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Hieronymous Alloy posted:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Selkie Yeah I’ve watched The Secret of Roan Inish about 20 times while working in an art house theater and personally made fun of it to the director on accident while bartending.
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Jan 9, 2019 17:37
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skasion posted:It is more probable that Poseidon is a syncretic figure of 1) a horse-god associated with the underworld (there was an old Arcadian myth about horse-Poseidon raping horse-Demeter which seems to have an echo in the Eleusinian mystery story of Hades and Persephone) and 2) a Homeric/Hesiodic god whose sphere was that of the waters, as Zeus received the sky and Hades the underearth, and despite the preexistence of other river/sea deities. Why this association originally arose is not clear (to me anyway, though there are water/horse traditions elsewhere in Europe). I always loved the Thales/water thing as an example of the power of observation and its limits, because his model is not entirely wrong! He just puts the ground that we walk on and credits the motion to the wrong liquid!
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Jan 9, 2019 17:57
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Which liquid are you envisioning?
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Jan 9, 2019 18:08
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Scarodactyl posted:Which liquid are you envisioning? Magma/Lava, the motion of which can contribute to certain types of earthquakes. i.e. he's right to notice a sort of a fluid dynamic to earthquakes, but the information he was drawing his conclusions from was limited.
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Jan 9, 2019 18:12
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Selkie Right, sorry!
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Jan 9, 2019 18:15
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Man that's basically an unusually gay Renaissance painting
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Jan 9, 2019 19:25
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aphid_licker posted:Man that's basically an unusually gay Renaissance painting Just silkies on parade.
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Jan 9, 2019 20:06
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skasion posted:It is more probable that Poseidon is a syncretic figure of 1) a horse-god associated with the underworld (there was an old Arcadian myth about horse-Poseidon raping horse-Demeter which seems to have an echo in the Eleusinian mystery story of Hades and Persephone) and 2) a Homeric/Hesiodic god whose sphere was that of the waters, as Zeus received the sky and Hades the underearth, and despite the preexistence of other river/sea deities. Why this association originally arose is not clear (to me anyway, though there are water/horse traditions elsewhere in Europe). didn't the sumerians have separate gods for freshwater and seawater, with the freshwater one also tying into the underworld?
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Jan 10, 2019 12:45
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There was a sort of general belief in ancient near eastern cosmology that there was a freshwater sea under the earth called the Apsu, distinct from the saltwater ocean.
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Jan 10, 2019 16:24
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Scarodactyl posted:There was a sort of general belief in ancient near eastern cosmology that there was a freshwater sea under the earth called the Apsu, distinct from the saltwater ocean. Makes sense because when you dig down and hit water it’s almost always fresh.
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Jan 10, 2019 16:37
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LingcodKilla posted:Makes sense because when you dig down and hit water it’s almost always fresh.  makes sense
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Jan 10, 2019 16:39
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In Sumerian/Babylonian mythology Apsu is the god of fresh waters and Tiamat is the goddess of the ocean, and where they meet is where creation begins. (And then later Marduk slays Tiamat. Here's a decent lecture about this creation myth) I don't think this influenced Poseidon though.
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Jan 10, 2019 18:22
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Man I cannot talk about Marduk without thinking of Sealab. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OCoiNj09xBM
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Jan 10, 2019 18:39
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LingcodKilla posted:Makes sense because when you dig down and hit water it’s almost always fresh. Also cave systems with underground rivers and such.
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Jan 10, 2019 19:07
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Tias posted:Viking cat archeology is my exact fetish. I'm the average dog. So obviously the journalism here is pretty terrible but it seems the studies authors are guessing when they say cat size increase is likely due to diet, which seems a mite improper. Like I could just as easily postulate domestication led to a removal of certain selection pressures keeping cat size low, but I wouldn't because I don't have any evidence.
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Jan 10, 2019 19:17
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Vaginal Vagrant posted:I'm the average dog. Isn't this how science work? You form a hypothesis, you test it and then you revise/update/discard said hypothesis based on your conclusion? You then repeat the experiment, have it peered reviewed and then it becomes theory? quote:More research is needed to confirm the new finding, but there’s a good chance it had to do with being better fed. When I read this, it sounds to me as if they provided an hypothesis, and now more research needs to be done to either prove or disprove this hypothesis.
