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Rutibex posted:Sending their women into battle likely had a big negative impact on their population. Two women and one man can make two babies, two men and one woman can only make one. Every women you lose in battle is 4 fewer soldiers for your civilizations next generation. Counterpoint: “How many wombs does our civilization have?” isn’t the only limit to population.
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Nov 24, 2016 08:40
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No, but it's important not to cloud history with a modern world view. We have formula milk, they had poor medical care and a higher death rate due to childbirth. It makes little sense to spend your resources training, feeding, and equipping someone who will repeatedly be out of action for 2 years and might die during the process. Much better to come in with a superior fighting force, kill people until they surrender, enslave the rest and make them do the housework and use the weird sock darning device.
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Nov 24, 2016 08:51
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and yet, cultures did it in real life
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Nov 24, 2016 09:15
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Josef bugman posted:All of this post is part of the reason why some small parts of me wishes the Vikings or the Gauls had won against the Romans or the various "Romanized" peoples that came after them. It would have been nice to have the Greek idea of "Women are weird and icky, only young men are the people we should love" get flushed down the drain. The most famously romanized peoples were Gauls and there were plenty of Scandinavians in that category too.
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Nov 24, 2016 09:29
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Vaginal Vagrant posted:The most famously romanized peoples were Gauls and there were plenty of Scandinavians in that category too. I know about the first bit, but the second? Scandinavia was well outside the Roman orbit even when it was at its height. The Germanic peoples may well have assisted there but there does not appear to have been any large scale interaction like with Gaul or the modern day Balkans.
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Nov 24, 2016 09:44
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The Roman Empire collapsed a couple centuries before the Viking age. I seem to recall some Romans showing up in Jutland in the early first millenium though. Don't remember the details.
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Nov 24, 2016 11:44
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Plenty of vikings worked for the romans though?
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Nov 24, 2016 12:07
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Waci posted:Plenty of vikings worked for the romans though? Eastern Romans, I think.
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Nov 24, 2016 12:22
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Powaqoatse posted:The Roman Empire collapsed a couple centuries before the Viking age. lol You do know that the Roman empire wasn't finished until 1453 right? Only the western empire collapsed (and reformed twice!), the eastern empire survived for quite a bit longer. The Romans lived through the entire Viking age, and beyond it!
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Nov 24, 2016 13:41
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Rutibex posted:lol You do know that the Roman empire wasn't finished until 1453 right? Only the western empire collapsed (and reformed twice!), the eastern empire survived for quite a bit longer. The Romans lived through the entire Viking age, and beyond it! Those aren't real Romans 
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Nov 24, 2016 14:00
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Powaqoatse posted:Those aren't real Romans Aw poo poo you done did it now.
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Nov 24, 2016 14:02
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Liudprand of Cremona, 949 AD posted:In front of the emperor’s throne was set up a tree of gilded bronze, its branches filled with birds, likewise made of bronze gilded over, and these emitted cries appropriate to their species. Now the emperor’s throne was made in such a cunning manner that at one moment it was down on the ground, while at another it rose higher and was to be seen up in the air. This throne was of immense size and was, as it were, guarded by lions, made either of bronze or wood covered with gold, which struck the ground with their tails and roared with open mouth and quivering tongue. Leaning on the shoulders of two eunuchs, I was brought into the emperor’s presence. As I came up the lions began to roar and the birds to twitter, each according to its kind, but I was moved neither by fear nor astonishment … After I had done obeisance to the Emperor by prostrating myself three times, I lifted my head, and behold! the man whom I had just seen sitting at a moderate height from the ground had now changed his vestments and was sitting as high as the ceiling of the hall. I could not think how this was done, unless perhaps he was lifted up by some such machine as is used for raising the timbers of a wine press.
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Nov 24, 2016 14:23
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learnincurve posted:No, but it's important not to cloud history with a modern world view. We have formula milk, they had poor medical care and a higher death rate due to childbirth. It makes little sense to spend your resources training, feeding, and equipping someone who will repeatedly be out of action for 2 years and might die during the process. Much better to come in with a superior fighting force, kill people until they surrender, enslave the rest and make them do the housework and use the weird sock darning device. The thing is that this wasn't usually the kind of giant organised large-scale warfare like you'd see in e.g. 30 Years' War. You're looking more at small-scale skirmishes or raids between neighouring societies, involving a few dozen or maybe hundreds of fighters. At that scale, having an additional body in your force is usually more immediately important than the min/maxing of your projected population growth or ideal resource allocation. Especially since many of these findings are from a times and places where dedicated professional armies weren't really a thing. Besides, it's not like the people in the dedicated fighting force are the only ones at risk. These battles are usually fought close to home, often with the goal of raiding for resources or slaves. So if your force ends up losing the battle, the people who stayed back home are still in danger. It makes not much difference whether somebody dies as a combatant in the initial battle or as a noncombatant during the ensuing plundering or reprisal. So from that perspective, it can well be a better idea to bolster your fighting force as much as possible to give you the better odds at winning in the first place, even if it does put a relatively greater proportion of your population at immediate risk.
