Sometimes when I read the news these days–about the dismal housing market, burgeoning homelessness, the ever-widening income gap in our country, or how certain members of the wealthiest 1% committed criminal acts that exacerbated our current economic crisis–I wonder what century I’m in.

Because statistically, things have been ever thus. Most people who ever lived have toiled and fought and suffered and died young, that the tiny percentage of the wealthy might be warm, comfortable, well-fed, and entertained. By no means am I saying this is just; it’s just true.

In my Poop book, I have an ongoing feature called “Icky Occupations,” which catalogs awful jobs people have performed over the course of history. Consider the job of hut builder, for instance.

Throughout the Middle Ages (and even later), a huge number of European peasants built their homes with “wattle and daub.” You start by weaving large reeds, willows, or other grasses (the wattle), and then fill in the gaps with a mixture of manure, mud, water, and straw (the daub).

To assemble, you stomp together all that muddy, smelly goo. Then you take a big glob of this mixture and smear it into the cracks. You weave together a roof from reeds or grass, which often leaks or attracts nesting animals.

Since glass was expensive, there wasn’t any in most peasants’ homes. To keep out snow, wind, and cold, people stopped up the windows with rags, straw, or anything else they had available. Viking settlers sometimes stretched out see-through animal guts and used them for windows.

For a very realistic and disgusting re-enactment of this process, you can check out this segment from a popular British television show.

In his fascinating book, A World Lit Only by Fire, William Manchester provides a harrowing description of a peasant home interior. If you were a prosperous peasant, you might have owned a bed, piled with straw that seethed with vermin. Everyone slept there, including your smaller livestock, children, inlaws, and any passing travelers. If you were a less prosperous peasant, you would probably have lacked both a bed and a chimney. You would have slept on the mud floor, with the livestock keeping you warm (and itchy). Smoke from the kitchen fire would make its way through a small hole in the roof, but your hut would have been fearfully smoky, especially on a windy day.