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I'm just gonna quote this post about the relative lack of contiguity of China over time and plop it on right here.Kangxi posted:There are several periods where different regions were ruled by different dynasties. The most famous of these is the Three Kingdoms period, where what we'd call China was split among three different dynasties which regarded themselves as legitimate successors to the defunct Han Dynasty. There is also the Sixteen Kingdoms period, the Northern and Southern Dynasties period, and the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms period (10th century). There are more. Which is a lot like most European or middle eastern societies that went through fractures and conquests and revolutions over time. JesustheDarkLord posted:How to Invent Everything: A Survival Guide for the Stranded Time Traveler https://www.amazon.com/dp/073522014X/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_Zn7GDb12K2V37 Whelp, that's going on the wishlist.
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Sep 19, 2019 21:56
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PittTheElder posted:That's a great way to wind up on the side of perhaps the two most morally repugnant polities in human history: For whatever reason people aren't taking my posts from this morning in the tongue-in-cheek spirit they were made, which was mainly to poke fun at the time traveller discussion. So public service announcement for the credulous: If you do actually have a time machine please don't try to alter history.
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Sep 19, 2019 21:58
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There's also just no such thing as a world power prior to the Spanish Empire. You can make an argument for the Mongols, but I wouldn't consider just Eurasia to be "world". In either case, the Mongols are as early as you could go. China, in whatever form, was often though not always the dominant regional power of East Asia, but has never been a major global influence until... well, now.
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Sep 19, 2019 21:59
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Grand Fromage posted:There's no evidence of drug prohibition. Wouldn’t this be a big anachronism anyway? Philosophical and religious sects had dietary restrictions, but Roman legal thought doesn’t seem to have respected them. Food could be sacred, like the viscera of a sacrifice or the spelt cake for super-formal marriage, but I don’t think it could be profane. I don’t think even Christian emperors legislated about that stuff really, except to prevent animal sacrifice. The idea that the emperor must enforce moral reform in all aspects of life strikes me as more a Carolingian or caliphal thing.
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Sep 19, 2019 22:02
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SlothfulCobra posted:I'm just gonna quote this post about the relative lack of contiguity of China over time and plop it on right here. This makes "China" sound like less of a nation and more like a region like "Europe".
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Sep 19, 2019 22:03
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punk rebel ecks posted:This makes "China" sound like less of a nation and more like a region like "Europe". This is a very common way of dealing with China in academia, yes. I think it gets taken too far sometimes but it has utility.
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Sep 19, 2019 22:04
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punk rebel ecks posted:This makes "China" sound like less of a nation and more like a region like "Europe". Ding ding ding e: fuckssakes, the national Chinese epic is set during a period of conflict and points out “the Empire united must divide; the Empire divided must unite”. Triskelli fucked around with this message at 22:09 on Sep 19, 2019 |
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Sep 19, 2019 22:06
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skasion posted:Wouldn’t this be a big anachronism anyway? Philosophical and religious sects had dietary restrictions, but Roman legal thought doesn’t seem to have respected them. Food could be sacred, like the viscera of a sacrifice or the spelt cake for super-formal marriage, but I don’t think it could be profane. I don’t think even Christian emperors legislated about that stuff really, except to prevent animal sacrifice. The idea that the emperor must enforce moral reform in all aspects of life strikes me as more a Carolingian or caliphal thing. The earliest sumptuary law I'm aware of is a Roman law from the 6th century BC forbidding extravagant funerals. I don't doubt that drugs were legal but I also don't doubt that if they were considered immoral governments might have tried to outlaw them. e: I might be off by a century but it's definitely from the archaic period and part of a document which is our earliest record of roman laws cheetah7071 fucked around with this message at 22:08 on Sep 19, 2019 |
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Sep 19, 2019 22:06
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skasion posted:Wouldn’t this be a big anachronism anyway? Philosophical and religious sects had dietary restrictions, but Roman legal thought doesn’t seem to have respected them. Food could be sacred, like the viscera of a sacrifice or the spelt cake for super-formal marriage, but I don’t think it could be profane. I don’t think even Christian emperors legislated about that stuff really, except to prevent animal sacrifice. The idea that the emperor must enforce moral reform in all aspects of life strikes me as more a Carolingian or caliphal thing. I don't think they would've had the concept of a drug as a special category to deal with really. You do get moral enforcement from emperors though, starting right off with Augustus. And one of the duties of the censor was public morals. But I know of no evidence that chompin' on some opium would've been considered a moral issue.
