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Okay since he's banned from posting in this thread it's not good sport, let's stop talking about him.
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Jan 19, 2014 10:10
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Besides, it's hardly ancient history.
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Jan 19, 2014 10:20
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Monarchs in Europe still have some non-ceremonial duties, like in Belgium (refusing to sign law to legalize abortion). He was actually deemed 'unfit to rule' for 36 hours so the law could still be signed.
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Jan 19, 2014 11:41
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Most still-remaining nobility in Europe are pretty rich too, though direct participation in government is rare. Besides, there is no quicker way to alienate your friends and countrymen than by constantly going "no see, my daddy is a baron  ".
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Jan 19, 2014 12:38
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Namarrgon posted:Most still-remaining nobility in Europe are pretty rich too, though direct participation in government is rare. Besides, there is no quicker way to alienate your friends and countrymen than by constantly going "no see, my daddy is a baron My Christmas wish of "make the Middleton kid die" hasn't been too popular either, though.
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Jan 19, 2014 13:24
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I meant the nobility outside of the royalties. For some reason people will go crazy over kings, queens, princes and princesses.
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Jan 19, 2014 13:27
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Agean90 posted:I gotta wonder how it must have felt for the guys who were still nomadic, decide to go into a certain mountain pass and see a big rear end temple complex made of carved stone holy fuckballs. I've read somewhere about a similar ancient temple-structure found in England and apparently it was burned down just a few years or something after being build. So I guess maybe some still nomadic people got offended, or the whatever religion they believed in ended in infighting? Another thing that really got me was reading up on ancient Mesopotamien history and being told that linguistically, some of the oldest Sumerian languages include idiosyncrasies hinting at several other older languages who just got assimilated. Those older people who were displaced by the old Sumerians wandering in left no writings, though. So we know almost nothing about them except of what distinctions they left in later written languages. Ancient history is really neat, I never knew ancient Egypt and the different Mesopotamien empires regularly exchanged messages, for example. Or that Hammurabi of Babylon used mass starvation as a weapon in his war with Lagas.
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Jan 19, 2014 15:00
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Libluini posted:Or that Hammurabi of Babylon used mass starvation as a weapon in his war with Lagas. Was it mass starvation in the Great Leap Forward sense, or the Holodomor sense?
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Jan 19, 2014 19:43
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Namarrgon posted:I meant the nobility outside of the royalties. For some reason people will go crazy over kings, queens, princes and princesses.
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Jan 19, 2014 20:16
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Hedera Helix posted:Was it mass starvation in the Great Leap Forward sense, or the Holodomor sense? If I read the wikipedia-entry on Holodomor right, then neither. It all goes back to an inscription of Hammurabi of his victory over Rimsin of Larsa (Sorry, Lagas was wrong, it was one of the affected cities, but the main enemy in this war was the realm of Larsa, not the city-state of Lagas) in the 18th century BC. In it, he graciously grants back water to the cities of Nippur, Eridu, Ur, Larsa, Uruk, Isin and allowed the people of Sumer and Akkad to come back from the wilderness. Now archaeological evidence suggests the massive water-network in the north, were Hammurabis mainpower lied, suddenly stoppend being maintained during the war. Why is this important? At the time of the war against Larsa Mesopotamia, especially the south, had been settled for literally thousands of years already. The southern cities all had trouble sustaining agriculture, since the food production only worked well with water irrigation. Watering was especially needed to flood the fields to wash out the salt which had accumulated over thousands of years of agriculture. The first people noticing their fields slowly dying were those who founded the empire of Akkad, but this empire was essentially a proto-communist dictatorship: Everything revolved around sustaining agriculture of the slowly dying fields and the government held tight control over everything. After the collapse, everything got worse, then slowly better. In the time of Hammurabi, an extensive irrigation system stretched the entirety of Mesopotamia, from north to south. Now thanks to the way the rivers Euphrat and Tigris flow, the southern irrigation systems depended on waterflow from the northern part of the network -if I understand my sources right, without the northern part of the network working, the southern provinces of Mesopotamia started accumulating salt at an advanced rate and at the already infertile places agriculture just couldn't be maintained at all. Another important part: The water irrigation system only worked