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What were the population sizes like back in the Bronze age, and how much food surplus could the subsistence agriculture produce?
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Nov 16, 2012 03:02
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Hip Flask posted:I read somewhere that the king of Denmark (ruler of Iceland) seriously contemplated evacuating the entire icelandic population, because the whole situation was so fubar. The Danish authorities actually planned moving all the survivors to northwestern Denmark but when someone actually sat down and did the math they figured out that they would have to send a large number of ships back and forth hundreds of times and that it would take years and cost ghastly amounts of money so just trying to do what was possible to make things in Iceland a bit more tolerable was probably a little less impossible and much less likely to bankrupt the state. Of course it was only about 40.000 people but that's still a lot of boats and since all urbanization was resisted and legislated against by the Icelandic upper classes the population was spread over a somewhat large area and often mountainous with almost no roads* all of which would make evacuation a slow and painful process. I've seen the areas in Denmark where they were going to put everyone. It looked quite nice. A bit more barren than most of Denmark but quite pleasant by Icelandic standards. I could go on but it would all be outside the scope of the thread since it isn't very ancient or Greco-Roman. *Travelling from eastern Iceland to Reykjavik by land took longer than jumping on the next ship to Copenhagen and then taking a ship from there to Iceland.
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Nov 16, 2012 03:19
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Besesoth posted:Thucydides. Depends what you mean by "modern". There are Robert Graves' Claudius novels from the mid-20th century, and more recently Steven Saylor's written several detective novels set in late Republican Rome (and I think he isn't the only one to have done Ancient Roman detectives, either). Besesoth posted:Speaking of destruction layers, the archaeology of Troy/Hisarlik is about the most
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Nov 16, 2012 20:07
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More seriously, I honestly don't know of a lot of modern fiction set in classical Greece or Rome. 
story I can think of in recent archaeology. Briefly: Heinrich Schliemann, a wealthy 19th-century treasure hunter who honestly believed in and worshiped the Greek gods, decided that the hill Hisarlik, in modern Turkey, was where Troy had been. It turns out he was probably right, but we'll never know for sure, because a) he decided early on that one layer in particular was the Real Troy, and b) one of the tools in his archaeological toolbox was dynamite.
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cheerfullydrab posted:Is there any good fiction set during the Peloponnesian War? There's a Tom Holt novel set during that period, "The Walled Orchard", could check it out. Playwright gets sent on the Sicilian Expedition.
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Nov 17, 2012 01:43
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General Panic posted:He wasn't the only 19th/early 20th century archeologist to do this kind of thing, I think. There was a bit of an "Indiana Jones IRL" aspect to it in those days; you only have to think of Lord Caenarvon and his guys digging up Tutankhamun's tomb and the fuss that got made over all the sweet, sweet gold (not that that wasn't incredibly important historically, as well). Oh, absolutely. Until the early part of the 20th century - possibly until the 50s, although I'm not sure on the dates - archaeology was less "preserve the history" and more "add to my kickin' rad collection" and/or "make me rich". Hence the stories about people in Egypt burning mummies for fuel, for example - they were just ancient bodies wrapped in linen, and they burned real good; who cared about the historical value? Fun fact: I went to high school with the great-grandson of Howard Carter. (Or at least he and his family claimed that; I never actually checked the genealogy.)
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Nov 17, 2012 06:01
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A question about classical/earlier burial practices: have trapped tombs (as opposed to false ones in the case of the later Egyptian pyramids) ever been a thing outside of fiction?
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Nov 17, 2012 08:28
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Besesoth posted:Oh, absolutely. Until the early part of the 20th century - possibly until the 50s, although I'm not sure on the dates - archaeology was less "preserve the history" and more "add to my kickin' rad collection" and/or "make me rich". Hence the stories about people in Egypt burning mummies for fuel, for example - they were just ancient bodies wrapped in linen, and they burned real good; who cared about the historical value? I think the family was making it up because so far as I know Howard Carter never had kids. Might have been his great-great-nephew though.