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Sep 19, 2019 22:07
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punk rebel ecks posted:This makes "China" sound like less of a nation and more like a region like "Europe". China is more like Rome, also not dissimilar to America or Russia or some other large geographic polity that absorbed different peoples and integrated them into a coherent political system. With China there is also a geographic narrative going on. It's relatively isolated from the rest of the world by mountains and steppe, so even when China splits up the little states gravitate towards reforming a China rather than trying to conquer the nomads or trek over the himalayas or jungle mountains in the south.
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Sep 19, 2019 22:16
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China presents itself as this unified ethnic state and that it has always been such. This is particularly strong nowadays to fit with CCP propaganda. It just has the problem of not being true. Various related ethnic/cultural groups have conquered and unified China repeatedly over the centuries and have attempted to stamp out regional identities. This has been successful to an extent--most Chinese today consider themselves to be the same Han ethnic group--but regional variation has never gone away, and the Chinese state has always been an imperial project holding together all these assorted groups into a political unit. It's basically a situation where China has tried to portray itself as something special for a long time, when in reality the various dynasties have been much like any other empires in history. China has never fragmented and remained fragmented like Europe did, but you can make an argument that Europe is actually the weird outlier and most other regions with big empires go in cycles the way China does. India and the Middle East have a unification-fragmentation-unification cycle that resembles China much more than it does Europe.
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Sep 19, 2019 22:27
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Yeah the different Chinese dynasties controlled varying amounts of land throughout their history. Thinking of it as a region like Europe can be a useful way to think about it. I mean, even the modern PRC controls less territory than the Qing did. Tibet is technically a part of the country but functionally autonomous, the status of Taiwan remains disputed, and Hong Kong and Macau also have a high degree of autonomy (although the Chinese army does garrison those areas). I think people also tend to forget that there are dozens and dozens of different ethnic minorities in China. Not that all of them each had their own kingdoms at one point necessarily, but it's not a monolith, and some of those different ethnic groups did control the empire at different points. The Yuan dynasty was Mongols, the Qing were Manchu, etc. Jamwad Hilder fucked around with this message at 22:31 on Sep 19, 2019 |
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Sep 19, 2019 22:29
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Molentik posted:Did the romans take magic mushrooms, or was that too barbarian for some reason? they had magic fish instead
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Sep 19, 2019 22:31
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I have no doubt that the successor states to the USA will try to evoke our imagery and claim more continuity than actually exists
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Sep 19, 2019 22:31
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Grand Fromage posted:India and the Middle East have a unification-fragmentation-unification cycle that resembles China much more than it does Europe. It's a shame that archaeology is so bad at detecting politics, I'd love to know if this was true in the Americas as well
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Sep 19, 2019 22:34
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cheetah7071 posted:I have no doubt that the successor states to the USA will try to evoke our imagery and claim more continuity than actually exists the cascadians call their country "washington" but historians agree that there is actually no connection to the old imperial capital
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Sep 19, 2019 22:39
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Jamwad Hilder posted:The Yuan dynasty was Mongols, the Qing were Manchu, etc. And to illustrate the way imperial propaganda works, the current line in China is Mongols and Manchu are Chinese and always were. I had students get very upset at "foreigners" claiming Genghis Khan was not Chinese. Tibet is also not in any way autonomous, despite what the government will claim. But I don't want to get into modern politics too much. China continues its long-standing policy of colonizing border regions to overwhelm the native population with loyal Han. It's been done throughout history and in the 20th/21st century, Tibet and Xinjiang are the areas being colonized.
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Sep 19, 2019 22:47
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CommonShore posted:Basic plant fiber paper would be game changing and it can be made from poo poo you have laying around the house.
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Sep 19, 2019 22:49
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cheetah7071 posted:I have no doubt that the successor states to the USA will try to evoke our imagery and claim more continuity than actually exists I realize that it is all but inevitable, but it's hard for me to imagine a fractured USA. Jeb Bush 2012 posted:the cascadians call their country "washington" but historians agree that there is actually no connection to the old imperial capital I'd be down to live in Cascadia over USA though.
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Sep 19, 2019 22:50
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Family Values posted:Why would you want to help the Romans?
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Sep 19, 2019 22:52
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punk rebel ecks posted:I realize that it is all but inevitable, but it's hard for me to imagine a fractured USA.
