos. This one was ace. Have you been planning on doing anything on pirates? Like the way the chain of command worked etc?
godofimagination So it is thought. The size of the part of our brains that tracks social connections, compared with those of other animals, would predict that number.
Besides that, we always know someone who knows someone. So if you don't know someone directly, you probably know someone who does. That, or the person you know, may know someone else who knows someone, of whom knows the person you actually want to know. Yes...I know..it can get confusing...
If you have some spare time you could look at English court roles of rural manors. It's small villages (500 or so people) and the court roles are sometimes filled with petty theft, really petty theft...
An interesting perspective... it makes me wonder what the longer term implications of technologies like Public-Key Encryption and Blockchains will have in the Digital World...
If you want proof of this, look at two large minecraft servers, one with PVP on and no way of safely storing valuables and one with a safe and secure way. The one that can form a thriving economy is always the one where private property is protected somehow.
"Locks as a freeing thing": The metaphor I'd employ is that the lock was a vital piece of *structure*, a crucial bone in the skeleton of a society-to-be.
Iroquois societies were made of villages that could get up to 2000 person in population. (In the case of the St-Lawrence Iroquois), and create confederacies (in the case of the confederacy of the six nations) of up to 10 000 people. But since they never developped the concept of private property, they never needed locks. They still expanded. Until the european came. With smallpox and firearms.
I wouldn't say laws are necessary, plenty of ancient societies exsisted without centralised authorities telling people what they can and can't do. however, there are certain "rules" if you lived in one of those societies such as, don't take my things and I won't... do this or that.
+Danel Lo Gris yeah, if people wanna do illegal shit, they usually are gonna do it anyways. They're can be other ways of creating order in society without, like you said, a centralized authority.
![⭐ฮิตในTikTok!! ( หมูเด้ง MooDeng ) Ver. แดนซ์โจ๊ะๆ ReMix BY [ ดีเจกิต รีมิกซ์ ]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/3krsyfWUeHU/mqdefault.jpg)
Would love to see a video about law enforcement in various older periods and locations
xxsinnirxx Local Lord gives Ugly Thugs weapons, armor and authority over peasants.
xxsinnirxx Man with weapon tells another man without weapon what to do, and thus, law was born!
***** Off to headsmans axe with ye matey
***** It's all about having the biggest stick.
Gingrnut And walking softly.
I guess you could say that locks were the *key* to larger societies...
The invention of locks shows that society had reached a level where people where able to keep a surplus of goods large enough to make thievery a career rather than a necessity.
PregnantOrc ...im not an expert but i see what you mean. interesting point
Geez, you're still pregnant 4 years later? How long till the baby comes?
Locks aren't particularly useful against career thieves in most cases.
@@EebstertheGreat Locks certainly keep a lot of people from becoming career thieves, seeing it would be too bothersome.
Thats a nice contribution, PregnantOrc.
There were not only things to steal, there is also food. And after eating it, nobody would say "hey, that looks like it once was my bread that got stolen yesterday"
And food is probably shared to everyone (maybe even eaten communally) in small scale societies anyway.
Barrister in court: I put it to you that you stole the bread, having done so, pinched a loaf.
My father always said that "A lock only stops an honest man" Always liked that phrase, funny thing is if you change the word lock to law, its still true.
***** When it comes to the law, there's only so dishonest an untrained man can be.
***** I guess it stops the stupid too though?
***** or he's robbing for his own survival?
Newsman4chon not dying? I gotta say... its probably the best excuse there is.
Newsman4chon I feel like that's like saying "its not morally right to kill animals so you can eat"
I think the lock is one of the most *human* of human inventions. Weapons are just an extension of teeth and claws etc, nothing that animals haven't done before.
A lock, however, is unique in that it transforms information into a physical barrier - very simply. It takes a pattern from the human brain, and directly transforms it into an impassable barrier in the physical world.
Hugely important invention, if not *the* most invention in human history (maybe apart from the wheel)
Interesting. Jays (corvids - a type of bird) bury nuts/seeds for later retrieval and consumption. Sometimes they will watch another jay bury its horde, wait until it has gone, then swoop down and steal it. Experiments have shown that if an individual jay has a history of stealing from other jays, it becomes more cautious about how it buries its own horde. If such a jay knows that it is being watched while burying its horde, it will return a few minutes later, dig it up and rebury it somewhere else. This seems to be evidence of the jay empathising - understanding what the other jay might be thinking - and changing its plans accordingly in order to ensure that its "treasure" is secure. In a way, this is similar to what you have described with people taking the idea and creating the barrier to protect their own property.
What about the structure of the pouch?
A lock isn't a barrier, it is the thing that removes the barrier by the only people who has the key. Barriers is nothing new; humans and animals builds different kind of walls, or as people pointed out, burying thing (the top soil is a barrier). Burying is also a different kind of hiding, a lock isn't hiding things; you know it's there, you can't just access it.
