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Disinterested posted:Nobody is arguing that they couldnt. Nice.
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Jul 10, 2017 23:06
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skasion posted:Yeah "how do I get swole" is one thing that modern technology isn't remotely necessary to figure out. Also they had early performance enhancing supplements
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Jul 10, 2017 23:11
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Being swole was pretty necessary for some tasks too. Rowers on triremes etc. were probably ripped as all hell, they had to do it for hours and hours and hours. I know rowers on warships were normally all citizens, but I don't recall if they were professionals or it was compulsory service like being a hoplite.
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Jul 10, 2017 23:12
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Rowing doesn't create a hugely jacked form but then again by modern standards greek and roman statuary isn't so much insanely jacked as it is a model for a generic good looking fit person. Hercules as depicted is pissant compared to a modern specialist strength athlete since we learned how hard we could warp ourselves.
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Jul 10, 2017 23:16
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To clarify I'm not asking if they could figure out how to get jacked/lean, more if they intentionally tried and if we know how they expected some healthy-but-average rando to look. Like taking a modern athlete or an infantryman, some men and a few women will naturally look like rippling statues, others still look very fit and strong but carry enough stomach fat to hide their abs unless they try for it. Whereas someone lifting for aesthetics and watching their diet can and will get abs and a more-or-less ideal physique as long as they train hard and stick to an appropriate meal plan. Did people do that in say Athens?
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Jul 10, 2017 23:23
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Edgar Allen Ho posted:To clarify I'm not asking if they could figure out how to get jacked/lean, more if they intentionally tried and if we know how they expected some healthy-but-average rando to look. Like taking a modern athlete or an infantryman, some men and a few women will naturally look like rippling statues, others still look very fit and strong but carry enough stomach fat to hide their abs unless they try for it. Whereas someone lifting for aesthetics and watching their diet can and will get abs and a more-or-less ideal physique as long as they train hard and stick to an appropriate meal plan. Did people do that in say Athens? Their knowledge of the exact cause and effect was imperfect but yes ancient Greeks in particular did that.
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Jul 10, 2017 23:25
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I can imagine Spartans looking like that, yeah. At least those of fighting age.
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Jul 10, 2017 23:28
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I think of these as the height of "heroic physique" in the ancient world: Laocoon Hercules
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Jul 10, 2017 23:54
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IIRC literacy was a criteria for advancement in the Roman army at some point. The Romans viewed working out and getting swole solely to look amazing (instead of merely to be healthy and fit for military service) as being frivolous and downright Greek, so that tells us both that there were Romans trying deliberately to get swole, and that the Greeks were notorious for caring about looking amazing for their naked gym sessions.
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Jul 11, 2017 00:15
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Any republican or high imperial Roman officer above the rank of centurion would have been expected to be literate in Latin and Greek. This wasn't part of military discipline so much as it was just The Done Thing. If you were of any means you were expected to be bilingual to some extent and if you weren't of means, what are you doing trying to command a legion, you prole? Even a centurion would have needed to be literate, or at the very least able to fake it with his staff's help, so that he could execute written orders. By the late empire this was probably no longer the case as the Latin and Greek halves of the empire diverged culturally and politically, the old model of classical education was supplanted by Christianity as the basis of high culture in the empires, and the cultural elite of Latin-speaking culture became increasingly insignificant and fragmented in the face of the dominance of Romanized "barbarians". And of course by a couple centuries after the fall of WRE a functionally illiterate guy like Charlemagne was able to hold supreme military and political power.
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Jul 11, 2017 00:25
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Yeah, the various things I've read (and I wish I could remember where) implied that it was expected for a centurion to be literate, and that while there may or may not have been a test, there were definitely going to be written orders sent and written reports expected so either the centurion himself had to be able to read and write or he had to have an assistant who could.
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Jul 11, 2017 00:48
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Someone was in here a while ago talking about how Rome was likely wealthier than Han China. How would one go about such an investigation and what is the literature on the subject?
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Jul 11, 2017 02:03
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What ancient society was nicest to fatties? If I ever get a time machine I want to go there.
