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Vincent Van Goatse posted:None of which makes him an expert in interpreting ancient literature or physical anthropology or human evolution. .. I think you should acquire expertise in this by reading the book, honestly  Evolution?
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Jul 5, 2013 03:01
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Ras Het posted:.. I think you should acquire expertise in this by reading the book, honestly Yeah, human evolution. The development of the brain is a pretty big deal in that area and none of the people who seem to be influenced by Jaynes' theories actually work in that area. The "neuroscientist" who wrote a forward to one of his books is something of whackjob. Vincent Van Goatse fucked around with this message at 03:11 on Jul 5, 2013 |
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Jul 5, 2013 03:07
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Vincent Van Goatse posted:Yeah, human evolution. The development of the brain is a pretty big deal in that area and none of the people who seem to be influenced by Jaymes' theories actually work in that area. The "neuroscientist" who wrote a forward to one of his books is something of whackjob. Meanwhile, you can't quite get his name right. The point isn't some sort of a physical development, but a reframing of your thought process. Human evolution doesn't seem to come into it at all.
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Jul 5, 2013 03:10
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Ras Het posted:Meanwhile, you can't quite get his name right. The point isn't some sort of a physical development, but a reframing of your thought process. Human evolution doesn't seem to come into it at all. Yeah, but such a drastic change in thought processes would probably require some genetic component.
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Jul 5, 2013 03:22
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Can we argue about this in the anthropology thread instead? It was interesting at first but after 2 pages... I was trying to think of a good question to go with this but I got nothin'. Do we know much about ancient Korea?
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Jul 5, 2013 03:47
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Vincent Van Goatse posted:Yeah, but such a drastic change in thought processes would probably require some genetic component. You should read the book and let us know what you think, because just based on reading a few articles on the internet, what you're talking about isn't what Jaynes is talking about. I'm going to buy the book and read it later when I have the chance. Probably not a great idea to call someone an idiot before reading the 200-300 pages they've written explaining the idea. This is more anthropology anyway, isn't it?
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Jul 5, 2013 03:52
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Vincent Van Goatse posted:That's an understatement. Apparently when shown evidence that didn't agree with his thesis (the Gilgamesh epic for one), he dismissed it for what basically amounted to "reasons". It's also dripping with the same sort of sneering condescension shown by Victorian types towards anyone with darker skin than the Welsh, according to some anyway. Well, not really. Actually, the Epic of Gilgamesh is covered in the book. In fact it was from this book that I learned that the earlier accounts had the protagonists name as Bilgames.
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Jul 5, 2013 03:53
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Well, Fspade's response was that this rewiring was memetic. Which is still nonsense, because it doesn't explain how this consciousness meme spread. And besides, it puts forth a nice testable hypothesis: uncontacted tribes must be non-conscious, and after a single generation of contact they will have massively increased rates of schizophrenia. No evidence supports this. I remember watching a David Attenborough video of him and an Australian and a few dozen Papau New Guineans going into jungle to meet an uncontacted tribe. And when the camera finally met them, you could read body language straight off them (they also had a local interpreter with a similar language to the uncontacted tribe). They were mostly friendly, and the older one was a very charismatic guy, but they were a bit cautious even about the gifts they were offered. And then Attenborough asked if they could lead the party to their village to meet their women and children. The two villagers were like "...sure", and slightly apprehensive about it, and a few hundred metres later they freaked out about the thought of leading a few dozen strangers to their homes and their families and loving bailed on Attenborough. Nothing about them struck me as being less sapient or conscious than the others, if anything, Attenborough was the one lacking introspection about some villagers being less than thrilled about introducing potentially dangerous weirdos to their homes.
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Jul 5, 2013 03:53
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Koramei posted:Can we argue about this in the anthropology thread instead? It was interesting at first but after 2 pages... Indeed. We should be talking about the crackpot theory that says that the European Dark Ages never happened, Ancient Rome/Greece/Egypt were made up by renaissance dudes, written history only began in the year we would call 800AD, the Jewish Kings of Israel were actually the Roman Emperors, Jesus was actually Andronikos Komnenos, and Tamerlane was a Russian guy all along.
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Jul 5, 2013 03:55
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Yes, it's like a lava lamp.
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PittTheElder posted:Indeed. We should be talking about the crackpot theory that says that the European Dark Ages never happened, Ancient Rome/Greece/Egypt were made up by renaissance dudes, written history only began in the year we would call 800AD, the Jewish Kings of Israel were actually the Roman Emperors, Jesus was actually Andronikos Komnenos, and Tamerlane was a Russian guy all along. Or, minus talking about that, we can go back to a favorite subject. Guys, when did Rome truly end?