with continous maintenance. As soon as the eternal work stopped, the water soon stopped too. In the north, parts of Mesopotamia were still wet enough agriculture could be sustained with rain alone, so it really looks damning when around the same time Hammurabi fought his war, the maintenance work in the north suddenly stopped. And started back up again after his victory. Combine this with his victory inscription, which tells a tale of mass destruction in the south. Archaeological evidence suggests that it really was that bad: First the price of grain and other food products exploded, leading to an economic collapse in the south. Then people started starving, since ancient wars could go on for many years as long as no decisive battle was fought. The south was also cut off from food imports from the more fertile north, which accelerated the problem. And as soon as Rimsin of Larsa (and his presumably half-starved army) was defeated, Hammurabi just ordered the maintenance work to continue, and the people of the south had their water back. Soon after, famine and starvation ended, people came back from the wilderness to reclaim empty cities and rebuilding began. And later on Hammurabi overextended himself and his empire started to collapse again after his death, but that is another story.  Edit: With it being like neither, I meant Hammurabi used mass starvation as a direct weapon, there is no controversy about it. And naturally Hammurabi didn't try to industrialize his country, so it can't be like the Great Leap Forward either. It is it's own thing. Libluini fucked around with this message at 22:38 on Jan 19, 2014 |
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Jan 19, 2014 22:34
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Oberleutnant posted:I gotta say that this is still true for the lesser nobility. I work for a Duke, and the way people simper and fawn over the whole family is just unbearable. e: always and only the middle classes. Working class and upper class people are pretty chill about it, but the middle classes become all cringingly servile as soon as they come within 150 feet of His Grace. Which one? Not that I'd ever fawn over a member of the nobility, but the actual history of the nobility (mostly Roman and British) is something I've always been interested in. I understand if you can't tell me for privacy reasons.
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Jan 19, 2014 22:51
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Octy posted:Which one? Not that I'd ever fawn over a member of the nobility, but the actual history of the nobility (mostly Roman and British) is something I've always been interested in. I understand if you can't tell me for privacy reasons. Since he wasn't (as far as I'm aware) present in ancient Greece or Rome I won't poo poo up the thread anymore with this derail.
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Jan 20, 2014 00:01
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Oberleutnant posted:I gotta say that this is still true for the lesser nobility. I work for a Duke, and the way people simper and fawn over the whole family is just unbearable. e: always and only the middle classes. Working class and upper class people are pretty chill about it, but the middle classes become all cringingly servile as soon as they come within 150 feet of His Grace. There's probably a bit of tradition behind it, like standing up during the national anthem at a football/baseball here in the states. Nobody wants to be that guy who wants to stick it to the Duke by pointedly omitting the honorary, much like nobody wants to be seen being the rear end in a top hat sitting and pouting during the national anthem. Sometimes simply being socially polite comes off as being cringingly servile. As for it being only the middle class, it probably has to do with the cult of right-wing media/tabloid obsession (Telegraph/Daily Mail?) with nobles/royals. Upper class is probably familiar enough to be chill, lower class couldn't give less of a gently caress. FAUXTON fucked around with this message at 00:59 on Jan 20, 2014 |
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Jan 20, 2014 00:49
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Seeing we're on the topic of monarchy anyway, was the Spartan dual kingship a unique phenomenon or were there other examples of unusual monarchies like that?
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Jan 20, 2014 02:41
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quote:Edit: Well, it's pretty much wartime famine 101. When ”barbarians” overran the land, the irrigation canals silt up and the peasants are all too afraid/dead to maintain them. And caravans can't get through without being murdered, so alternate sources of food aren't available. It's a pretty typical result of war. Once the Babylonians got their poo poo together and established hegemony over the region, they rebuilt things and were sure to let people know who was responsible. Because it was a big deal. But it wasn't quite the deliberate policy of starvation. Famine comes during war, surely as the floods in the spring. People still used hunger as a siege weapon, but that's pretty much par for the course before advanced siege weaponry appears. Also, I wouldn't describe Akkad or any other Sumerian state as ”communist”. People paid their taxes with labor, used to build critical infrastructure projects, and were paid in food so they wouldn't starve, but they weren't owners of the means of production in any sense of the phrase. I guess private ownership of the land wasn't quite as big a deal as it is now, and there weren't easily identifiable nobles like in feudalism, but there were still elites that ran the show and accordingly consumed the delicious rewards.