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Nov 17, 2012 12:33
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Besesoth posted:A werewolf and a couple of ghosts, yep. One of the ghosts may have been a revenant; it's been a while since I read it and I don't have it to hand. Huh. Neil Gaiman uses this exact story in Sandman (Brief Lives), but it's an 'alder man' who turns into a bear. The rest is the same.
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Nov 17, 2012 13:14
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Grand Fromage posted:[regarding what China received from trade with the west] Shitloads of gold and silver. Also glass, but that was a limited luxury item (even moreso than silk). It was all about the giant piles of cash. Wiki suggests that the Chinese knew how to make glass starting around 1000 BC, so what was the appeal of Roman glass to them? Aesthetics? Love this thread. 
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Nov 17, 2012 15:46
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Do we know who the Sea People were, or at least have some good guesses? I know it's kind of an ambiguous term for a reason. I've always been under the impression that they were Mycenaean Greek in origin.
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Nov 17, 2012 16:36
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Torka posted:Wiki suggests that the Chinese knew how to make glass starting around 1000 BC, so what was the appeal of Roman glass to them? Aesthetics? I think wiki's been the victim of Chinese nationalists. Glassmaking was one of the rare technologies that the west invented long before the Chinese. I suppose it's possible they could make some type of glass but the quality was absolutely nothing compared to Roman technology. The Romans didn't invent glass, but they did invent clear glass and were the first to have glass windows and such. They also invented glass blowing, which made it much cheaper and faster to manufacture.
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Nov 17, 2012 17:26
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QI comes to the rescue once again. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t3Ff0D-dWew
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Nov 17, 2012 17:32
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Count Chocula posted:Huh. Neil Gaiman uses this exact story in Sandman (Brief Lives), but it's an 'alder man' who turns into a bear. The rest is the same. It shouldn't come as a surprise that neil gaiman is extremely literate (in the sense of being well read, obviously of course he can read just fine) and basically everything he writes is full of references to myths and legends.
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Nov 17, 2012 18:05
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canuckanese posted:Do we know who the Sea People were, or at least have some good guesses? I know it's kind of an ambiguous term for a reason. I've always been under the impression that they were Mycenaean Greek in origin. The Egyptian records list a long list of peoples involved in the raiding, Greeks included. Lends some weight to the chain raiding idea.
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Nov 17, 2012 18:51
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canuckanese posted:Do we know who the Sea People were, or at least have some good guesses? I know it's kind of an ambiguous term for a reason. I've always been under the impression that they were Mycenaean Greek in origin. A mixture of Mycenaeans, some Anatolian peoples, and probably also Sicilians and perhaps even Sardinians.
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Nov 17, 2012 20:41
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Phobophilia posted:What were the population sizes like back in the Bronze age, and how much food surplus could the subsistence agriculture produce? Subsistence agriculture by definition produces no surplus at all. It literally means farming just enough to provide for the farmer. I can't answer the question of what the population densities were like, but there were proper cities with large populations in any case. These civilizations were capable of producing a sizeable surplus.
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Nov 17, 2012 20:55
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Do we know how events in other societies affected Mediterranean societies? IE did the collapse of the Han Dynasty have any effect on Roman society, did it exacerbate any economic issues during the crisis of the third century? or did it just happen at about the same time?
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Nov 17, 2012 22:08
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Grand Fromage posted:I think wiki's been the victim of Chinese nationalists. Glassmaking was one of the rare technologies that the west invented long before the Chinese. I suppose it's possible they could make some type of glass but the quality was absolutely nothing compared to Roman technology. I think that Carthage invented clear glass, or at least that's what I've always been told. Glassware in general was one of their biggest non-agricultural exports.