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Jul 5, 2013 04:01
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PittTheElder posted:Indeed. We should be talking about the crackpot theory that says that the European Dark Ages never happened, Ancient Rome/Greece/Egypt were made up by renaissance dudes, written history only began in the year we would call 800AD, the Jewish Kings of Israel were actually the Roman Emperors, Jesus was actually Andronikos Komnenos, and Tamerlane was a Russian guy all along. What is that about, anyway? I once knew a guy who said he believed in it, but he was less than forthcoming about what the supposed evidence for it was.
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Jul 5, 2013 04:10
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Brown Blitzkrieg posted:Well, not really. Actually, the Epic of Gilgamesh is covered in the book. In fact it was from this book that I learned that the earlier accounts had the protagonists name as Bilgames. He discusses it, but dismisses any evidence of introspection as being a later insertion after humans magically gained real consciousness. Like I said, he dismissed evidence contrary to his theory because it didn't fit. Classic pseudoscience move, that.
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Jul 5, 2013 04:15
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Vincent Van Goatse posted:He discusses it, but dismisses any evidence of introspection as being a later insertion after humans magically gained real consciousness. Didn't he specifically compare tablets of the same verse from different time periods with differences that supported his theory?
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Jul 5, 2013 04:20
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Amused to Death posted:Or, minus talking about that, we can go back to a favorite subject. Guys, when did Rome truly end? That would depend. Do you mean the classical city, the empire, or the broader civilization? In that case it would be 476, 1453, and some unknown date, respectively. There were plenty of groups that saw themselves as the Third Rome, notably Russia.
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Jul 5, 2013 04:21
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Nothing quite beats my Classical Philosophy professor telling us they have a 100% accurate image of Christ. 
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Jul 5, 2013 04:29
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karl fungus posted:That would depend. Do you mean the classical city, the empire, or the broader civilization? In that case it would be 476, 1453, and some unknown date, respectively. There were plenty of groups that saw themselves as the Third Rome, notably Russia. One thing I've always been curious about is the rise of the Catholic Church as a power, and what appeared (to me at least) to be the Pope taking over the place of the Emperors (the "divine" ones at least). Is there any possible argument to be made that the Roman Empire actually continued on as the Catholic Church, or is that just an incredibly stupid idea?
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Jul 5, 2013 04:45
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Jerusalem posted:One thing I've always been curious about is the rise of the Catholic Church as a power, and what appeared (to me at least) to be the Pope taking over the place of the Emperors (the "divine" ones at least). Is there any possible argument to be made that the Roman Empire actually continued on as the Catholic Church, or is that just an incredibly stupid idea? They inherited a lot of the bureaucracy and titles of the empire- I've actually heard the idea bandied around quite a bit. It makes sense too when you think about it.
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Jul 5, 2013 04:55
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Then would the Orthodox Church be the continuation of the Byzantine Empire, in that sense?
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Jul 5, 2013 05:02
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Jerusalem posted:One thing I've always been curious about is the rise of the Catholic Church as a power, and what appeared (to me at least) to be the Pope taking over the place of the Emperors (the "divine" ones at least). Is there any possible argument to be made that the Roman Empire actually continued on as the Catholic Church, or is that just an incredibly stupid idea? It's not stupid. The Catholic Church is the only surviving Roman governmental body. It's not a fringe argument at all, it's truth. I wouldn't call it the Roman Empire, but it's absolutely a Roman institution that carries on Roman traditions and rituals to this day. Many parts of the full Catholic mass are essentially Roman government ceremony.
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Jul 5, 2013 05:07
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Jerusalem posted:One thing I've always been curious about is the rise of the Catholic Church as a power, and what appeared (to me at least) to be the Pope taking over the place of the Emperors (the "divine" ones at least). Is there any possible argument to be made that the Roman Empire actually continued on as the Catholic Church, or is that just an incredibly stupid idea? You know what Catholic Church dioceses are right? All of them originate in Roman civil dioceses, and often retain the same borders as the Roman civil ones of 1500 years ago or so. Obviously, many new ones have been created outside former Roman territory, as well old ones being split up or merged as populations changed. This is just as one example of Roman governmental function/feature that seamlessly moved to the Church.
