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If they weren’t morons, why did they so massively overengineer that ring of supports? They’re protected by the roof, so wood supports would last an awfully long time. If stones are used, they needn’t be nearly so thick. Think of the concrete columns holding up modern buildings. That’s an upper bound on how large the verticals need to be. In moderation, stone is an O.K. choice for the verticals for the same reason concrete columns are used today—it’s very strong in compression. It’s a poor choice for the lintels because it’s weak in tension and the bottom half of the lintels are under tension. Ancient people may not have put it in the same words, but people who could shape and transport stones of such immense size knew a thing or two about its properties. They knew they didn’t need such a volume of stone for support. They knew that the stone could be stacked rather than in monolithic blocks without compromising its strength. They knew that spanning a gap with a stone was kind of daft. They built like they did at Stonehenge not because it was the most practical way to build but because it pleased them to do so. I mean maybe it pleased them to overbuild internal supports for a wood roof, but I tend to think that they didn’t quarry and move dozens of Davids just to hide them under a wooden façade.
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Aug 21, 2019 20:43
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Platystemon posted:If they weren’t morons, why did they so massively overengineer that ring of supports? Yes but, have you seen how cool it looks?
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Aug 21, 2019 20:48
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Platystemon posted:If they weren’t morons, why did they so massively overengineer that ring of supports? theyre stupid cavemen
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Aug 21, 2019 20:54
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Mantis42 posted:theyre stupid cavemen We're all stupid cavemen.
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Aug 21, 2019 20:55
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twoday posted:In the Mediterranean there are many stones, and as a result there were many monumental buildings made of stone, stone ornaments left behind and such. And because of the nature of stone, it's easier to cut blocks and stack them into rectangular buildings, which is the predominant form. However, in Northern Europe wood was the common building material, and one of the simplest shapes to build from wood is more of a teepee structure. This evolved into the round form seen in many Celtic houses: As a corollary to this though, ancient people also did poo poo for reasons we do not really relate to at all. I'm not familiar with the ignored post holes thing. Is there wood down there contemporary to the storns being raised, etc? What is the actual evidence for that massive of a superstructure, when standing stones are not unique to Stonehenge and we're definitely not all parts of buildings. A wooden superstructure would easily explain the vertical standing stones, but the lintel stones would never be needed for such a building, and represent the most impressive feat related to Stonehenge. Since ancient people were not morons, why did they spend an absurd amount of time and effort to place the lintel stones only to cover them up with wood, when a log would work just fine to support a wooden structure. I get your point that we should not just make assumptions about ancient peoples, but I'm really curious where you are getting the idea that modern archeologists retain Victorian level disdain for ancient peoples when normally it could not be further from that. Stonehenge was obviously something not built for a "rational" reason and took generations to complete. It's entirely feasible that same culture considered it part of those rituals that they must be done under the sky.
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Aug 21, 2019 21:01
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Also, since Stonehenge is lined up for solstices, how would it make any sense for the rituals to be conducted indoors?
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Aug 21, 2019 21:06
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Stone Henge was created by the wizard Merlin you dolts ffs
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Aug 21, 2019 21:10
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Fuzzy McDoom posted:Also, since Stonehenge is lined up for solstices, how would it make any sense for the rituals to be conducted indoors? the marking of the solstice occurs at sunrise or sunset, which occurs at the level of the horizon. You don't need an open roof to see it, just a doorway. see for instance, Newgrange, in Ireland:  On the solstice the sun rises in such a position on the horizon that reaches all the way to the back of the tunnel inside the structure through the long narrow tunnel, and does so only on that day.  The alignment at stonehenge works in a similar manner, so a roof would be fine. If anything, it would be even more spectacular with a roof because a roof would create near total darkness inside, and when the sun rose it would enter the doorway and totally illuminate the inside of the building because of the correct angle 
twoday has issued a correction as of 22:12 on Aug 21, 2019 |
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Aug 21, 2019 21:20
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Olim truncus eram ficulnus, inutile lignum, cum faber, incertus scamnum faceretne Priapum, maluit esse deum. deus inde ego, furum aviumque maxima formido; nam fures dextra coercet obscenoque ruber porrectus ab inguine palus; ast importunes volucres in vertice harundo terret fixa vetatque novis considere in hortis. "Once I was a trunk of fig, a useless piece of wood, when a carpenter, unsure whether he should make a bench or a Priapus, decided to make a god. So I am a god, of thieves and birds a very great scarer; for my right hand curbs thieves, as does the red pole which projects from my indecent groin; but as for the importunate birds, the reed fixed on my head terrifies them and forbids them to settle in the new gardens."