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Jan 10, 2019 19:31
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Yeah I'm in a different field, but putting hypotheses to be tested in future research into your discussion section is extremely common in my field
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Jan 10, 2019 19:37
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Everybody loves bigger cats. Don’t need science for that.
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Jan 10, 2019 20:08
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Being better fed sounds like it could be plausible to me. Smaller cats might have an advantage in the wild because they'd make less noise/be slightly harder to see, if they get domesticated they don't have to worry about getting spotted by predators/their prey spotting them so much. Maybe the bigger cats had an advantage in fighting over the food that was put out by humans, like big birds in parks/campgrounds today. Maybe an abundance of food meant that cats with the genes to grow bigger actually had the nutrients to grow and that let them survive against predators better. Thats just me speculating once I've already heard their hypothesis though and I'm by no means knowledgable in biology but to me it makes sense that having easy access to food from humans could mean they got bigger. underage at the vape shop fucked around with this message at 09:46 on Jan 11, 2019 |
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Jan 11, 2019 08:21
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I was "impressing" my wife this morning with my yo-yo "skills" acquired during the two brief yo-yo crazes in the late 80's and early 90's in Australia and it made me wonder - do we have any record of fads from the ancient world?
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Jan 11, 2019 15:01
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Elissimpark posted:I was "impressing" my wife this morning with my yo-yo "skills" acquired during the two brief yo-yo crazes in the late 80's and early 90's in Australia and it made me wonder - do we have any record of fads from the ancient world? Bathing
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Jan 11, 2019 15:03
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Mithraism?
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Jan 11, 2019 15:11
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Wasn't there a record of an older Roman complaining about the youths growing facial hair like the barbarians or something?
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Jan 11, 2019 15:31
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Elissimpark posted:I was "impressing" my wife this morning with my yo-yo "skills" acquired during the two brief yo-yo crazes in the late 80's and early 90's in Australia and it made me wonder - do we have any record of fads from the ancient world? Trousers
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Jan 11, 2019 15:32
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Older Romans complained that young Scipio Aemilianus had long hair - LIKE A GIRL 
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Jan 11, 2019 15:49
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Imagined posted:Wasn't there a record of an older Roman complaining about the youths growing facial hair like the barbarians or something? Young Roman men traditionally grew out their first beard for a while before shaving and dedicating it to a god as a rite of passage (presumably the amusement of other Romans was also a factor in this tradition). This may reflect that shaving was not a native Roman tradition; Scipio brought it into fashion along with other Greek cultural mores. Of course ironically when beards came back into style through Hadrian, he was imitating contemporary Greek practices as well. Anyway under the late Republic and Principiate, growing large amounts of facial hair in adulthood was regarded as alarming and extreme behavior at best (Augustus did this when Varus failed to bring back his legions) and simply slovenly and probably barbarous at worst. But having a well-kempt beard during the Augustan age can not have been too unusual; Ovid’s “Art of Love” assumes you have one.
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Jan 11, 2019 15:51
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Imagined posted:Wasn't there a record of an older Roman complaining about the youths growing facial hair like the barbarians or something? Yep. During Caesar's youth we have record of a fad among the kids of the aristocracy running around with big mustaches and wearing pants because dressing like a Gaul was the cool thing to do, scandalizing their parents. Greek and Egyptian art/religion/architecture also seem to have been fads at different times, you'll find a bunch of tombs in a short period that all have Egyptian features and stuff like that. I'm sure there were lots and lots of fads all the time that we don't have record of.
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Jan 11, 2019 18:18
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I can't help but wonder if the ancient Romans would have considered Nero's tragic neckbeard to be as unfortunate as we do today.
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Jan 11, 2019 18:23
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Beards didn't seem to have become acceptable again for the upper classes until Hadrian, so probably. Though it may have just been a generalized dislike of beards rather than a specific neckbeard issue.
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Jan 11, 2019 18:28
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I remember Carlin saying that men wearing open front toga's with very sheer fabric was a fad spread by Caesar. Not sure on the source for that.