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Jul 5, 2013 05:10
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Install Gentoo posted:You know what Catholic Church dioceses are right? Yeah, finding out about these recently, as well as the "Vicar" title, were what resparked my thoughts on the subject, but I guess I just assumed that it was a theory I'd have heard bandied about more if there wasn't some super-obvious thing I wasn't aware of disproving it. It's nice to know it's not a fringe theory and has some basis in reality.
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Jul 5, 2013 05:13
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Install Gentoo posted:You know what Catholic Church dioceses are right? All of them originate in Roman civil dioceses, and often retain the same borders as the Roman civil ones of 1500 years ago or so. And once the Church inherited all that power in all those civil institutions, it got rather comfortable with it and was loathe to give it up. Hence the various squabbles between the Church and new secular institutions that characterize the last 500 years or so of history.
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Jul 5, 2013 05:14
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PittTheElder posted:Indeed. We should be talking about the crackpot theory that says that the European Dark Ages never happened, Ancient Rome/Greece/Egypt were made up by renaissance dudes, written history only began in the year we would call 800AD, the Jewish Kings of Israel were actually the Roman Emperors, Jesus was actually Andronikos Komnenos, and Tamerlane was a Russian guy all along. The theory I've heard was that Otto III and Pope Sylvester II invented most of the dark ages, including Charlemagne, in order to make themselves sound more impressive. I love how so many crackpot history theories boil down to, "the people in this region/era are so terrible and stupid, so we have to invent this weird theory to explain it." SlothfulCobra fucked around with this message at 05:22 on Jul 5, 2013 |
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Jul 5, 2013 05:19
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My favorite part of that one is the sheer balls of its level of Eurocentrism. It's breathtaking to say the "dark ages" never existed because some Europeans made it up and it's actually the year 1300 or whatever and just dismiss the entirety of history from the rest of the world.
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Jul 5, 2013 05:30
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Grand Fromage posted:My favorite part of that one is the sheer balls of its level of Eurocentrism. It's breathtaking to say the "dark ages" never existed because some Europeans made it up and it's actually the year 1300 or whatever and just dismiss the entirety of history from the rest of the world. Yeah, that really is the best part. "Using confirmation bias, I can find a correlation between Jewish Kings and Roman Emperors! Chinese or American sources? Eh, whatever, those don't really count because." There not even really a reason why he's so comfortable ignoring poo poo.
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Jul 5, 2013 05:51
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As someone who had gall stones and ultimately had the gall bladder removed, I can't help but wonder, what would have happened to me if I lived in the ancient world? Would I just have died?
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Jul 5, 2013 06:20
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karl fungus posted:As someone who had gall stones and ultimately had the gall bladder removed, I can't help but wonder, what would have happened to me if I lived in the ancient world? Would I just have died? Yes, but first you would have had a lot of cabbage based remedies. So bloating AND death.
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Jul 5, 2013 06:29
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That's pretty unfortunate. Why did they give you cabbage? Also, why not just, you know, not give cabbage if the people ended up dying from that?
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Jul 5, 2013 06:32
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karl fungus posted:That's pretty unfortunate. Why did they give you cabbage? Also, why not just, you know, not give cabbage if the people ended up dying from that? Well, Chinese medicine is still being used and basically it's the same deal...grass and poo poo. Found this on a website "Cabbage (brassica oleracea) - Pliny goes as far as saying the Romans used cabbage as the only medicine for a number of centuries. Catullus defended it and its virtues in the senate against other foodstuffs and herbs being imported from the orient. The poor ate all parts of it whilst the rich had a preference for the young shoots only. Recent cancer research sugests that indeed it is an effective cancer defence and should be eaten twice a week if possible!"
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Jul 5, 2013 06:39
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I would love to hear more about Roman medical care. I've heard about important people like emperors and generals having personal doctors but what about the average Roman working in the city? Lets say I broke my arm and needed it to be reset and properly bound up, would I have to go to some kind of doctors office in town, would I send my spouse out to fetch a doctor to me and if so where do I even send my spouse to? Could I even afford a doctor? What sort of training could I expect my doctor to have? Also, if plague sprung up in the city was there any sort of group dedicated to containing the outbreak and caring for the dying?