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Aug 21, 2019 21:29
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WoodrowSkillson posted:As a corollary to this though, ancient people also did poo poo for reasons we do not really relate to at all. I'm not familiar with the ignored post holes thing. Is there wood down there contemporary to the storns being raised, etc? What is the actual evidence for that massive of a superstructure, when standing stones are not unique to Stonehenge and we're definitely not all parts of buildings. So this was a ritual site, and it resembled other earlier ritual stone circles elsewhere in Britain.   They are thought to represent dead ancestors. Kind of a graveyard. But they often have some astronomical alighments. These are probably a good approximation of how Stonehenge originally looked, and archaeological evidence supports this. The phases of construction have been figured out, which went like this:  1) Originally it was also a circle surrounded by a ditch, like the others. There are holes around the edge called Aubrey holes, these are thought to be the original locations of the smaller stones at the center of Stonehenge. There were also some other columns and stones outside the circle to mark the solstice alignment 2) Next they moved the small stones from the outside to the inside 3) Then they put up the large stones. At the same time, the other holes, the "Y holes" and "Z holes" appeared So the inside of the Stonehenge circle looked like this:   (Please excuse the labels in the following diagram, it was the best drawing I could find which shows the small stones upright:)  So why did they move the smaller stones, which seem to have previously been at the edges of the circle, to the inside? What makes sense to me, and also explains the appearance of the Y holes, is that they built stonehenge as a building, and moved the older stones inside to protect them. Like a church. twoday has issued a correction as of 22:14 on Aug 21, 2019 |
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Aug 21, 2019 21:35
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Platystemon posted:If they weren’t morons, why did they so massively overengineer that ring of supports? Going from my previous post, assuming that Stonehenge was a ritual site, like some kind of temple, and that it was a building that housed the stones which represented their ancestors where an elaborate ritual took place, then it would have certainly been the largest temple and the most important. Not just a church, but the greatest cathedral in all the land. In this case the size of the over-engineered scale of construction was not entirely practical, but also meant to be awe-inspiring. twoday has issued a correction as of 21:51 on Aug 21, 2019 |
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Aug 21, 2019 21:43
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twoday posted:the marking of the solstice occurs at sunrise or sunset, which occurs at the level of the horizon. You don't need an open roof to see it, just a doorway. Oh right, duh. I forgot about the visual effect of the sunrise since the solstice itself is not responsible for making a sunrise particularly spectacular. Wouldn't this present a capacity problem though? How many people would fit inside an enclosed Stonehenge? I suppose it might not matter since we don't even know if the inner ring was open to the general public, so to speak. I guess I was thinking more along the lines of Mesoamerican temple architecture where the design was intended for the priests to be able to show off celestial phenomena, which may be taking place high in the sky such as eclipses, to large masses of people. If I'm not misremembering, Mesoamerican societies also oriented vast complexes around the solstice, but typically not an enclosed space, so the sun would appear between some ceremonial pillars on the main axis of the plaza and be lined up with a pyramid. This way the facilities could have multiple astronomical purposes because you could observe things dramatically on the horizon as well as overhead depending on the occasion.
