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A White Guy posted:The reason why many of the agricultural disasters that befell the Later Roman Empire occurred was because the system had been engineered in such a way as to force those people to continue to use practices that destroyed their farmlands. I love me some historical analogue and this kind of cycle of enforced stupidity is a major factor in the destruction of more than a few empires. It's rarely that the farmers are doing the ~bad thing~ accidentally, and its often because their overlords are forcing them do the ~bad thing~ as a way to increase his own narrow self-interest. Inevitably, this leads to Really Bad Things along the line (usually with some sort of trigger, like war or a drought), and then violent social upheaval. First the egyptians, then the romans, soon the iowans.
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Jan 16, 2016 15:24
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cptn_dr posted:Speaking of attempted American Ecological Fuckery, this is an article about Hippos that everyone should read. Those who haven't already, do yourselves a favour and read this article. It's amazing.
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Jan 16, 2016 15:51
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RagnarokAngel posted:I think also in the time when we were still mapping out the world it was a lot easier to imagine that there were tons of extinct animals SOMEWHERE over the horizon we just had to find them. It helps that the idea of species and subspecies was not terribly well understood. When lions and elephants disappeared from the fringe of Europe it didn't really register that anything much has been lost, because they knew that elephants and lions were still out there somewhere and if they're maybe not quite exactly the same who cares? If it looks like a lion and quacks like a lion, it's a lion.
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Jan 16, 2016 17:39
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Gabriel Pope posted:It helps that the idea of species and subspecies was not terribly well understood. When lions and elephants disappeared from the fringe of Europe it didn't really register that anything much has been lost, because they knew that elephants and lions were still out there somewhere and if they're maybe not quite exactly the same who cares? If it looks like a lion and quacks like a lion, it's a lion. There was also a time before genetics was understood well enough. Or at all, really; it was believed that a male and a female was enough to repopulate an entire species. Now of course we know you need at least a certain critical number of individuals or you end up with a genetic bottleneck. If you only have a handful of the species then the species is effectively extinct as it is very unlikely to recover. A small enough number of individuals and the species can't recover. Granted this was also before people thought hard about things like "once the species is lost it is gone forever." People still struggle to think that way overall. Oh there's endangered ground birds in this valley? gently caress 'em, gotta graze mah cows.
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Jan 16, 2016 17:52
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To be fair, I believe the anthropocene begins at the end of the 18th century (with industrialization), so the idea that humanity was too insignificant to meaningfully affect the biosphere wasn't too terribly off the mark.
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Jan 16, 2016 18:47
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Full Battle Rattle posted:To be fair, I believe the anthropocene begins at the end of the 18th century (with industrialization), so the idea that humanity was too insignificant to meaningfully affect the biosphere wasn't too terribly off the mark. That depends on the scale you're talking about. Humans in some places did a drat fine job of wrecking the area. The big thing there was that they could easily move elsewhere and didn't farm as intensively as we do now. Monoculture is also largely a new thing; actually ancient farmers were pretty clever though didn't always understand why what they were doing worked on a scientific level. There just plain weren't enough of us to seriously gently caress the rock up and we were real busy murdering each other when we weren't farming so we kept ourselves in check. We did manage to drive things into extinction over our existence, though, which is part of why the antropocene starts with humans numbering in the millions. If you look at things on a geological scale the entire history of civilization is small enough to effectively not exist. Extinction events actually happen over tens of thousands to millions of years. Which is kind of scary to think that humans are one of the worst and we're doing it so drat quickly.
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Jan 16, 2016 18:56
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Solice Kirsk posted:When did "conservation" actually become a thing that the majority of people got behind? Was it sometime in the 1800's? I'd love to know when we went from "Boy, you don't see too many of these animals anymore.....pass me the rifle so I can shoot and eat it," to "Boy, you don't see too many of these animals around....we should stop shooting them." Some of the first animal protection laws was created in the thirties. By Adolf Hitler.
