Theater kids may sit at their own lunch table, but discrete, socially excluded classes of people aren’t culturally universal. Not even close. To the Western imagination, examples of such are supposed to have historical roots in India and other places, not in France, where modern European egalitarianism was born.

Everything in the study of untouchable classes is confusing and idiosyncratic, and often the existence of these groups flies in the face of national self-images.

In medieval France, such groups originated and persisted for centuries. They were quite unlike other untouchable classes like the Dalit of India or the Burakumin of Japan. They were also unlike Jews of Europe who were similarly situated in a medieval milieu, socially excluded in some ways, religiously distinct, but not untouchable in any real way.

Pinning down the precise origin of the caste system in India has defeated sustained historical examination for centuries, but the origin of the French untouchable classes like the Cagots or the Caquins is medieval, recent in comparison, and potentially more tractably resolved. The fact remains that there are no extant contemporary records. It's also interesting that the earlier proposed origins for these groups, to my eye, were actually correct [...]