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Aug 21, 2019 21:44
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Quite a few Some priests and nobles and a bunch of other important people would comfortably fit. Also, the inner ring of Trilithons is not circular, so I would suspect that if they were roof supports, the roof they were supporting may have had an irregular, non-conical shape. but something that more closely resembles the nave of an actual cathedral. I don't know the answer to this, but this theory makes a hell of lot more sense to me than this: WoodrowSkillson posted:I get your point that we should not just make assumptions about ancient peoples, but I'm really curious where you are getting the idea that modern archeologists retain Victorian level disdain for ancient peoples when normally it could not be further from that. Stonehenge was obviously something not built for a "rational" reason and took generations to complete. It's entirely feasible that same culture considered it part of those rituals that they must be done under the sky. We have this theory now, it's a good theory, it explains a lot. It's simple and elegant. I have yet to see any convincing evidence that would contradict it. It is based on archaeological evidence. However, it has been published and considered, but not yet accepted by the top experts in the field. Why is that? It contradicts too much of what they believe; they can't accept it. They have spent their entire lives living in a world where stonehenge was not a building. They have written papers and books on the matter, come up with elaborate theories to explain why it was built that way, with a lot of imagined ideas about culture and ritual that are ultimately pure speculation. They are trapped in this world. They can't fathom that stonehenge was a building because it would contradict every book they read, every one they wrote. They would, on a massive institutional level, have to admit that they were wrong, as was everyone who came before them. They don't take this theory seriously because it contradicts so much of what they believe. And stonehenge in particular is one of the sites in the ancient world where almost all of what we know about it is almost entirely speculative. So this disdain against ancient people is not necessarily a conscious act now. It is inherited from the Victorians, who presumed the ancients where much stupider and simpler people. They based all of their theories upon this presumption, and all the theories which followed built upon those theories. It is all fundamentally rooted in the conception that ancient people were morons, no matter what the scholars today believe, and that early bias has fundamentally skewed the entire field of research, and will take an extremely long time to correct. because it has become institutionalized. And this returns to my previous broader criticism of historical scholarship, and how painfully slow and difficult it is for it to accept new ideas, and how old invalid ideas become institutionalized and ultimately slow down the cultivation of knowledge. twoday has issued a correction as of 23:40 on Aug 21, 2019 |
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Aug 21, 2019 21:46
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cheetah7071 posted:The researchers' findings suggested that the split between South American and Australian happened before the split between Australian and New Guinean. In other words, it's pretty plausible that there was a population living in Asia that split--one group north and one group south. The northern ones followed Beringia whether by land or following the coast by sea). There's no need for the transpacific sea voyage you posit. Even if you're right that boats existed much earlier than previously thought, boats that can make a transpacific journey are much more advanced. We also have pretty good dates of colonization of Pacific islands, and none of the islands far enough away to suggest advanced boating technology were inhabited more than two or three thousand years ago. Yeah, that is what the actual paper says. It seems to be another case of university press offices and popular mass media hyping up things that the research doesn't actually say.
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Aug 21, 2019 22:49
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Dalael posted:I'm sorry but I'm going to address this right here. It was proven in the end of the 40's that reed/papyrus boats such as those that existed all the way back in Pharaoh's times, could be used to traverse the oceans. DO NOT GET ME WRONG. I am not saying they did. Only that it was possible. thor heyerdahl was a racist hack, kon-tiki was an attempt to show that white people colonized the pacific from the east by floating, before another group of brown people from asia floated up around the fringe of the pacific (siberia/alaska/west coast of americas) and followed them and destroyed their civilisation. this is the reason why polynesian is an austronesian language. though the polynesian chiefs have a higher proportion of white people blood this is instead of "austronesians knew how to sail upwind"
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Aug 21, 2019 22:53
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KiteAuraan posted:Yeah, that is what the actual paper says. It seems to be another case of university press offices and popular mass media hyping up things that the research doesn't actually say. That makes sense, but it still implies that there was first a migration of one distinct group from New Guinea to the Americas, all the way to South America, and also implies that none of them were left behind in North America, or that those that were left behind were later wiped out completely, and still requires the entire history of the Americas to be rewritten to account for migrations that weren't previously found, and possibly genocides. Also, if this were the case, that people related to the Australian Aboriginals migrated from New Guinea to North America in a distinct, earlier migration event, where is the archaeological evidence of that? Shouldn't it be scattered across half the world? I can't think of any archaeological evidence which would support this theory, though I would love to see it twoday has issued a correction as of 23:03 on Aug 21, 2019 |
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Aug 21, 2019 22:55
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twoday posted:That makes sense, but it still implies that there was first a migration of one distinct group from New Guinea to the Americas, all the way to South America, and also implies that none of them were left behind in North America, or that those that were left behind were later wiped out completely, and still requires the entire history of the Americas to be rewritten to account for migrations that weren't previously found, and possibly genocides. It does, and that rewriting has been in progress for decades as the archaeological evidence you're mentioning has trickled in. They seem to have used tools that didn't preserve as well and had lower population densities but it's now mainstream and accepted that the wave of migration around 11000 BC entered into an already-populated western hemisphere. The term used for this earlier migration wave is pre-Clovis, because the later wave is called the Clovis culture (the first archaeological dig to find their artifacts was near Clovis, New Mexico) Pre-Clovis sites were (and to an extent still are) kind of controversial because almost every site has something weird with it that makes it hard to decisively date. But there's such a preponderance of sites that are probably from much earlier than 11000 BC that at this point the easier conclusion is that they truly are that old. Some of these sites are in North America, so it's not like it's confined to South America. If this new genetic study has found a remnant of pre-Clovis peoples then the question becomes "why did pre-Clovis people remain the dominant genetic group only in parts of South America?" How the Clovis people replaced pre-Clovis peoples is obviously very difficult to disentangle but they definitely had superior technology, including a really distinctive spearhead that's a pain in the rear end to make but works much better. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clovis_culture#Alternatives_to_Clovis_First has a list of sites believed to be pre-Clovis.
