Deptfordx posted:If you have any access to the BBC Iplayer, i can strongly recommend Monday night on BBC 2's "Churchill, when Britain Said No". Obstensibly it's about why Churchill lost the 1945 election. It's also a hilarious deconstruction of the Churchill myth with even right leaning historians being unusually candid about his numerous flaws. Thanks for this, I would have missed this otherwise.
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May 26, 2015 18:24
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Cast_No_Shadow posted:heygal Oh for gently caress's sake, how have I not gotten this until now 
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May 26, 2015 18:41
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T___A posted:E: Given that modern humans are in much better shape than their medieval counterparts could someone today effectively one handed wield a sword that someone from the medieval period would consider a two handed weapon?
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May 26, 2015 18:51
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The question of...conditioning...between modern people and our medieval equivalents is often driven home to me in an amusing way when admiring the physiques of many modern re-enactors.
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May 26, 2015 19:00
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Arquinsiel posted:"Health" is not exactly the same thing as "fitness". I saw a claim a while back that humanity as a whole is far less physically inclined today than it was even a thousand years ago. We're evolving fast. We may be more sedentary now, but I bet our top athletes are beasts compared to even the most fit warriors of 600 years ago.
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May 26, 2015 19:01
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mlmp08 posted:We may be more sedentary now, but I bet our top athletes are beasts compared to even the most fit warriors of 600 years ago.
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May 26, 2015 19:07
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mlmp08 posted:We may be more sedentary now, but I bet our top athletes are beasts compared to even the most fit warriors of 600 years ago. Your average NFL starter in 2015 would have been a multi-sport Olympic gold medalist in 1980.
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May 26, 2015 19:09
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T___A posted:E: Given that modern humans are in much better shape than their medieval counterparts could someone today effectively one handed wield a sword that someone from the medieval period would consider a two handed weapon? Even if this modern person was twice as big as the medieval dude in all physical proportions (yes... all of them  ), I'm not sure if it'd make sense as the twohanded sword is meant to be used like that and therefore probably would be lacking in balance compared to a doublesized onehanded sword.Arquinsiel posted:To a point yes, but most of them are super specialised. Also remember the legend of where "Marathon" comes from. That dude just upped and started running if we can believe it, no special training. It's absolutely brutal what natural born hunters can do, like those Bushman hunters who follow an antilope for hours in scorching desert heat where I would become a puddle of jelly within five minutes if I tried to do anything more than swipe sweat from my brow. Or that Russian guy who after fleeing Stalin's religious persecution to uncharted Siberia would feed the family by hunting moose by running after the animal without shoes through the snow all night long and killing it almost barehanded. Nenonen fucked around with this message at 19:18 on May 26, 2015 |
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May 26, 2015 19:10
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100 Years Ago Bulgaria has suddenly found itself a rather popular nation as both sides of the war step up their diplomatic efforts to pull the Bulgarians into it. The Italians continue bungling their way slowly forward, the Friendly Feldwebel likes his new commanding officer even less than he liked Eger (whose rank I'm suddenly unsure of, as he's just been replaced by a captain - trying to find his first appearance without an index is, ahem, not the easiest job), and Louis Barthas complains (with much justification) about the actions of his "medical" officer. edit for personal reference: yes, he's introduced as "Major Eger", so god knows wtf's going on there Trin Tragula fucked around with this message at 15:24 on Jul 7, 2015 |
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May 26, 2015 19:13
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It's a misconception that professional warrior were small. The armor of these guys is large, they were beasts.
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May 26, 2015 19:17
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Arquinsiel posted:To a point yes, but most of them are super specialised. Also remember the legend of where "Marathon" comes from. That dude just upped and started running if we can believe it, no special training. Uh, that guy had lots of training. His job was to be a herald, a long distance courier. Problem was he had already run 150 miles the day before.
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May 26, 2015 19:23
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sullat posted:Uh, that guy had lots of training. His job was to be a herald, a long distance courier. Problem was he had already run 150 miles the day before.  story.
