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I think that you cant equate the intangible concept of color with the very tangible concept of pooping.
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Dec 6, 2016 06:49
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Teriyaki Hairpiece posted:I think that you cant equate the intangible concept of color with the very tangible concept of pooping. I am not sure why you're being deliberately obtuse here. The ancients really didn't have a solid grasp on complex psychological phenomena and it's not silly to say so.
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Dec 6, 2016 06:51
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Teriyaki Hairpiece posted:I'm saying of course they'd have something because a culture will always have terms for and concepts built around matters of the human body no matter how different that culture is. Universal stuff like boners or pooping or, yes, physical addiction.
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Dec 6, 2016 06:52
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Telsa Cola posted:Physical addiction is a much more complicated phenomenon though then pooping and one we don't fully understand today. Its why I brought up the concept of PTSD, Roman soldiers probably had it but I don't know that there any records that phrase it as something more deeply impacting to the psyche then a lack of courage. You could do a Frederick II style experiment and get two people physically addicted to alcohol in complete isolation, then deprive them of it, and they could still die.
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Dec 6, 2016 06:53
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Teriyaki Hairpiece posted:I think that you cant equate the intangible concept of color with the very tangible concept of pooping. Poop isn't the question. How is addiction more tangible than color perception?
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Dec 6, 2016 06:53
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Jazerus posted:I am not sure why you're being deliberately obtuse here. The ancients really didn't have a solid grasp on complex psychological phenomena and it's not silly to say so. I'm telling you that physical addiction is not a complex psychological phenomenon. It's definitely possible in a society that has alcohol and opium. I apologize for being obtuse.
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Dec 6, 2016 06:54
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Grand Fromage posted:Poop isn't the question. How is addiction more tangible than color perception? You can be addicted to alcohol, then stop drinking, and die. Withdrawal from opiates is like the worst flu you've ever had times a million.
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Dec 6, 2016 06:55
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And we (or at least I) are not arguing that it didn't exist but that it was not recognized as such. I think you are looking at the phenomenon with the hind sight of like thousands of years of medical and psychological knowledge and not looking at it as how it would be viewed during the time period. Edit: The symptoms of alcohol withdraw are similar to fever symptoms so they might have lumped them together. Telsa Cola fucked around with this message at 07:06 on Dec 6, 2016 |
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Dec 6, 2016 07:00
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Telsa Cola posted:Edit: Is there anything about allergic reactions in ancient recordings? That might be another good one. I was just reading something that suggested that allergic reactions to cats were a possible reason they were associated with black magic.
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Dec 6, 2016 07:38
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ulmont posted:I was just reading something that suggested that allergic reactions to cats were a possible reason they were associated with black magic. Interesting. Do you have an article name? I would love to read that. Did they postulate why dogs were not as well since people can be allergic them and often times both?
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Dec 6, 2016 07:49
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Telsa Cola posted:And we (or at least I) are not arguing that it didn't exist but that it was not recognized as such. I have not intended to be abrasive or polemical but I've definitely gotten an undercurrent of "addiction is a modern sickness" wafting off a few posts like a swampy front yard reeking of a backed up septic system. I have made exactly zero statements supposing how addiction would be viewed in the ancient world, only stating that it would be viewed and understood as something.
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Dec 6, 2016 08:02
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In the ancient world just like the modern world it is easy to just ignore physical addiction if you are a part of the privileged elite that is writing history. After all even with a mountain of medical science at our disposal most addicts refuse to believe they are addicts "I can quit any time" unless they are confronted with the hard realities of withdrawal. In the ancient world if you're rich enough to be writing history you're rich enough to never run out of your fix. If you never run out and as a result are able to keep your life together because of that, despite your drug use, it's fairly easy to write off poorer people who do go through withdrawal as just being of weaker character or having some unrelated illness. Even in the 1800s alcoholism was frequently seen as being a personal choice of the immoral.
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Dec 6, 2016 08:59
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I went with this but I like poo poo Posts and Questions about Rome for the next title change.
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Dec 6, 2016 09:30
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I don't think anyone is saying that physical addiction or substance abuse wouldn't have existed, but recognition and acknowledgment of them would vary greatly depending on the time, culture, and substance.
