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"New explanation for Alexander the Great's death" [YAEFATGD]: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/01/190122115006.htm "It may have happened more than 2,300 years ago, but the mystery of Alexander the Great's death could finally be solved, thanks to a University of Otago, New Zealand, academic." Finally Solved! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guillain%E2%80%93Barr%C3%A9_syndrome Reasonable, but I think we're gonna need a hepatoscopy from him to be sure.
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Jan 28, 2019 01:59
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Well according to other sources when he died the air filled with mist and darkness fell, a star fell from the sky carried by a giant eagle and the statue of Zeus in Babylon was shaken. I bet their diagnosis doesn't cover those sources.
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Jan 28, 2019 02:27
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British Museum posted another good video describing part of their Assyrian collection. Its maybe the most pro-follow internet channel https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vpe7fevbReA
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Jan 29, 2019 05:41
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I have a couple weeks in late February that I'll be in Europe, any must sees? I'm strongly considering Rome but am worried it will be too crowded/expensive, even this time of year. I speak French quite well in addition to English, if that matters. Sorry if this is the wrong thread for this or if it's a frequently answered question but I think the posters here are most likely to have the best advice.
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Jan 30, 2019 03:14
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You speak French and you're interested in Roman history?? Go to Nîmes.
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Jan 30, 2019 05:28
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There are a lot of Roman ruins all over the place. Ok yeah they arent all Rome but it might be easier to pick places you want to go and see what Roman ruins are nearby. Even places that arent famous for it have big Roman ruins. Jordan has Petra for example, but the capital Amman has a big theatre in the city and the ruins of a roman city not too far outside of town. Theres a tourism subforum for ask and tell with a europe thread too
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Jan 30, 2019 07:24
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Herbotron posted:I have a couple weeks in late February that I'll be in Europe, any must sees? I'm strongly considering Rome but am worried it will be too crowded/expensive, even this time of year. Pompeii, Merida, Bath
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Jan 30, 2019 09:29
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FAUXTON posted:Pompeii, Merida, Bath ....İstanbul
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Jan 30, 2019 09:40
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FAUXTON posted:Pompeii, Merida, Bath
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Jan 30, 2019 09:48
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HEY GUNS posted:any sentence involving bath is at least 2x as good if you say "a Bath" instead The tour I went on at the Roman Baths in Bath, England was pretty neat, they talked about the heated flooring and how they did the whole "lather you with oil in the heat room, then scrape it all off after a dip in the cold water" thing (which sounds like a recipe for acne in places you never expect) etc. It was quite thorough and aside from the old london ghost walk it's the most memorable thing from the times I visited England.
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Jan 30, 2019 09:54
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Not necessarily just Roman history, but if you decide to spend a significant amount of time in France at all my two suggestions for history buffs are always: 1. Musée de l'Armée in Paris. It's got a ton of cool stuff, including Napoleon's tomb. 2. Normandy in general was great. Norman castles, the Bayeux tapestry (Bayeux itself was relatively untouched by WW2 and there are Roman ruins intact there as well), WW2 battlefields, etc. Plus it's beautiful country. I enjoyed riding the train around there.
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Jan 30, 2019 14:55
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Thanks for all the advice! Pompeii would be amazing and I do have other reasons to consider making London part of my trip, so Bath wouldn't be too out of the way.
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Jan 30, 2019 18:56
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Rome is 100% worth it even with the crowds. The Vatican museum was the only place I went where the crowds really detracted from it. Tiberius' Villa on Capri is less well known but still really cool if you can make the hike. We literally had the place to ourselves on a weekday morning.
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Jan 30, 2019 21:14
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Jamwad Hilder posted:Not necessarily just Roman history, but if you decide to spend a significant amount of time in France at all my two suggestions for history buffs are always: Also very cool Roman ruins all over Provence, but definitely more of an investment to visit.
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Jan 30, 2019 21:23
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Rome's always going to be crowded because it's Rome, just go if you want to see it. It's not that bad. Also look up all the multiple entry tickets, since waiting in ticket lines is what really eats your time. But you can almost always get a ticket that lets you into everything in an area and pick it up somewhere that isn't crowded then slide past all those fools in line.