So I don't think any reply refuted your idea of a lock being the most *human* of human inventions. It's a thing that removes the barrier without needing a guard. No hiding being done.
@@Liggliluff I guess #TheVino3 meant that lock enables barrier which can be easily removed by owner, but not by anybody else. If I bury something I will have to use about the same amount of energy and time as anybody else to get it back, but unlocking chest or door or whatever is usually much easier and quicker than other ways of getting in.
So maybe personalized barrier would be more accurate description.
I vote the fridge as the most important invention. No longer was daily shopping needed, one was less likely to waste food or poison oneself.
To the argument 'Locks only stop an honest man':
Still a deterrant. It's like if you go to a lower-end part of town and seeing a small-time crook checking car doors to see if the owner forgot to lock them. Won't stop everybody, but it might stop quite a few more opportunistic ones.
And if you see someone fiddling with a lock you can be instantly suspicious.
Exactly - I used to know a guy who was a career criminal - did a LOT of B&Es. And most of which were "opportunistic" - he'd spot an open window, an unlocked door, etc. If someone is so determined to get into a place, that they'll get through any lock because they are set on getting past - then the chances are it's a premeditated assault on a location based on past information or interaction (like they had a tip-off about a stash of jewelry in a certain house, or they were getting revenge against a specific person, etc).
If you can do your best to eliminate easy opportunities for people to 'get one over you' - then you'll eliminate the vast majority of the risk of being robbed.
Make it so anyone who wants to break into your house, has to be super determined and take a great amount of effort to achieve such an end. Then you're pretty much safe against almost anyone other than someone who's specifically out to get you, no matter what.
Yea. After watching some Lockpicking Lawyer, you can see that any lock can be cracked. The better the lock, the more time and skill it takes. So that means more of a hassle for the burglar and a greater chance of being cought.
@@Katerspacedopwater Altho sometimes, with the right tools/skills, its faster than using the key. I personally had a VERY cheap lock on my locker when I was in college and sometimes I would just forced it open if my keys were in my backpack or something. You literally just had to pull on it hard enough and it would open lol, a child could do it. It wasnt much more effective than a "please don't open" sticker. Just saying it only really becomes a hassle if the lock has a minimum of quality XD
I figure this might be interesting to you, Lloyd, and some of your viewers. About a year ago I got to play with a leaf spring lock, bought by an antiques dealer friend of mine a long time ago in Morocco. She asked me if I could figure out the lock and how it opened, I did, and made her a guide for the future owner of the lock to use to open it if they liked. I took plenty of pictures to do this and figured I would share it with this little community. I'm sure some of you might find it neat. Have you seen many locks like this one Lloyd? I don't know a terrible amount about them myself. teawithmuses.tumblr.com/post/117926414299/leaf-spring-lock
Scroll's Adventures The pictures are so small that I cannot make out the words or the details. Might you do a bigger version?
Lindybeige I was afraid of that. Sometimes this site attempts to be "convenient", and resize the images for easy viewing.
These links might work better.
41.media.tumblr.com/a1f0b65f23ee23919843f31b9d709a1f/tumblr_nnpvaqvMIb1rhbl08o1_r1_1280.jpg
40.media.tumblr.com/d8fd7c5cffa0e03f0e46b8a9c538d809/tumblr_nnpvaqvMIb1rhbl08o2_r1_1280.jpg
Scroll's Adventures That's a really neat lock! I own a lock that works in the same way, but it's basically only the last unlocking step of yours; 3 pieces total including the key. I'm fascinated how there are multiple extra locks that locked around the other locks in that way; very unique and definitely something I've never seen before, thank you so much for sharing!
Scroll's Adventures eww, tumblr.
Scroll's Adventures Lloyd's got 100,000 subs dude. It ain't a small community.
I'm not an anti-social hermit or something, but there is something about the endless stream of strangers that one comes across pretty much anywhere in civilization which kind of freaks me out. To me the idea of living in a village of 100-200 people with the occasional trips elsewhere/visitors seems much more comfortable and natural.
Calgach V. Yeah, but it's scary in its own way. In this modern society you can do whatever you want, as long as you have money. In a small community, you are overwhelmed by custom and folklore, to the point that you are just another cog in the machine. Your neighbours would control your life: who comes to your house, at what time do you come and go, etc. In a religious town you' be condemned to "be like them" or be an outcast. Don't get me wrong I like the idea of small communities, but boy, some towns would make you go crazy.
Btw the fact that you'd rather lived like that, would not make you anti-social, quite the opposite. It means you are willing to engage in close relationships with 200 people, smell their feet and all that.
Pau Nuns I agree. I live in a city in Europe, but I've spent some time in a small village in Africa which where most people would only ever come into contact with each other. Mind you, they were all really nice and welcoming to me (being an outsider an all), but it was a very new cultural experience: The lack of outside influence made them close-knit, but the gossiping and social control and endless ways in which you always had to watch your step (even at home) or find yourself on the receiving end of social judgement was the thing of old-fashioned literature (that I didn't really understand prior to that experience) and did not seem appealing to me at all.