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Jan 16, 2016 20:00
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System Metternich posted:Barber comes from Latin barba, "beard" (which comes again from PIE bʰardʰeh₂), the similarity is coincidental. The onomatopoetical origins of "barbarian" are better visible in the first instance it's been attested: pa-pa-ro in Mycanean Greek. I was taught in high school Latin that the word for beard came from the onomatopoeic word for "those dirty Germanic fucks." Their language sounded like "barbarbar" and they were hairy, compared to the clean-shaven, civilized Romans. But my Latin teacher had his doctorate in German lit and only taught Latin on the side, so ymmv. Retail Slave posted:Don't know if this one has already been posted, but this is one of my favorites: Dealey Plaza is a lot smaller than it looks on TV. If anything, Oswald's shot from the sixth floor of the book depository would have been difficult with a pistol, but it was close enough that anybody who knew his way around a rifle couldn't miss. ToxicSlurpee posted:It also took a ton of training and time to learn how to fight with a sword properly. One of the reasons pole arms were extremely popular throughout history was that it didn't take much effort to train a bunch of peasants to stand in a line and point their sticks at the bad guys. In a way axes were similar; they used less metal than a sword and were also good tools. People had axes everywhere because they were useful.
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Jan 16, 2016 20:57
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Bad Angus! Bad!
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On september 1. 1939 the 18th Pomeranian Uhlans, a Polish cavalry unit, charged German armored vehicles. The charge was successful.
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Jan 17, 2016 15:47
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Alhazred posted:On september 1. 1939 the 18th Pomeranian Uhlans, a Polish cavalry unit, charged German armored vehicles. The charge was successful. You mean this? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charge_at_Krojanty quote:The incident became notable as reporters visiting the site soon after saw the dead bodies of horses and cavalrymen which led to false reports of Polish cavalry attacking German tanks. Nazi propaganda[3] took advantage of this, suggesting that the Poles attacked intentionally, believing that the Germans still had the dummy tanks the Versailles treaty restrictions had permitted them. The scene of Polish cavalry charging the Panzers with their lances has become a modern-day myth.[4]
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Jan 17, 2016 17:10
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szary posted:You mean this? quote:It took place on the evening of September 1, 1939, near the Pomeranian village of Krojanty. Polish soldiers advanced east along the former Prussian Eastern Railway to railroad crossroads 7 kilometres from the town of Chojnice (Konitz) where elements of the Polish cavalry charged and dispersed a German infantry battalion. Machine gun fire from German armoured cars that appeared from a nearby forest forced the Poles to retreat. However, the attack successfully delayed the German advance, allowing the Polish 1st Rifle battalion and Czersk Operational Group to withdraw safely.
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Jan 17, 2016 17:18
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Do you even read what you post? The article says the attack dispersed a German infantry battalion, but failed when armoured cars appeared. In no way was that a "successful" charge on German armoured units.
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Jan 17, 2016 18:01
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If you want a direct charge against armor, you want the one where they went in with bagsful of smoke grenades and successfully peeled the infantry off of the tanks.
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Jan 17, 2016 18:06
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szary posted:Do you even read what you post? The article says the attack dispersed a German infantry battalion, but failed when armoured cars appeared. In no way was that a "successful" charge on German armoured units. The point of the charge wasn't to fight the tanks but to give the other units enough time to gently caress off. It was both successful and not direct charge against tanks.
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Jan 17, 2016 18:18
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ToxicSlurpee posted:The point of the charge wasn't to fight the tanks but to give the other units enough time to gently caress off. It was both successful and not direct charge against tanks. On september 1. 1939 the 18th Pomeranian Uhlans, a Polish cavalry unit, charged German armored vehicles. The charge was successful.
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Jan 18, 2016 07:03
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I discovered Wikipedia's List of Places with Unusual Names Warning: May contain jokes. edit: also of interest, Wikipedia's List of Unusual Articles Lord Lambeth has a new favorite as of 04:16 on Jan 19, 2016 |
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Jan 19, 2016 03:58
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I'm sure most of you already know of this book, but for those who don't and like history and weird facts, check out the Uncle John's Bathroom Reader Plunges Into History books. I think there are two history-specific ones, and there are literally dozens of other books in the Bathroom Reader series.
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Jan 19, 2016 04:28
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Retail Slave posted:I'm sure most of you already know of this book, but for those who don't and like history and weird facts, check out the Uncle John's Bathroom Reader Plunges Into History books. I think there are two history-specific ones, and there are literally dozens of other books in the Bathroom Reader series. oh poo poo i forgot about uncle johns, those books are fantastic
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Jan 19, 2016 04:32
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Lord Lambeth posted:I discovered Wikipedia's List of Places with Unusual Names always weird to see humor on Wikipedia articles. It's like there's humans writting the articles.