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Jul 5, 2013 08:07
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I grew up with DnD and it's meticulous progression of protection by degrees. Nowadays my theory on armor would be that there's about three categories: armor that isn't made of metal, then most armor that's made of metal, then that late Medieval platemail that was so good you didn't even care about carrying a shield. But if I trusted my own pet theories I wouldn't be posting this. How does ancient armor compare to medieval armor, comparing them both in design and material. As two specific examples take roman chain mail (hamata?) vs medieval chainmail and roman plate mail (segmentata?) vs European plate mail. I heard in either this thread or the medieval history thread that roman "plate mail" is actually worse than the roman chain mail, and not nearly as good as the later plate mail of the medieval period. Regarding the chainmail my  opinion is that the designs don't look very different but perhaps the quality of metal differs? This is getting more into the medieval side of things but was there more variety of metal quality in the fractured European feudal period compared to the "factories" of ancient Rome? And what about areas of coverage? Did Legions wear as much chainmail as a European soldier or did they wear less? The armor at least from the HBO show ROME seems a little scantier compared to some footman head to toe in mail. Look I'll be honest with you. I watch Game of Thrones and start fantasizing about the Roman Legion showing up and I know tactics and discipline are what's most important, but how does the armor compare. Like I said I'm willing to throw it all into about three categories at this point and chalk the rest up to nitpicking. Sort of similar to how most people who's knowledge of firearms I respect just condense it all down to "handguns vs long guns", maybe comparing different kinds of metal armor is like trying to argue about 9mm vs 45 but if anyone has anything to contribute on the topic it's been on my mind and I'd love to hear it. EDIT: Also what about brigadine? It was around during the time of the Romans and it's label as "transitional" armor would suggest that it was more protective than mail. Did Romans express any envy of brigadine? Did they think their mail was fine? EDIT: Literally daydreaming about Titus and Lucius wandering into Westeros. Jack B Nimble fucked around with this message at 08:52 on Jul 5, 2013 |
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Jul 5, 2013 08:38
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Dr Scoofles posted:I would love to hear more about Roman medical care. I've heard about important people like emperors and generals having personal doctors but what about the average Roman working in the city? Lets say I broke my arm and needed it to be reset and properly bound up, would I have to go to some kind of doctors office in town, would I send my spouse out to fetch a doctor to me and if so where do I even send my spouse to? Could I even afford a doctor? What sort of training could I expect my doctor to have? There were surgeon's offices in Rome, which is probably where you'd send someone to fetch a surgeon for you in the case of an emergency. Your surgeon likely served as an apprentice to another surgeon, which is pretty much how most everyone was trained in everything in those days. Your surgeon was most likely a Greek fellow who was a slave or freedman. Surgery was as barbaric as you might imagine, but the knowledge about how parts of the body responded to surgical techniques was generally pretty good. In the Imperial period, there was a formal medical corps established for the Legion, so in later years you might have a surgeon who was trained there. For diseases and other things that couldn't be empirically demonstrated or practiced on a corpse, you had home remedies, just like your virtuous grandfather taught you. (Got the flu? Eat some cabbage. Strep throat? Cabbage. Fever? Cabbage. Lung cancer? You guessed it, cabbage!) If you were rich and fell ill, you could take your chances with a doctor's regimen and care -- but the concept of what diseases were and how to cure them was rather unrefined, so it was a crap shoot. Private doctors who were good at what they did could make a lot of money in Rome treating wealthy patients, but it's also attested that doctors were available to the poor for virtually no cost. (Though, the poor probably got the crap doctors and the quacks.) For maladies needing long term treatment, there was a place called the Aesculapium, on Tiber Island in Rome, which was kind of like a hospital. It was a temple dedicated to the god of medicine, and it was attended by doctors, nurses, and apothecaries. It was founded in response to a plague outbreak, and served the entire city. Payment wasn't charged, but it was culturally expected that if you had money and the god answered your prayers, you'd give in proportion to your means. It's known that people of many social classes used the place, since there are a few imperial decrees that free all of the slaves who were abandoned there. (Presumably, this situation came about because masters would drop their sick slaves off there and then assume that they died.)
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Jul 5, 2013 08:52
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It's wrong to call the Lorica segmentata plate. The construction process and the protection it provides is radically different from a medieval suit of armour. You're comparing a bunch of steel plates hanging off a guy to this. Yeah it was less effective than gothic plate. In terms of coverage, the Romans started out wearing their hamata basically like a t-shirt. They can do this because the legionary's main protection was his gently caress-off shield. The coverage becomes longer and longer as the shield's shrink, and by the East/West split the mail is at kinda of a "sexy nightshirt" sort of phase, and it just gets longer and longer until cavalry becomes the thing and mail extends past the knees.