***** Well yes, but still...you would know all your neighbors, and they'd know you. If you beat your children or get horribly drunk at the local bar, people will know...And since you will meet these people almost daily, you have to be very careful about your privacy, which could lead to hermetic, isolated families. There's this play called The House of Bernarda Alba, it deals with some of this stuff and I'd sincerely reccomend it.
***** Oh I wasn't making a case against little towns, and you're right about politeness, my only experience is a couple of months every year for about 3 years, I got a little taste, people would just walk past my door, say hello and start a conversation, which I found so weird (they were far relatives) This was possible because doors remained unlocked of course. To me it felt like time slowed down, it's another pace.
Calgach V.
I grew up on grandmas farm some kilometres outside of my home village of 300 or so
To me, this place i am living in now was the big city where you could get anything
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kalix
When i am old now i see that cities are the root of all evil
When large armies were mobilized to fight in foreign territory, how were they all fed? If you had to march your troops some distance or sail them over an ocean (the English channel maybe), how would you feed them en route and how would you feed them when you arrived at your destination? Was food constantly shipped from home? Would they try to forage for food in the local area? What about water?
I went to a special Viking exhibit in Chicago recently, and - this, I suppose, is only somewhat relevant - it said one of the best ways to gauge how wealthy and influential a Viking noblewoman was was to count how many keys she had been buried with. The greater the number of keys she had, the more she and her husband owned and had to protect with locks.
There once was a quite thoughtful crook
(If it wasn't locked up, he partook)
But despite the poached wealth
He felt bad 'bout himself
'Cause it was freedom he actually took
Just sitting here, watching your videos. Love them. They're fantastic. Just such a pleasure.
next do "Locke" and the bigger society?
Excellent. Only found you about a month ago and have watched many of your videos, you're already in my top five subs, keep up the good work and thanks for entertaining me for hours, I even watch your dancing videos.
Just as a side note, the town I grew up in had just about no locks. I never once remember my house ever being locked. I don't ever remember a friends house that was locked or any family members. I never encountered a locked car. I can always remember seeing the keys in the ignition in every car I had ever been in, and when we got to the place...they stayed in the ignition. I imagine the town bank was locked, as well as a few business. But never our church. It was open 24/7/365. And this is a small town in rural Indiana from 1970 to 1978. Not all that long ago. Now, I won't leave my car unlocked if I run into a 7/11 and I can see it the entire time or leave my apartment unlocked when I run down to the mailboxes. Strange.
+Six String Löve my parents have told me stories about growing up in Glasgow, Scotland (a major industrial city) in the 60s where nobody locked their doors because everybodys neighbours looked out for each other... plus nobody really had anything worth stealing anyway haha! its a shame that so much has changed
You could look at it another way and say things have improved because now everybody has things worth stealing.
how big of a town was it? like, how many people lived there?
It had a population of just over 1,000,000 people which was about a fifth of the population of the entire country
There may have been another reason, albeit at a later time, to sue locks: standardization in making the goods.
If my knife is made of flint it is unique, probably quite distinctive. If I buy (or barter) a brass or iron knife from the local blacksmith, chances are that he makes them quite similar to one another, so it would be more difficult for the legal owner to spot his stolen one.
When they found Otzi thawing in the Alps, and found all his stuff plus that he'd been shot and died from it, it was a bit of a mystery why his valuables were still with him. I thought, his stuff is uniquely his, and anyone found with any of it would immediately be asked why they had it. Small population. I think he had badly offended some people and they were after him for it.
One of my Dad's friends worked for a company that made locks. He told me something when I was a kid that I thought was brilliant. "Locks are made to keep honest people honest". Which is very true. Someone who is determined to be dishonest will always find a way to do dishonest things.
But Lindy, you are so silly. Locks had nothing to do with cities. Locks were invented because having a latch or a bolt in a chastity belt just doesn't work.
LOL! I LOVE this comment.
opmdevil Just get a guard dog.. do I have to think of everything?
Lilliath
Well, that gives new meaning to "lap dog".
What about a ferret?
ExBruinsFan
I don't have a dick, but I imagine ferrets would be among the last things I'd put it near.
Lilliath What about a cat?
I'm sure you've heard the saying, "a lock only keeps out a honest man."
Locks won't stop a good thief. All you can hope for is to slow him, or her (must give the ladies equal billing) down. Most don't want to hear this but 90% of residential doors open with on swift solid kick.
Once had a copper advise me to leave $20, a pack of smokes and a six pack of beer by the back door. He reasoned most of the B&Es occured between 3 to 6. When the teenagers are out of school and working folks are gazing at the clock at work.
Said teenagers are looking to find cash for drugs, smokes or booze. Often if there's nothing there that forwards their agenda, they'll trash your home.
