I suppose it would be mostly practical skills, cooking, fixing things. Usually had to be done by people themselves.

Maybe also mental things like navigating (with or without paper map) and remembering their daily and weekly agendas.

What other things would be a big difference with the people today?

  • Tyrq@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
    14·
    13 hours ago

    Definitely more than 50 years ago, but this little piece of Americana is interesting

    Families often had small nail-manufacturing setups in their homes; during bad weather and at night, the entire family might work at making nails for their own use and for barter. Thomas Jefferson wrote in a letter: “In our private pursuits it is a great advantage that every honest employment is deemed honorable. I am myself a nail maker.”

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nail_(fastener)#History/

    • CannedYeet@lemmy.world
      3·
      3 hours ago

      I like the preceding lines

      Nails were expensive and difficult to obtain in the American colonies, so that abandoned houses were sometimes deliberately burned down to allow recovery of used nails from the ashes. This became such a problem in Virginia that a law was created to stop people from burning their houses when they moved.

      • Tyrq@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
        2·
        6 hours ago

        Ah ha, that one I did not know. I guess slavery is also Americana, though a whole lot less quaint than the thought of industrious households making their own nails