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fishmech posted:Yeah it's a whole different scale of effort. Just pulling some of the smallest modern British canal "tubs" which were hauled up rails or oiled ramps would mean hauling up several tons of cargo at once. It'd be quite an effort for the draft animals and you'd need to rotate them out several times a day to make sure they don't get overworked. And then you consider the need to have dozens of them to cross mountain ranges and so on... That's what Irish are for.
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Nov 14, 2017 20:23
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Telsa Cola posted:Sorry, poo poo came up and haven't been near my notes in a couple days. The person I have written down is Cameron Griffith who looked at torch light and how it interacted with cave features and modifications. I will try to find some of his articles but yeah. Oh no problem, this is interesting stuff to me.
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Nov 14, 2017 20:34
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fishmech posted:Instead, you'd bring some dudes on board to lie down on top of your boat's roof or cargo and kick against the low roof to propel your way through. In the dark, of course. Imagine having to have that job on some of the longer tunnels, where you need to do that for like a mile or more! I mean, considering the alternative jobs that seems quite pleasant really, pushing a boat along while lying on your back.
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Nov 14, 2017 21:30
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OwlFancier posted:I mean, considering the alternative jobs that seems quite pleasant really, pushing a boat along while lying on your back. Yeah, beats being a coal miner or whatever.
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Nov 14, 2017 21:31
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I'd do that today if you'd let me, frankly. No customers to deal with and probably less legwork involved. Cool in summer too.
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Nov 14, 2017 21:33
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LingcodKilla posted:You have some good points but your concept of how sailing vessels work is pretty poor. A deeply laden vessel is not leaving shore unless the tide is right. If the wind is blowing towards shore you are not leaving either. Say you did make it out, how you gonna notice reefs or not get disoriented by the sound of the surf? Any knowledge you're imagining these savvy unstoppable locals have, everyone but first-time-newbie merchants would also have. If you're imagining these savvy locals jumping on a merchant at ebb tide, the traders also know that's when they're most vulnerable. A ship is differently vulnerable "on the beach" vs. anchored by the shore. You're imagining scenarios where complete idiots are always on their first trip up the Atlantic coast, and the locals are both desperate enough to risk a smackdown on their entire community and smart enough to fence goods somehow through connections. Crime was easy to commit in the ancient world, but much harder to get away with outside of the legal system if there was evidence and/or witnesses, due to how small and insular most places were. Once you're dealing in stolen goods, it gets even easier to track you, because you're the trader nobody's seen before, selling the things that are known to have been stolen. The inability to find people who could vouch for your good name made the Roman legal system potentially pretty grim for people outside their authentic community, and ancient civilizations in general take a dim view of theft and piracy in general. If you're willing to disappear into the wilderness and forsake all contact with civilization, sure, you can avoid the worst consequences of serious crimes, but if you hope to sell your goods for cash, you need a place that will let you do that and not be suspicious of you as a stranger.
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Nov 14, 2017 21:36
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OwlFancier posted:I'd do that today if you'd let me, frankly. No customers to deal with and probably less legwork involved. Plus you would end up with some loving epic quads.
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Nov 14, 2017 21:36
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homullus posted:Any knowledge you're imagining these savvy unstoppable locals have, everyone but first-time-newbie merchants would also have. If you're imagining these savvy locals jumping on a merchant at ebb tide, the traders also know that's when they're most vulnerable. A ship is differently vulnerable "on the beach" vs. anchored by the shore. You're imagining scenarios where complete idiots are always on their first trip up the Atlantic coast, and the locals are both desperate enough to risk a smackdown on their entire community and smart enough to fence goods somehow through connections. I don’t know that I’ve ever heard about Atlantic coastal piracy specifically, but there definitely was a good bit of banditry and brigandage going on in the Roman Empire and the state was not always able to deal with it. Regardless of the obviously shady nature of criminals in antiquity, actual Roman government authority could operate so shadily that I doubt too many people were inclined to snitch on your garden variety highway robber (and as Roman authority in the West weakened whole swathes of territory were considered to be held by rebellious bandit types). There’s even a supposed Severan-era Robin Hood figure cited by Cassius Dio, Bulla Felix, though like Robin Hood he gets sold out and done away with. It clearly wasn’t impossible for some people to make a living for a while by theft even under imperial power.
