History Main / TheDungAges

[[{{Pun}} A really crappy time to be alive.]]

Something to keep in mind is that neither The Dung Ages nor YeGoodeOldeDays is "more" accurate than the other. The reality is that while hygiene was not good by modern standards, and living conditions were not what we'd call "comfortable" (what with the lack of air conditioning, flush toilets and weekly garbage pick-up), neither did most people walk around barefoot, caked in filth, eating rotten food and living in tumble-down huts made of sticks.

More common in literature or live action works, since animating a lot of dust, dirt and grime is harder than having everything be clean.

* ''Manga/{{Dororo}}'', parts of ''Manga/{{Phoenix}}'' and other JidaiGeki stories by Creator/OsamuTezuka depict Japan's Sengoku period this way, as he was a staunch pacifist who disliked the romanticized view of the age of the samurai prevalent in Japanese media. Expect to see lots of burned down villages and corpses everywhere, either from the constant warfare or good old fashioned famine and disease. It should tell you something that when the setting of the film version of ''Dororo'' was moved from the 1500s to the post apocalyptic future, very little was changed.

* During the brief Post-Crisis 'Team-Up' phase of Action Comics, Franchise/{{Superman}} is sent back in time by the Demon ComicBook/{{Etrigan}} in order to stop a mystic plot that is killing Metropolis in the present. Creator/JohnByrne had recently established Superman's costume as not being invulnerable, but mostly protected under a skin-tight force field his power generated. As a result, his walk through a medieval mudscape is no bother to him, and two passing peasants say [[ShoutOut "That one walks as a King." "Why say you this?" "Look! His Robes Are Untouched By Filth."]]

* In ''Fanfic/HomeWithTheFairies'', chapter 3, this is how Maddie perceives the town of Bree. It looks medieval, and it stinks, with "open sewers down the sides of the street" and "the retched filth lying in the gutters and alleys". It disgusts her, but the locals seem to ignore it. Maddie is yet to learn that she is in the setting of ''Literature/TheLordOfTheRings'', and dwarves and hobbits are nearby.

* Creator/RobertBresson's 1974 film ''Film/LancelotDuLac'', in many ways, instigated this trend in film. Most people do not realize that ''Monty Python and the Holy Grail'' is a send up of Lancelot du Lac, but the grime and hyperviolence (as in the Black Knight scene especially) are directly related to the earlier film.

* A central humorous theme in the French movie series ''Film/LesVisiteurs''. A medieval knight and his squire are sent to the late 20th century by mistake and pretty much everyone notices how smelly they are, Jacquouille (the squire) in particular (and since he ends up in the house of a dentist, the rotten state of his teeth does not go unnoticed). Peasants in the era they come from look like they're taken straight from one of the aforementioned Monty Python movies and Jacquouille's NeatFreak descendant emphasizes the trope even more by his reactions to his ancestor's dirtiness. Even the 18th century characters of the third movie are disgusted by Jacquouille, despite their era not having the 20th century hygiene standards.

* ''Film/{{Yellowbeard}}'': Staring Graham Chapman, could be seen as an extension of the Creator/MontyPython motif.

* ''Film/BlackKnight'' has this as part of the humor. At first, Creator/MartinLawrence's character Jamal thinks he's in a Medieval theme park. Then he needs to go to the bathroom and discovers, to his horror, that Medieval privies are... not exactly hygienic. Earlier, a bum ([[spoiler:actually, the disgraced Sir Knolte]]) offers him some food, which is a nasty-looking critter on a stick. The scene with the royal feast also shows the Medieval table manners (e.g. loud farting, no utensils, letting a dog lick your fingers). After his first attempt at riding a horse, Jamal is comforted by Victoria... and some leeches. Even the idea that Jamal is literate seems incredible to the locals. Strangely, NoEqualOpportunityTimeTravel is averted (except for Jamal getting tired of people calling him "Moor"), but this can be partly explained by him pretending to be a ducal messenger. His odd mannerisms are attributed to him being perceived as a Norman.

