An old law reveals what someone once feared other people might be allowed to do.

Laws are written against something. A statute that carefully forbids a specific act tells you that the act was happening, or that someone in power was frightened it might, and that fear is preserved in the text long after the circumstances have gone. Prohibitions are a fairly reliable inventory of what a society could not tolerate being possible.

Read old rules as evidence about their authors rather than about the people they governed. The same reading works on any rulebook you encounter now, including workplace ones. A very specific prohibition is nearly always a record of an incident.