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Nov 14, 2017 21:55
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homullus posted:Any knowledge you're imagining these savvy unstoppable locals have, everyone but first-time-newbie merchants would also have. If you're imagining these savvy locals jumping on a merchant at ebb tide, the traders also know that's when they're most vulnerable. A ship is differently vulnerable "on the beach" vs. anchored by the shore. You're imagining scenarios where complete idiots are always on their first trip up the Atlantic coast, and the locals are both desperate enough to risk a smackdown on their entire community and smart enough to fence goods somehow through connections. This a super romantic view of a very short period of time where you could say the Roman Empire had more than a nominal control of the Atlantic coast.
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Nov 14, 2017 22:09
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in the ancient world, if you kill a merchant and take his stuff to somewhere other than his origin or destination, who exactly would know about the theft? you could even take it to the intended destination and have a decent chance of nobody recognizing that you're selling stolen goods unless the merchant has done the route many times before random locals might not want to go to the trouble of all of this but bandits are hardly going to balk at needing to travel a little to get out of the hot zone
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Nov 14, 2017 22:10
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cosmic brain: the smugglers and the locals are the same people
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Nov 14, 2017 22:17
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Jazerus posted:in the ancient world, if you kill a merchant and take his stuff to somewhere other than his origin or destination, who exactly would know about the theft? you could even take it to the intended destination and have a decent chance of nobody recognizing that you're selling stolen goods unless the merchant has done the route many times before There's plenty of Chinese stories that are literally this. Bandit kills a rich man, pretends to be him for a while, eventually ghost of victim leads a magistrate or a family member to uncover the crime. I'm pretty sure it's a widespread phenomenon. This is also why business is done through people you know and can vouch for. Personal contacts are a big deal in all business endeavors both ancient and modern.
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Nov 14, 2017 22:27
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LingcodKilla posted:This a super romantic view of a very short period of time where you could say the Roman Empire had more than a nominal control of the Atlantic coast. You keep coming back to the idea that I'm thinking of the Romans patrolling the Atlantic, and that's not what I'm suggesting. I'm suggesting the ordinary land forces that deal with banditry, including legions and auxilia, would be invested in wringing the greatest taxation possible from the region. I have no doubt that bandits existed; I am suggesting, apparently controversially, that it's not a life of sitting on a beach and waiting for one easy mark after another to unknowingly fall into your savvy local clutches, and then walking half a block back to town, where you sell all your goods. All of those things were difficult, because transport and social mobility were much more challenging then. Jazerus posted:in the ancient world, if you kill a merchant and take his stuff to somewhere other than his origin or destination, who exactly would know about the theft? you could even take it to the intended destination and have a decent chance of nobody recognizing that you're selling stolen goods unless the merchant has done the route many times before Why do you think nobody would notice a different merchant? Cities in Roman Europe were small, and even fewer of the people in each were themselves part of the market for whatever good we're imagining was stolen. How many blacksmiths did you think a town had? The problem the bandits would face is not willingness to travel, but ability to conveniently travel somewhere with a load of goods that were cheaper and easier to transport by water, and find somewhere with an interest in those goods, and a willingness to buy them when they don't know the person.
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Nov 14, 2017 22:41
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Hey guys, Britain was an important source of minerals for the Western Mediterranean from prehistory through the classical period so maybe we can cool it with the hypothetical pirates.
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Nov 15, 2017 00:16
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How much of an increase in piracy was there in the medieval era?
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Nov 15, 2017 01:18
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I've seen some convincing work by a Portuguese historian that suggests they completely overwhelmed the ability of any European state to deal with them, and destroyed entire economies. They were pretty ubikuitous.
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Nov 15, 2017 01:49
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Yes, it's like a lava lamp.
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PittTheElder posted:I've seen some convincing work by a Portuguese historian that suggests they completely overwhelmed the ability of any European state to deal with them, and destroyed entire economies. They were pretty ubikuitous. nice
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Nov 15, 2017 02:02
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SlothfulCobra posted:How much of an increase in piracy was there in the medieval era? Enough that a bunch of Norse pirates were able to take over multiple countries stretching from Russia to Canada.  It's pretty much what you'd expect. Europe goes from having one massive hegemonic power that kept decent control over the majority of the population to hundreds of small warring powers. Banditry and piracy may have never been fully eliminated under the Romans but it got a hell of a lot worse without the threat of Roman legions hanging over everybody.