* Played with in Creator/GeorgeMacDonaldFraser's novel ''Literature/ThePyrates''. The opening pages describe an idealized picture of England during TheCavalierYears with buxom wenches and lots of GorgeousPeriodDress, but then refer to scholars' conclusion that the actual standard of living and cleanliness of the time made it closer to The Dung Ages. Fraser then dismisses these conclusions in a tongue-in-cheek way as PoliticalCorrectnessGoneMad and announces that he would prefer to write about 17th century England as it should have been.

* Sometimes averted, sometimes upheld in Creator/EricFlint's ''Literature/SixteenThirtyTwo'' series. The "downtime" Germans of the 17th century are notable in their day and age as having some of the cleanest cities and towns in Europe, but some other places -- Edinburgh, for one -- are every bit as filthy as stereotype would have it. [[spoiler:Indeed, Julie Sims Mackay's infant daughter contracts a severe infection while passing through Edinburgh from which she almost dies.]]

* Both averted and played straight on Robert Low's ''The Oathsworn Series''. Although the overall world didn't care much for sissy things like basic hygiene, norse characters are shown to be "more vain than women" with all the combing their hairs and taking regular showers.

** All wizards finds ways to be more hygienic than the locals, especially where bathrooms are concerned. Being able to teleport and time travel helps. Tyler is noted as keeping an apartment in his own time specifically to use its bathroom. Phillip's toilet has a perpetual portal that transports the waste to [[spoiler:just above Jimmy's statue's head]].

* In ''Literature/TheLighthouseDuet'', the land of Navronne has famine, rain, and copious amounts of mud, and Valen sees the relatively simple food offered by the monks at Gillarine as a luxury, which says a lot about what the food is like elsewhere. In this case, i's justified, as Navronne is mired in a protracted civil war that includes a faction of necromancers and a doomsday cult.

* ''Literature/HouseholdGods'' by Judith Tarr and Creator/HarryTurtledove highlights how much this was the case in the late Roman Empire. It's mostly because of ignorance or simply inability to do anything else however. How do you keep the flies or lice away with no screens or shampoo, for instance? Nonetheless, it's hard on the protagonist, who's a time traveler from the US in the late 90s. They still do bathe frequently, but it doesn't help much since the grime quickly sets in again, bath water is rarely changed, and sick people go too.

* ''{{Literature/Timeline}}'': {{Subverted}} and mocked. The protagonist walks around, expecting horribly disgusting conditions, but is surprised to learn everyone is reasonably well kept. In the afterward, Crichton notes this was mostly an invention of the Renaissance, during which many scholars romanticized the Classical period above their own era. Personal hygiene declined significantly only once the Black Plague became epidemic (which started around the time the book is set), when the public baths that were common in most Medieval towns and cities became disease vectors. This made frequent bathing a hazard, and it was denounced as sinful. Because of this, the post-Black Death cultural attitude towards bathing went too far in the other direction, with monarchs like Isabella I of Spain boasting of only bathing a few times in their ''entire lives''. A servant insists that Chris is not clean enough after he washes himself, to his surprise, and scrubs him quite thoroughly.
* ''Literature/SchooledInMagic'': Outside of the mage schools, the world is in this, with abusive nobles, brutal serfdom and poor sanitation contrasting the meritocracy and hot running water of Whitehall. To a magician's nose, even the king smells like shit. [[spoiler:In ''Past Tense'', everyone in the past is as bad off as peasants of the modern day Nameless World.]]

* A program on Creator/TheHistoryChannel called "Going Medieval" devoted a section to disproving this trope. There were soaps (both personal and laundry) that were cheap enough to be made by any peasant. They even had primitive dental care. Naturally, the upperclass could afford better stuff and had more time for it but "unwashed masses" the lower classes were not.

