I suspect the last generation or so have looked in a supermarket, but I see what you mean.
> But did you know that your ancestors (assuming they lived in the
> British Isles)
Only for the last 1600 years, as far as we can tell.
> didn't think to look in the ocean for fish? Oceanic
> fishing was ignored for a large period of habitation (based on
> analyzing middens). [I'm afraid I took that anthropology class
> something like 18 years ago so I can't provide the specifics quickly.]
Don't worry, I'll believe you. How weird, when sea fishing was so common elsewhere. Or was this a very VERY long time ago?
> Remember that the events in this story took place after the Great
> Darkness. People had lost almost everything. And now the entire world
> is open to them again.
There's that - as someone else said, they even had to adjust to the idea of night and day. Maybe they hadn't seen a working fruit tree for a few generations.
> (Apparently the wine cork was lost during Europe's Dark Ages, which
> were arguably less severe than the Great Darkness. And was it the
> Patagonians who lost almost all their technology?)
And we also lost central heating, concrete.... A lot of What the Romans Did for Us.
> And don't forget that a lot of stuff people now eat is poisonous.
> Look at manioc -- you need to process it by blanching it. Twice.
No idea what that is, but I know not to eat the root of the rhubarb plant, only the stalk. And to boil kidney beans really well. Though I doubt if any of my ancestors used magic to determine this - experimentation seems more likely.
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