5 extremely dangerous jobs our ancestors had to do

If you’re lucky enough to live in a country that has health and safety laws then you should be thankful, because up until relatively recently the attitude of “we don’t care and there’s nothing you can do about it” was all too common. If you were injured at work in a job during or earlier than the 1800s, then you would most likely be told to get out if you can’t do what you’re being paid for. The pay for such dangerous work was not even close to being worth the risk, but as with many periods in human history, people had no choice. There are countless terrible and dangerous jobs our ancestors had to do, but 5 of the worst are listed below.

1 Limestone raker

If you’ve ever been to a castle or a very old church, the type of mortar they used to stick the stones together was made from limestone. To make this type of mortar, a large amount of limestone would need to be quarried and broken up into chunks before being heated in a huge kiln. These kilns would be stacked with alternating layers of limestone and coal before being ignited and then topped up with more fuel and rock which was poured in from the top as they burned.

(An old kiln showing the entrance that someone would have to stand in front of pulling out white-hot chunks of corrosive rock)

The reason this job was so dangerous was because smoke from burning limestone can blind you very quickly if it gets in your eyes, and someone would have to stand near the entrance of the kiln with a long rake pulling out the chunks of burning limestone as they fell out. At this stage, the limestone is now quicklime (calcium oxide) because the Co2 has been burned out, and is a powerful alkaline that burns in the same way as a weak acid powder would. Getting paid barely enough to eat for the risk of working with blinding smoke coming off a white-hot chunk of corrosive rock wouldn’t exactly pass today’s safety standards.

2 Stone Age hunter

Hunting with a bow is incredibly difficult, and getting close enough to a wild deer to throw a spear at it is almost impossible, especially when all you’re working with is poorly carved rock stuck to the top of a stick. During the Stone Age, there were a number of large mammals that roamed the land that have long since gone extinct but would have been on the menu for our ancestors. Sometimes the deer herds would migrate to a new area and small game might become scarce, leaving you to hunt the larger and more dangerous creatures like the cave bear or mammoth.

The skin on a mammoth is about 1 inch thick, followed by a couple of feet of fat and muscle before it even gets close to a vital organ. Trying to take down something of this size with nothing more than flint spears and arrows doesn’t actually seem possible, but their bones have been found in numerous ancient archaeological dig sites around the world, seemingly put there as a sort of bone graveyard after someone ate them. If a grizzly bear can outrun any human on earth at least twice over, I’d hate to imagine the fear when a pissed-off cave bear that’s double the size of a grizzly comes charging at you because you put an arrow in its leg, and in a time when all forms of medicine were nonexistent.

3 Pirate

There were various types of people who committed piracy, such as privateers who were basically pirates employed by their home nations to attack anyone that wasn’t them, but a true pirate captain took orders from no one and attacked anyone he liked. This violent lifestyle and continuous acts of theft will obviously make a lot of enemies, and will ultimately cut your career and life short. The most famous pirates like Blackbeard, Captain Kidd, and Henry Morgan all had rather short careers during their lives as pirates and none of them lasted for more than a few years before being caught and executed.

Apart from everyone wanting you dead, the other danger was surviving at sea without the ability to land in certain ports to get supplies. Even the most successful pirate crew would have to come ashore once in a while for fresh water and food, but if the only port close to you has put a bounty on your head, you’re just going to have to starve at sea a while longer.

4 Leech collector

One of the beliefs throughout many civilizations in history is that sickness was caused by bad blood, but if the blood could be removed then your body would create new, clean blood that would make you better. There were a few devices made to try and safely extract blood, but the most popular by a long shot was the use of leeches to do all the work for you. A leech would be placed on the afflicted body part with the idea that it would safely remove all the bad blood from the area. It didn’t work in the slightest but because people believed it did, this created a massive demand for leeches.

If you can’t find a better job, then you may end up getting stuck with the duties of a leech collector. Swirling a net around a stagnant pond wouldn’t catch you many, and it was too expensive to use live animals as bait, so the only answer was to use your own body. Rolling up your sleeves and plunging your arms into a stagnant pond would be a daily task for a leech collector, and if you wanted some extra money then climbing in naked and going for a swim would increase your leech count. Getting covered in tiny wounds and then regularly entering stagnant water so a bug can suck your blood obviously comes with health risks.

5 Plague Doctor

Starting in the year 1346, Europe was hit by the Bubonic plague that killed between 50 and 200 million people. Because the disease was highly contagious and killed so quickly, usually in less than 2 weeks, there was no time for people to develop any kind of defense against it or try to escape the infected area. The only answer people managed to come up with to fight this new plague was a special type of doctor who would visit the infected and administer whatever cure they could think of.

(Up to 200 million people died from the Bubonic Plague, most of which were buried in mass graves outside the settlements they lived in)

The actual healing benefits of being visited by one of these plague doctors were non-existent because there was no such thing as antibiotics or even genuine medicine at the time, but they probably gave people a little hope. Because they were a complete waste of time, plague doctors would be doing nothing more than expose themselves to more infected people than necessary. The plague spread through flea bites so the long draping cloak of the doctor and beak-like mask filled with cloth and make-shift filters would protect from the most direct flea attacks, but it only takes one single flea to make its way under your clothes and you’re dead within two weeks. This would be risked every single time a plague doctor visited a patient, and because they often did this full-time, it was obviously a very risky job.