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Nov 15, 2017 02:07
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Also due to plagues in the 3rd century the population of the western mediterranean was not doing super compared to the German population, which, with no evidence, I will assert was growing.
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Nov 15, 2017 04:24
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Ask is about Roman/ancient history: This I will assert with no evidence
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Nov 15, 2017 06:23
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Thwomp posted:Ask is about Roman/ancient history: This I will assert with no evidence Some recent posts definitely remind me of the "restoration" work of the famous 19th century Frenchman Eugène Viollet-le-Duc. He had old buildings reconstructed the way he imagined they used to look in the past, usually going on pure gut instinct. Sometimes he even demolished actual historical structures to make way for the way he thought they probably should have been built in the first place. Total bullshit, total nonsense, but people love his works! They're absolute tourist favorites.
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Nov 15, 2017 08:45
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So kinda like the Arthur Evans stuff on Knossos? Minoan art looked like 1920s art deco because he hired an art deco artist to "restore" the frescoes. gently caress that dude
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Nov 15, 2017 09:07
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HEY GUNS posted:cosmic brain: the smugglers and the locals are the same people Even if you hate Bad Cav Island, Southwestern England and Cornwall are the best example of this during the late 18th century. Essentially every single person living in the area was involved with smuggling and murdering crown officials who tried to stop smuggling. It has always been like that when it comes to coastal piracy. The locals are doing the stealing as a side gig from fishing or whatever.
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Nov 15, 2017 09:24
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Kemper Boyd posted:Even if you hate Bad Cav Island, Southwestern England and Cornwall are the best example of this during the late 18th century. Essentially every single person living in the area was involved with smuggling and murdering crown officials who tried to stop smuggling. Yeah, I think people seriously underestimate the willingness of rural dudes living on the margins of a society to engage in smuggling or piracy or just turn a blind eye to their family members who are. I really, really have a hard time believing that some 2nd century Basque village is going to send a runner to the nearest garrison because a fisherman comes by with a bunch of poo poo he "found washed up on the beach."
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Nov 15, 2017 16:03
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Cyrano4747 posted:Yeah, I think people seriously underestimate the willingness of rural dudes living on the margins of a society to engage in smuggling or piracy or just turn a blind eye to their family members who are. A lot of people in this thread have probably heard this story from Ammianus Marcellinus because it's commonly used as a case study for how the late Roman empire was hosed up, but I think it relates to the issue here so I'm going to retell it. The year is AD 363. In Tripolitania in northern Africa, brigands are afflicting the town of Lepcis Magna -- probably they were a Berber tribal group, but it's hard to say for sure. The provincials capture one of the brigands, a guy by the name of Stachao, and finding him guilty, burn him to death. The brigands are unhappy, and the standard issue highway robbery develops into a full-blown raid with burning, murder, and the kidnapping of a magistrate. The Lepcians complain to the newly appointed military leader for the region, the comes Africae, Romanus. Romanus shows up at Lepcis Magna, but demands 4000 camels and provender before he will take any action about the brigands. The locals refuse to provide these things, claiming quite reasonably that it is well beyond their means to do so especially after having just been raided and robbed. Romanus promptly takes himself and his forces away and leaves Lepcis Magna to get raided. The next year, the citizenry of Lepcis Magna, still getting raided, decide to send an embassage to the emperor Valentinian to get something done about their problem. Romanus hears of this and realizes he could get in trouble; he contacts his relative Remigius, one of Valentinian's senior bureaucrats, and tries to get the case heard by persons favorable to himself. Valentinian hears the embassage's claims and Remigius' defense and does not believe either side's story. He changes the responsibility for military affairs in that region from Romanus to the local governor, Ruricius, but is too busy in Gaul to do anything else about it. Ruricius has no forces capable of restoring order at Lepcis. Meanwhile back at Lepcis Magna the situation has continued to be terrible, with general raiding, blockading of the city by land, the murders of local notables, and nobody is doing anything about it because Romanus used