* On ''Series/AdamRuinsEverything'', Adam explains to Murph and Emily ''where'' all those studies that say [[MyBiologicalClockIsTicking you have to have children before age 35 OR ELSE]] got their data from: French farmers in the 1500's. He lets in several people, all of whom are dirty and tracking in straw. Murph opens up a window, because they smell. One of the farm girls comments in French, "No dirt, no plague...this must be {{Heaven}}!" A researcher on the subject (who herself had all her children relatively late in life) follows, and explains that this is a problem, because the data comes from an era before fertility treatments (such as IVF), antibiotics, modern medicine, etc. Also, it's only census data, so it doesn't explain ''why'' few of those women were having babies after 35. Sure, it could mean that those women were going through menopause or perimenopause sooner than women today do. But it could also reflect that those women were dying early of diseases (such as TheBlackDeath), or [[DeathByChildbirth dying in childbirth]], or that their husbands had gone off to war, or maybe sex after a certain age was considered "unseemly," or many other possible explanations. [[note]] And, in case you're wondering, more ''modern'' data suggests that a woman's fertility declines, not in her mid 30's, but in her mid ''40's''. And the risk of a live birth with a birth defect ''does'' double: from 0.5% to 1%. So you can have babies later in life than you've been led to believe.

** The Brettonian dukedom of Mousillon is the logical extreme to this trope. Mousillon is a filthy, rundown region built on a swamp, so most the buildings are rotted and/or abandoned and streets are little more than sewers. The malformed peasants are almost all inbred, mutants or infected with plague. The graveyards of Mousillon are larger than the city itself, and undead roaming outside the gates is a constant problem.
** Logical Extreme for humans, anyway. The Skaven, which are bi-pedal, intelligent rat people with a perchant for highly advanced, if unstable technology, are much, much worse still. Since they exist in the hundreds of millions all over the world but live underground, and are back-stabby and cannibalistic ''and'' worship a God of pestilence and decay, their cities are more mold and rot than wood and stone (the capital is literally sinking a little more into a morast of death every year), their soldiers are disease-ridden and wear more filth than cloth (to say nothing of the "peasants") and they even have have a magic discipline focused around decay and disease. Where humans usually at least try, Skaven don't even care, nor do they need to.
** And then there's the Nurglite cults, who ''encourage'' this as it strengthens their god, who has power over disease, decay and love (yes, love for all living things, it's just that bacteria and vermin are so much more numerous than humans).

* ''VideoGame/DemonsSouls'' and ''VideoGame/DarkSouls'', both being heavily influenced by ''{{Manga/Berserk}}'' are this. It's most obvious in the Vally of Defilement and Blighttown respectively. These areas are nasty, disgusting, plague ridden towns built over swamps.
** [[VideoGame/DarkSoulsIII The third installment]] brings this back a few times, most notably The Undead Settlement, the Corvian Settlement is also pretty nasty and there is something clearly wrong with it's residents.

* ''VideoGame/TheElderScrollsVSkyrim'' doesn't shy away from how filthy it gets, at least when you're outside of the cities, and even within some of the cities its run down and disgusting in the right places. In fact, there's even a character creation option to smear your Dragonborn with dirt across their face.
** Yet they are well aware about hygiene. Every bandit camp has at least one corner with a bucket, and houses have washbasins - which is historically accurate, norse people bathed at least weekly, had running water, and saunas are as antique as the norse people.
* ''VideoGame/Thief2014'' has technology well beyond TheMiddleAges, but it still fits this trope. People make comments like "We still have our lives and most of our teeth!" and there are rats, garbage heaps and filthy beggars everywhere. Some thugs in Riverside can be overheard discussing a particularly sweet-smelling prostitute who lathers herself in perfume; she apparently has quite a waiting list.

* Discussed in [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jG1VNSCsP5Q this]] PublicServiceAnnouncement from the Global Health Media Project. It details the story of a young boy whose father came down with cholera, and who worked to create change in his village, so that no one would ever get such a horrible disease again.

* In the short lived cartoon ''WesternAnimation/MadJackThePirate'', Jack and Snuck visited a very poor village who worshipped an animal and rubbed its droppings on their clothing.

** In Russia, where the forests were so abundant that even ''now'' there are mooses on the prowl in downtown Moscow sometimes, the concept of weekly bathing pretty much ''never'' died. It was one of the reasons why the Black Death outbreaks were relatively weak there. Well, that and the general lack of enormous concentrations of people in the filthy cities -- Russian cities always were more spread out.