He figured if a kid kicked in your door everything he might want is right there, they'll be on their delinquent way sparing your prized possessions that hold no value for them, say a big ole grandfather clock.
The best thing you have going for you is their lack of brainpower.
Knew a guy in highschool. He'd been absent a while so I asked where he'd been.
Locked up after a B&E.
How'd they catch you?
They matched the glass in my shoes to the broken window.
Several months go by and again, he disappeares.
Where were you?
Locked up. Did a B&E.
How'd they get you?
They matched the glass in shoes........
Need I say more?
I could share a great number of similar tales that I heard after I got caught with glass in my shoes. Just kidding. I was at, as the British say, Her Majesties pleasure for something different. I did hear some many funny stories of capers gone very wrong. I could scribe a small book with all the material I heard.
Thanks again for sharing your knowledge. You'd make a brilliant teacher.
Another factor would be whether or not there are people in the house at all times. With large families who do not travel, there is no need for a main door lock that can be locked from outside, so a latch is sufficient. Shops which are not residences would also require a mechanism to lock it from the outside.
Whole family is over.
Creeping down Hallway, headphones in.
Clicks on video.
Finds out hard way that headphones are unplugged and volume is all the way up.
Even without large cities and/or communities, there's quite a few uses for locks.
1) to keep slaves/prisoners from running away
2) to keep other raiders from nicking your stuff while your campaigning far from home (strongbox)
That's why the Vikings were quite adept at making locks. They didn't live in very large communities but they sure as hell didn't trust their neighbours.
Speaking of things we take for granted: What of cloaks? Why did they go out of fashion? My first thought is that cloaks are not very practical for automobiles, but while that's true, cloaks were on their way out at least a century before the invention of the automobile. Sewing technology, perhaps? Or maybe a more widespread mercantile industry?
Invention of the umbrella?
***** before automobiles, carriages were widespread (though not as widespread as cars are now).
What makes a cloak cumbersome in a car makes it cumbersome in a carriage as well.
ExBruinsFan Who'd want an umbrella when you could have a bad-ass cloak?
Did you ever wear A cloak? They arent Really Comfortable
***** I would guess sewing tech, fashion and the changing needs of civilisation. The older styles of cloak were pretty unstructured garments that could be easily re-purposed as needed to blankets and whatever else you could use them for. Later on they acquired sewn in shoulders, collars, clasps, chains, buttons etc, which limited their applications, mainly because the people using them only needed them for a warm garment and not too much else, since they mostly lived in towns and cities (farmers might still use the other styles).
Later they acquired arm holes. In the 18th century the riding garrick was a popular style of coat which is a good representation of the final transition of a cloak into a coat- it's big and wide and multiple cape-like collars.
Structured cloaks hung around as a decorative anachronistic dress item of clothing all the way until about the 1930s. There were still practical versions on them in use in the military in the 19th century all the way to the Vietnam war in the form of rain and cold weather protection.
Those bits of wisdom at the end get me every time
I'm glad to see you getting more and more subscribers.
Like so many others I came to know your videos by your most popular, the one about the katana, but I have stayed for the brilliant wit and writing.
But please please please upload more.
And never stop.
Ps what is your occupation?
Depending on what material the lock/key is made out of it can be rather expensive. If you think of the middle ages for example, when wealthy persons wore big, ornamental keys on their belts to show off just how good they are doing. So... key and lock, especially in the early days of bigger societies, must have cost a fortune themselves, therefore whatever they were used to protect must have been very very valuable. Richer people who, of course, settled in bigger cities, possessed those, mostly made of iron. However, you do find some made of wood, dating back to times even before bronze age. I conclude that the making of big sturdy iron locks and keys started with the founding of the first bigger societies as a necessity to prevent theft and robbery.
Just wanted to throw this in. Sorry for my english, hope it's understandable.
And Lindy, this channel is awesome, keep it up.
At that time, key fraud was a major issue in elite society. People would wear phoney keys to boost their status.
I'd never thought about that. Once again a lovely video that makes me go "Nifty!".
I can think of a city without locks where wealth is guarded by shifts of trusted armed guards all the time. Very possible. And indeed there's plenty of examples of cities without locks. Other people have already pointed out examples in previous comments. Mesoamericans didn't have locks, but had big cities.
+Federico Spadone Locks are so necessary to cities as automatic firing is for napoleon's army.
Tenochtitlan and Teotihuacan had a populations of 200k people, and no locking system.
jaocheu None at all? Interesting point. They also had fantastically brutal regimes and the death penalty for almost every transgression. I wonder if that's a coincidence.