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Jan 11, 2019 18:44
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Grand Fromage posted:Beards didn't seem to have become acceptable again for the upper classes until Hadrian, so probably. Though it may have just been a generalized dislike of beards rather than a specific neckbeard issue. Domitian appears from his coin portraiture have a similar sideburns/chinstrap beard at times. On the other hand we have the story about how he shaved the philosopher Apollonius. I don’t have any especially strong evidence for this but I do think the Romans made a big distinction between a small amount of facial hair as one sees on Domitian or Nero, and a full beard with mustache like one sees on Hadrian or Aurelius.
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Jan 11, 2019 18:46
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Terrible Opinions posted:I remember Carlin saying that men wearing open front toga's with very sheer fabric was a fad spread by Caesar. Not sure on the source for that. He was chided for his loosely girded tunics and coats at least according to always extremely reliable Suetonius.
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Jan 11, 2019 19:15
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I'm not sure if it counts as a fad per se because it went on for centuries, but dressing/acting like whatever the barbarian group of the age was was popular in the army. It was a part of how the later legions developed their own culture that separated them from mainstream Romans. They'd adopt fashions in hair and clothing, as well as borrowing words to make their own barbarized Latin to speak among the legionaries.
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Jan 11, 2019 19:20
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Grand Fromage posted:I'm not sure if it counts as a fad per se because it went on for centuries, but dressing/acting like whatever the barbarian group of the age was was popular in the army. It was a part of how the later legions developed their own culture that separated them from mainstream Romans. They'd adopt fashions in hair and clothing, as well as borrowing words to make their own barbarized Latin to speak among the legionaries. Soldiers always do this, even to today. Adopting local customs and dress is typical.
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Jan 11, 2019 21:00
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Cessna posted:Soldiers always do this, even to today. Adopting local customs and dress is typical. Yeah, everybody does it. Try living somewhere foreign for a few years and not picking up local phrases and the like.
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Jan 11, 2019 21:37
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Grand Fromage posted:I'm not sure if it counts as a fad per se because it went on for centuries, but dressing/acting like whatever the barbarian group of the age was was popular in the army. It was a part of how the later legions developed their own culture that separated them from mainstream Romans. They'd adopt fashions in hair and clothing, as well as borrowing words to make their own barbarized Latin to speak among the legionaries. How much of this is them picking up local customs vs them conscripting barbarians? Could we even tell?
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Jan 12, 2019 01:14
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underage at the vape shop posted:How much of this is them picking up local customs vs them conscripting barbarians? Could we even tell?
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Jan 12, 2019 01:26
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Modern army and their ridiculous obsession with beards. The more things change.
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Jan 12, 2019 02:43
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LingcodKilla posted:Modern army and their ridiculous obsession with beards. They just want to copy whatever the Special Forces guys are doing. Post 9/11 the Green Berets and Delta Force guys all grew huge beards to blend in with the Afghans a little better. See also the adoption of berets for all Army troops. As for the Romans didn't the professional guys serve ridiculously long like 20 year terms? These were guys who didn't come back to their farm or whatever after the campaign season every year. They were away from Italy for decades. It's only natural they developed their own culture and drifted away from Roman culture. Weren't there also something like two slaves to every soldier following the legions around, dealing with the supply trains and all that? I imagine these were heavily populated with local victims of conquest. Maybe after you spend longer around Gallic slaves than you do around Italian freeborns the more you start adopting Gallic customs and language to talk to the servants.
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Jan 12, 2019 03:00
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The vast majority of troops in the imperial period were not Italian to begin with. Recruitment after the republic tended to be done locally, which meant mostly in the frontier zones. This is why so many of the late Roman military elite hailed from the Danube, and also why the late Roman military was occasionally difficult to distinguish from barbarian forces even to Roman observers — see the Caesar Julian’s difficulty in convincing the people of Troyes that his men were not “one of the widespread bands of savages”. Even the republic’s armies, though they chiefly are reported in terms of the (Italian) heavy infantry, may have drawn as much as half of their combat strength from non-Italian auxiliaries, to say nothing of non-combatants.
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Jan 12, 2019 03:17
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