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Jan 30, 2019 23:01
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Grevling posted:Does anything know about what Greek soldiers ate? I've been translating some of Archilochus' poems as part of my studies and there was this elegy: Barley would have likely been their major source of calories, more likely in a porridge or gruel than as bread for most meals. Curiously, pre-Roman Greeks thought onions were super important to eat if you were doing hard labor or an athlete so it would have been an important staple for soldiers as well. Wine, olives, and olive oil would have been consumed whenever they could get them. Xenophon as well as a few other sources specifically mentions garlic as being eaten by soldiers. Even now in modern Greece gathering wild greens ("horta") to make salads is a culturally significant activity so I think they probably would have foraged vegetables and herbs from their surroundings. If you can wade through the crazy sites promoting modern "Spartan" diets that might give you a baseline for how soldiers ate. Spartans were notoriously strict in their diet though so I'd guess that the average soldier ate [i]better than the traditional Spartan diet. Especially since soldiers would have mostly been responsible for providing their own food and what they could afford and were wise enough to bring would have varied a lot. It was a thing that when you made a sacrifice to the gods that you mostly gave them the disgusting parts of the animal and ate the rest yourself, so soldiers would likely have gotten at least some meat, especially beef, that way. One of the stories about Prometheus even credits him with tricking Zeus into demanding meatless, inedible bones, covered in fat so that it looked appetizing, as the Olympian's portion and agreeing to let the mortals eat the actually good parts of the animal.
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Jan 30, 2019 23:32
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Grand Fromage posted:Rome's always going to be crowded because it's Rome, just go if you want to see it. It's not that bad. Also look up all the multiple entry tickets, since waiting in ticket lines is what really eats your time. But you can almost always get a ticket that lets you into everything in an area and pick it up somewhere that isn't crowded then slide past all those fools in line. When I was in Rome the airport train station was selling packages of something like the Colosseum, forum and five museums of your choice, plus three days of subway/bus pass, for 50 euros. Didn't have to wait in line for tickets any of it (but you obviously can't skip security lines)
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Jan 30, 2019 23:41
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cheetah7071 posted:When I was in Rome the airport train station was selling packages of something like the Colosseum, forum and five museums of your choice, plus three days of subway/bus pass, for 50 euros. Didn't have to wait in line for tickets any of it (but you obviously can't skip security lines) That sounds like a good deal. I know the forum and Colosseum have a unified ticket, and I think there's one for most of the museums.
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Jan 31, 2019 00:24
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Herbotron posted:Thanks for all the advice! Pompeii would be amazing and I do have other reasons to consider making London part of my trip, so Bath wouldn't be too out of the way. The British Museum may be the shrine of a colonial legacy of looting and exploitation, but it's also my favorite place in the whole world and is a reason to go to London by itself. It's always crowded, but it's free!
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Jan 31, 2019 00:29
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Yea, if you buy a Vatican ticket online you get to skip a huge queue abf head in. The Vatican also has s surprisingly large Egyptian collection, and the hall of maps which is amazing and everyone just walks through it. The Sistine Chapel is kinda poo poo though.
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Jan 31, 2019 00:44
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More an artefact than a shrine IMO
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Jan 31, 2019 00:50
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LLSix posted:Barley would have likely been their major source of calories, more likely in a porridge or gruel than as bread for most meals. Curiously, pre-Roman Greeks thought onions were super important to eat if you were doing hard labor or an athlete so it would have been an important staple for soldiers as well. Wine, olives, and olive oil would have been consumed whenever they could get them. Xenophon as well as a few other sources specifically mentions garlic as being eaten by soldiers. Even now in modern Greece gathering wild greens ("horta") to make salads is a culturally significant activity so I think they probably would have foraged vegetables and herbs from their surroundings. I'm just guessing here but, could it be that onions is an easy to grow vegetable that takes a lot of time before going bad? something like 1 or 2 months in the heat, a lot more if kept in the cold?
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Jan 31, 2019 01:15
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Just being in Rome is an experience for an American. It’s a different way of life.
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Jan 31, 2019 02:28
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euphronius posted:Just being in Rome is an experience for an American. It’s a different way of life. Why Americans in particular?
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Jan 31, 2019 02:50
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Grape posted:Why Americans in particular? If I had to hazard a guess, it's the sense of age, of people having always been there for millennia. Nothing in the United States dates back to before the 1600s, and even if you are generous and by America you mean North and South America, then the oldest continuously occupied city is Mexico City and people have only been living there since the 1200s. Part of this is because all the natives were killed/died of disease but still Meanwhile at that point, Rome was getting close to 2000 years old
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Jan 31, 2019 03:10
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Also the outdoor* living and visible, breathable, tangible community of even a block or a square (piazza) And the scooters. * as in people aren’t on their homes when they are living
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Jan 31, 2019 03:32
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Don Gato posted:If I had to hazard a guess, it's the sense of age, of people having always been there for millennia. Nothing in the United States dates back to before the 1600s, and even if you are generous and by America you mean North and South America, then the oldest continuously occupied city is Mexico City and people have only been living there since the 1200s. Part of this is because all the natives were killed/died of disease but still There are structures in the US dating back to long before the 1600s (though not continuously occupied, and still a lot younger than Rome): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancestral_Puebloan_dwellings
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Jan 31, 2019 04:17
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Don Gato posted:Nothing in the United States dates back to before the 1600s
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Jan 31, 2019 04:23
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Silver2195 posted:There are structures in the US dating back to long before the 1600s (though not continuously occupied, and still a lot younger than Rome): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancestral_Puebloan_dwellings Thats very very different to what he was talking about. There probably isn't a place on Earth where you can't go and find some sort of evidence of humans thousands (or atleast hundreds) of years old. That's incredibly different to a major city that has been a major city for thousands of years and has real, visible evidence of it's history. It's not like you can stand in New York and see any evidence of who stood there 2000 years before you, in Rome (and quite a lot of European cities) the evidence is huge and inescapable. underage at the vape shop fucked around with this message at 07:35 on Jan 31, 2019 |
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Jan 31, 2019 07:08
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Don Gato posted:Nothing in the United States dates back to before the 1600s, and even if you are generous Dibs on not having to tell the Kumeyaay this.