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Nov 17, 2012 23:15
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BoutrosBoutros posted:Subsistence agriculture by definition produces no surplus at all. It literally means farming just enough to provide for the farmer. I can't answer the question of what the population densities were like, but there were proper cities with large populations in any case. These civilizations were capable of producing a sizeable surplus. Ah, thanks. I guess my definition was wrong, I looked it up, subsistence agriculture tends to be non specialised and hence lacks economies of scale. More intensive agriculture techniques call for specialisation and trade with people who can fill out more of their needs. Still, as a food surplus per farmer, it can't be awfully high. Phobophilia fucked around with this message at 00:41 on Nov 18, 2012 |
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Nov 18, 2012 00:32
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Jazerus posted:I think that Carthage invented clear glass, or at least that's what I've always been told. Glassware in general was one of their biggest non-agricultural exports. Transparent glass you could use for windows doesn't show up until the first century AD, so definitely not Carthage. It was still kind of cloudy, but it was possible to see through it and Roman buildings started using it a ton once it was invented. Definitely a Roman invention. If you're in Pompeii there are actually a couple buildings with some original glass intact. Just little shards of it, but it's way cool anyway. Grand Fromage fucked around with this message at 02:22 on Nov 18, 2012 |
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Nov 18, 2012 02:20
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Did Romans have any concept of birth control? And are there any cool speculative (or factual) stories about Roman emperors or important political figures who may in fact have been bastards? Any famous Roman cuckolds?
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Nov 18, 2012 03:38
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I believe they were aware of the herbs that can cause abortions. Pennyroyal I think is one? I've never actually encountered the term bastard in Roman history, I don't know if it was a thing. Bastardry was important because of royal descent lines but the Romans didn't do that. The only way I can imagine it mattering would be inheritance in a patrician family but... I dunno. I can't give a definitive answer but I don't remember it ever coming up. Belisarius' wife was supposedly banging their godson. Big rumor around the imperial court.
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Nov 18, 2012 04:12
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Marriage was mostly a political tool and adoptions were not at all uncommon - bloodlines weren't so important as long as you were born somewhere within the patrician club. Julius Caesar was known for being a seducer of other men's wives. One of his allies in the Senate tried to turn it around on him during the period that Caesar was the pontifex maximus - there was a goddess known as Bona Dea ('the good goddess'; her cult name has been lost), and one of the goddess's festivals was an all night ladies-only party at the home of a high Roman official. (This was a very strict No Men Allowed kind of thing.) Caesar's wife was the party host one year, and Clodius Pulcher, a populist senator, disguised himself as a woman and tried to infiltrate the festival with the intent of seducing Caesar's wife. He was discovered, the ritual was halted and the whole house declared ritually polluted, and there was a ton of fallout from it. (This was made worse by the fact that it was the Pontifex Maximus' house, which was owned by the state and loaned to the PM for use, so having the place where all of the high priests in the future were going to live be ritually tainted was a seriously bad thing.) It's not much of a cuckold story considering the seduction was unsuccessful, I guess, but I think it shows that, at least in the late Republic aristocracy, adultery was seen as a kind of exploit for men to pull off. e: Plutarch also suggests that Brutus was actually Caesar's son by one of his adulteries with Servilia, but Caesar would have been 15 when Brutus was concieved, and Plutarch suggests a lot of things, so...
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Nov 18, 2012 04:24
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Yeah, that's part of why I don't think bastardry mattered. Adoption was common, and inheritance was specified in the will, it wasn't an automatic thing. I don't think they cared.
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Nov 18, 2012 04:28
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Grand Fromage posted:I believe they were aware of the herbs that can cause abortions. Pennyroyal I think is one? The Romans loved them some abortifacient herbs. In fact, one herb, known as silphium or laser, was important enough in the late Republic and early Empire that it was featured on some of their coins, and so well-loved that the Romans literally harvested it into extinction. It's said - although now I can't remember who said it - that the last known specimen of silphium was given to Nero as a curiosity. We're not even sure what kind of plant it was (although the illustrations - largely from the coins - give us clues), just that apparently it was really, really good at its job. I'm pretty sure the Romans had lambskin (and other-critter-skin) condoms; they also used cervical sponges and, later - having imported the concept from Egypt - cervical dams (made of crocodile dung, yum yum).