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Jan 20, 2014 03:30
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sullat posted:Also, I wouldn't describe Akkad or any other Sumerian state as ”communist”. People paid their taxes with labor, used to build critical infrastructure projects, and were paid in food so they wouldn't starve, but they weren't owners of the means of production in any sense of the phrase. I guess private ownership of the land wasn't quite as big a deal as it is now, and there weren't easily identifiable nobles like in feudalism, but there were still elites that ran the show and accordingly consumed the delicious rewards. Presumably he meant how communist countries during the 20th century actually panned out, rather than the philosophical goal of a truly egalitarian society as proposed by Karl Marx.
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Jan 20, 2014 04:02
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Paxicon posted:Presumably he meant how communist countries during the 20th century actually panned out, rather than the philosophical goal of a truly egalitarian society as proposed by Karl Marx. If that's the case pretty much any pre-industrial society would be ”communist”. Which kind of makes it a useeless adjective for describing things.
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Jan 20, 2014 04:07
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ColtMcAsskick posted:Seeing we're on the topic of monarchy anyway, was the Spartan dual kingship a unique phenomenon or were there other examples of unusual monarchies like that? It's not quite the same thing, but you can look at Rome at various times. Double consuls in the Republic; Emperors of the East and West when the Empire splits; and even the junior and senior emperors in each part during the Tetrarchy.
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Jan 20, 2014 04:32
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Suenteus Po posted:What kinds of texts talked about farting unambiguously, medical texts? No, fart jokes. 
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Jan 20, 2014 07:08
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ColtMcAsskick posted:Seeing we're on the topic of monarchy anyway, was the Spartan dual kingship a unique phenomenon or were there other examples of unusual monarchies like that? By calling it an unusual monarchy you're already loading the question and betraying your biases. Historiography! Sorry, undergrad habits catching up to me. So, yeah, as pointed out above, Rome's a pretty obvious example. Generally these systems work best when there's some clear delineation between who's doing what when. The Spartans are a bit weird because there's also a council of voting elders to go along with the monarchs, which is very Roman in that Senate plus consuls sort of arrangement. You get some weirdness in other places. The Japanese shogun/emperor dual system could be comparable. Then you got fun cases where one person would hold two kingships. In Europe the mess of inheritance laws led to this, in China it happened when the steppe nomads rolled in and needed to manage two populations, so they adopted two personas. Also, as far as weird monarchies go, it's hard to beat the Poles.
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Jan 20, 2014 08:37
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If undergrad history has taught me anything, it's embrace you biases but still pretend you don't have any.
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Jan 20, 2014 10:08
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sullat posted:If that's the case pretty much any pre-industrial society would be ”communist”. Which kind of makes it a useeless adjective for describing things. No, since a lot of those societies didn't have writing and therefore couldn't possibly enact the amount of control the old Akkadian empire did. Those guys had lists for everything and punishment for skimming of your alloted taxes high. Also the Akkadian empire was special in the way it collected everything it's agriculture produced and then re-distributed it out again as payment for the workers. Almost exactly like the collective farms of communist states like the Sowjet Union worked. Including the massive amounts of paperwork. (Even though technically they didn't use paper.) sullat posted:Well, it's pretty much wartime famine 101. When ”barbarians” overran the land, the irrigation canals silt up and the peasants are all too afraid/dead to maintain them. And caravans can't get through without being murdered, so alternate sources of food aren't available. It's a pretty typical result of war. Once the Babylonians got their poo poo together and established hegemony over the region, they rebuilt things and were sure to let people know who was responsible. Because it was a big deal. But it wasn't quite the deliberate policy of starvation. Famine comes during war, surely as the floods in the spring. I have to disagree here, too. First of, in the case of the war no-one overran the north, the Babylonians invaded the south. Also, since nothing seemed to cause the maintenance work in the north to stop (like a barbarian invasion for example), it really looks damning. I remind you the irrigation canals in the south couldn't even work in peace without the rest of the