That's true they say of regimes like North Korea you can drop your wallet in the main square in the morning and come back and pick it up at night untouched, people being in such fear it was placed there as bait by the secret police. However houses in proto-cities like seem to have had no locks too, so at the very development stage of cities locks were not playing a role. I have never heard of aver age houses in ancient Mesopotamian cities having locks either. Perhaps another thing to remember in lot of ancient cities, and even in India till recent times (I saw some myself), the really poor hovels where you would imagine crime was rife, had makeshift doors or even just curtains pulled across entrances.
jaocheu Yes I think this video is not true. The main form of security is the eyes of family, housemates, and neighbors there is usually someone around and a bounty for catching a thief. Even in a large city filled with strangers the neighboring residents in your street should be known to you and look out for each other, until the invention of TV then neighbors became strangers too.
jaocheu I think you're thinking of locks in a different way. Back in these days you would probably not have locks on your front door, even though we see it as a given today. Think more like chests for example.
Also consider that metal was more valuable and rare back then, many locks were probably made out of wood. There are even records of pin tumbler style locks in ancient Egypt entirely made of wood.
So my guess is that a lot of these locks just rotted and withered away.
*Edit: "lack of evidence is not evidence of lack"
jaocheu They also had no metal :)
"Locks and fences keep good men honest."
A small physical barrier, and the potential of evidence, is often enough to dissuade the snooping, or outright opportunist urges we all feel. They don't stop criminals, but it's enough of a reminder and a hindrance to make most people say: "Oh right, I shouldn't go after that."
Also the criminal cannot say "it was just laying there, doing nothing" to defend his actions. And if there is world of locked and unlocked doors with more or less same valuable items behind, I guess most thiefs would go with unlocked door.
And I was hoping you will show some ancient examples of lock, for example sumerian archetypes. What a shame judging from the thumbnail.
Now I want every Brit to rewatch this video and replace the word lock with firearm.
Before locks, people had guards. If you had enough wealth (in items or currency) such that it is worth locking it away, then you keep a record of it, take inventory, and hire a guard to ensure that said inventory never shrinks. Hell... this is exactly how modern shopping markets work. You aren't stopped from stealing because of locks. You are stopped because there are people ensuring you don't steal the goods.
Further, the local population acts as a defacto guard. Your neighbors know your place. They also know who is regularly allowed in your place (yourself, your family, friends, etc). The "eyes on the street" concept of neighbors watching out for eachother ensures that if a stranger were to enter your place, they would most likely be noticed right off and stopped.
Locks help, yes. But they only help in situations where the relatively poor (unable to hire a guard) live in places without close neighbors (rural situations or places where you don't know your neighbors). Other than that, they are in reality just a form of psychological deterrence.
That was when only a few people owned anything worth stealing.
My mother, born 1950, lived most of her childhood through young adult life never locking her doors. She lived in places which were rural and/or neighborhoods where people watched out for each other. She was neither poor, nor was she rich.
"Small Town America" is famous for not locking their doors. It is a situation where the population knows each other and watches out for each other.
Locks are a foreign concept to my friend who lives in the boonies of the Carolinas. Who would steal anything from me? What would they steal?
In metropolis situations, the anonymity of daily life and the shear "noise" of activity make for easy theft, however. This is when and where guards or barriers are required to secure belongings.
I was born in the very early 60s and I live in a small town where we don't have to lock our doors either. One of the reasons we have a low crime rate in my sleepy little town is that everytone knows everyone and nothing can remain a secret for long. SOMEONE is going to brag or get mad and squeel or say something just a bit to loud and the perpetrators get caught. Mind you, that doesn't stop the random 'suicide' where you shoot yourself in the chest 3 times; or at least that's what the family claims so that the favorite cousin doesn't go to jail for murder.
I think the small town example is kind of bad because while you probably can't get away with nicking your neighbor's favorite shirt, if you steal something immediately consumable like food then you'll be fine as long as no-one sees you. There's also nothing stopping you from raiding the other town five miles down the road, so locks would still be of use to small communities concerned about raids from nearby settlements, looting by armies passing through or theft by itinerant people like Gypsies who don't have to hang around and suffer the social consequences of stealing.
First, if someone in a small town makes a habit of stealing food you can bet people would find out about it eventually. Second, a lock would be of no use against someone willing to kick down your door in a raid. Finally, this is why itinerant people were often scorned and made to camp away from the town itself.
in Small communities, everyone knows each others business. folks would know if you went next town over and came back with a bunch of stuff they had not seen you with before.
in regards to food, the phrase "Don't shit where you eat" applies. there are only so many people in a small village, if food goes missing, they'll know who it was before too long. Why risk everyone knowing you're a theif and winding up in the stockade or worse in that scenario?
The best lock to secure your property? The flintlock. ;-)
When I was a lad, I lived on a farm on the side of a major Federal highway in the US. Hundreds, if not thousands, of strangers from all over the country passed our house and farm buildings every day. We never locked our house or our outbuildings. We did however lock our gasoline (petrol to you, Lloyd) tank. The fuel was coloured, because we paid no tax on it, but an auto would run quite nicely on it. The temptation might have been too much for the travelers on the highway!
my new favorite youtuber
A very down to earth illustration of the severe limitations of communal living and the broad societal benefits of secure private property.
the thing i dislike about talking about ancient locks is that it overlooks the internal door locking mechanisms. you only need locks if you leave the place empty and UNATTENDED. For most family houses with extended family living together, someone was ALWAYS home to lock the door from inside so locks werent really that needed.