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Sep 19, 2019 22:53
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I guess you'd probably have: Nation of Cascadia California Republic Republic of Texas New England Federation Republic of Hawaii Florida Commonwealth The South would probably be a mix of two or four states. And...not sure how the Midwest, MST States, and Alaska would play out.
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Sep 19, 2019 22:58
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Honestly, it's pretty easy to imagine for me. State governments are already far more important to your daily life than the federal government, and it's not difficult to imagine a scenario where central control weakens and atrophies to the point where states are fully autonomous instead of partially autonomous. It'd be a reversal of the current trend of increasing federal power but nothing lasts forever. Once the state government stop pretending to care about the federal government, some of them might either form new federations with or conquer their neighbors.
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Sep 19, 2019 22:58
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First state to use the nuclear weapons they can get a hold of to nuke another makes the new US. It's that simple. It's like you all forgot those exist?
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Sep 19, 2019 23:03
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fishmech posted:First state to use the nuclear weapons they can get a hold of to nuke another makes the new US. It's that simple. it's an unstated assumption in any discussions of the far future that you pretend that the world isn't going to end
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Sep 19, 2019 23:05
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I'm imagining Trajan just trippin' balls on mushrooms during his conquests and when he got out to the Persian Gulf it was essentially an ancient history version of Dude: Where's my Car?HEY GUNS posted:you also don't need modern tech to do it. Same with the 18th century Agricultural Revolution The difference with paper is that it barely even needs specialized or technical knowledge to pull it off, to the extent that anyone who has seen it done once can work it out enough to get started on making some rough but workable sheets from a heap of rags, a bunch of cotton, some cattails, or whatever. The knowledge involved is more the difference between doing it and doing it well. And as a technology it would have far-ranging implications considering the shittiness of papyrus and the cost of parchment and vellum. One thing I don't know offhand is how early modern people made manuscript ink for writing on porous paper media. I know how they made press ink, but that's a whole different basket of eggs. Should probably read up on the ink making techniques just in case I ever get sucked back in time.
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Sep 19, 2019 23:05
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I wonder what it would be that breaks up the United States? I also can imagine the European Union becoming a United States of Europe if that makes sense.
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Sep 19, 2019 23:14
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I suspect the death of the US will be part of the death of nation-states generally, but I may just read too much cyberpunk.
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Sep 19, 2019 23:15
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Grand Fromage posted:I suspect the death of the US will be part of the death of nation-states generally, but I may just read too much cyberpunk. So essentially  .
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Sep 19, 2019 23:20
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CommonShore posted:One thing I don't know offhand is how early modern people made manuscript ink for writing on porous paper media. I know how they made press ink, but that's a whole different basket of eggs. Should probably read up on the ink making techniques just in case I ever get sucked back in time. The Romans had iron gall ink in the first century and that’s what everyone used till recently. Make some pounce to sprinkle on rough paper.
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Sep 19, 2019 23:20
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Good news! New Total War game is set in the Trojan War, so there's plenty for people here to pick apart and argue about https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OaSkIVpp_mI
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Sep 19, 2019 23:24
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My grandfather figured he knew enough that he could have given Napoleon primitive radios, which he estimated would probably have let him more effectively conquer Europe. That plus explaining history would, he thought, let Napoleon do better, including crushing the Tsar, whose government would later get his older brother killed in the 1905 war with Japan. It would have also improved the situation of the Jews throughout Europe and probably would have headed off the Holocaust even if he didn't expect it would cure anti-Semitism. I figure the greatest boon you could give your chosen historical culture is bringing your own little Columbian transference in the form of a sack of seed potatoes and perhaps also some maize/tomato/tobacco seeds.
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Sep 19, 2019 23:32
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cheetah7071 posted:it's an unstated assumption in any discussions of the far future that you pretend that the world isn't going to end Seems a bit weird to claim a nuclear war in one suddenly collapsed nuclear power will necessarily end the world? I mean sure, whatever's big enough to cause the US to legit fall apart could be something leading to the god-emperor of North Dakota having all the nukes outside Minot sent to blow up Moscow, Beijing, Paris and Nairobi and thus triggering an actual world ending nuclear exchange. But that's not guaranteed to happen. Nuclear weapons have been around for over 70 years, you can't just write about what happens if a major nuclear power collapses as if the nukes in play and their possible use is off the table! We were lucky enough that the collapse of the USSR maintained enough central control of the nuclear arsenal over there that you didn't have serious threats between the components over nuclear force - outside of Ukraine being bribed into handing over their independently controllable nuclear weapons to Russia. Of course the country that kept full access to the USSR's nuclear arsenal also still controls 76% of the USSR's landmass, retained 52% of the USSR's population at the time of collapse, a basically unknowable but huge chunk of the overall economic assets, and so on and so forth.