system in the north working: Without the north working, not enough water reached the south. And the canals silting up wasn't the main problem, it was the accumulation of salt. The southern part had been lived in long enough by the 18th century BC it was simply not capable of sustaining agriculture even with the southern irrigation canals working. The system needed the additional water coming through the canals from the north. So no, stopping the maintenance work of the canal system was in fact used as a direct weapon against the south by Hammurabi, at least as far as we know. Remember, it got so bad several cities were just abandoned. As far as we know, Hammurabi didn't even move south during this time. He just starved everyone while sitting in Babylon until his enemies were already defeated, even if they didn't know yet. Edit: And advanced siege weapons like catapults already existed at the time, we know about it for sure since 2003 or 2007 at the least, after excavations in Jordan showed extensive use of ceramic balls against a besieged city. Evidence suggested they used catapults to fire massive ceramic spheres into the city. For more information, I posted about this in the military history thread: Libluini posted:Found it, it was in the German magazine/newspaper Zeit! Libluini fucked around with this message at 12:11 on Jan 20, 2014 |
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Jan 20, 2014 12:03
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sullat posted:People still used hunger as a siege weapon, but that's pretty much par for the course before advanced siege weaponry appears. History records some occasional spectacular failures of this, my favorite being the Spartans during the Peloponnesian. The Spartans got pissed and were all like “rarrr let’s march up the peninsula and mess up Athenian crops”. No one really thought about how logistically impossible it would be to tear up hundreds of square miles of olive trees and grape vines, by hand, while being shot at by Athenian patrols. Even 50,000 men were a drop in the bucket, and those plants in particular are very hardy. The campaign was an utter failure. The airborne defoliants deployed by the U.S. during the Cold War got a lot of well-deserved bad press, but they could one day prove dispositive should a non-nuclear total war scenario ever emerge in the modern day. We can defoliate Greece, definitely.
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Jan 20, 2014 16:05
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physeter posted:The airborne defoliants deployed by the U.S. during the Cold War got a lot of well-deserved bad press, but they could one day prove dispositive should a non-nuclear total war scenario ever emerge in the modern day. We can defoliate Greece, definitely. A war that would allow one party to have such an air superiority that it can fly over fields and forests for hours a day and spray them down is probably one where this party doesn't need to do it, since they have already won. Guerrilla war like Vietnam aside of course.
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Jan 20, 2014 16:45
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Libluini posted:I have to disagree here, too. First of, in the case of the war no-one overran the north, the Babylonians invaded the south. Also, since nothing seemed to cause the maintenance work in the north to stop (like a barbarian invasion for example), it really looks damning. I remind you the irrigation canals in the south couldn't even work in peace without the rest of the system in the north working: Without the north working, not enough water reached the south. And the canals silting up wasn't the main problem, it was the accumulation of salt. The southern part had been lived in long enough by the 18th century BC it was simply not capable of sustaining agriculture even with the southern irrigation canals working. The system needed the additional water coming through the canals from the north. Is it in any way possible to demonstrate that the halting of maintenance was deliberate though? If Hammurabi had raised a large enough army to go off raiding or campaigning, that could easily remove the workforce that would normally maintain the irrigation networks. This far removed, I just doubt we'll ever be able to tell whether he might have deliberately allowed his portion of the system to fail because it screwed over his enemies, or if he simply would have been willing to see it wither because he needed the manpower and was hurt less. Disclaimer: I don't know anything about the period except from skimming these posts, just playing devil's advocate. Decius posted:A war that would allow one party to have such an air superiority that it can fly over fields and forests for hours a day and spray them down is probably one where this party doesn't need to do it, since they have already won. Guerrilla war like Vietnam aside of course. Eh, you wouldn't need to have air superiority or supremacy, you could accomplish it pretty easily just by having large WW2 scale bombing raids probably. Of course Greece isn't a credible threat either. PittTheElder fucked around with this message at 17:18 on Jan 20, 2014 |
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Jan 20, 2014 17:15
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Yes, it's like a lava lamp.