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Aug 21, 2019 23:07
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It says nothing of the sort. It implies a shared ancestral population in mainland SE Asia that split both north and south and arrived in Beringia or east Siberia at a time frame consistent with current models of human movement into East Beringia around 40 KYA. This group then moves south, probably raft hopping down the coast (contrary to what popular media says the Ice Free Corridor has fallen out of favor with archaeologists). Later groups do the same. This is a period from 40-16 KYA, ample time for such movements of small groups within the model as it stands, no genocide needed. The archaeological evidence is early sites of at least 30 KYA in west Alaska and earlier still in east Siberia. There are also likely sites beneath the ocean. The occurrence of early coastal sites (16 KYA, all the good ones, Cactus Hill and Meadowcroft still have dating issues) matches a movement by raft down the Pacific Coast from Beringia, not across the open Pacific. The Lapita Culture is the earliest we know of to attempt and succeed at that no earlier than 1600 BCE. You don't need genocides to explain it, just genetic drift and more isolated populations or, also likely given the small database for Indigenous North American DNA, a lack of needed genetic data to identify the population.
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Aug 21, 2019 23:08
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Soviet Space Dog posted:thor heyerdahl was a racist hack, kon-tiki was an attempt to show that white people colonized the pacific from the east by floating, can you explain this further? What white people? From where? In what era? He believed in a bunch of pre-columbian trans-oceanic contact nonsense regarding the global spread of pyramids, and I wouldn't be surprised if he was motivated by stupid ideas, but his actual experiments provided a lot of information which is useful for arguing other ideas
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Aug 21, 2019 23:08
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KiteAuraan posted:It says nothing of the sort. It implies a shared ancestral population in mainland SE Asia that split both north and south and arrived in Beringia or east Siberia at a time frame consistent with current models of human movement into East Beringia around 40 KYA. This group then moves south, probably raft hopping down the coast (contrary to what popular media says the Ice Free Corridor has fallen out of favor with archaeologists). Later groups do the same. This is a period from 40-16 KYA, ample time for such movements of small groups within the model as it stands, no genocide needed. Ok, well that all makes sense. You are a tremendous font of knowledge, thank you. Ice free corridor always struck me as a really dumb idea, I'm glad to hear this. cheetah7071 posted:then the question becomes "why did pre-Clovis people remain the dominant genetic group only in parts of South America?"  The hypothesized comet strike on North America 13,000 years ago which kick-started the Younger Dryas is really underrated IMO twoday has issued a correction as of 23:18 on Aug 21, 2019 |
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Aug 21, 2019 23:13
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twoday posted:can you explain this further? What white people? From where? In what era? his entire theory was that white people from the middle east brought culture to the americas. then left to float amongst the pacific. see "Heyerdahl’s Kon Tiki Theory and the Denial of the Indigenous Past" and https://www.reddit.com/r/badhistory/comments/2a1g3e/thor_heyerdahl_is_terrible_and_you_are_terrible/ hell you can even just quote from his Kon-Tiki book: quote:Now it happened that, when the Europeans came to the Pacific islands, they were quite astonished to find that many of the natives had almost white skins and were bearded. On many of the islands there were whole families conspicuous for their remarkably pale skins, hair varying from reddish to blonde, blue-gray eyes, and almost Semitic, hook-nosed faces. In contrast to these the genuine Polynesians had golden-brown skins, raven hair, and rather flat, pulpy noses. quote:I was no longer in doubt that the white chief-god Sun-Tiki, whom the Incas declared that their forefathers had driven out of Peru on to the Pacific, was identical with the white chief-god Tiki, son of the sun, whom the inhabitants of all the eastern Pacific islands hailed as the original founder of their race. And the details of Sun-Tiki’s life in Peru, with the ancient names of places round Lake Titicaca, cropped up again in historic legends current among the natives of the Pacific islands.
