The medieval period in Europe started in the 5th century and ended in the 15th century. There were differences in the way people looked at the time.
- Almost everybody experienced periods of scarcity of food. People were much shorter and smaller, also because of conditions like parasitic infections of their digestive systems throughout their lives, which would make their faces smaller on average too.
- People generally had their lower jaws positioned further to the front and their mandibles were larger. The process of the jaws moving back started already thousands of years earlier when we began farming and is also linked to the development of the ability to pronounce the sounds “f” and “v”. These were rarer in languages, as we go further back in time. Skulls of medieval people were a bit more heavily built. Facial features are more graceful in us after the 19th century because our diet now consists of foods that are softer and easier to chew and don’t require that much strength in muscles that attach to the skull.
- The diet of people consisted of a lot of very hard foods, like unleavened bread or hard tack type of biscuit. They also chewed on the bone for marrow and sometimes bark for medical purposes. It all caused teeth of people to become worn down relatively early in life.
- Until the vaccinations became popular near the modern period, many people had permanent, visible marks on their skin from infectious diseases, like smallpox if they even recovered from them.
- There were some people with conditions like gigantism or mild cancers that are curable in modern times. They could make some of them have facial features that are rare in the modern world but only if they didn’t die relatively young and if their family or their community took care of them.
- The eyes of older people could have been cloudy from visible cataracts because treatment for them was developed only in the 18th century.
- There are vague references that some ethnic groups might have painted their faces for various reasons like during the war or ceremonial purposes. Also, permanent markings like tattoos on faces were reported by contemporary sources in some groups, like Vikings but the evidence for them is inconclusive. The exact patterns that were used are highly uncertain and most likely are not depicted accurately in popular culture in modern times.
- The medieval period was very long and piercing was popular in some centuries and in some ethnic groups, more than in others. Sailors were known for ear piercing for most of this period.
- Long hair plaits were frequent all over Europe. People who maintained their hair less neatly often had matted hair. Other than that, there were differences in hairstyles between cultures, social statuses, and places in society, for example, monks had shaven top of their heads and long hair around in a circle.
- It was not appropriate for married women to show hair, they covered it with, for example, a wimple. Men wore coifs made of fabric or woolen berets.
People in the past looked quite different than today. Most of the changes that happened since are related to improved health care, vaccinations, and better access to food.
The question was: What are some common facial features of Western European medieval people that would surprise us today?
A monk.
The medieval wimple, head covering.
The Nobel Prize Laureate in literature in 2018 from Poland, Olga Tokarczuk sports hair with dreadlocks inspired by the matted hair of the past.