* Speaking of ancient Rome, while a lot is made of the fact that Romans had sewers, flush toilets, and public baths; Roman sanitation was still incredibly gross by modern standards and [[https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2016/01/ancient-roman-toilets-gross/423072/ of questionable effectiveness.]] The water of the baths was only changed intermittently and it was custom to conclude a bathing session in a swim at the portion of the bath which was essentially a giant unchlorinated pool. Public toilets would be better described as flush latrines rather than flush toilets. People did there business over a big cistern that was only flushed when it got too stinky. And everyone wiped their ass with the same sponge. Worse, the Roman sewer was initially designed just to drain rain water, but people started using it to dump human waste into anyway. If it didn't rain for a while, it could make the whole city smell rancid. It's telling that wealthy romans used toilets not connected to the sewer and emptied in a more traditional method.

* Surprisingly subverted in the form of dental hygiene: even in the Middle Ages, people used rudimentary toothbrushes and mint to clean their teeth; they had to, because the only alternative for dealing with a bad tooth was to ''yank it out''. Also, the relative scarcity of sugar and sugary foods meant that rotting teeth were generally not a problem for most people. In fact, you can actually see a ''sharp'' decline in the state of Europeans' teeth after the introduction of sugar.

* Averted with many of the Celtic cultures, who adored bathing and grooming for both women AND men since the AgentPeacock trope was in full force. Unlike many other mythologies, bathing/grooming is ''frequently'' mentioned, manifesting in the prevalence of OutdoorBathPeeping in folktales. Also, they invented soap. Though it was originally developed to help prevent infection of battlefield wounds, and was painfully harsh.
* Interestingly averted by many Stone Age societies, despite the popular idea of the dirty, ape-like caveman continues, early humans were generally on the go and therefore were less likely to catch diseases from sewage or from rats and roaches. For instance, the Neanderthaler species or subspecies died at around age 40, not because of this trope so much as injuries and starvation. In fact this trope really began to take off in the past 12,000 years with the rise in cities and urban living.

* The often-repeated claim that people in medieval Europe drank beer because pure water was too filthy is incorrect. Medieval Europeans got their fresh water from the wells, springs, and rivers close to their towns, which was [[CoolClearWater still not]] ''as'' clean as modern tapwater, but reasonably potable. Medieval people drank beer (and further south, wine) because [[Series/ThatMitchellAndWebbLook everything mankind does is much, much easier if you're ever so slightly drunk]]. (It was 'slightly' by modern standards; they watered their alcohol down, especially if children were drinking it.)

[[quoteright:320:[[ComicBook/VanNulTotNu https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/the_dung_ages2.jpg]]]]
[[caption-width-right:320:Those were ''really'' shitty times.]]

* ''Household Gods'' by Judith Tarr and Creator/HarryTurtledove highlights how much this was the case in the late Roman Empire. It's mostly because of ignorance or simply inability to do anything else however. How do you keep the flies or lice away with no screens or shampoo, for instance? Nonetheless, it's hard on the protagonist, who's a time traveler from the US in the late 90s. They still do bathe frequently, but it doesn't help much since the grime quickly sets in again, bath water is rarely changed, and sick people go too.

* Up until the 19th century, the water from the Thames was used both for drinking and sewage. The brutally hot summer of 1858 was known in London as [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Stink "The Great Stink"]], the Thames became so pestilential that the Parliament at Westminster shut itself down because the stench from the river was unbearable. In some places, it was said that that feces, dead fish, and industrial sludge piled up six feet deep by the shore. Fortunately, this became the final straw that led to the building of massive sewers and water treatment facilities that rehabilitated the Thames.
* Averted by the Vikings, [[http://www.vikinganswerlady.com/hairstyl.shtml surprisingly]]. There are several accounts remarking with disgust how they washed their hands, hair, and faces daily, washed before meals, and changed their clothes and bathed at least every Saturday (the Nordic word for Saturday was "laugardagr", which literally means "bathing/cleaning day", and it even still survives in modern Scandinavian as "lørdag/lördag"). Might explain why they were popular with Englishwomen.

* Although against popular perceptions the European bathing culture wasn't yet remotely dead during UsefulNotes/TheCrusades, UsefulNotes/TheKnightsTemplar believed that personal hygiene was a sign of sinful vanity, and are believed to be the reason why the Muslims emphasized the insult "''filthy'' infidels" at the time.