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Aug 21, 2019 23:17
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Soviet Space Dog posted:his entire theory was that white people from the middle east brought culture to the americas. then left to float amongst the pacific. Yeah, this is not surprising. I visited the Pyramids of Güímar on Tenerife in the Canary Islands, which is a site which was purchased by Hyerdahl in 1990 and is now a tourist attraction. The entire thing is rather confusing, and the information in articles in journals about the history of Canarian monuments contradicts some of the findings mentioned in the wiki article above, which presents a very poor summary of the findings IMO and ignores a lot of research about the Guanches. Anyway, at this site there is a museum about Hyerdahl's research which presented his insane theories about the global dispersal of pyramids and trans-oceanic contact. The Ra II is there as well, which was pretty neat to see in person. What has always struck me as glaringly non-nonsensical was his decision to build his ships on the model of Egyptian ones, even though the Egyptians weren't a particularly remarkable seafaring civilization in their day. And though the museum and his ideas seemed rather incredible to me, the pyramid site itself was quite fascinating, and I hope to post more extensively about it in this thread one day, but it's a very long story. twoday has issued a correction as of 23:42 on Aug 21, 2019 |
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Aug 21, 2019 23:37
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Fly Molo posted:...until he got murdered in turn by Phillip the Arab at the ripe old age of 19. In summary, the 3rd century was a land of contrasts. Maybe got murdered. He could just as easily have died from one of a dozen or so camp diseases during the advance through Syria and everyone just decided it would be easier to blame Philip for it later on after Decius's ascension.
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Aug 21, 2019 23:48
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Regardless of his insane beliefs, Hyerdahl's experiments attempting to recreate ancient seafaring, however misguided, ended up inspiring some other similar experiments which have given us insight into the ancient world. For example. the Borobudur Ship:  quote:Based on archeological and other evidence, scholars have learned that the bas reliefs of Borobudur depict the everyday life of 8th-century ancient Java, from courtly palace life to that of commoners in the village. An array of temple, marketplace, architecture, flora and fauna, dress, jewelry and fashion are portrayed, as well as modes of transportation including palanquins, horse carriages and ships.  And this sort of research helps to counteract whatever dumb theories Hyerdahl may have had, but it also wouldn't have occurred without him.