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Jan 19, 2016 04:42
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MeatwadIsGod posted:Really surprised this hasn't been mentioned yet, considering it's one of those bat-poo poo coincidences that make history so much fun to read about. From a while back, but Robert Todd Lincoln was either present at or very nearby the sites of 3 presidential assassinations: He was not at Ford's Theatre, but at the White House and was rushed to his parent's side after the shooting. Lincoln was present at James A. Garfield's assassination and was an eyewitness to the event. He was also an invited guest of William McKinley in 1901 in Buffalo when, you guessed it, he was assassinated. After that, he refused any an all Presidential invitations for the rest of his life.
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Jan 19, 2016 04:55
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hahahahaha oh gently caress that poor bastard He must have died believing he was poison to America's presidency or something edit: well he definitely had a pitch-black sense of humor about it, it seems Wikipedia posted:Lincoln himself recognized these coincidences. He is said to have refused a later presidential invitation with the comment "No, I'm not going, and they'd better not ask me, because there is a certain fatality about presidential functions when I am present."[ Son of Thunderbeast has a new favorite as of 05:37 on Jan 19, 2016 |
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Jan 19, 2016 05:33
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Son of Thunderbeast posted:hahahahaha oh gently caress that poor bastard The Lincolns were certainly cursed. Mary Lincoln was batshit insane, Abe was killed, and the only child of theirs that lived into the 1900's (Robert Todd) had the curse upon him to have Presidents die whenever he was around. Also, Abe Lincoln has no living decendants. The last blood relative of his died in 1985.
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Jan 19, 2016 14:01
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ToxicSlurpee posted:That depends on the scale you're talking about. Humans in some places did a drat fine job of wrecking the area. The big thing there was that they could easily move elsewhere and didn't farm as intensively as we do now. Monoculture is also largely a new thing; actually ancient farmers were pretty clever though didn't always understand why what they were doing worked on a scientific level. Humans drove plenty of species into extinction in prehistory. Mammoths, the New Zealand Moa, the American and probably Australian megafauna, etc. Basically, whenever humans were able to get to an area of the earth that had previously been blocked off, at least one species bit the dust from overhunting. But you could make the argument that this process wasn't "unnatural" until the last couple hundred years. After all plenty of animal species were driven into extinction by other animals when their previously isolated habitats became un-isolated, like when the isthmus of Panama closed up and united North and South America. (North American species soon drove a huge proportion of South American species into extinction.) Sucrose has a new favorite as of 11:02 on Jan 21, 2016 |
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Jan 21, 2016 10:56
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Sucrose posted:Humans drove plenty of species into extinction in prehistory. Mammoths, the New Zealand Moa, the American and probably Australian megafauna, etc. Basically, whenever humans were able to get to an area of the earth that had previously been blocked off, at least one species bit the dust from overhunting. That's where the argument has a lot of grey area; a lot of those species were already on the decline. Some were pretty much on their way out before humans ever encountered them. Humans just sped it up. Of course that gets into the argument of what "natural" is. Humans are part of nature whether we like it or not and have spent a gently caress load of time adapting nature to ourselves. Agriculture and selective breeding are the big ones. What we found along the way is that preserving species is kind of a big deal because they might to out to be useful to us somehow and sometimes knocking a species that seems insignificant out completely wrecks an entire region and ends up with humans at a net loss. Whether or not it's natural what has been pointed as as "a big loving deal like seriously huge you guys" is that human civilization is an extinction event. We're wiping out species by the dozens and hundreds constantly, some of which we just plain didn't even know about. And now they're gone. Once it's gone it's gone forever and it's seriously upsetting how the world functions in a lot of ways. It's looking more and more like we're creating a world that humans can't survive in which is...yeah. We might not be able to destroy the world but we can sure as hell change it into something we can't survive on.
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Jan 21, 2016 11:10
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That fact wasn't fun at all! 