* The Italian movie ''TheIncredibleArmyOfBrancaleone''

* ''Literature/ProvostsDog'', set two centuries before the rest of the Literature/TortallUniverse books, really goes for this. However, it's mostly because Beka lives and works in the poorest part of the city, where good sanitation is warning people in the street that you're about to dump your chamberpot out the window. Expensive districts are markedly cleaner, and Port Caynn has a decent (for medieval times) sewer system.

* Played straight and subverted in ''Fanfic/WithStringsAttached''. The quasi-Victorian city of Focan in Ketafa stinks of dung (and factories) so badly that the four gag when they first smell it and have to breathe through their mouths. The people stink too. Also, when they first meet a native (a farmer who smells like a goat), he sniffs them and is amazed that they “smell different.” On the other hand, the quasi-medieval city of Ta'akan in Baravada is kept magically clean, and the citizens bathe regularly, to the point where even crumbling old hotels have their bathrooms maintained. And the Baravadans are very critical of how the four smell when they first arrive from Focan.

* In ''FanFic/HomeWithTheFairies'', chapter 3, this is how Maddie perceives the town of Bree. It looks medieval, and it stinks, with "open sewers down the sides of the street" and "the retched filth lying in the gutters and alleys". It disgusts her, but the locals seem to ignore it. Maddie is yet to learn that she is in the setting of ''Literature/TheLordOfTheRings'', and dwarves and hobbits are nearby.

* Creator/MaryRenault didn't dwell on this too much in her books on UsefulNotes/AlexanderTheGreat but did bring out his habit of frequent bathing (meaning that a lot of other people followed his example). Bathing was also important in the Persian court as described in the second book of the Alexander trilogy. In the non-fiction book ''The Nature of Alexander'' where she gives all the background information she found, she mentioned that the Persian courts also had lots of incense to cover up "the almost universal human stink".

* Averted with many of the Celtic cultures, who adored bathing and grooming for both women AND men since the AgentPeacock trope was in full force. Unlike many other mythologies, bathing/grooming is ''frequently'' mentioned, manifesting in the prevalence of OutdoorBathPeeping in folktales.

* ''VideoGame/KingdomComeDeliverance'' is set in medieval Bohemia and averts this quite a bit. The people around have some hygiene standards and will comment to you if you've gone a long while without bathing, especially if you've travelled a lot or been in a fight. People around will regularly wash in public troughs, though it's not the most effective at doing so given that everyone's using it, and public bathhouses are available if you want to be more thorough (and if you want to solicit a washerwoman for sex, which is coincidentally among the reasons the practice falls out of favor). When it comes to shit in the streets, cities have garderobes, latrine closets and such are around with gong farmers being paid well to remove all the excrement accumulated in them and villages are surveyed with residents understanding that one has to defecate some distance downstream.

The Dung Ages are the representation of the [[TheMiddleAges Medieval Era]] as a CrapsackWorld of [[ThePigPen pustule-faced, cat-beating, dung-caked, mud-farming peasants]], the antithesis of YeGoodeOldeDays, made popular by the [[Series/MontyPythonsFlyingCircus Monty Python]] team. This was partially for RuleOfFunny -- Monty Python's Terry Jones is a historian and knows better -- and partially as [[GenreDeconstruction a reaction against]] the flowery King Arthur-inspired romances that had shaped popular views of the era up until then. Portrayal of the Dung Ages is not limited to Britain and/or the Dark Ages. It's often seen even in portrayals of cultures where it doesn't belong. Many ancient Romans, for instance, bathed every day: once soapmaking arrived from Gaul, the Roman Patricians who could afford it used soap with abandon, possibly to a greater extent than we do.

* Roman-era is portrayed this way in ''Series/{{Chelmsford 123}}''.

Something to keep in mind is that neither The Dung Ages nor YeGoodeOldeDays is "more" accurate than the other. The reality is that while hygiene was not good by modern standards, and living conditions were not what we'd call "comfortable" (what with the lack of air conditioning, flush toilets and weekly garbage pick-up), neither did most people walk around barefoot, caked in filth, eating rotten food and live in tumble-down huts made of sticks.

Something to keep in mind is that neither The Dung Ages nor YeGoodeOldeDays is "more" accurate than the other. The reality is that while hygiene was not good by modern standards, and living conditions were not what we'd call "comfortable" (what with the lack of air conditioning, flush toilets and weekly garbage pick-up), neither did most people walk around barefoot, caked in filth, eating rotten food and living in tumble-down huts made of sticks.