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Sep 19, 2019 23:36
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Grumio posted:Good news! New Total War game is set in the Trojan War, so there's plenty for people here to pick apart and argue about Hey, cool. I suppose if you wanted to travel back in time and give Laocoon some pepper spray or something so Troy doesn't get sacked, that'd be pretty cool.
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Sep 19, 2019 23:39
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fishmech posted:Ukraine being bribed into handing over their independently controllable nuclear weapons to Russia. That worked out so poorly for Ukraine that no one is ever going to hand over their nukes ever again. Great job ruining it for everyone, Putin. 
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Sep 19, 2019 23:41
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Platystemon posted:The Romans had iron gall ink in the first century and that’s what everyone used till recently. Yeah i had a couple guesses as to how to do it and when I glanced at wikipedia I found that I was more or less correct, namely to mix some kind of carbon/soot/char and/or some kind of oxide, likely iron or manganese, with something a bit sticky which will dry out, and there you go. I'm pretty sure that most of the MS stuff I've encountered from the EM period was written with the iron gall stuff as it fades to brown with time.
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Sep 19, 2019 23:41
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CommonShore posted:Yeah i had a couple guesses as to how to do it and when I glanced at wikipedia I found that I was more or less correct, namely to mix some kind of carbon/soot/char and/or some kind of oxide, likely iron or manganese, with something a bit sticky which will dry out, and there you go. As far as I know those are two different methods. You either make ink with gallnuts and iron, or you make it with soot. Edit: and I refuse to believe Hey Guns doesn't make his own ink.
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Sep 20, 2019 00:00
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Grand Fromage posted:And to illustrate the way imperial propaganda works, the current line in China is Mongols and Manchu are Chinese and always were. I had students get very upset at "foreigners" claiming Genghis Khan was not Chinese. Really? Like, they're claiming that Mongolians, the people who speak a completely different language and historicaly had a completely different lifestyle, are Han Chinese? Jamwad Hilder posted:Yeah the different Chinese dynasties controlled varying amounts of land throughout their history. Thinking of it as a region like Europe can be a useful way to think about it. I mean, even the modern PRC controls less territory than the Qing did. Tibet is technically a part of the country but functionally autonomous, the status of Taiwan remains disputed, and Hong Kong and Macau also have a high degree of autonomy (although the Chinese army does garrison those areas). "Han Chinese" is not really an ethnic group, it's more like "mainstream Chinese society". The shared script and semi-shared language is much different from polyglot Europe or Africa, but it's not like a unified identity. China is composed of a bunch of regions, which are recognizably different from each other despite the shared language. Think Californians vs Texans vs the Deep South vs New England etc. in America. Grumio posted:Good news! New Total War game is set in the Trojan War, so there's plenty for people here to pick apart and argue about Apollo would certainly NOT have lended any assistance to Polyatylene, because his great-grandfather Attalarxus famously defaced the statue of Apollo in Naxos while screwed his half-sister, the cloud nymph Dorothea. This is divine revisionism at its worst, and I will be calling upon Zeus himself to punish CA for this indiscretion.
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Sep 20, 2019 00:09
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Grumio posted:Good news! New Total War game is set in the Trojan War, so there's plenty for people here to pick apart and argue about Imagine working your whole life as an artist, and you get the chance to imagine the faces of Achilles and Hector and spend hundreds of hours bringing them to life, and that's how you depict them.
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Sep 20, 2019 00:14
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Slim Jim Pickens posted:Really? Like, they're claiming that Mongolians, the people who speak a completely different language and historicaly had a completely different lifestyle, are Han Chinese? Yep. I was curious how far it went and a student showed me in their Chinese history textbook where it was arguing Mongols had always been Chinese (mostly the "argument" was about the Mongol economic relationship with northern China) so the Yuan Dynasty was not a foreign conquest. Also fun how you'll simultaneously get an assertion the Mongol Empire was Chinese, but that China has never engaged in imperialism and only been a victim of it. Basically the claim is any people who were within the Qing borders are and always have been Chinese.
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Sep 20, 2019 00:23
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