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Jan 21, 2016 12:51
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Sucrose posted:(North American species soon drove a huge proportion of South American species into extinction.) What are some cool dead South American species? Please respond
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Jan 21, 2016 16:00
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Back To 99 posted:What are some cool dead South American species? Please respond The Quetzalcoatl terror bird. Poor thing adorned it's nests with chocolate and couldn't fly. It could kick the poo poo out of your average puma but numerically they were at a real disadvantage. Their propensity for making roadrunner lasagna didn't do them any favors with the catyotes either.
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Jan 21, 2016 16:13
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ToxicSlurpee posted:That's where the argument has a lot of grey area; a lot of those species were already on the decline. Some were pretty much on their way out before humans ever encountered them. Humans just sped it up. Of course that gets into the argument of what "natural" is. Humans are part of nature whether we like it or not and have spent a gently caress load of time adapting nature to ourselves. Agriculture and selective breeding are the big ones. What we found along the way is that preserving species is kind of a big deal because they might to out to be useful to us somehow and sometimes knocking a species that seems insignificant out completely wrecks an entire region and ends up with humans at a net loss. There's also some serious grey area with respect to timeframe. Is it natural if a species dies out because for example, the humans are doing seasonal burns to encourage growth of plants that benefit them? Because they did an absolute ton of that in the Americas well before serious agriculture. Just in general, North American agriculture was pretty cool. There were some farms, especially at Cahokia, but in other places there was a bunch of work to shape and push the environment to naturally produce more of what was wanted. They even got bison up to New England.
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Jan 21, 2016 16:40
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Alhazred posted:On september 1. 1939 the 18th Pomeranian Uhlans, a Polish cavalry unit, charged German armored vehicles. The charge was successful. Whose bright idea was it to create a cavalry unit made up of tiny adorable dogs?
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Jan 22, 2016 02:09
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ToxicSlurpee posted:That depends on the scale you're talking about. Humans in some places did a drat fine job of wrecking the area. The big thing there was that they could easily move elsewhere and didn't farm as intensively as we do now. Monoculture is also largely a new thing; actually ancient farmers were pretty clever though didn't always understand why what they were doing worked on a scientific level. I hate to say just how wrong this is. We have strong archeological evidence about just how much land changes when humanity began to spread out. It's less about extinction-level events and more about just how man's influencing of Nature has radically changed ecosystems. Even the Native Americans, who Europeans romanticized into this 'noble savage', tremendously altered the landscape of North America before the Europeans showed up. In many areas of the continent, the prevalence of many species (such as California's iconic oak woodlands) is due largely to historical burning by Native Americans. The monstrous bison herds that used to roam the plains of middle America? We're very certain that a large part of their prevalence was due to Native American meddling, both through burning and through culling of the herd (by killing the sickest and weakest bison). Indeed, even outside of the Americas, we can see the influence of humanity. The grasslands of Eastern Africa? Largely the result of frequent burning, because of a tradition of rangeland management that literally extends from our ancient Hominid ancestors. And then we get to agriculture. Holy poo poo. There's a very strong argument that the Middle East is a giant desert today because of humanity. Even the Sahara was a functional grassland before Malikovich cycles and humanity's meddling reduced it to a massive desert. It's not really clear just how much we've changed the face of the world, but with the advent of the satellite and GPS+GIS, the extent of our impact that we've uncovered has been un-loving-believable. And we're still nowhere near knowing just how much we've changed the world.
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Jan 22, 2016 02:41
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Semi-related to the current discussion, a contender for best name would have to be Head-Smashed-In Buffalo Jump National Park in Alberta, where the Blackfoot tribe scared herds of buffalo off of a cliff in order to quickly slaughter them for resources. The name comes not from the buffalo's heads, but from a legend where a tribesman decided to get an up close view of the buffalo as they came down. He was found at the bottom of the buffalo pile with his head smashed in.
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Jan 22, 2016 03:29
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A White Guy posted:I hate to say just how wrong this is. We have strong archeological evidence about just how much land changes when humanity began to spread out. It's less about extinction-level events and more about just how man's influencing of Nature has radically changed ecosystems. Even the Native Americans, who Europeans romanticized into this 'noble savage', tremendously altered the landscape of North America before the Europeans showed up. In many areas of the continent, the prevalence of many species (such as California's iconic oak woodlands) is due largely to historical burning by Native Americans. The monstrous bison herds that used to roam the plains of middle America? We're very certain that a large part of their prevalence was due to Native American meddling, both through burning and through culling of the herd (by killing the sickest and weakest bison). For a good example of 'noble savages who live in perfect harmony with the world', look no further than Easter Island/Rapa Nui.