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PittTheElder posted:Is it in any way possible to demonstrate that the halting of maintenance was deliberate though? If Hammurabi had raised a large enough army to go off raiding or campaigning, that could easily remove the workforce that would normally maintain the irrigation networks. In short, no. I'm only an interested amateur myself, mind you. But we have a little bit of archaeological evidence and Hammurabis' inscription. Also we know everything in the south went to poo poo. It could be just coincidence, sure. The current state of research is: Most likely he did it, but we have no way of being 100% sure. Hell, we don't even know the right dates. For everything older then a few thousand years you can be lucky if you get close enough to pinpoint the right decade!
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Jan 20, 2014 17:33
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Libluini posted:Also the Akkadian empire was special in the way it collected everything it's agriculture produced and then re-distributed it out again as payment for the workers. Almost exactly like the collective farms of communist states like the Sowjet Union worked. Including the massive amounts of paperwork. (Even though technically they didn't use paper.) Didn't a few ancient states do something similar to this? I recall reading about Egyptians using a centralized grain supply and doling out payments from it, but that could have been hundreds of years after this during the Ptolemys.
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Jan 21, 2014 23:53
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Ithle01 posted:Didn't a few ancient states do something similar to this? I recall reading about Egyptians using a centralized grain supply and doling out payments from it, but that could have been hundreds of years after this during the Ptolemys. Could be, I know next to nothing about Egypt.
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Jan 21, 2014 23:59
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Little fact I just picked up while listening to a Constantinople audiobook. I knew by the end the Roman identity was fading, but I never knew specifics. The eastern Empire used the term "Romanoi" for themselves until almost the end--in the early 1400s, some intellectuals in Thessaloniki began to use Hellas and Hellenes, and the emperor Manuel II was the first to use Hellenes to refer to the Empire's people. Until that point, it was never used. Even diplomats who came to Constantinople bearing letters to the Emperor of the Greeks were refused. If the Empire somehow survived the Ottomans, the Roman identity might've faded entirely. By then the theological struggle between the Eastern and Roman churches was so strained that the very term Roman had become tainted in the east. So for everyone who has asked about this, it seems Roman identity remains inviolate until the 1400s, where it starts to crack among the upper classes.
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Jan 22, 2014 03:09
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So looks like I will very likely be doing Honours in Ancient History this year. I've got an offer from the Faculty and if the Department can accommodate me, that'll be it. My broad subject area (Late Roman) isn't as popular as say the Roman Republic so hopefully I'll have an advantage in actually getting a supervisor, particularly as they're down one this year. I did have a meeting with a potential supervisor and he was very excited about my research proposal. Made a little mention about getting grant money to go off to North Africa or somewhere to study inscriptions... Hell, I'll just name drop him to make you all jealous. It's Dr. Richard Miles. I haven't read any of his books but I've had him a few times over the years and he is very good.
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Jan 22, 2014 09:17
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I searched this sub-forum and didn't see anything about it I highly recommend the book "Soldiers and Ghosts" - http://www.amazon.com/Soldiers-Ghos...iers+and+ghosts Dude loving loves talking about the phalanx. He goes on some seemingly pointless tangents in the beginning that drag out for a bit, though. That being said awesome book! I have a question that may be straying a bit off-topic but bear with me. So I understand the Moors invaded Iberia around 8th century AD and occupied it for a while. How come this piece of history is hardly ever talked about or mentioned? I understand a good portion of the castles and forts in Portugal and Spain now were built by them. But it seems like they didn't leave anything when they were kicked out. Culture, religion, race, etc? Like they were just kicked out and all remants of them wiped aside from the castles they could use. I'm having a hard time articulating this question the way I want to but that's the jist of it. Nostalgia4Dogges fucked around with this message at 19:31 on Jan 22, 2014 |
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Jan 22, 2014 19:28
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Christoff posted:So I understand the Moors invaded Iberia around 8th century AD and occupied it for a while. How come this piece of history is hardly ever talked about or mentioned? I understand a good portion of the castles and forts in Portugal and Spain now were built by them. But it seems like they didn't leave anything when they were kicked out. Culture, religion, race, etc? Like they were just kicked out and all remants of them wiped aside from the castles they could use. I'm having a hard time articulating this question but that's the jist of it. Dude, this is kinda really not true. You could start with this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arabic_language_influence_on_the_Spanish_language The Moorish rule also left a huge influence on, say, Spanish cuisine, and a lot of the cultural and political developments in Iberia in the Late Middle Ages have to be looked at with reference to the period. I mean, the very foundation of Spanish cultural identity seems toi be the Reconquista.