Locks only became needed to close buildings like fortresses and temples so they wouldnt need to be constantly guarded.
Oh, wow, the ending panel is comedy gold!
I LOVE IT when you talk about Iron age and Medieval laws!
Like the "Its not a Sword, its a _knife_" episode! That was GREAT!
MORE LAWS!
Love these videos about day to day life in the olden times.
150 is the estimate limit for close friends, people you actually know, what you may be looking for is the gossip range.
gossip is a great tool to allow people to trust each other, but it also has a limit (which i don't recall).
perhaps when this 'gossip limit' was crossed that the locks became necessary
I don't think the point about no stealing in smaller towns really flies. I mean I can see why a stolen spade could maybe look familiar to the owner but surely there us less obvious stuff people could steal? Coins, leather or food for example? Also people could steal stuff and go to another town and sell it right?
Sander Most people didn't really travel all that much. It was difficult, time consuming and most of all, quite dangerous.
dalem04 true. But stealing consumables would indeed be possible. Especially in small amounts it'd not be easily noticed that someone suddenly has more than he used to.
Of course if someone who used to have 10 coins yesterday today is buying a horse costing 200 it'd raise suspicion.
But Lloyd is right that the larger the group, the more the need for locks, and other means to create a secure, private space.
We didn't dream of locking the doors to our rooms in the 4 person apartment I rented room in as a student, there was no need to.
My sister, living in a dorm complex with several hundred others, kept her door locked at all times and with good reason.
They even had locks on the doors of the kitchen cabinets to prevent other floors from "borrowing" pots and pans.
Sander btw in those small towns you have the issue of everybody knowing evrybody, thus perhaps nobody would recognize that small insignificant thing you just stole, but if somebody saw you, your life in that town won't be that pleasant. and if I think that doing it without being seen isn't the most easy thing to (if the houses are close to each other), because many people do their work at home, especially children and women. (not as in mom and dad are of hunting and the children are at the cavemancare next town up)
Sander I'm not sure how much coins were used in the smaller villages on a daily basis. Also, if it's a small kind of village where everybody knows everybody else, I think the more natural thing to do would be to just ask for stuff that's needed, ask for favours in return for future favours. "Oh no, I'm all out of leather and my kids need new shoes! I know, I'll ask Paulie, see if he can lend me some now..." - in a small place, getting a reputation for being the guy who's always borrowing and never paying back would be pretty easy to get (and difficult to get rid of) - and it'd also be fairly difficult to thrive there with that kind of rep, I imagine.
Sander Keep in mind that there wasn't such a thing as mass production, and coins for peasants were very rare. Vast majority of people, for instance, made their own clothes.
It is difficult for us to understand it, but they had very little "stuff". The life was hard, with very few conveniences.
Incidentally in old villages in Europe, there are still places where idea of a lock is foreign. I've been to a farm that was pretty much same as it has been for centuries (That was in Poland), electricity was unknown, and outhouses was the end of Technology, with wells providing water. In this village nobody bothered to lock their doors. At the same time, using a wood fire stove, no heating, electricity, no toilets, or running water, would drive most people insane. So, personally, I take my locks :)
Did anyone else get a GoogleAd for a lock pick set? No? Just me then...
Cel Works yes
Last year I nicked a Mark IV Thingamybob from my Scottish cousin "Ooh" Jimmy Flip (he starts all sentences with "ooh" thus his nickname). And you were absolutely right: We recently had a family get together at my place, and everyone kept asking me "Isn't that..erm..'Ooh' Jimmy Flip's Thingamybob"?
One quick point: i lived in a small town of about 2000 growing up and many people.. most people.. didnt lock their doors. but they did have locks. :) so it may have been when a town reached larger than 2000 or, more likely in my opinion, had many people coming to the town from elsewhere to trade.
lindybeige lives in a society
not really because you could trust someone who trusts someone who trusts someone ect.
Realize also that a lock is a hindrance and not a barrier. Any kind of lock can be picked, though modern ones are pretty tricky. Locks that were common up to the industrial era could be picked in minutes if not moments by any trained person. So using locks doesn't entirely deter theft, merely restricts it to those desperate or skilled enough to get around them. A society that widely uses locks still largely depends on social mores and interactions to keep crime down.
"In a similar manner, the domestication of the parrot made piracy possible" - hahaha
Schuyler Towne has a great video about the emergence of the lock (and tamper evident seals before them) for anyone interested in this subject.
I agree. Trust is a major aspect of society and economics, and locks help you trusting people without actually trusting them.
Rural households had a nightly practice called "shuttering in." This was bolting doors and locking shutters. All this necessary to keep people from breaking in and stealing from them.
