The Moon's origin

August 13, 2017 10:15 PM

One of the earliest known instances of mooning happened during the Fourth Crusade around 1203, when...
posted by storybored (22 comments total)

Lede Status: not buried
posted by R.F.Simpson at 10:38 PM on August 13, 2017 [2 favorites]

To be fair the Polynesian tradition of mooning your enemies in the work up to battle goes back way before the late 1800s
posted by mbo at 10:49 PM on August 13, 2017

I got confused by the bit about how the new Pixar film Brave reveals that the Scots of the tenth or eleventh century used to show their buttocks to the enemy British.
posted by Segundus at 11:13 PM on August 13, 2017

"According to Josephus’ account in The Wars of the Jews, a Roman soldier bared his rear to an audience of Jews celebrating Passover, and thereby incited a furious riot that killed 'upwards of thirty thousand.' However, a closer examination of Josephus’s account shows that the soldier was not mooning the crowd, but rather farting in their general direction. Josephus puts it more delicately: 'One of the soldiers, raising his robe, stooped in an indecent attitude, so as to turn his backside to the Jews, and made a noise in keeping with his posture.'"

DARK SIDE OF THE MOON
posted by Prince Lazy I at 11:44 PM on August 13, 2017 [6 favorites]

"Farting in their general direction" elicits the most Beevis and Butthead kind of laugh from me
posted by Hermione Granger at 1:05 AM on August 14, 2017 [3 favorites]

You have Monty Python to thank for that.
posted by Dr Dracator at 1:47 AM on August 14, 2017

I appreciate the research, but I'd be willing to bet that mooning people is as old as wearing clothes.
posted by Literaryhero at 1:54 AM on August 14, 2017 [7 favorites]

May we always make noises in keeping with our posture.
posted by Mr. Yuck at 3:19 AM on August 14, 2017 [7 favorites]

It's been a while since I've seen it, but I think that in Braveheart the soldiers didn't just lift up the back side of their kilts; before they did that, one guy ran out front of William Wallace and lifted up the front of his kilt and wagged his dick.


...Last time I was mooned was a couple weeks ago, actually - I had been to the Rockaways and was coming back home on the ferry, and we passed a smaller recreational speedboat with about eight guys on it. As the two boats were passing each other, I saw about four guys all lined up on the side closest to us, butts aloft. ....I'm not sure if anyone else even noticed.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 4:47 AM on August 14, 2017 [2 favorites]

butts aloft

...definitely a good stripper name....
posted by biscotti at 5:31 AM on August 14, 2017 [3 favorites]

Mooning was alive and well in rural NJ in the 1920s when my mother was a child. She said that the old Ukrainian ladies when they had a serious argument would lift their skirts at each other, and they were not wearing underwear. This town was heavily Slavic of various sorts then; my mom was Polish.
posted by mermayd at 6:14 AM on August 14, 2017 [2 favorites]

"What Made the Moon? New Ideas Try to Rescue a Troubled Theory."
posted by Wolfdog at 6:14 AM on August 14, 2017 [6 favorites]

"...one of us oughta moon those Saxon dogs."
posted by Pope Guilty at 6:24 AM on August 14, 2017 [5 favorites]

I now eagerly await the complex history of "hanging brains."
posted by Abehammerb Lincoln at 7:49 AM on August 14, 2017

Flag on the Moon. How did it get there?
posted by Strange Interlude at 8:49 AM on August 14, 2017

It turns out that FIAMO was actually NASA policy for much of the latter half of the 20th century.
posted by Wolfdog at 9:02 AM on August 14, 2017 [3 favorites]

Kilts make mooning pretty intuitive - actually, they make it almost a moral imperative.
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 11:04 AM on August 14, 2017

This is a good candidate for the buttslol and/or lolbutts tags.
posted by asperity at 11:19 AM on August 14, 2017

Kilts make mooning pretty intuitive - actually, they make it almost a moral imperative.

LOL....flashback to the time my town's community theater did Brigadoon. There was a guy who had a whole dance solo during one of the numbers, and we had a choreographer work with him on his solo. When we finally saw the dance in a rehearsal, we saw that it was really athletic - full of a lot of leaps, spins, and twirls.

I think the director turned to the actor at some point immediaely after and said "just in case, for the record - you WILL have to wear underwear under your kilt. Period."
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 11:29 AM on August 14, 2017 [1 favorite]

I appreciate the research, but I'd be willing to bet that mooning people is as old as wearing clothes.

It seems to be kind of a thing with apes, too, so I figure it goes way further back than that.
posted by klanawa at 4:06 PM on August 14, 2017

My 2 boys discovered the act of showing each other their rear ends all on their own, I assure you this was not a learned behavior. I believe there is a gene for this and it is probably found on the Y chromosome.
posted by Slarty Bartfast at 6:07 PM on August 14, 2017 [1 favorite]

It seems to be kind of a thing with apes, too, so I figure it goes way further back than that.
More likely an offering than an insult.
posted by artdrectr at 9:55 PM on August 14, 2017