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May 26, 2015 19:29
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Arquinsiel posted:To a point yes, but most of them are super specialised. Also remember the legend of where "Marathon" comes from. That dude just upped and started running if we can believe it, no special training. Speaking of, specialization makes the Decathlon hilarious. It makes perfect sense as a bloodless warrior competition from two thousand years ago. But now you just are watching guys look like total goobers while doing their events, because the only frame of reference you have are the people who exclusively do one of those ten events. A modern decathlon would be a bit less exciting. Running, climbing over walls, moving quickly with armor on, shooting. Radio operating 
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May 26, 2015 19:32
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Klaus88 posted:I wonder what it's like to have 25-30 million losses dismissed and minimized because you didn't happen to be on the right side of history. Oh calm down. Pointing out that victory in 1945 wouldn't have happened without American industrial output is hardly minimizing the Russian war dead. Most Soviet rolling stock and trucks were Lend-Lease, after all. Without those, it takes Stalin's armies much longer to advance west.
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May 26, 2015 19:33
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T___A posted:What are good books on medieval warfare? I'm specifically looking for ones that focuses on weapons since from what I've seen of HEMA videos what I know about medieval warfare is completely wrong. The best books on weapons are without a doubt Ewart Oakeshott's but it sounds like you want more than a sword typology and are instead interested in tactics. To that end, Osprey books can be (emphasis on can) pretty good As an introduction. How deep do you want to go down the rabbit hole? quote:E: Given that modern humans are in much better shape than their medieval counterparts could someone today effectively one handed wield a sword that someone from the medieval period would consider a two handed weapon? Your given is a false one. I have handled a number of swords from the 15th and 16th centuries and the answer to your question is "lol no" My earlier thoughts on modern vs. Medieval bodies are somewhat elaborated upon in previous posts, but one of the things that people somehow forget is that there are a lot of steroids and other performance enhancing drugs out there that allow athletes to break these records. it's not that modern humans are eating better it's that we're all doping. JaucheCharly posted:It's a misconception that professional warrior were small. The armor of these guys is large, they were beasts. Yes and no. there is a lot of surviving armor for children, which confuses some people, but what is perplexing is that some of the most famed knights of their day (I'm thinking of Robert Curthose and Boucicault specifically) were short guys. Using weapons, armour, and horses throws off the bigger = always better calculation it seems to me.
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May 26, 2015 19:50
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ALL-PRO SEXMAN posted:Oh calm down. Pointing out that victory in 1945 wouldn't have happened without American industrial output is hardly minimizing the Russian war dead. Most Soviet rolling stock and trucks were Lend-Lease, after all. Without those, it takes Stalin's armies much longer to advance west. Assuming they even get to go west at all. I mean, we know that the Germans were unable to take Moscow in late 1941 (not that they didn't try), but now imagine the same situation, except the Soviets are short nearly 200 tanks. Imagine Fall Blau, except the Soviets can't deploy reserves effectively due to a lacking rail capacity. They may still be able to win the war, but it definitely goes up in the air.
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May 26, 2015 19:57
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Deptfordx posted:If you have any access to the BBC Iplayer, i can strongly recommend Monday night on BBC 2's "Churchill, when Britain Said No". Obstensibly it's about why Churchill lost the 1945 election. It's also a hilarious deconstruction of the Churchill myth with even right leaning historians being unusually candid about his numerous flaws. Another good if very disturbing new BBC documentary this week was '1945: The Savage Peace' - It covered the reprisals in Eastern Europe against Germans and ethnic Germans including film and first hand accounts of civilians and PoWs being massacred. In some incidents over a thousand civilians were killed in a couple of days. One bit of film was civilians being lined up and shot, then being run over by what looked like Soviet (or Czech Soviet) in military trucks. It also show film of the execution of German war criminals which was odd just in the method used - With a belt around the chest they were hauled up a post, then had a noose attached around their neck at the top, then lowered so they'd strangle to death over a period of 10 minutes.