* Played straight and averted in Scott Meyer's ''Literature/{{Magic20}}'' series.

* ''Household Gods'' by Judith Tarr and Creator/HarryTurtledove highlights how much this was the case in the late Roman Empire. It's mostly because of ignorance or simply inability to do anything else however. How do you keep the flies or lice away with no screens or shampoo, for instance? Nonetheless, it's hard on the protagonist, who's a time traveler from the US in the late 90s. They still do bathe frequently, but it doesn't help much since the grime quickly sets in against, bath water is rarely changed, and sick people go too.

* ''Literature/SchooledInMagic'': Outside of the mage schools, the world is in this, with abusive nobles, brutal serfdom and poor sanitation contrasting the meritocracy and hot running water of Whitehall. To a magician's nose, even the king smells like shit.

* It is a commonly repeated belief that bathing was considered sinful during the Middle Ages. This is not entirely true; what the Church disapproved of was not bathing, but ''bathhouses'', which were holdovers from the Roman Empire, and not without reason. In Greek and Roman times, bathing was a social activity when people would go to public bathhouses and gymnasiums not just to keep clean, but to relax, socialize with peers, and also to engage in prostitution. These were seen as places of decadence, with opponents describing them as brothels in all but name (and this being AncientRome and [[AncientGreece Greece]], would have involved homosexuality as well). The fact is many people in the Middle Ages ''did'' bathe, but mostly at home or in streams. It was actually ''after'' the Middle Ages in the supposedly "enlightened" Renaissance and the Early Modern Period that bathing and hygiene standards declined.

* Averted by the Vikings, [[http://www.vikinganswerlady.com/hairstyl.shtml surprisingly]]. There are several accounts remarking with disgust how they washed their hands, hair, and faces daily, washed before meals, and changed their clothes and bathed at least every Saturday (the Nordic word for Saturday was "laugardagr", which literally means "bathing/cleaning day", and it even still survives in modern Scandinavian as "lørdag/lördag"). Explains why they were popular with the Englishwomen.

* A central humorous theme in the French movie ''Film/LesVisiteurs''. A medieval knight and his squire are sent to the late 20th century by mistake and pretty much everyone notices how smelly they are, Jacquouille (the squire) in particular (and since he ends up in the house of a dentist, the rotten state of his teeth does not go unnoticed). Peasants in the era they come from look like they're taken straight from one of the aforementioned Monty Python movies and Jacquouille's NeatFreak's descendant emphasizes the Dung Ages trope even more by his reactions to it. Even the 18th century characters of the third movie are disgusted, despite their era not having the 20th century hygiene standards.

* Played straight and averted in Scott Meyer's ''Literature/{{Magic20}}'' series. While there are many smells that Martin isn't used to, life in 12th century England isn't ''that'' bad, even for the common folk. However, Martin specifically chose that time period after a quick Google search for the best time to live in Medieval England. As it turns out, this was the intention of Phillip and the other wizards, who keep a certain book in print to get more time travelers to join them.

* With all the aesthetic impression on how clean Imperial Japan may look, surprisingly the Heian era turned out to be this, or least for the Heian court. [[http://figal-sensei.org/hist157/Textbook/Higuchi.htm See here for more details.]] Despite how aesthetics the Heian imperial court looks, some historians point out that the living conditions would considered to be unsanitary by today's standards and rival that of the Renaissance period, given that seldom mention of bathing and the frequent uses of perfume.

* In the setting of ''{{Manga/Berserk}}'', while you get occasional pockets of YeGoodeOldeDays in the land, and the nobility and royalty live in shiny splendor, many peasants and poor people suffer from famine, dress in rags, and live in filthy hovels. It gets especially bad during the plague and invasion that create a refugee crisis in Midland, leading to thousands of people huddling in a tent city beneath the tower of Conviction mired in filth, starvation, and ignorance. In contrast, the magically created city of [[spoiler:Falconia]] is considered to be a fantastic marvel because unlike everywhere else it has running water, a modern sewer system, public baths, and flushing toilets!