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Dec 6, 2016 13:41
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If you drink booze all the time as one of your primary sources of calories/refreshment/entertainment, how would you tell that stopping that caused a physical reaction instead of associating that with just, being hungry/thirsty/bored? You'd think lots of people would have a sort of low level dependence that they'd never notice because it's so completely socially accepted, and you're much less likely to see the long term effects because there were so many things you couldn't explain vying to kill you. Slight tangent, but there are also plenty of more modern post Industrial Revolution examples of eg whiskey shipments getting spilled and then hundred of people die of alcohol poisoning, demonstrating (at least in part) the factor preventing people drinking themselves to death was access, not will (see also: England and cheap gin). Getting access to enough alcohol to really give yourself a rip roaring addiction must have been expensive. Lots of people couldn't afford it.
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Dec 6, 2016 13:57
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CoolCab posted:If you drink booze all the time as one of your primary sources of calories/refreshment/entertainment, how would you tell that stopping that caused a physical reaction instead of associating that with just, being hungry/thirsty/bored? What
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Dec 6, 2016 16:07
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Ras Het posted:What Sorry, that came put garbled. If you're drinking constantly to satisfy another need (for example, hunger) would you associate cessation with alcohol withdrawal or with failing to satisfy that need (i.e. starvation).
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Dec 6, 2016 16:20
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I think your premise is still garbled. I don't think alcohol is an obvious response to any well defined need but alcohol addiction
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Dec 6, 2016 16:53
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I know it's not Greco-Roman, but re the "language for addiction" bit, Pepys certainly doesn't have the term "addiction" but in his contemporaries he certainly records a whole host of modern indicators for alcoholism, and he is able to categorize this behaviour as a problem in specific individuals (eg. Sir William Battens). I can compare this to something like Symposium, which also represents heavy consumption but doesn't really take a "wine messes people up" angle at all, even when getting into how much Socrates drinks. Of course there are a ton of other factors that prevent any easy comparison, not least of all that Pepys is privately recording his criticisms of his contemporaries. Can anyone think of any classical examples of people who mess themselves up with too much wine? I don't know my Juvenal that well, but it seems like something he'd note if it had ever crossed his mind.
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Dec 6, 2016 16:57
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CoolCab posted:If you drink booze all the time as one of your primary sources of calories/refreshment/entertainment, how would you tell that stopping that caused a physical reaction instead of associating that with just, being hungry/thirsty/bored? You'd think lots of people would have a sort of low level dependence that they'd never notice because it's so completely socially accepted, and you're much less likely to see the long term effects because there were so many things you couldn't explain vying to kill you.
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Dec 6, 2016 17:18
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CoolCab posted:Sorry, that came put garbled. If you're drinking constantly to satisfy another need (for example, hunger) would you associate cessation with alcohol withdrawal or with failing to satisfy that need (i.e. starvation). If you were drinking constantly for the calories then you'd be missing some important nutrients and suffering from that well before your wine habits caught up with you. Hell you'd be dealing with ulcers and lost muscle mass really quick, though I don't know if, say, you'd be running into something like scurvy since I don't know if wine/beer contains enough/any vitamin C.
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Dec 6, 2016 18:52
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FAUXTON posted:If you were drinking constantly for the calories then you'd be missing some important nutrients and suffering from that well before your wine habits caught up with you. Hell you'd be dealing with ulcers and lost muscle mass really quick, though I don't know if, say, you'd be running into something like scurvy since I don't know if wine/beer contains enough/any vitamin C. You could be a monk and drinking a shitload of Doppelbock.
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Dec 6, 2016 18:56
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VanSandman posted:Sulla did Caesar a favor by stripping him of the office he was in, too; otherwise Caesar would've been stuck in Rome and never allowed to leave or to witness a dead body, because of the importance of the office to the state religion. I always got a kick out of that Colleen McCullough book (she wrote very entertaining historical fiction and happily and openly took a lot of liberties with the thin facts on hand) where she suggests that Marius freaked out when he realized how capable the young Caesar was and deliberately got him the office to prevent him becoming a General and one-day overshadowing him. Then of course Sulla comes along and "punishes" Caesar by stripping him of the office, thus freeing up Caesar to begin a military career and eventually surpass them both. And of course in the end Augustus figured out that you just made it so you got the credit for all the major military victories even if some other General lead all the campaigns.
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Dec 7, 2016 02:49
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I think that in ancient times people got drunk.