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Nov 18, 2012 04:47
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Besesoth posted:The Romans loved them some abortifacient herbs. In fact, one herb, known as silphium or laser, was important enough in the late Republic and early Empire that it was featured on some of their coins, and so well-loved that the Romans literally harvested it into extinction. It's said - although now I can't remember who said it - that the last known specimen of silphium was given to Nero as a curiosity. We're not even sure what kind of plant it was (although the illustrations - largely from the coins - give us clues), just that apparently it was really, really good at its job. It's related to fennel and they ate it to death, I think. I didn't know it was also an abortifacient but I doubt that's the sole reason it was harvested to extinction.
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Nov 18, 2012 05:23
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How much of what Thucydides wrote was accurate, as opposed to being an old man complaining about the people who rejected him or an Athenian talking poo poo about Sparta?
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Nov 18, 2012 06:55
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SlothfulCobra posted:How much of what Thucydides wrote was accurate, as opposed to being an old man complaining about the people who rejected him or an Athenian talking poo poo about Sparta? Hard to say. There are not alternative accounts, so his word is sort of the last, but he published at a time when a lot of the people involved where still alive. We can gauge by the reception it received how accurate others thought it was. Xenophon, for instance, starts his Hellenika right were Thucydides left off. Like, he just jumps right in with "Not many days after that..." (or something to that effect.) Point is, you don't model a work like that off of someone no one takes seriously.
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Nov 18, 2012 11:25
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the JJ posted:Hard to say. There are not alternative accounts, so his word is sort of the last, but he published at a time when a lot of the people involved where still alive. We can gauge by the reception it received how accurate others thought it was. Xenophon, for instance, starts his Hellenika right were Thucydides left off. Like, he just jumps right in with "Not many days after that..." (or something to that effect.) Point is, you don't model a work like that off of someone no one takes seriously. There actually are some alternative accounts. Plutarch wrote biographies on several of the main actors, Diodorus summarized the Peloponnesian war in his world history. Both these authors include information not found in Thucydides. There are some contemporary Athenian theatrical plays (but extracting actual information out of old satire is no easy task) I'm sure there are others I don't remember right now. Of course none of these are as comprehensiveness or has the same quality as Thucydides, but they reveal that Thucydides in some places has omitted or downplayed evidence that goes against his interpretations of events. In many ways this is a bigger problem with his work than his biases since these are often obvious while nobody has an as extensive library as Plutarch anymore Fornadan fucked around with this message at 16:32 on Nov 18, 2012 |
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Nov 18, 2012 16:29
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the JJ posted:Hard to say. There are not alternative accounts, so his word is sort of the last, but he published at a time when a lot of the people involved where still alive. We can gauge by the reception it received how accurate others thought it was. Xenophon, for instance, starts his Hellenika right were Thucydides left off. Like, he just jumps right in with "Not many days after that..." (or something to that effect.) Point is, you don't model a work like that off of someone no one takes seriously. I have a question about this--how did attribution work for ancient authors; that is, what kind of relationship did readers have with the sources of books that let them know that when they pick up a book that starts with "So I got a great education, and..." that they're reading Meditations by Aurelius? I only recently learned that you can identify pseudepigrapha by an introduction that reads "This being the testament of I, Dickus Maximus, son of Priapus, concerning the matter of..."
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Nov 18, 2012 18:49
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Eggplant Wizard posted:It's related to fennel and they ate it to death, I think. I didn't know it was also an abortifacient but I doubt that's the sole reason it was harvested to extinction. Isn't that the plant with the heart-shaped seeds? It was so popular as a symbol of loving that the shape of the seeds has been used as a symbol for love ever since. (Supposedly).