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Jan 22, 2014 19:34
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Alright, guess I'm just naive then! Thanks
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Jan 22, 2014 19:37
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Christoff posted:I have a question that may be straying a bit off-topic but bear with me. You probably don't hear much about the original Moorish conquests in the same way you don't hear about their conquest of Christian areas much in general. And in the case of Iberia, the Reconquista has been seen as much more glorious; why talk about getting almost conquered when you can talk about throwing them back out? But it did leave a huge impression on Spain, though some of that was probably masked pretty hard by the Inquisition.
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Jan 22, 2014 19:37
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Yeah, I assumed it could be a pride thing. Just not something I ever remember learning about. When visiting castles in Portugal and such there'd be a big blurb about the history of it and at the very bottom "oh and this was built by the Moors."
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Jan 22, 2014 19:40
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Christoff posted:Yeah, I assumed it could be a pride thing. Just not something I ever remember learning about. When visiting castles in Portugal and such there'd be a big blurb about the history of it and at the very bottom "oh and this was built by the Moors." Well, history is written by the winners, after all.
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Jan 22, 2014 19:44
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Christoff posted:I searched this sub-forum and didn't see anything about it A lot of Spanish art was heavily influence by the Moors, as well. In particular, the geometric patterns found in Spanish, and even modern Latin American culture have as one of their roots Moorish art, which forbade anything like the realism found elsewhere in Western Europe.
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Jan 22, 2014 19:45
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Christoff posted:Yeah, I assumed it could be a pride thing. Just not something I ever remember learning about. When visiting castles in Portugal and such there'd be a big blurb about the history of it and at the very bottom "oh and this was built by the Moors" It's a part of the whole "Dark Ages, nothing really happened here" chapter of most American history books. The last chapter on the Roman empire usually ends with the fall of Rome. Then ~Dark Ages~. There's usually something about Byzantium continuing on (with no further mentioning of its links to Rome), the growth of feudalism/serfdom, the growth of what we'd recognize as modern European kingdoms (with a big section on Charlemagne), then the growth of the Church and into the Crusades. By then you can reach nearly into the fall of Constantinople (yeah, we're skipping a lot of important stuff here) and stuff picks up immediately with the Renaissance. Oh and yeah parts of Spain were under the control of these brown people but it doesn't matter because they totally got kicked out and what's really important is right after that, the king and queen sent this guy on an impossible quest across the sea.
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Jan 22, 2014 19:47
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Libluini posted:Well, history is written by the winners, after all. Right, but they occupied the area for what, 700 years?
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Jan 22, 2014 19:48
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Had you guys really barely heard about it? The reconquista lasted until 1492, the Moors had a profound influence on Spanish (and Portuguese) culture. My grandmother lived in the Algarve so maybe I've been exposed to it more than I realised from that, but I didn't think it was undertold at all. And to address "How come this piece of history is hardly ever talked about or mentioned?": because loving most of the world's history is barely glossed over even in the better school systems. Libluini posted:Could be, I know next to nothing about Egypt. It did, at least for workers, as did Babylon, I'm pretty sure? In any case I'd be hesitant to apply communist philosophy to anything before Marx; highly developed bureaucracies were pretty much the standard in the Near East during the Bronze Age. That all seems pretty tangential to your point though. And on that ... nothing you said really points to it having conclusively been the case, that Hammurabi intentionally crippled the south's agriculture? I don't see any reason he wouldn't have done it (starving people was extremely ubiquitous in warfare during this period- and for most of history-, both by cutting off cities and destroying crops. the ability to produce siege engines does not mean they're what's going to be used in most circumstances), but had he, you can bet he'd have bragged about it all over so it's not like we'd have to be searching for evidence. More likely it's just what Pitt the Elder said; your workers are your fighters, you're not gonna be able to maintain as much during wartime, and if your not maintaining of this thing will help your conflict, why not. I'm not saying for sure that it wasn't all an elaborate plan on Hammurabi's part, I'm just not sure why you're so adamant that it was.
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Jan 22, 2014 20:08
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