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Jul 11, 2017 02:22
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Arglebargle III posted:Someone was in here a while ago talking about how Rome was likely wealthier than Han China. How would one go about such an investigation and what is the literature on the subject? I'd be surprised if there's anything substantive. There was a study published earlier this year comparing European and China's GDPs back to the Song and it (or well, the article I read about the study, I never read the study its self) mentioned that trying to calculate even that far back is a very new thing and fairly inaccurate, let alone a thousand years earlier than that. fe: https://www.economics.ox.ac.uk/materials/papers/15109/155aprilbroadberry.pdf this is the study also I might be conflating the comment you're talking about with something from another thread, but as I recall it sounded like they pulled that statement out of their rear end
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Jul 11, 2017 02:40
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Arglebargle III posted:Someone was in here a while ago talking about how Rome was likely wealthier than Han China. How would one go about such an investigation and what is the literature on the subject? It's buried deep in the unexcavated, virgin layers of ones own rear end. There is simply no basis at all for comparison. Economics as an empirical discipline didn't exist, all the economic writings we have from the ancient Med at least are theoretical/philosophical in nature and I believe this is the case for China too. That leaves us with what contemporary historians and the government's records can tell us which, in the case of Rome, is not much. The odd economic legislation, like Diocletian's ill-fated price edicts, are of very little help on a macro level and rather make me suspect that Diocletian knew little more about the economy of Rome than we do today. We don't even have a firm sense of how many people lived in the Roman Empire at any given time; all modern population figures are based on the work of the 19th century author Beloch, who made a lot of regional population estimates but ultimately was working off the same load of nothing we are. We simply have not got the information that we would need to assess the wealth of the state quantitatively and it may be that such information was never available in any comprehensive form. So that's a bit of a strikeout in the Roman end. But we know somewhat more about the Han economy because their census records are extant and we know how many coins were minted during the dynasty's reign. All the same this does not boil down to a single unarguable figure of GDP per capita and there's a lively debate in the field about how well-off the government and the state were at any given time. The Hanshu (early 2nd century AD history of the earlier years of the dynasty) talks about the peasantry in relatively detailed terms that suggest they were just barely above a subsistence level, and throughout the dynasty peasants were highly vulnerable to being forced to sell their land to the rich who then paid them (or someone else) a pittance to keep farming it, latifundia style. That suggests to me that the economy there was in some ways similar to that of Rome, but there is no firm consensus and may never be. skasion fucked around with this message at 03:03 on Jul 11, 2017 |
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Jul 11, 2017 03:00
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Rowing in triemes did not use the legs so it would be a completely different thing then modem rowing Iirc.
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Jul 11, 2017 03:06
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Disinterested posted:Hercules as depicted is pissant compared to a modern specialist strength athlete since we learned how hard we could warp ourselves. True, but how much of a modern bodybuilder's musculature is useful for everyday things like cleaning stables with rivers or beating lions to death with sticks? I suspect the classical depiction of Herc is based more on someone with useful physical strength than a steroid-popping guy who poses in a Speedo.
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Jul 11, 2017 03:12
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euphronius posted:Rowing in triemes did not use the legs so it would be a completely different thing then modem rowing I'm pretty sure they did. The rowers sat on leather sliding pads, greased with olive oil. The rowing motion was almost identical to modern rowing machines.
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Jul 11, 2017 03:22
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I haven't rowed a trireme but I do love kayaks, and yeah the basic idea would be you can row best if you're engaging as many muscles as possible in one set of movements. Although it's funny to imagine ancient greeks as gym bros, where the trireme oarsmen have enormous rocking backs and shoulders but tiny chicken legs and get made fun of by the hoplites, except the hoplites have tiny baby arms and can do like two pullups, and so on.
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Jul 11, 2017 03:26
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In a rowing boat it is much easier to row if you have something to brace your legs against and you definitely use your leg muscles in the process if only to hold the rest of your body in place. You're pulling on the oar and if you don't hold yourself onto the seat you just pull yourself off the seat in the process. Even little boat oars are heavy things, especially in the water.
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Jul 11, 2017 03:42
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I don't think greased leather pads are in anyway substantially similar to modern rowing but, granted , depending on the spacing, it would allow some leg connection to the stroke. Tho with hundreds?? Of rowers i doubt they moved much as one missed stroke would cause problems . It's ridiculously hard to get eight people rowing well Who knows .
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Jul 11, 2017 03:45
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Edgar Allen Ho posted:I haven't rowed a trireme but I do love kayaks, and yeah the basic idea would be you can row best if you're engaging as many muscles as possible in one set of movements. Hoplites would need all sorts of muscles for the shield and spear.
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Jul 11, 2017 04:07
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Mantis42 posted:What ancient society was nicest to fatties? If I ever get a time machine I want to go there. Ptolemaic egypt
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Jul 11, 2017 04:20
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if anyone in the thread is interested in historical woodworking, here's a cool vid of how shingles are made with hand tools starting with a log. its an interesting process because they split the wood rather than sawing it in order to make it more water resistant edit: whoops https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UZA1J8RHltY&t=4s Kanine fucked around with this message at 05:41 on Jul 11, 2017 |
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Jul 11, 2017 04:37
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Mantis42 posted:What ancient society was nicest to fatties? If I ever get a time machine I want to go there. Whichever prehistoric culture carved those "Venus" statues of women that living strawman Fat Acceptance types claim show that fat people were the original ideal of human beauty, never mind that they might just be artisanal caveman dildos. Kanine posted:if anyone in the thread is interested in historical woodworking, here's a cool vid of how shingles are made with hand tools starting with a log Where be the video, my friend?
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Jul 11, 2017 04:51
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Kanine posted:if anyone in the thread is interested in historical woodworking, here's a cool vid of how shingles are made with hand tools starting with a log Try again.
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Jul 11, 2017 04:54
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Kanine posted:if anyone in the thread is interested in historical woodworking, here's a cool vid of how shingles are made with hand tools starting with a log This video is fascinating!
