At some point in your life, you may have become frustrated with modern day life.

在生活中的某個時刻，你可能曾對現代生活感到沮喪。

The awful music, long work hours.

難聽的音樂、漫長的工時。

You complain that everyone's living through social media, rather than actually living.

你抱怨人類都是透過社交媒體生活，而沒有真正在過日子。

You may even foolishly believe that life in the past was superior and that you were born at the wrong time.

你甚至還可能愚蠢地認為過去的生活比較優越，而你生錯時代了。

You may think that life was simpler back then, less hectic and stressful, perhaps.

你也許認為過往的生活更為單純，較不忙碌也比較沒壓力。

But in reality, how good, or bad, was pre-industrial life?

但實際上，工業化前的生活有多好還是多壞呢？

Before we had machinery and modern medicine, if we go back to the Middle Ages or even all the way back to the Roman Empire, was life ever any better than it is right now?

在擁有機械和現代醫學之前，如果我們回到中世紀，甚至一路回到羅馬帝國，當時的生活是否比現在更好？

Let's take a dirty detour and flirt with the filthy past to discover what it was really like to live in the time of the history books.

讓我們繞行一條骯髒的路，和汙穢的過去調情，探討活在歷史書籍形容的時代裡，究竟會是什麼樣子。

So, why a dirty detour into the past?

那麼，我們為什麼會說繞行一條過去的、骯髒的路呢？

Because ladies and gentlemen, the past was disgusting; utterly, down-right filthy.

各位觀眾，因為過去令人作嘔、十足地汙穢。

Cities were also disease-ridden.

城市也充滿了疾病。

The bigger the city, the filthier it was.

城市越大就越骯髒。

Humans are pretty disgusting like that.

人類有時就是這麼噁心。

The biggest contributor to this problem was obviously the sewers, or lack of.

造成此問題的罪魁禍首顯然是下水道，或者該說下水道的缺乏。

Until the last 300 or so years, most cities around the world relied on sewerage systems no more advanced than throwing your waste of the window and hoping it doesn't land on your wife's head.

直到三百年前左右，世界上多數城市才開始依賴污水處理系統，它的先進程度，就好比把排泄物出窗外，並希望它不要砸到你太太的頭。

Some fancier cities though, like ancient Rome and London, had open sewers—how opulent of them!

有些像古羅馬和倫敦等比較奢華的城市，則擁有明溝—還真奢侈的呢！

To put it crudely, open sewers were no more than a river of shit running past your front door.

講得粗魯一點，明溝不過是充滿糞便、流經你家門的一條河罷了。

Very few people had clean running water in the past.

過去很少有人擁有乾淨的自來水。

Only the very wealthy, whose water was delivered through lead pipes, which gave them all heavy metal poisoning.

只有非常富有的人才能透過鉛管獲得自來水，但鉛管卻讓他們集體重金屬中毒。

But wait a minute, back up there:

但等等，回到上一點：

Weren't the Romans credited with creating vast underground sewerage systems?

羅馬人不是因為創造了龐大的地下污水處理系統而受到讚譽嗎？

Well, yes, but they only built those in the dwellings of the upper-classes.

是沒錯啦，但是他們只是在上流階層的居所建造。

They also built some public toilets that led to underground sewers.

他們也建造了一些流通到下水道的公共廁所。

But you'd have to share these with hundreds of people—some chose not to.

但是你就得和數百人共享，而有些人選擇不這麼做。

Despite the Romans having some underground sewers, we know from the history books that the majority of the lower class in ancient Rome and elsewhere, still chose to chuck their waste out of the window onto the street.

儘管羅馬人有一些下水道，我們可以從歷史書籍得知，古羅馬和其他地方多數的下層階級仍然選擇從窗戶將他們的排泄物丟到街上。

It's just easier, I guess.

我想這麼做的確比較簡單。

And in smaller towns and villages across the world, all throughout history, dumping your waste onto the street, or all over your neighbor's cabbages, has been the standard way to dispose of it.

縱觀歷史，在世界各地的小城鎮和鄉村中，把排泄物倒在街道上或鄰居種的高麗菜上，一直都是標準的處理方法。

Interestingly, emptying waste out of your window was actually illegal in medieval London.

有趣的是，在中世紀的倫敦，從窗戶倒排泄物其實是違法的。

That didn't stop most people from doing it, though.