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Jan 22, 2016 08:21
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Khazar-khum posted:For a good example of 'noble savages who live in perfect harmony with the world', look no further than Easter Island/Rapa Nui. Or Cahokia, or even the Maya falling apart, even though that's more marginal places getting stressed past the limit without a solution to make things work again.
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Jan 22, 2016 16:42
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If you ever want to find someone to manage a park, ask him about 'restoring' a place. If he says "To what?  ", it's not a trick question. We literally have no idea what a lot of places looked like, ecologically speaking, because humans showed up. The impact of humans is ridiculous. You don't even have to have people living in a place. Just the impact of a few hundred years of humans coming to see a place can radically alter an ecosystem. It's mind boggling just how much humanity has and is changing this rock. You would be extremely hard pressed to find even a square mile of land in the lower 48 that hasn't been, in some way shape or form, altered by the impact of humans. Anyhow, historical fun fact: The population of Tenochitilan(now Mexico City) and it's outlying vassal city states, at the height of the Aztec's power, was greater than that of basically all the other capitals of Europe (at the same time) combined.
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Jan 22, 2016 21:10
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Yep, I regularly do "conservation" work which is actively preventing nature from reclaiming a man-made habitat (heathland). otoh it's a p cool little habitat so nature can get hosed on this one
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Jan 22, 2016 22:32
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XMNN posted:Yep, I regularly do "conservation" work which is actively preventing nature from reclaiming a man-made habitat (heathland). Yeah, it really boils down to doing nothing being another possible choice with another set of ramifications rather than some default that will leave things as they are.
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Jan 22, 2016 22:47
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Khazar-khum posted:For a good example of 'noble savages who live in perfect harmony with the world', look no further than Easter Island/Rapa Nui. Actually the 'Rapa Nui were a wholly destructive force who destroyed themselves stupidly' thing is almost certainly a myth, largely propagated by noted assholes like Jared Diamond. They probably worked really hard to develop the island and increase it's human carrying capacity. Their massive death toll was almost entirely due to the importation of Western diseases post-contact. The research is still developing but it has a hell of a lot more backing it than anything Rapa Nui critics like Diamond have put out. quote:Few historical tales of ecological collapse have achieved the cultural resonance of that of Easter Island. In the conventional account, best popularised by Jared Diamond in his 2005 book ‘Collapse’, the islanders brought doom upon themselves by over-exploiting their limited environment, thereby providing a compelling analogy for modern times. Yet recent archaeological work suggests that the eco-collapse hypothesis is almost certainly wrong – and that the truth is far more shocking. http://www.marklynas.org/2011/09/the-myth-of-easter-islands-ecocide/ Also these are the same researchers that figured out how the statues were actually transported (none of that 'they cut down all the trees to roll statues around on lol fuckin' savages' crap). If you haven't seen the video of it then do so cause it's seriously amazing and a great testament both to the ingenuity of ancient man and the work of archaeologists/anthropologists to understand them. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yvvES47OdmY
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Jan 23, 2016 00:01
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A White Guy posted:Anyhow, historical fun fact: The population of Tenochitilan(now Mexico City) and it's outlying vassal city states, at the height of the Aztec's power, was greater than that of basically all the other capitals of Europe (at the same time) combined. It also smelled much better! The streets of Tenochtitlan were regularly cleaned and some clever engineering gave the city a steady supply of fresh water from the surrounding mountains. It blew the Spaniards' minds to see a city not covered in a thick layer of literal human poo poo and other fun things. Aztecs also valued cleanliness and bathed regularly, with the emperor himself bathing twice a day.
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Jan 23, 2016 00:12
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I just read they found a group of like 27 people that were killed roughly 10.000 years ago. Near the Ugandan/Kenyan border. Anyway, lots of skulls busted in, broken ribs etc. Supposedly that's the oldest documented human conflict. I'm thinking there's thousands of earlier conflicts that just happened in less preservative environments. Humanity is a scourge.
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Jan 23, 2016 01:12
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It makes you wonder what they fought about, and if it was really worth dying over, considering that thousands of years later nobody has any idea why they did it
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Jan 23, 2016 01:24
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