You make a good point here. It's the same reason contract law facilitates wider economic activity.
further to the "locks are a social construct" idea, may i recommend the lecture on Schuyler Towne's channel entitled "why do you lock your door" which talks about the history of the subject and the 4000 year old lock
The Odyssey describes the treasure room of Odysseus having a lock and key.
Other than that, they just thought locks belonged on boxes not doors.
They had a Suffolk latch with a leather thong instead of a thumbplate for doors which allowed you to secure them inside by pulling the leather thong in through the hole in the door.
The translater makes the mistake of saying "bolt" where he should say "latch" which makes it hard to spot in the book unless you are really paying attention.
What about the option of having your offspring (the ones who survive infancy, offset by lack of contraception at the time) guard your territory, or someone always being present? Coupled with laws, a witness testimony would be discouraging to potential thieves. Social prosperity can also discourage thieves, as it's really too much work and a bit of a risk to steal. And most of the time, you don't want to kill when stealing, which even makes stay-at-home grandmothers statistically viable guards.
While it looks like the Assyrians and Romans had locks, what about the earlier Greeks(/Minoans), and what about the native American civilisations, such as the Mayans? Indus Valley seems to have existed a couple thousand years prior to Assyrians?
Fantastic video and very interesting.
A faction from a rival territory might undergo raiding their neighbor, so a lock might be a way to discourage them from thinking they could get away unnoticed, because while a lock can be bypassed, doing so usually makes a bit of noise. Guards, being human, are prone to human fallacies. However, locks were expensive, thus if you can afford a substantial lock back then, you probably had the influence to keep your guards loyal.
This Theory is cool n' stuff but what I really have been waiting for is your theory that explains how sharks swim efficiently without sinking, why they have flat undersides, and why they have asymmetrical tails. I mean its been awhile since you hinted at releasing it to the world and I think its high time you delivered.
Lindy beige is my favourite of all the beiges.
An alternative to locks is to use a tabu instead, which seems something that our minds take to quite readily. Meaning tabus have an evolutionary purpose. So, you could see locks as a testimony of weaker social conditioning (I do believe more in Lindybeige "expanding society" explanation, just wanted to mention something more).
Also, even in ironage comunities or even stoneage ones, there is always a benefit of stealing food. Which people will have done throughout the ages. Since starvation has been the most common cause of death.
"Locks only stop honest people" a quote from a locksmith friend.
As a security professional who's trained in locksmithing:
Yeah, pretty much. Door and window hardware matters a lot more nowadays. Most locks are "padlocks on paper chains" when you think of how little actually secures the door jamb from forced entry.
We have lock on our door to the basement even we are not afraid for thieves stealing some rusty tools and bags of sand, we have it locked to prevent the kids to play down there for it can be dangerous, so I think locks had same function back then, just to be able to lock places where you did not want folk poke around, I can see how the female of the house had the keys to prevent men from sneaking around in pantry in hunt for something extra, or to prevent the kids from opening a coffin just to play with the extra nice quilt and so on.
That's why my friends list never exceeds 150.
Locks may be "presence" extenders. If I have a lock, I can lock my stuff up here and then because I don't have to hang around stopping other people form stealing it, I can go somewhere else and do something else. I can use my time more efficiently and effectively be in two places.
the invention of the lock shows that humans finally started making stuff worth stealing XD
When I first saw the video title I thought it was gonna be about hair and I kind of want that now.
I think the price of a lock was high enough that hiring guards or creating hidden stashes was more efficient for a long time. Shepherds guard the flock all day, and there is evidence all the way up to the 1800's of people burying valuables in the fireplace masonry for safe keeping.
Totally agree! **I always thought locks and their functionally equivalent are the a key feature to private property and stratified society.**
In some (tribal) societies, the idea of private property doesn't (or didn't) exist. Anyone can (or could) borrow almost anything from anyone else.
What you had in large societies is large families with servants living under the same roof. And somebody always was inside. Door barred, latched and secured. And coming in and out was controlled from the inside.
Once you get large enough it is not even strangers, it is people you have never seen before. once your shop is to large to keep watch over people are going to take things that are not being looked over and just travel through your town
I love this youtube channel :D
99% Invisible recently made an episode regarding locks that was quite interesting. Would definitely suggest listening to that episode as it also gives a take on "perfect security" which incidentally the episode is called.
You said that it would be rare for theft to happen because the world was so small in the iron age. Two points: traveling merchants have been around for a while. Also, lots of folks used money for a long time back. You might recognize an object as belonging to a specific person, but what about a coin?
Very interesting video.
Interesting.
The idea of "trade", as we understand it, requires an exchange of goods between strangers, for the most part. Therefore, you have to keep those goods under some kind of control until the deal is completed. Either you have a lot of heavy buddies guarding your stuff, or you have a place you can keep it that potential customers can't get in to.
There is the counter-argument that you might want to do repeat business, but I suspect casual thievery was invented first, then locks.