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Jan 31, 2019 07:25
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underage at the vape shop posted:Thats very very different to what he was talking about. There probably isn't a place on Earth where you can't go and find some sort of evidence of humans thousands (or atleast hundreds) of years old. That's incredibly different to a major city that has been a major city for thousands of years and has real, visible evidence of it's history. It's not like you can stand in New York and see any evidence of who stood there 2000 years before you, in Rome (and quite a lot of European cities) the evidence is huge and inescapable. This guy gets what I mean. I don't mean to denigrate the natives that were here but in most of North America outside of Mexico, there isn't as much evidence of people living in large metropolitan areas. I realize now that I sounded more euro-centric than I meant to.
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Jan 31, 2019 07:32
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Don Gato posted:This guy gets what I mean. I don't mean to denigrate the natives that were here but in most of North America outside of Mexico, there isn't as much evidence of people living in large metropolitan areas. I realize now that I sounded more euro-centric than I meant to.
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Jan 31, 2019 07:34
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E: I hosed up quote isnt edit
underage at the vape shop fucked around with this message at 07:42 on Jan 31, 2019 |
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Jan 31, 2019 07:34
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Don Gato posted:This guy gets what I mean. I don't mean to denigrate the natives that were here but in most of North America outside of Mexico, there isn't as much evidence of people living in large metropolitan areas. I realize now that I sounded more euro-centric than I meant to. I made an edit to my post but I'll just make a new one: This is from an article linked to in Silver's article:  It's a thousand years old and in the middle of nowhere, New Mexico:  Compare that to any number of European cities, but especially cities like Rome or Athens where the center of the capital city of a modern country was also the center of a massive civilisation thousands of years ago, with mostly intact evidence of that ancient power still standing (and in some cases, still in use). It's a really cool feeling being in a place like that if you live in a country that doesn't have it. I'm not American, I'm Australian, but it's a similar situation with all the numbers exagerated. Yeah the aboriginals were here 80 000+ years before us, but the Brits destroyed all of that and the civilisation that is here now was only federated in 1901. Just standing in a city with history is a huge experience.
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Jan 31, 2019 07:35
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HEY GUNS posted:in new mexico there are metropolitan areas, they're just small and mostly sand Huh, learn something new everyday. I've only been to the ones in Yucatan and Teotihuacán near Mexico City and just assumed those kinds of things only existed in Mesoamérica
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Jan 31, 2019 07:45
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Don Gato posted:Huh, learn something new everyday. I've only been to the ones in Yucatan and Teotihuacán near Mexico City and just assumed those kinds of things only existed in Mesoamérica
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Jan 31, 2019 07:52
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The best‐situated walled city I’ve ever seen is Constantinople.
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Jan 31, 2019 07:56
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HEY GUNS posted:there's just not a lot of water up there, not many people. check out Acoma though. the best-situated walled city i've ever seen Does it even need walls?
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Jan 31, 2019 08:14
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underage at the vape shop posted:I made an edit to my post but I'll just make a new one: We all willingly came to the ancient history thread, we get that it's ancient bud
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Jan 31, 2019 15:59
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underage at the vape shop posted:Thats very very different to what he was talking about. There probably isn't a place on Earth where you can't go and find some sort of evidence of humans thousands (or atleast hundreds) of years old. That's incredibly different to a major city that has been a major city for thousands of years and has real, visible evidence of it's history. It's not like you can stand in New York and see any evidence of who stood there 2000 years before you, in Rome (and quite a lot of European cities) the evidence is huge and inescapable. lol I think this explains my confusion. See I've been to Greece, Turkey and Cyprus. Places with just as old if not older history than Rome... but rarely was I smacked over the head with history like that in the same way. Because really most of their cities are like 90% 20th century structures (ugly ones too!). Istanbul obviously had some older clout though. Except that one electronics store in a Thessaloniki mall that had a glass floor in one part with uncovered ancient ruins under it. My Athens experience was also not tourism, but getting on the wrong airport bus during a layover and being carted around through the shittiest parts of the city around midnight with a driver who knew no English. 
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Jan 31, 2019 18:13
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