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Dec 7, 2016 04:58
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drunk on enlightened philosophy and dignified masculinity, perhaps 
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Dec 7, 2016 12:42
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Arglebargle III posted:I think that in ancient times people got drunk. There's lots of evidence to suggest that the development of agriculture was strongly motivated by the desire to brew beer and wine.
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Dec 7, 2016 15:34
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Telsa Cola posted:Interesting. Do you have an article name? I would love to read that. Did they postulate why dogs were not as well since people can be allergic them and often times both? The reference I saw was just a throwaway: quote:The medieval witch hunters suspected a whole menagerie of animals—including crabs, hedgehogs, and butterflies—of demonic mischief. But cats were indeed the most commonly accused “imps,” according to one analysis of more than 200 English witch trials, with many villagers testifying that witches’ cats “tormented” them and sickened their children. Several theories explain this prejudice, including the fact that cats are nocturnal, and so more readily available for midnight Sabbaths. But the University of Pennsylvania zoologist James Serpell also suggests a convincing medical explanation: cat allergies. Respiratory reactions to cat dander are exceedingly common, impacting up to a quarter of modern people, and can be quite crippling. Perhaps it didn’t seem like a stretch to say that sorcery triggered the scary “Hecticks and consumptions” that many people experienced in the company of cats. Maybe cats earned their reputation as a malevolent force. That comes from Abigail Tucker's "The Lion in the Living Room: How House Cats Tamed Us and Took Over the World." https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01CO34KU6/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1 Looking at her references, she cites to James A. Serpell, “Domestication and History of the Cat,” in The Domestic Cat: The Biology of Its Behaviour, 2nd ed., ed. Dennis C. Turner and Patrick Bateson (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 188. https://www.amazon.com/Domestic-Cat-Biology-its-Behaviour/dp/1107025028/ref=dp_ob_title_bk Looking at Dr. Serpell's website, you might also check out “Guardian Spirits or Demonic Pets: The Concept of the Witch's Familiar in Early Modern England, 1530-1712,” in The Animal/Human Boundary: Historical Perspectives, ed. Angela N. H. Creager and William C. Jordan (Rochester: University of Rochester Press, 2004), 157-190. https://www.amazon.com/Animal-Human-Boundary-Perspectives-Comparative/dp/1580461204 http://www.vet.upenn.edu/people/faculty-clinician-search/JAMESSERPELL
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Dec 7, 2016 16:21
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Tasteful Dickpic posted:I just found it funny that they complained about the Greeks complaining about their vandalism, as part of their vandalism. ÞUG LYᚠE
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Dec 7, 2016 17:33
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ulmont posted:The reference I saw was just a throwaway: Whoa, thanks a ton for all the effort.
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Dec 8, 2016 02:57
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Friendly Humour posted:Well, the Romans did come up with fascism, so it would make sense I guess. From a while back but no, they didn't.
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Dec 8, 2016 05:02
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Deteriorata posted:There's lots of evidence to suggest that the development of agriculture was strongly motivated by the desire to brew beer and wine. Really, evidence? I mean I've always liked the idea that the ancients grew barley and/or hops to ensure a supply of beer, but I didn't know there was actual evidence?
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Dec 11, 2016 21:26
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It was more like an oatmeal than what we think of as beer if I recall right.
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Dec 11, 2016 22:27
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I can't remember the details of the paper, but it came from DNA analysis of different maize crops. The conclusion was that for the first 1000 years or so of maize being grown by humans, the corns would still be too small to be able to eat or get much nutrition out of. However, you would be able to mash up the micro-corns and use it to make weak alcohol. So the authors theorised that maize was grown for a long period before it was worth growing for food soles for the purpose of making alcohol, and only after than was going on for awhile did we breed maize crops it was worth farming for the food alone.
