Atlas Obscura on Slate is a blog about the world’s hidden wonders. Like us on Facebook or follow us on Twitter. The dream of the common person’s utopia was more than a little bit different during ...

Medieval peasants had far more vacation days than the average American today. The peasant, although often toiling in fields with back-breaking labor, would only work about 150 days of the year, ...

Rodney Hilton, 85, a British historian who wrote influential works on the rise of capitalism and medieval peasant revolts, died June 7 at his home in Birmingham, England. The cause of death was not ...

Medieval peasants mainly ate stews of meat and vegetables, along with dairy products such as cheese, according to a study of old cooking pots. Researchers analysed food residues from the remains of ...

I just got out of a hot shower, and am sipping a cup of hot chocolate while I listen to music on my iPhone in my heated apartment, while I write this article on a computer that allows me instant ...

Scientists from the University of Bristol have uncovered, for the first time, definitive evidence that determines what types of food medieval peasants ate and how they managed their animals. Using ...

Growing inequality has become one of the major political and economic concerns in the world as well as in America. The growing disparity of wealth today has many parallels with the unequal societies ...

If your lil' business has a lot of tired workers, there could be a good reason. A Stanford University professor says Americans are working longer hours than medieval peasants. "The amount of time we ...

This is an archived article and the information in the article may be outdated. Please look at the time stamp on the story to see when it was last updated. There aren’t many reasons to envy the life ...