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May 26, 2015 19:59
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Rodrigo Diaz posted:My earlier thoughts on modern vs. Medieval bodies are somewhat elaborated upon in previous posts, but one of the things that people somehow forget is that there are a lot of steroids and other performance enhancing drugs out there that allow athletes to break these records. it's not that modern humans are eating better it's that we're all doping. Naw, we're also eating better. Average height in medieval times was comparable to now, but during the 17th and 18th centuries the average European was three inches shorter than today. Despite some prominent cases, there are fewer athletes using PEDs now than in the 1970s.
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May 26, 2015 20:05
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Chamale posted:Naw, we're also eating better. Average height in medieval times was comparable to now, but during the 17th and 18th centuries the average European was three inches shorter than today. Despite some prominent cases, there are fewer athletes using PEDs now than in the 1970s. Or maybe they're getting better at timing the doping? What's the basis for you saying fewer athletes use PED now than in the 1970s?
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May 26, 2015 20:08
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Rodrigo Diaz posted:
There is a wide variety of reasons athletes keep breaking records beyond basic nutrition and size, but it's not just doping. That's a rather cynical and one-sided view of athletic training programs.
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May 26, 2015 20:09
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Chamale posted:Naw, we're also eating better. Average height in medieval times was comparable to now, but during the 17th and 18th centuries the average European was three inches shorter than today. Despite some prominent cases, there are fewer athletes using PEDs now than in the 1970s. Eh, the PED criteria don't cover some of the stuff they should, and people got a whole lot better at not being caught.
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May 26, 2015 20:09
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Arquinsiel posted:"Health" is not exactly the same thing as "fitness". I saw a claim a while back that humanity as a whole is far less physically inclined today than it was even a thousand years ago. We're evolving fast. I wanna call BS on this claim. There is little I feel to suggest that a sedentary lifestyle has a strong enough selection pressure in that frame of time. Do you have a demonstrated genotype/phenotype that supports this? Hypha fucked around with this message at 20:53 on May 26, 2015 |
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May 26, 2015 20:44
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Boiled Water posted:Can you use a modern map or would that just make everything more confusing? I just finished reading Europe's Tragedy. It has a map in it and if you've played too much EU4 it should be no problem to locate what you're looking for. The problem is you also want to use something that can do a search so you don't spend five minutes playing Where's Wallenstein? three to five times a chapter when hunting down minor locales or garrisons.
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May 26, 2015 20:48
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Rodrigo Diaz posted:Yes and no. there is a lot of surviving armor for children, which confuses some people, but what is perplexing is that some of the most famed knights of their day (I'm thinking of Robert Curthose and Boucicault specifically) were short guys. Using weapons, armour, and horses throws off the bigger = always better calculation it seems to me. You've never been to the Rüstkammer, yes? There, the most powerful man of all time had his armor parked. I'm actually not sure if it was operated by a single man or two normal guys. The dude was hillariously fat and also quite tall. I pity his horse. Anyway, they're probably too small for the average american and his bovine growth hormone laced diet.
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May 26, 2015 20:49
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Hypha posted:I wanna call BS on this claim. There is little I feel to suggest that a sedatary lifestyle has a strong enough selection pressure in that frame of time. Do you have a demonstrated genotype/phenotype that supports this?
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May 26, 2015 20:51
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Arquinsiel posted:So you see where I'm coming from then, right? That's insane distances for someone to run in a three day period. It is, also, probably bullshit but let's not let that get in the way of a good True. Supposedly he ran from Athens to Sparta to ask the Spartans to send troops to fight the Persians, but they were like, "Sure, we'll be over in a month or so." So he ran to Marathon to report that, the Athenians couldn't wait that long, so they attacked and won, but were worried that nervous Athenians would surrender the city without updated info, so Mr. P ran the 26.2 miles to let the Athenians know. Unfortunately, he was so tired that all he was able to do was shout the name of his favorite shoe brand, "Nike" before he died. He had to do his product placement before delivering the message, you see.
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May 26, 2015 20:55
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Had ancient Greeks not heard about this new fangled "domestication of horses" gizmo yet?