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Dec 12, 2016 02:14
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Mr Havafap posted:Really, evidence? Beer and wine fermentation equipment seem to predate ovens and breadmaking equipment in a lot of places. Also, many varieties of cereal were unsuitable for grinding into flour in their earliest forms, but would have been fine for brewing. It took many generations of breeding to make them palatable. Additionally, the cereals most suitable for brewing (barley, mainly) show signs of having been domesticated first. It's not direct proof that brewing came first, but certainly suggestive of it. The general hypothesis is that feasting and celebrations were the main driver for brewing beers, and only after they settled down in permanent locations did they start domesticating the grasses for the production of food. A rather thorough discussion is here. Deteriorata fucked around with this message at 02:37 on Dec 12, 2016 |
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Dec 12, 2016 02:35
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nothing to seehere posted:I can't remember the details of the paper, but it came from DNA analysis of different maize crops. The conclusion was that for the first 1000 years or so of maize being grown by humans, the corns would still be too small to be able to eat or get much nutrition out of. However, you would be able to mash up the micro-corns and use it to make weak alcohol. So the authors theorised that maize was grown for a long period before it was worth growing for food soles for the purpose of making alcohol, and only after than was going on for awhile did we breed maize crops it was worth farming for the food alone. Ehhh, Sumpweed and Goosefoot, a semi-staple food plant in the Northeast follows the same small to large (though not as drastic as corn) trends and there is no evidence that I know of that it was used for alcohol. Basically they were easyish to grow in large quantities, making the small sized corns/seeds a non issue since you had a gently caress ton. Their use predates the arrival of corn in that area as well. Once you get it localized and semi domesticated in your environment the caloric cost for them goes way down and you can start seed selection. Also the same argument for alcohol can be used for soups and broths which is what Sumpweed and Goosefoot are used for a lot. Its possible it was grown for food purposes first and since both processes share the same stage (mashing them up and adding water) its possible that using it for alcohol split off from there, but I would say its more of a side benefit then the sole purpose. Telsa Cola fucked around with this message at 03:24 on Dec 12, 2016 |
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Dec 12, 2016 03:10
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LingcodKilla posted:It was more like an oatmeal than what we think of as beer if I recall right. Not the most specific source, but the guy in the Egyptian History Podcast (who is an actual Egyptologist to be fair) has talked about this a bit, that beer in ancient times was much much thicker than what we think of, and a significant source of their daily calories. So them making beer wouldn't have (only) been to get drunk and party with, it would be a source of nutrition.
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Dec 12, 2016 04:18
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There's bunch of stoned trippers are religiously convinced that the Kykeon (a drink for initiates of the Eleusinian Mysteries) was an ergot-derived psychedelic and they annoy the hell out of me, particularly as no drug nerd has outlined how one could be synthesized and isolated safely and reliably (i.e. without being disfigured or killed by ergotism) with the chemistry knowledge and tools available at the time. Then again there's people (often the same ones) who will heartily avow that Jesus was actually a mushroom. I'm all for speculation just not for asserting it as fact. I find the various Mystery Cults of Greece/Rome quite interesting despite the fact that there's so little information about what they actually entailed, despite being so widespread their secrets died with their adherents. Such as the Mithraic Cult, whose underground temples figuratively peppered the Empire's landscape. Some kind of proto-freemasonry, perhaps?
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Dec 12, 2016 12:25
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More like proto-Christianity 
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Dec 12, 2016 12:49
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[Citation needed]
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Dec 12, 2016 13:01
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Deteriorata posted:Beer and wine fermentation equipment seem to predate ovens and breadmaking equipment in a lot of places. Also, many varieties of cereal were unsuitable for grinding into flour in their earliest forms, but would have been fine for brewing. It took many generations of breeding to make them palatable. Additionally, the cereals most suitable for brewing (barley, mainly) show signs of having been domesticated first. It's not direct proof that brewing came first, but certainly suggestive of it. The general hypothesis is that feasting and celebrations were the main driver for brewing beers, and only after they settled down in permanent locations did they start domesticating the grasses for the production of food. Remember that cereals have to be malted to release the sugars necessary for brewing beer. IE wet it, let it sprout, stop it by heating in an oven at the right time and right temperature, then milling it. If you aren't doing that then you aren't getting beer. Gut feeling here is it was flour or porridge first. I find it more probable they were milling it and eating it for sustenance and then discovered it could make some sort of alcoholic beverage if some old grain that was sitting around happened to have the right yeast get in there before lactobacillus or acetobacter screwed up the brew (The two big enemies of even a sanitized planned brew with modern materials and cleaners). I'd rather eat the porridge than drink the sour vinegar that can happen if doing beer wrong. There had to be a reason why they had a pile of grain sitting around, that then got wet and malted itself when they put it out in the sun to dry. Or the bread in water myth, whatever. Fo3 fucked around with this message at 15:04 on Dec 12, 2016 |
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Dec 12, 2016 14:51
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