但這並沒有阻止大多數人這樣做。

The recommended method of waste disposal in London was actually to dump it in the river Thames, which is where thousands of people also got their drinking water from. Nice.

在倫敦針對垃圾的處理方法，其實是把它倒進傾泰晤士河裡，數以千計的人也是從同一條河裡取得飲用水。太棒了呢。

So, what happened to the endless waste piling up in the streets?

那麼，那些在街道上無止盡堆疊的排泄物又何去何從？

Well, sewage collectors, known as "muckrakers," would roam the streets and collect all the waste, then take it to local farmers and sell it as fertiliser.

這個嘛，被稱為「扒糞者」的污水收集者會沿街收集所有的排泄物，然後當作肥料出售給當地農民。

So, next time you complain about your job, just remember:

所以說，當你下次抱怨工作時，請記得：

You could be playing Pokemon Go with human feces for a living.

你的另一個選擇可能是以「糞便寶可夢」遊戲維生呢。

And that's if you were lucky enough to have a local shite shoveler.

而這還是要你所在居住地有幸擁有一名鏟屎員的情況。

Some historic accounts tell of streets that were caked so deep in human waste that stepping stones had to be built to traverse them.

有些歷史記載顯示，街道上堆積排泄物之多，以至於需要建造墊腳石讓人們能夠穿越。

But that would only have been a minor inconvenience to your medieval self.

但是那對中世紀的你來說，只是輕微的不便而已。

You would have been far too busy trying to stay alive to care about all the filth.

你會為了要存活下來而疲於奔命，根本沒心思理會這些穢物。

Death and disease was everywhere, and almost every disease out there was hideous and meant certain death, or if you were very lucky an amputated limb, without anesthesia of course.

死亡和疾病無處不在，而且幾乎每種疾病都令人毛骨悚然且意味著無法避免的死亡，或是很幸運地只被截肢，當然是在沒有麻醉的狀況下。

Diseases such as leprosy, diabetes, dysentery, and measles were rife, and there was no cure or treatments like we have today.

麻風病、糖尿病、痢疾和麻疹之類的疾病相當氾濫，而當時也沒有我們今日擁有的解藥和治療方法。

In fact, before the advent of modern medicine, if you managed to reach the age of 40 and your face hadn't fallen off yet, then you were incredibly lucky.

實際上，在現代醫學問世之前，如果你成功活到 40 歲還沒有倒下來，就算是很幸運了。

But it wasn't actually all that bad.

但情況實際上不全然都那麼糟。

Contrary to popular belief, peasants in the Middle Ages did eat rather well.

與普遍看法相反，中世紀的農民反而吃得很好。

They weren't starved like the books and films would have us believe.

他們並不是像書和電影中陳述的那樣，總在挨餓。

The poor actually ate a plentiful diet of porridge, bread, meats, cheeses, fruits, and plenty of beer to wash it all down with.

窮人實際上吃了很多麥片粥、麵包、肉類、起司、水果，以及大量用以搭配飲用的啤酒。

Although, to be fair, the beer did taste absolutely terrible, since Flemish hops hadn't been introduced yet.

但說句公道話，當時啤酒的味道確實很難喝，因為法蘭德斯啤酒花尚未被引入。

There was also significantly less violence outside of war than the movies portray.

戰爭以外的暴力也比電影所描繪的要少得多。

Medieval taverns were actually relatively civilized, until of course you go and steal somebody else's whore and you get garroted.

中世紀的小酒館氛圍其實相對文明，不過如果你拐了別人的老婆，可能就會被人用鐵絲勒死。

So, next time you complain about modern-day life and your long work hours, at least you're not a slave to some lord or emperor, doing back-breaking work seven days a week, all the while trying to avoid the plague and the myriad of other fatal diseases out there.

因此下次你抱怨現代生活和漫長工時的時候，至少你不是某位君主或皇帝的奴隸，一週七天從事繁重的工作，同時還要努力避免瘟疫，還有生活中其他無數的致命疾病。

And when you walk home at night, the ground you tread upon is probably nicely paved and relatively clean.

而當你晚上走回家時，踩到的地面大概都鋪好了地磚且相對地乾淨。

So, just be thankful, because your street could be covered in the collective works of your neighbor's bowels.

所以說，心懷感激吧！因為你的街道原本可能是由所有鄰居糞便所覆蓋的。

And on that cheery note, thanks for watching.

我們就用這愉快的氣氛作結吧！感謝收看。