the thing about not leaving the town you were born in is false though, people travelled all the time to varying degrees. Hell a big thing was that everyone wanted to go on a pilgrimage to jerusalem once, and there were all kinds of privileges given to pilgrims for that reason. Basically if you were a pilgrim people had to give you free food and bed, and i think free travel too.
i mean this is all very dependent on time, place, and people. there are people that were fully nomadic at all times of human history. they certainly didn’t stay in a town either. some people did travel, clearly. devout religious folk, merchants, well to do young men… there have always been exceptions, but on the whole as a norm, over 500 years ago most people didn’t travel much. and more to my point, pilgrims traveling like that likely didn’t have maps most of the time. they likely got directions to the next town by the people that lived there.
the thing about not leaving the town you were born in is false though, people travelled all the time to varying degrees. Hell a big thing was that everyone wanted to go on a pilgrimage to jerusalem once, and there were all kinds of privileges given to pilgrims for that reason. Basically if you were a pilgrim people had to give you free food and bed, and i think free travel too.
i mean this is all very dependent on time, place, and people. there are people that were fully nomadic at all times of human history. they certainly didn’t stay in a town either. some people did travel, clearly. devout religious folk, merchants, well to do young men… there have always been exceptions, but on the whole as a norm, over 500 years ago most people didn’t travel much. and more to my point, pilgrims traveling like that likely didn’t have maps most of the time. they likely got directions to the next town by the people that lived there.