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Jul 11, 2017 04:56
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Ancient Fitness Explored by Goons: Why would you row with your legs and is it possible to be fit without steroids?
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Jul 11, 2017 05:05
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Vincent Van Goatse posted:True, but how much of a modern bodybuilder's musculature is useful for everyday things like cleaning stables with rivers or beating lions to death with sticks? I didn't say bodybuilder, I said strength athlete. And either way, the modern is better.
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Jul 11, 2017 05:33
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aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa sorry i thought i hit ctrl+v before i hit submit https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UZA1J8RHltY&t=4s
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Jul 11, 2017 05:40
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Setting kanine's post free.
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Jul 11, 2017 05:41
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Vincent Van Goatse posted:Whichever prehistoric culture carved those "Venus" statues of women that living strawman Fat Acceptance types claim show that fat people were the original ideal of human beauty, never mind that they might just be artisanal caveman dildos. Isn't one of the theories that they're actually warped because they're essentialyl sculpted in first person by a woman? https://steemit.com/science/@deeallen/self-portraits-of-fertility-symbols-venus-figurines-of-upper-paleolithic-eurasia-nudity 
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Jul 11, 2017 05:45
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Kanine posted:Isn't one of the theories that they're actually warped because they're essentialyl sculpted in first person by a woman? I always found that argument unconvincing because even if the artist was a woman she would still have other women to look at and would know that her perspective of herself looking down wasn't accurate Every time I post in this thread someone comes and points out my fundamental misunderstanding about something so I look forward to being wrong here too!
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Jul 11, 2017 06:11
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skasion posted:The Hanshu (early 2nd century AD history of the earlier years of the dynasty) talks about the peasantry in relatively detailed terms that suggest they were just barely above a subsistence level, and throughout the dynasty peasants were highly vulnerable to being forced to sell their land to the rich who then paid them (or someone else) a pittance to keep farming it, latifundia style. That suggests to me that the economy there was in some ways similar to that of Rome, but there is no firm consensus and may never be. As someone who's been trying to get into Chinese history for the past two years, I get the impression that its better documented (at least during the Imperial Era) than large periods of European history because of the official court histories. Like I remember the Roman History podcast talking about periods during the Crisis of the 3rd Century where historians have to guess what happened or there is contradictory information and so on, and then there's the early Middle Ages where we don't know a lot about the early kings of, say, Britain. Compared to that, even a tumultuous period such as the Three Kingdoms in China has a large, encyclopedia-like historical record with biographies of even important, non-political and military actors. A lot of these court histories haven't been translated though, which is a shame. Anyways, being unable to read most of these since my Mandarin is still crap, how accurate is this assessment? Roman history has gaps in its primary sources but there are a dozen historians listed on wikipedia, along with all the artistic and philosophical works, whereas I don't know many other written texts from the Han era except for the two official histories and maybe some Confucian works. Is there a dearth of written works outside of what was produced by the bureaucracy or are they just not obvious to a westerner? In Rome we get Caesar writing about his campaigns and Meditations by Marcus Aurelius, were there any first hand accounts by any Han generals or letters or novels or what have you? Anything funny like The Lives of Famous Whores?
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Jul 11, 2017 06:16
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cheetah7071 posted:I always found that argument unconvincing because even if the artist was a woman she would still have other women to look at and would know that her perspective of herself looking down wasn't accurate Don't be down on abstract poo poo man
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Jul 11, 2017 06:16
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cheetah7071 posted:I always found that argument unconvincing because even if the artist was a woman she would still have other women to look at and would know that her perspective of herself looking down wasn't accurate The 'made by a woman from a first-person perspective' theory as I recall doesn't involve them being intended as sculptures of ideal female forms, but rather that they were more along the lines of 'what to expect when you're expecting: cavewoman edition', the idea being that the sculptures were intended to be looked at as though from a first person perspective and then compared to what the viewer's own body looks like.
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Jul 11, 2017 06:35
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hailthefish posted:The 'made by a woman from a first-person perspective' theory as I recall doesn't involve them being intended as sculptures of ideal female forms, but rather that they were more along the lines of 'what to expect when you're expecting: cavewoman edition', the idea being that the sculptures were intended to be looked at as though from a first person perspective and then compared to what the viewer's own body looks like. That seems like a lot of trouble to go through versus just asking one of the other women who'd already had a few kids?
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Jul 11, 2017 07:50
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The suggestion I heard was that they may have been mementos. People were inspired to make them because they were pregnant. They're caveman selfies.
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Jul 11, 2017 09:25
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Mantis42 posted:Is there a dearth of written works outside of what was produced by the bureaucracy Yeah. Court Historian was an official post.
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Jul 11, 2017 12:34
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skasion posted:And of course by a couple centuries after the fall of WRE a functionally illiterate guy like Charlemagne was able to hold supreme military and political power. Charlemagne could probably read but not write.
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Jul 11, 2017 14:11
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