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Aug 21, 2019 23:49
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Soviet Space Dog posted:thor heyerdahl was a racist hack, kon-tiki was an attempt to show that white people colonized the pacific from the east by floating, before another group of brown people from asia floated up around the fringe of the pacific (siberia/alaska/west coast of americas) and followed them and destroyed their civilisation. this is the reason why polynesian is an austronesian language. though the polynesian chiefs have a higher proportion of white people blood I've read a lot of idiotic posts but this one takes the cake. His idea was that polynesian islands were settled from East to West alright. Starting from South America. He went against the orthodoxy that Polynesians were settled from the West. You clearly didn't understand where white people fits in the theory. Blood samples from native polynesians who had no european ancestry (Ie not contaminated by the dirty dirty white man) which concluded the evidence did support some of his hypothesis. That's when people started claiming that those polynesians may have had their dna "contaminated" by south americans after european contact. IE: blaming white man for making both cultures meet, which is complete bullshit and was contradicted after Heyerdahl's death. I hate to quote wikipedia but "Anthropologists continue to believe that Polynesia was settled from west to east, based on linguistic, physical, and genetic evidence, migration having begun from the Asian mainland. There are controversial indications, though, of some sort of South American/Polynesian contact, most notably in the fact that the South American sweet potato is served as a dietary staple throughout much of Polynesia. Blood samples taken in 1971 and 2008 from Easter Islanders without any European or other external descent were analysed in a 2011 study, which concluded that the evidence supported some aspects of Heyerdahl's hypothesis.[17][18][19] This result has been questioned because of the possibility of contamination by South Americans after European contact with the islands.[20] However, more recent DNA work (after Heyerdahl's death) contradicts the post-European-contact contamination hypothesis, finding the South American DNA sequences to be far older than that.[21] Heyerdahl had attempted to counter the linguistic argument with the analogy that he would prefer to believe that African-Americans came from Africa, judging from their skin colour, and not from England, judging from their speech." What you are describing is an idiotic attempt to smear him based on the fact that he thought a certain group of "white-skinned" people (which were described by early explorers) were descendants of people mentioned in an Inca legend. The funny part of your stupid smear is there seems to be more and more evidence that what he said might just be what happened. quote:A 2009 study by Norwegian researcher Erik Thorsby[28] suggested that there was some merit to Heyerdahl's ideas and that, while Polynesia was colonized from Asia, some contact with South America also existed.[29][30] Some critics suggest, however, that Thorsby's research is inconclusive because his data may have been influenced by recent population contact.[31] However, more recent work[when?] indicates that the South American component of Easter Island people's genomes predates European contact: a team including Anna-Sapfo Malaspinas (from the Natural History Museum of Denmark) analysed the genomes of 27 native Rapanui people and found that their DNA was on average 76 per cent Polynesian, 8 per cent Native American and 16 per cent European. Analysis showed that: "although the European lineage could be explained by contact with white Europeans after the island was "discovered" in 1722 by Dutch sailors, the South American component was much older, dating to between about 1280 and 1495, soon after the island was first colonised by Polynesians in around 1200." Together with ancient skulls found in Brazil – with solely Polynesian DNA – this does suggest some pre-European-contact travel to and from South America from Polynesia. Again, the ONLY reason "white people" have anything to do with the story, is because others claimed that South Americans and Polynesians may have had contacts after Europeans showed up, hence "contaminating" the dns evidence. Something which, according to the statement linked above, is wrong.
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Aug 21, 2019 23:59
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The idea that Polynesians managed to find just about every single Pacific Island but never stumbled on the Americas sounds unlikely bordering on absurd to me. The contact being prolonged enough to leave evidence of trade (in the form of American crops being grown) and intermarriage (in the form of genetics) is completely reasonable to me. I wouldn't be surprised if we eventually find some evidence of trade/marriage in the other direction, with Polynesian stuff showing up in South America.
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Aug 22, 2019 00:08
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twoday posted:Ok, well that all makes sense. You are a tremendous font of knowledge, thank you. This is changing and fast. You're probably aware but at the end of 2018 it was announced that a 19 mile wide crater was found in greenland and it appears that this crater was created around 11 500 years ago. I'm no expert on anything, but my understanding is that the Ice caps were still all over North America and part of Europe at that time. That ice must have been miles deep. Imagine the consequences of as asteroid or comet impact that can create that kind of crater under miles of ice. For comparison, the famous arizona crater is 0.73 miles wide. Humans were alive at that time... Wtf did they survive? Countless tons of ice would be immediately vaporized (later raining back on earth for weeks or months, probably as acid/ashe rain?) Another countless tons of ice would melt immediately, probably raising ocean's level in a matter of days (maybe even hours) leaving no chances for anyone living on the coast. Earthquakes all over the world most likely, fires everywhere.... I can't even begin to imagine what they must have felt.
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Aug 22, 2019 00:12
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no wonder so many cultures have ancient flood stories 
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Aug 22, 2019 00:29
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holy poo poo stonehenge stuff! the main problem with the building theory is that the y and z post holes postdate the large sarsen stones by nearly a millenia, which stretches the idea beyond credulity that they were intended for structural supports. as to whether or not wooden structures existed at stone henge, definitely yes at least for certain periods. whether an enormous wooden structure existed in the late stages I don't know. my guess is probably not, but I'm not at all up to date on the latest stuff.