his connections at court to get the responsibility for the region transferred back to himself. Valentinian finally hears how serious the situation is and dispatches his bureaucrat Palladius to go investigate the situation and tell him what is really going on, on the pretext of going to pay Romanus' soldiers. Romanus has to cover his rear end here, so he instructs the officers whose job it is to receive and distribute the pay Palladius is bringing to "distribute" a good bit of it back to Palladius rather than the soldiers. When Palladius has interviewed the Lepcians and comes to Romanus to demand an explanation for his actions, Romanus uses this kickback to blackmail Palladius. He demands that Palladius tell the emperor that the situation isn't really that bad and the Lepcians are just whining about nothing. If Palladius doesn't do this, Romanus will rat him out to the imperial court for having pocketed the soldiers' pay for himself. Palladius is trapped and agrees to go back and do this, as a direct result of which the Lepcians' envoys (still at court in Gaul) and the luckless governor Ruricius are sentenced to be mutilated and executed for having lied to the emperor. TEN YEARS LATER, a local Berber leader, Firmus, revolted against Romanus. Deciding that Romanus had lost control of the situation, Valentinian sacked him and sent the magister militum Theodosius to replace him in command of the African troops. Theodosius found among Romanus' papers a letter in which a message was relayed confirming that Palladius had in fact lied to the emperor about the Tripolitanian situation. Palladius was summoned to explain himself, but committed suicide en route; so did Remigius, Romanus' friend at court. Romanus himself, astonishingly enough, managed to talk his way out of any punishment by claiming that the provincials simply had a grudge against him and were trying to get him in trouble. Theodosius suppressed Firmus and apparently restored some degree of order to the province, but within a couple of years was himself put to death in the purge after Valentinian died. There are about as many takeaways from this event as there have been retellings of it, but I think the most relevant here are 1) brigands could be a minor problem, but local attempts to deal harshly with them could lead to very serious problems 2) regional military/political leadership could be just as greedy and useless as any brigand 3) the opacity of Roman government made it extremely difficult to get anyone to commit to dealing with local criminal troubles 4) if you tried to force the central government to commit to this, it was entirely possible that you'd tread on someone's toes and die horribly 5) it could take years and years for such a problem to be solved, if it ever was. It's hard to avoid the conclusion that the Tripolitanians would have been better off just not setting Stachao on fire, no matter who he robbed.
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Nov 15, 2017 16:55
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He would have gotten away with it if wasn't for those savvy locals!
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Nov 15, 2017 16:59
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Cyrano4747 posted:Yeah, I think people seriously underestimate the willingness of rural dudes living on the margins of a society to engage in smuggling or piracy or just turn a blind eye to their family members who are. Roman law treated those who harbor criminals as guilty of the same crime. Violent bandits (latrones) were routinely put to death or sent to the mines. Roman law acknowledged that ongoing banditry required either a community to support them (to sell their goods) or the patronage/support of landowning elites; since Roman sentencing was classist, that could mean those harboring criminals (receptatores) could get off more lightly. My impression, though, is that most of the eternal banditry that went on under the Roman Empire was primarily not against traders for their goods, but rather overland travelers for their valuables. When these crimes took place within the community, we have some evidence that these were reported to the local authorities (thanks to papyrus + Egypt). Most of the time, they even reported who did the crime (or whom the suspected), and what their occupation was.
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Nov 15, 2017 17:16
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LingcodKilla posted:He would have gotten away with it if wasn't for those savvy locals! One easy trick to reduce brigandy! The comes hates it! homullus posted:Roman law treated those who harbor criminals as guilty of the same crime. Violent bandits (latrones) were routinely put to death or sent to the mines. Roman law acknowledged that ongoing banditry required either a community to support them (to sell their goods) or the patronage/support of landowning elites; since Roman sentencing was classist, that could mean those harboring criminals (receptatores) could get off more lightly. On the other hand, the fact that they had to go to the effort of making harboring bandits a crime shows that brigandry was an ongoing problem. That's one of the things about laws - it can be hard to figure out if they were effective or not, but their presence indicates that there was a problem there to begin with.