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Nov 24, 2016 14:23
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Rutibex posted:lol You do know that the Roman empire wasn't finished until 1453 right? Only the western empire collapsed (and reformed twice!), the eastern empire survived for quite a bit longer. The Romans lived through the entire Viking age, and beyond it! Exactly. The 'Western' Roman Empire never really fell, it was simply (and violently) transmogrified into something else. Even the Senate, a body that hadn't been relevant for almost half a millennia in the 5th century, still carried legalistic weight well into the 6th century. All the relevant titles and duties of government officials continued on even when Roman control had long since vanished. It's less that the Romans stopped ruling, it's more that the Barbarians started referring to themselves as Romans.
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Nov 24, 2016 15:31
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And then it slowly morphed into the Catholic Church, which would make it even more difficult to kill.
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Nov 24, 2016 15:37
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It's less like the Empire morphing into the Church than the Church being a still extant Imperial “Agency“ (seeing as it was more or less part of the state after Constantine) that still carries the torch of the Empire in a way, but yeah The Orthodox Churches even more so, by the way. There are still tons of prayers said in Orthodox liturgies that commemorate Roman Emperors, or victories against the Parthians, or the defeat of evil heretic Arius and his ilk
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Nov 24, 2016 16:13
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Powaqoatse posted:Those aren't real Romans Justinian and Belisarius disagree 
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Nov 24, 2016 16:22
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It is the very height of presumptuousness to think that you can "logic out" how ancient cultures worked.
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Nov 24, 2016 17:46
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People in ancient civilizations were definitely rational actors, much like everyone today.
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Nov 24, 2016 18:30
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JesustheDarkLord posted:That is a 250-year-old dildo. Banal as hell. gently caress. I posted the wrong link about ancient alien dicks. Please trust me, there are old as gently caress wing wangs out there. I assume the balls are also old as gently caress, and perhaps dank. I can't believe they played the ol' switcheroo on this chump. That's some fancy theatrics. I wonder if they pulled it out only for foreigners, or if every time someone saw the Big Cheese they'd reset the entire mechanism. These people were pretty clever when they weren't busy carving dildos.
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Nov 24, 2016 18:37
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value-brand cereal posted:gently caress. I posted the wrong link about ancient alien dicks. Please trust me, there are old as gently caress wing wangs out there. I assume the balls are also old as gently caress, and perhaps dank. It's interesting enough as-is, more interesting is how it would have been acquired then. Passed down along generations? Go to the shady parts of Gdansk and whisper euphemisms to a guy in an alley, then hand him some złoty? Walk into an ordinary store and pick one from the shelf? Go to a shop with a shingle outside reading "Kowalczyk & sons, master cocksmiths" and commission them to make you one? I honestly have no idea how acceptable or shameful it would have been then and there.
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Nov 24, 2016 19:17
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hogmartin posted:It's interesting enough as-is, more interesting is how it would have been acquired then. Passed down along generations? Go to the shady parts of Gdansk and whisper euphemisms to a guy in an alley, then hand him some złoty? Walk into an ordinary store and pick one from the shelf? Go to a shop with a shingle outside reading "Kowalczyk & sons, master cocksmiths" and commission them to make you one? I honestly have no idea how acceptable or shameful it would have been then and there. I know that in the 1800s there were mail-order catalogues for that kind of thing. They got surprisingly explicit.
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Nov 24, 2016 20:58
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Tiny Brontosaurus posted:I know that in the 1800s there were mail-order catalogues for that kind of thing. They got surprisingly explicit. "Home hysteria treatments" is a heck of a euphemism.
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Nov 24, 2016 21:14
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the nantucket dildo is plaster so maybe it was cast from the husbands real deal
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Nov 24, 2016 21:20
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They better hope that they didn't originally make the cast in plaster, that poo poo heats up something fierce, he probably would've burned the drat thing off
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Nov 24, 2016 23:24
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Josef bugman posted:"Home hysteria treatments" is a heck of a euphemism. 