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Aug 22, 2019 00:31
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got any sevens posted:no wonder so many cultures have ancient flood stories there are oral traditions of the coast line moving miles in a single lifetime. pretty wild.
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Aug 22, 2019 00:32
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cheetah7071 posted:The idea that Polynesians managed to find just about every single Pacific Island but never stumbled on the Americas sounds unlikely bordering on absurd to me. The contact being prolonged enough to leave evidence of trade (in the form of American crops being grown) and intermarriage (in the form of genetics) is completely reasonable to me. I wouldn't be surprised if we eventually find some evidence of trade/marriage in the other direction, with Polynesian stuff showing up in South America. Why do you feel its so absurd? The closest settled place was Easter Island and that was settled at the earliest around 300 AD. After that there is nothing for ~2.5k miles before you hit South America. And at that point it pretty much has to be people that leave from Easter Island, since otherwise you are mounting expeditions from even further away since super tiny islands like Pitcairn Island would not be supporting a population large enough to just have 20 guys go off on boats and likely never return unless it was a straight up abandonment of the island. Adding all of the challenges up means its exceeding unlikely, though not impossible, that there was significant contact. A couple sea canoes making it there and back is possible, though it would then beg the question of why no major settlement ever happened when news came back of a huge sprawling landmass.
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Aug 22, 2019 00:33
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Gareth Gobulcoque posted:holy poo poo stonehenge stuff! maybe the original posts were smaller and rotted away over a thousand years, and they decided to replace them with larger ones, which required them to dig wider holes in the same spot, and thereby also eliminate all evidence of the original post holes? I don't know, just theorizing
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Aug 22, 2019 00:41
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crossposting because someone in the Epstein thread asked for book and documentary recommendations about the Phoenicians and that belongs here:Bulgakov posted:yes As for books, there is only really one you need, which is called "The Phoenicians" and is almost 700 pages long, and very large, printed in full color with tons of illustrations and photographs of artifacts. It was compiled by all of the leading experts in the field, and even if you just skim through it or read the introduction you will already know a lot. It's kind of like an encyclopedia containing just about everything that is known about them, and written in a way that is pretty easy to understand even if you know little about ancient history. It's a really cool book, pro-read: https://www.amazon.com/Phoenicians-Sabatino-Moscati/dp/0847821943 ~~~ As for documentaries, there aren't many but I've seen them all Here's a good one that is a bit old but gives you a general summary of their civilization in under an hour: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zeUnMjjehV4&t=1095s Here is one that deals with the Roman/Carthaginian wars and Hannibal and such (in two parts), but it's a bit dry and slow: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E6kI9sCEDvY Here is a little 3D model of Carthage which is pretty cool too: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EdYhshaAZDY ~~~ But here is also a very cool story, and you can also skip that stuff above and just watch this if you want. This regards the story about the Phoenicians circumnavigating Africa around 500 BC, a feat which was recorded by Herodotus but that would not be replicated until the Portuguese did it 2000 years later. A retired British submarine captain of Lebanese ancestry (Phoenician ancestry) decided to build a replica of an ancient Phoenician ship and try to replicate this feat.  They sailed around Africa from east to west, almost being attacked by Somali pirates along the way, and encountering various other problems.  Here is a very easy read about the voyage from some journalist who was aboard. As far as I know they didn't make a documentary about this. Here are two brief clips about it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0tyUMssb60A https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dh1cVyqlF3c The best summary of the whole voyage though, is this video of a powerpoint presentation made by the skipper of the ship. It is quite bad in terms of video and audio quality, like a lo-fi TED talk, but I find the story he tells about his voyage around Africa in an ancient vessel to be pretty loving enthralling: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hapSImEzg2c ~~~ And as for podcasts, here are two. The first is about the destruction of Carthage and the voyage of Hanno the Navigator, and this is insanely good and the thing I would recommend on this list above all others (besides the book): https://historyofexploration.net/2016/03/30/episode-2-the-voyage-of-hanno-the-navigator/ The other is about the circumnavigation of Africa and is still interesting but slightly less enthralling: https://historyofexploration.net/2016/03/15/episode-1-necho-iis-expedition-and-the-early-mediterranean-explorers/ twoday has issued a correction as of 01:14 on Aug 22, 2019 |