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Jul 5, 2013 09:28
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Tao Jones posted:For maladies needing long term treatment, there was a place called the Aesculapium, on Tiber Island in Rome, which was kind of like a hospital. It was a temple dedicated to the god of medicine, and it was attended by doctors, nurses, and apothecaries. It was founded in response to a plague outbreak, and served the entire city. Payment wasn't charged, but it was culturally expected that if you had money and the god answered your prayers, you'd give in proportion to your means. It's known that people of many social classes used the place, since there are a few imperial decrees that free all of the slaves who were abandoned there. (Presumably, this situation came about because masters would drop their sick slaves off there and then assume that they died.)  The rod with a serpent entwined around it is the symbol of Asclepius, and that's still used as a symbol a lot of hospitals. It also shouldn't be confused with the Caduceus (the rod entwined by two snakes), which is a symbol of Hermes instead. Smart Car fucked around with this message at 11:50 on Jul 5, 2013 |
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Jul 5, 2013 11:45
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Deteriorata posted:Given that iron-working seemed to accompany the arrival of the Sea Peoples, the theory that iron weapons made their wielders almost invincible against their bronze-clad opponents and thus produced the cascading population disruptions is certainly plausible. No one really seems to know. I have heard recently that bronze weapons and armour aren't too bad or even equal. The difference is you can find iron everywhere, while bronze requires a lot more digging and an international trade network to get the materials together. Is this correct? Comstar fucked around with this message at 11:52 on Jul 5, 2013 |
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Jul 5, 2013 11:48
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Yes, bronze is better than primitive low quality iron, but bronze is expensive because tin is rare. Iron is everywhere, and once you've worked out it quirks of it (you need significantly higher temperatures to smelt iron), you can equip alot more men with it. If I had a choice between 10 dudes with bronze swords and 50 dudes with wooden clubs, versus 50 men with iron swords, I'd take the latter. And a few millenia or so later, people work out how to make even better iron.
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Jul 5, 2013 12:47
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Dr Scoofles posted:I would love to hear more about Roman medical care. I've heard about important people like emperors and generals having personal doctors but what about the average Roman working in the city? Lets say I broke my arm and needed it to be reset and properly bound up, would I have to go to some kind of doctors office in town, would I send my spouse out to fetch a doctor to me and if so where do I even send my spouse to? Could I even afford a doctor? What sort of training could I expect my doctor to have? You wanted to know about the treatment of the common people etc, but I really think Galen deserves mentioning. He was the personal physician to a number of Emperors and at the forefront of dealing with plagues in the army, and his studies/notes/hypotheses had an absolutely ENORMOUS impact on our understanding of medicine for 1500+ years. Up until the 16th and 17th Centuries a lot of his theories on anatomy, blood circulation etc were accepted as fact in the medical world, and during his own time he lived somewhat in fear of being poisoned or otherwise assassinated by Roman doctors who were challenged/threatened by his opposing views on medicine. He performed vivisection and dissections of pigs and monkeys to demonstrate what he believed to be the anatomy of the human being, established that the voice is generated by the larynx and pushed the viewpoint that the brain controlled the body through the nervous system, and even performed successful eye surgery!
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Jul 5, 2013 13:57
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Jack B Nimble posted:I heard in either this thread or the medieval history thread that roman "plate mail" is actually worse than the roman chain mail, I can't say much about the medieval comparisons, but chain v. segmentata has been played with by re-enactors, who basically made the stuff and then spent time attacking it. The virtues of segmentata are that it provides mildly superior protection against arrows and blunt trauma, and is just seriously super impressive looking. Downside is it's expensive and harder to repair. Chain performed only slightly worse and is easier to field repair...all you really need is a box of metal rings and a hammer. The Romans kept using chain a lot, even well after the lorica segmentata started showing up.
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Jul 5, 2013 14:14
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Lorica segmentata is what we see because it looks rad as hell, but lorica hamata was always the main armor used by the legions. Just cheaper and easier to deal with. Segmentata is better but you're mass equipping hundreds of thousands of men so it's not really practical to kit them all out with it. No one knows how it was divided up though.
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Jul 5, 2013 14:17
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Comstar posted:I have heard recently that bronze weapons and armour aren't too bad or even equal. The difference is you can find iron everywhere, while bronze requires a lot more digging and an international trade network to get the materials together. Is this correct? Yep, basically. And bronze is still useful as an industrial metal, especially for ships. It resists corrosion (one the exterior corrodes it basically stops) so if you only have a limited amount of bronze but tons of iron, use the bronze for ships (or anything else where corrosion is a big factor) and arm your army with iron and tell them to keep it dry and clean.
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Jul 5, 2013 14:32
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