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Nov 18, 2012 19:41
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Vigilance posted:And are there any cool speculative (or factual) stories about Roman emperors or important political figures who may in fact have been bastards?
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Nov 18, 2012 20:07
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Halloween Jack posted:I have a question about this--how did attribution work for ancient authors; that is, what kind of relationship did readers have with the sources of books that let them know that when they pick up a book that starts with "So I got a great education, and..." that they're reading Meditations by Aurelius? I only recently learned that you can identify pseudepigrapha by an introduction that reads "This being the testament of I, Dickus Maximus, son of Priapus, concerning the matter of..." It could get hosed up for sure, but books would typically have a titulus or little tag thing with the author's name and a title or content description. Stuff was definitely circulated under the wrong people's names. Apparently once part of one of Cicero's works got out before he was done editing, and he wrote his buddy about hopefully being able to pass it off as an impostor's work because he didn't want to be associated with it.
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Nov 18, 2012 22:08
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Eggplant Wizard posted:It's related to fennel and they ate it to death, I think. I didn't know it was also an abortifacient but I doubt that's the sole reason it was harvested to extinction. It's entirely possible my professors were more prurient than they ought to have been.  Honestly, though, with a name like "laser", it was too good for this world anyway...
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Nov 20, 2012 15:38
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the JJ posted:Wiki says the hetairai, unlike other women, could go to the Symposium, a place for intellectual discussion but not governance. It's most famous for being the site of Plato's Symposium and thus Socrates' discussion of love (e.g. Platonic love). So yeah, a place for rich men to get nude and hit on each other/the totally-not-prostitutes. Maybe that's what you were thinking? I have clearly been going to the wrong symposiums. So, I just finished catching up on this thread, reading from start to finish. Well done GF and everyone else for creating an absolutely fascinating thread!
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Nov 22, 2012 04:09
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I've also read the entire thread over the past couple of weeks, it's been very interesting. I have a ton of questions that I mostly forget at the moment, but I'm sure they'll come back to me. For now though, three that I've actually retained: Could someone go into more detail about the lasting effects Roman culture had on the east? How dominant were the Roman influences as opposed to the Hellenistic ones? In particular linguistically would be helpful; the principle counter argument I've gotten to the lack-of-divide between Byzantium and Rome has been that "they all spoke Greek"- I know someone said that the east always retained Greek as its language so that's a silly counterpoint, but all the same I don't feel confident enough on the points to actually argue about it. How much of a hand did iron have in the bronze age collapse, if any? I vaguely recall something from my childhood (it might have been from horrible histories...) about an iron-equipped civilization able to annihilate those that used bronze. Am I mangling events or did they have some relation? I'm also interested in hearing what people have to say to defend the study of the ancient weaponry and armour, and the machinations of individuals. These topics all seem to utterly dominate discussions about Rome, but what merits do they actually have? While things like the movements of people and languages, the origins of religious and cultural prejudices and so on can all be very useful today, what reason is there to learn that most legionaries actually wore chainmail instead of lorica segmentata, or who Cicero would be meeting in Brundisium on Sunday? Why are the latter topics so dominant in our education but the former so barely touched on? Is it just because pop trivia like that is more interesting or is there a purpose to it that I'm missing.
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Nov 23, 2012 00:12
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Penetration of Roman culture in the eastern provinces ranged from minimal to non-existent. And as widespread as Greek culture was in that area, it was almost entirely confined to major urban centres, and many different peoples and cultures existed in the large swathes of land outside the cities. Rome's influence on the politics of the east, and in a sense its political culture is undoubtable, but in terms of literature, music or art, I'm struggling to think of enduring examples. Veeta fucked around with this message at 02:19 on Nov 23, 2012 |
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Nov 23, 2012 02:11
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Dacia? Somehow the first province to be abandoned is the best example of eastern romance languages.