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Aug 22, 2019 00:48
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twoday posted:crossposting because someone in the Epstein thread asked for book and documentary recommendations about the Phoenicians and that belongs here: quoting this so i don't lose it. thx
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Aug 22, 2019 00:59
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WoodrowSkillson posted:Why do you feel its so absurd? The closest settled place was Easter Island and that was settled at the earliest around 300 AD. After that there is nothing for ~2.5k miles before you hit South America. And at that point it pretty much has to be people that leave from Easter Island, since otherwise you are mounting expeditions from even further away since super tiny islands like Pitcairn Island would not be supporting a population large enough to just have 20 guys go off on boats and likely never return unless it was a straight up abandonment of the island. Adding all of the challenges up means its exceeding unlikely, though not impossible, that there was significant contact. A couple sea canoes making it there and back is possible, though it would then beg the question of why no major settlement ever happened when news came back of a huge sprawling landmass. To clarify, I meant that no contact was what I considered absurd. Prolonged trade/intermarriage is unsurprising to me, but the absence wouldn't have been absurd, given the difficulty of the journey. Here's my thought process, if I'm making any incorrect leaps of logic please let me know I'm just some idiot on the internet. The journey is definitely possible. That's been demonstrated plenty of times. And many of the Pacific Islands that did get colonized are far from the nearest other archipelago. From the perspective of explorers, the journey that found Hawaii and the hypothetical journey east to the Americas start the same: you sail in a direction and hope there's land at the other end. And the Polynesians seem to have been extremely culturally willing to make these kinds of exploratory journeys, given that they found drat near every inhabitable Pacific island. So the journey to the Americas was both possible and the kind of journey that the Polynesians embarked on many, many times. The idea that they never actually did seems absurd to me, given that. As for why they never settled south america if they found it: it was full. Basically every European account of the Americas before smallpox and other diseases pushed them into a post-apocalyptic state was that America was full to bursting with densely packed settlements.
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Aug 22, 2019 00:59
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cheetah7071 posted:As for why they never settled south america if they found it Tired after weeks at sea, they saw the Andes mountains from afar, told themselves in their own languages, "gently caress this, I'm not climbing that." and turned around.
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Aug 22, 2019 01:08
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Dalael posted:Tired after weeks at sea, they saw the Andes mountains from afar, told themselves in their own languages, "gently caress this, I'm not climbing that." and turned around. this is supported by the presence of chickens on the western coast of South America, thought to have been brought there by the Polynesians, likely via Easter Island: https://www.forbes.com/sites/kristinakillgrove/2017/11/23/ancient-dna-explains-how-chickens-got-to-the-americas/#5c8e190d56db Recent genetic studies suggest that modern south american chickens seem to be unrelated, so it seems that the were brought over from polynesia and existed for a limited time in a limited area on the coast of Chile and then were later replaced with European chickens there are further arguments which support this theory of contact twoday has issued a correction as of 01:26 on Aug 22, 2019 |
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Aug 22, 2019 01:18
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Dalael posted:I've read a lot of idiotic posts but this one takes the cake. holy poo poo. theres actually thor heyedal apologists that exist. now tell us about how arab built the greater zimbabwe complex
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Aug 22, 2019 01:18
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What are some good books on ancient international relations? I'd especially love anything with first hand accounts of people experiencing a culture for the first time (Like Chinese dignitaries/merchants visiting the Africa or Greece and vice versa)
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Aug 22, 2019 01:26
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MizPiz posted:What are some good books on ancient international relations? I'd especially love anything with first hand accounts of people experiencing a culture for the first time (Like Chinese dignitaries/merchants visiting the Africa or Greece and vice versa) Any translation of the works of Ibn Battuta, a Moor who traveled across the entirety of the Islamic world, as well as to Beijing and up into then Islamic but distinct Iberia and the Balkans. In particular he traveled extensively in Sahel West Africa and down the east coast of Africa starting in Mogadishu and going as far as Zanzibar.
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Aug 22, 2019 01:39
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