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Nov 15, 2017 17:40
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Cyrano4747 posted:On the other hand, the fact that they had to go to the effort of making harboring bandits a crime shows that brigandry was an ongoing problem. That's one of the things about laws - it can be hard to figure out if they were effective or not, but their presence indicates that there was a problem there to begin with. not necessarily disagreeing with you about this specific case, but unless you think sharia law was actually prevalent in alabama, I don't think this is entirely true (or, for a less anachronistic example, laws against witchcraft and magic)
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Nov 15, 2017 17:58
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Jeb Bush 2012 posted:not necessarily disagreeing with you about this specific case, but unless you think sharia law was actually prevalent in alabama, I don't think this is entirely true You're right on the Sharia one. Still, at the very least it shows a preoccupation with them. It could also be argued that the witchcraft/magic laws were part of an ongoing attempt to christianize medieval society, a process that was very much done a done deal, especially in the countryside.
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Nov 15, 2017 18:01
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Cyrano4747 posted:One easy trick to reduce brigandy! The comes hates it! The overland, bandit-king steal-your-money kind never went away. It was more or less a fact of life for Roman citizens, an act of God over which there was little control.
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Nov 15, 2017 18:02
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Cyrano4747 posted:Yeah, I think people seriously underestimate the willingness of rural dudes living on the margins of a society to engage in smuggling or piracy or just turn a blind eye to their family members who are. What about when the local bandits don't share enough of their loot with you and your buddies? You're probably going to start thinking, maybe I should report them, unlike my good buddy who always gets me a cut.
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Nov 15, 2017 18:04
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fishmech posted:What about when the local bandits don't share enough of their loot with you and your buddies? You're probably going to start thinking, maybe I should report them, unlike my good buddy who always gets me a cut. Beats me, maybe it happened. The one thing that occurs to me is that this could get deep into kinship networks and other affiliations people in the area might have. If you end up with a load of hot olive oil or whatever maybe you're better off selling it off in that village that's full of your extended relatives rather than the one across the hill that is full of those fuckers who keep trying to steal your goats.
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Nov 15, 2017 18:09
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Cyrano4747 posted:Beats me, maybe it happened. The one thing that occurs to me is that this could get deep into kinship networks and other affiliations people in the area might have. If you end up with a load of hot olive oil or whatever maybe you're better off selling it off in that village that's full of your extended relatives rather than the one across the hill that is full of those fuckers who keep trying to steal your goats. Which reminds me, a lot of banditry is going to be just that; going across the hill to steal some rear end in a top hat's goats. Eventually some guy is going to say, oh, that hill is now the border between Rome and Not Rome (or England and not England or whatever) and now your traditional sheep-stealing pastimes becomes an international incident, but for local communities without much law enforcement, you're going to be stealing from your neighboring villages.
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Nov 15, 2017 18:14
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That story is utterly amazing
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Nov 15, 2017 18:18
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sullat posted:Which reminds me, a lot of banditry is going to be just that; going across the hill to steal some rear end in a top hat's goats. Eventually some guy is going to say, oh, that hill is now the border between Rome and Not Rome (or England and not England or whatever) and now your traditional sheep-stealing pastimes becomes an international incident, but for local communities without much law enforcement, you're going to be stealing from your neighboring villages. Shepherd-bandits were a huge problem, because unlike most people, they could and did move around. Rome tried restricting the ownership of horses to combat it.
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Nov 15, 2017 18:57
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Cyrano4747 posted:You're right on the Sharia one. But....society had been pretty thoroughly Christianized by that point? Unless you're trying to imply that anything Murray wrote is capable of holding water?
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Nov 15, 2017 19:06
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Mad Hamish posted:But....society had been pretty thoroughly Christianized by that point? Unless you're trying to imply that anything Murray wrote is capable of holding water? Richard the Lionheart believed he was descended from a fairy.
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Nov 15, 2017 19:09
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Kemper Boyd posted:Bad Cav Island also be generous they're bad at a lot of other things too
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Nov 15, 2017 19:15
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Mad Hamish posted:But....society had been pretty thoroughly Christianized by that point? Unless you're trying to imply that anything Murray wrote is capable of holding water? As late as Martin Luther you have people advocating training up as many decent priests as possible and sending them into the sticks to make the yokals stop being "christian" in the kitbash pagan sense and actually get them up to speed. Just because everyone is nominally worshiping Jesus instead of Wodin or whoever doesn't mean that you don't have a lot of folk practices dragging around which involve poo poo like casting spells and seeking magical protection wherever you can find it. poo poo, just look at all the astrological and mystical poo poo Hey Guns' people get into, and those guys were in the middle of fighting what was nominally a religious war between flavors of Christianity.
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Nov 15, 2017 21:20
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