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Nov 23, 2012 02:44
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The eastern influence is there but it's more nebulous than in the west. Western cultures developed directly out of a Roman base, while the east was dominated by invaders who retained their already strong cultures. They adapted Roman concepts to themselves, but they didn't adapt it wholesale the way the Germans did in the west. Why that is, I don't know. The Greek influence in the east was already strong before Rome arrived and Rome never supplanted it, it just became part of it, so I'd guess that's part of why. You can look at Islamic art and architecture and see Rome all over it though. Like look at these mosques:   Big Roman state buildings looked pretty much exactly like that. That's the kind of place you find the eastern Roman legacy, not in the direct lineage like we do in the west. Romania is a notable example in the eastern part of the empire as a place that turned Roman as gently caress and stayed that way. I think the iron thing is a myth. I've heard it too but never in anything scholarly. The attention is paid to the military for a few reasons. One, people find military history cool. Two, the military was one of the most notable features of Rome; it's impossible to talk about the Roman state without talking about the military. They are completely interdependent on one another. Rome's military prowess is why we're talking about an empire that spanned continents and millennia rather than one city. Third, it's a lot simpler so it's more accessible. There are plenty of discussions of everything else you mentioned, but dudes with swords is simpler to deal with than the details of land reform. Related to that, it's what shows up in popular culture. You're not going to get a Rome movie about migrations, you're going to get one about legions. And that's about as far as most people will ever learn about it. The reason the bigwigs are so prominent in the history is simply because of the amount of detail available. I'd wager our primary sources for Cicero alone are more extensive than everything we have for the entire pleb class in all of Roman history. All the stuff is out there, and lower class/social history is much more prominent now than it used to be. There's been a push back against the entire big man style of history, and military history as a discipline is totally ghettoized now. Too much so, in my opinion.
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Nov 23, 2012 03:17
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Koramei posted:How much of a hand did iron have in the bronze age collapse, if any? I vaguely recall something from my childhood (it might have been from horrible histories...) about an iron-equipped civilization able to annihilate those that used bronze. Am I mangling events or did they have some relation? I don't know about the bronze age collapse in particular, but the main advantage iron (pre-steel, that is) has over bronze is that it's much easier to find, so you can equip a lot more people with it. I'm not sure I understand your second question completely, but I'll give it a try. I think the interest in ancient arms and armor comes about out of the same kind of gearhead impulse that makes some people interested in the finer details of automobiles, computers, cameras, cellphones, firearms, trains, et cetera. It's also a means by which people can approach antiquity without needing any kind of specialized knowledge; everyone knows what armor is and might find it interesting to watch a program or read a book about various changes to armor technology and use over the years. Comparatively few people know the word λόγος or would be interested to hear about various nuances in how its use changed over time. (Weapons and tools are also thoroughly practical, non-abstract subjects. A language that you don't use is completely abstract and theoretical. I'd suggest that Anglophone countries have a cultural bias toward practical subjects and against abstract ones.) (There's also the issue that if you're writing or researching something like language in particular, an eighteenth or nineteenth century German has already beaten you to whatever your hypothesis is. So there isn't much new scholarship to be done on ancient language, barring the discovery of some previously lost literary text.) As for the focus on politics and machinating individuals, well, much of what we have from the period is by or about machinating individuals. So we have to make do with what we have, and since works like biography, history, letters, and so on are often more straightforward in their style than poetry or drama, they are commonly used as an entry point for Latin newbies, which means most everyone in the field is passingly familiar with Cicero from having to translate him for grammar practice. (I'd also suggest that there's a quirk in our educational system resulting from the fact that the modern university grew out of medieval seminaries and law schools, resulting in a bias toward reading history as a morality play or legal case, which lends itself to a focus on machinating individuals rather than relatively impersonal forces. This is changing somewhat in our time.)
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Nov 23, 2012 10:16
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