What were the thoughts about static build up and shock to people in the past, and was it seen as a sort of witchcraft if everyone has done it at least a dozen times?

by Deathinacan1

Its easy to zap stuff with a touch if youve rubbed hair/fabric/etc together for a second or two, and it's not an uncommon occurance for people to 'zap' people or stuff they touch because of it. When it was seen or felt, was it thought to be a mystery, a godly thing, a thing only witches and such could do, or what? What was the term for it? No doubt it changed between cultures and ideologies, so how was it seen from what you can tell? Not really sure where else to post this question, if you have a better r/ i can post this question at please let me know. Thanks in advance!

Iphikrates

There is an excellent older answer to this question by u/hillsonghoods here. Just because people in the past didn't have our scientific understanding of the phenomenon, doesn't mean that they didn't have a secular theory of what supposedly caused it. The precursor to modern science isn't witchcraft and superstition, it's just earlier forms of observing and understanding the world.