At the "If you discover a lock" part, I honestly thought you were going to, "But on the other hand it's a valuable people want to keep me from. Too bad I have a pick."
People used violence against one another to keep each other in line, as well as common courtesy.
A lock is useless when someone can just push extra hard on your door to pull the hinge from its socket.
Common sense also plays a role in keeping your stuff safe(e.g. don't leave it around).
I know this isn't really a course on philosophy nor would i watn to start a political argument about this question (that really seems miles away from the idea of this channel to me), but it still came up in my mind after watching this video: If the invention of the lock was crucial in preserving one's property, then at what point in time did the idea of property of individuals even emerge? Did neolithic hunter-gatherers care, which member of their tribe struck the killing blow to an animal to procure ownership of its meet or something like that? I'd like to guess, no, they might probably have shared everything they had at least within their own clantribe or whatever, so that eventually everyone would have enough to eat to survive the winter and so forth.
Now to me that actually rises the question, when the idea of individual property actually came up first and whether or not big societys could've been build with out it, and if not, then why not? Is it because humans just have a kind of egocentrical view on life, so at some point (if they were not longer in danger of starving immediatly, probably after invention of Agriculture) they decided it be better to keep everything for themselves?
Of course, in modern terms of economical systems this could translate to the question whether the lock wasn't just a tool to implement capitalism, and you could argue, that in a hunter-gatherer society the 'means of production', i.e. hunting and gathering, might be kind of shared within a tribe/clan or something, such that this system might be more akin to the idea, that was first formulated in the 19th century as communism.
So all in all you could ask: When did the concept of individual property actually come up and could a hunter-gatherer 'primitive communism' society build large 'citys' or groups of people or whatever without the need of locks? I don't know if this goes beyond the scope of this channel (which at some point i'm sure it does), but maybe some interesting information on what archeology knows about prehistoric economys and how they evolved or something might be suitably. At least thats what I think, let me know what y'all think about that please. :)
@Lindybeige
PS: I love Lindy Hop! If you ever come to Germany, maybe we might run into each other at some social dance or so. :D
Great contrast, explored.
I knew those damn Parrots were trouble!
Been watching your videos for a while now Lindybeige, trying to make my roleplay in World of Warcraft a little bit more logical. Sadly I can't have two handed weapons hanging from my belt on WoW, it's forced to stay on my back but I guess it's alright for an mmo where the weapons are too huge to be practical. I also quite enjoy your little jokes on the end of the videos. This one was ace. Have you been planning on doing anything on pirates? Like the way the chain of command worked etc?
Does the 150 person limit have anything to with the fact that we were built for the stone age, and were never prepared by evolution to build cities?
godofimagination So it is thought. The size of the part of our brains that tracks social connections, compared with those of other animals, would predict that number.
Besides that, we always know someone who knows someone. So if you don't know someone directly, you probably know someone who does.
That, or the person you know, may know someone else who knows someone, of whom knows the person you actually want to know.
Yes...I know..it can get confusing...
High value, portable, commodities, such as coins and jewels, seem important too.
If you have some spare time you could look at English court roles of rural manors. It's small villages (500 or so people) and the court roles are sometimes filled with petty theft, really petty theft...
Locks keep honest people honest. I agree with your concussion.
OH YOU BROUGHT UP THE MONKEY SPHERE!
An interesting perspective... it makes me wonder what the longer term implications of technologies like Public-Key Encryption and Blockchains will have in the Digital World...
My parrot is misbehaving and not letting me download the latest movies from piratebay.
If you want proof of this, look at two large minecraft servers, one with PVP on and no way of safely storing valuables and one with a safe and secure way. The one that can form a thriving economy is always the one where private property is protected somehow.
"Locks as a freeing thing": The metaphor I'd employ is that the lock was a vital piece of *structure*, a crucial bone in the skeleton of a society-to-be.
I love your vids theyr great
Iroquois societies were made of villages that could get up to 2000 person in population. (In the case of the St-Lawrence Iroquois), and create confederacies (in the case of the confederacy of the six nations) of up to 10 000 people.
But since they never developped the concept of private property, they never needed locks. They still expanded. Until the european came. With smallpox and firearms.
I couldn't lock my thing up, it likes to meet new people.
The same can be said for the Internet and virus protection.
I wouldn't say laws are necessary, plenty of ancient societies exsisted without centralised authorities telling people what they can and can't do. however, there are certain "rules" if you lived in one of those societies such as, don't take my things and I won't... do this or that.
I literally only came to the comment section of this video to see if someone would call him out on his "we need laws" claim. Thank you.
Brady Mercer
that's right, when have laws ever stopped people from doing what they want?
+Danel Lo Gris yeah, if people wanna do illegal shit, they usually are gonna do it anyways. They're can be other ways of creating order in society without, like you said, a centralized authority.
:P good luck trying to explain that to people.
+Danel Lo Gris I'm so confused about your stance on this lol