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May 26, 2015 20:59
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Arquinsiel posted:It wasn't actually the sedentary lifestyle so much as the changing attitudes towards violence as a method of resolving conflicts at every level of society that the article was talking about IIRC. I think the idea was that the sedentary lifestyle was a response not only to the ability, via tech, to have one, but also to the lack of a need to patrol your fields to make sure nobody nicked your cows and be able to give them a whomping if you found them trying. No idea where I found the original article though, I really need to start bookmarking everything I come across. I guess you mean evolving in a general sense, not a biological sense. I would be surprised if gooniness was a fitness advantage.
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May 26, 2015 20:59
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sullat posted:True. Supposedly he ran from Athens to Sparta to ask the Spartans to send troops to fight the Persians, but they were like, "Sure, we'll be over in a month or so." So he ran to Marathon to report that, the Athenians couldn't wait that long, so they attacked and won, but were worried that nervous Athenians would surrender the city without updated info, so Mr. P ran the 26.2 miles to let the Athenians know. Unfortunately, he was so tired that all he was able to do was shout the name of his favorite shoe brand, "Nike" before he died. He had to do his product placement before delivering the message, you see. Untrue. "Nike" is actually Greek for "gently caress the Spartans".
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May 26, 2015 21:02
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Nenonen posted:Had ancient Greeks not heard about this new fangled "domestication of horses" gizmo yet?  Hypha posted:I guess you mean evolving in a general sense, not a biological sense. I would be surprised if gooniness was a fitness advantage.
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May 26, 2015 21:07
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Trin Tragula posted:100 Years Ago Man, I tried to google Lindwurm, but I got buried under a deluge of weird fantasy books. That guy really has a google-unfriendly name. 
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May 26, 2015 21:13
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Aren't there a lot of scientific studies of the remains of people from these time periods? It may make sense to look some of those up. The big question is how modern healthcare, hygiene, nutrition, and athletic training compares to a lifetime of constant labor, and I don't think that' something we can deduce from our armchairs.
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May 26, 2015 21:14
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ponzicar posted:Aren't there a lot of scientific studies of the remains of people from these time periods? It may make sense to look some of those up. There are. The general consensus is that medieval people were a little bit smaller than we are on average and that difference can be accounted for almost entirely by nutrition and medicine advances. We DID get a lot smaller in the industrial era. Nutrition got a lot worse and disease got a lot more prevalent when we started urbanizing in large numbers. There were some other factors too: one of the most interesting to me was the effect of liquor. I can't remember where I read it, but there was a visible drop in average size and life expectancy in England during the Gin Craze resulting largely (we assume) from the effects of FAS. I've posted about the Gin Craze before but goddamn was that an almost unbelievable thing.
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May 26, 2015 21:28
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19th century Industrialised nations slums sound loving horrible. Poor bastards.
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May 26, 2015 21:34
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I remember learning about child labour in carpet factories way back when. Nightmare fuel.
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May 26, 2015 21:38
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This is not my area but a very quick literature search suggests that there is a lot of interest in this question from a chronic disease perspective. Namely, that our lifestyles do not match our genome, which leads to pathology. A review by Sylvia Kirchengast "Physical activity from the viewpoint of evolutionary medicine" seems general enough to touch on this quickly. Just google it, it should be free access. E: The claim about human evolution away from active lifestyles still sounds really shoddy. Hypha fucked around with this message at 21:43 on May 26, 2015 |
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May 26, 2015 21:41
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Arquinsiel posted:I remember learning about child labour in carpet factories way back when. Nightmare fuel. I've seen footage of those restored machines in action. gently caress the 19th century always.
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May 26, 2015 21:44
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SeanBeansShako posted:19th century Industrialised nations slums sound loving horrible. Poor bastards. Still better than agriculture.
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May 26, 2015 21:45
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Phanatic posted:Still better than agriculture. 
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May 26, 2015 21:52
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I've had handed-down stories of my great-grandfather working in a paper mill in about 1895, and they were bad enough.
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May 26, 2015 21:52
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