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Nov 24, 2016 23:55
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ToxicSlurpee posted:That was actually a common oops that corrections have been circulating around archaeological circles about for a while now. The automatic assumption was that if somebody was buried with weapons or had injuries that indicated being in a war (it's actually amazing how much you can tell about somebody by looking at their bones 900 years later!) it was a dude. Skeleton wearing armor and holding an axe? Definitely a respected dude that society was cool with. Nah: http://www.missedinhistory.com/blogs/raining-on-your-parade-about-those-women-viking-warriors.htm https://rewire.news/article/2016/10/13/two-spirit-tradition-far-ubiquitous-among-tribes/
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Nov 25, 2016 04:17
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one fact wrong = whole post nah anyway the link specifies that while one specific group of skeletons doesn't actually signify "half of the warriors wer women" there's still "plenty of evidence" that there WERE women warriors among the Vikings in general
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Nov 25, 2016 04:22
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Most Norse scholars don't think so. It's a nice thought but all that we know about actual historical conflicts and the makeups of Viking war bands says that it was probably unlikely at best. I don't think the sagas are a terribly accurate look at Viking history, but one thing we can take from them is a measure of the cultural climate. And in the sagas dedicated women warriors are almost always either mythical or foreign. Our knowledge of surviving Viking law also points to the fact that in many of the Norse kingdoms it would have been illegal for a woman to possess a weapon, even in the sagas in one of the places where a woman fights explicitly to defend their home she doesn't use an actual weapon (which they assuredly would have had around) but instead uses a common tool. However the Norse did not have a lot of the same compunctions later bands of seafaring raiders would have about the presence of women on ships. In cases where they were travelling very long distances (like the time Vikings tried to sack Rome) they often brought along or captured female slaves to do female slave tasks like mending clothes and when they went to establish colonies they brought women with them. Women had a lot of power in Norse society relative to other contemporary societies at the time in Europe, but Norse society was still extremely rigid about gender roles. It's fun to imagine warrior women like on the show Vikings or brave sheildmaidens carrying weapons into battle but it's probably mostly the realm of fantasy. The woman's role in Norse society was to hold on to wealth. Many Norse men died before they were 35 and if you don't count out the extreme child fatality rate the age drops top around 28. Women could own wealth and property and birth more sons, so they became a vastly important piece of the economy of that area of the world where one wealthy woman might live to be fifty and have multiple husbands who all died and left her their wealth. They were also one half of the backbone of the entire Norse economy. The Norse primarily made their money in two ways: the export of wood which was the job of men and the export of cloth and sewn goods which was the job of women (but men often knit as well during the long winter months where there wasn't much to do back in the old sodhouse). Risking women in battle would have put an actual strain on the economy of the area, which was exceptionally poor and dealt with a mortality rate that makes modern third world countries look hospitable. Most Viking raiders were, remember, farmers who needed resources in order to buy things like seeds and pay taxes, they went on raiding trips usually to supplement their income during the off season. It was extremely dangerous but if you brought home a new slave that could totally change the entire fortune of your household! Slaves weren't just used to produce goods and work farms, they also were used to keep children alive. You see the slaves would sleep holding the children (and by this I mean kids up to the age of around 11) in order to keep them warm because blankets and warm clothes were expensive and clothing growing children in clothes that could survive the Swedish winter was a legitimate concern. There's some other assorted evidence against the women warrior stuff as well, we know for example, that Vikings gave their children toys but there's no evidence pointing to girls getting martial toys while there is evidence of boys receiving toy horses and swords. I guess it also depends on who you count as "vikings". Things get more iffy if you include the Pagan kingdoms of Rus and Ukraine for instance.
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Nov 25, 2016 08:13
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this is the reason in parts of the UK we call an exercise bike an exercise horse.
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Nov 25, 2016 08:29
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I like how it was ordered by the prince of Wales as well.
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Nov 25, 2016 09:28
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Princess, you mean. I wonder if that counts as the most elaborately disguised sex toy.
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Nov 25, 2016 09:42
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theroachman posted:Princess, you mean. I think the Iron Maiden is probably the most elaborate one of those. Of course I know its not from the Middle ages, but apparently it might have been a weird "sex dungeon" esc thing.
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Nov 25, 2016 09:48
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theroachman posted:Princess, you mean. With that "nope, this is certainly not a dick" sticking up proudly from the saddle, I think it was more the thinnest veneer than an elaborate disguise.
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Nov 25, 2016 13:51
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That's one side of the fixed pommel of a sidesaddle.
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Nov 25, 2016 14:13
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Rutibex posted:lol You do know that the Roman empire wasn't finished until 1453 right? Only the western empire collapsed (and reformed twice!), the eastern empire survived for quite a bit longer. The Romans lived through the entire Viking age, and beyond it! have to change my ATM pin code to 'Bosco' now
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Nov 25, 2016 14:24
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steinrokkan posted:That's "one" side of the fixed "pommel" of a "sidesaddle".
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Nov 25, 2016 15:31
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hogmartin posted:With that "nope, this is certainly not a dick" sticking up proudly from the saddle, I think it was more the thinnest veneer than an elaborate disguise. You have some confusion about female anatomy if you think loving a sidesaddle pommel would be fun or even possible.
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Nov 25, 2016 16:26
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Tiny Brontosaurus posted:You have some confusion about female anatomy if you think loving a sidesaddle pommel would be fun or even possible. 
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Nov 25, 2016 16:39
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Tiny Brontosaurus posted:You have some confusion about female anatomy if you think loving a sidesaddle pommel would be fun or even possible. We're goons. Of course there are orifices galore down there. All shapes amd depths, too.
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Nov 25, 2016 16:41
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