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In North Ametica, there are no native earthworms north of like Pennsylvania. They all went extinct as a result of glaciation, and once it ended, southern species never spread north. So any worms you find there are European imports.
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Oct 12, 2019 12:30
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What were the names of those gay priests (?) buried together? the medieval ones. or early modern?
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Oct 13, 2019 06:41
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Nessus posted:Sounds like bullshit to me! Actually it was extremely successful and went off pretty much without a hitch.
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Oct 13, 2019 08:24
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Tree Bucket posted:I want Australia's giant Gippsland earthworm to go invasive. There was a scandal in France a couple years ago when Zoologists finally took notice that the country was slowly being invaded by new species of flatworms. The problem was that most biologists in Europe had specialized into hip new branches like biotech or biogenetics, and the actual "look at animal"-biologists had fallen out of favor to the point there weren't enough around to notice this. It also didn't help that by the time science took notice, approximately half the loving population had seen and reported the new worms. Scientists had just gone out of their way to ignore the growing number of reports.
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Oct 13, 2019 09:36
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Tree Bucket posted:I want Australia's giant Gippsland earthworm to go invasive. why did i google this my aunt lives in gippsland, i'm never visiting her again
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Oct 13, 2019 09:52
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Epicurius posted:In North Ametica, there are no native earthworms north of like Pennsylvania. They all went extinct as a result of glaciation, and once it ended, southern species never spread north. So any worms you find there are European imports. I'm taking classes on soil generation and exchange right now, and I got to ask: How the hell do you get fertile soil in areas with out the european worms? Is that achieved solely with synthetic fertilizers? 
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Oct 13, 2019 10:29
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Tias posted:I'm taking classes on soil generation and exchange right now, and I got to ask: How the hell do you get fertile soil in areas with out the european worms? Is that achieved solely with synthetic fertilizers? I'm pretty sure that the answer is that you still get fertile soil in areas without earthworms through simple decomposition of organic matter. Earthworms increase soil aeration and can mix organic matter throughout the soil, but they aren't the only way y ol u get soil fertility. There's actually a scientist, a Dr. Peter Groffman, who has looked at the introduction of invasive earthworms into forests in New York state and found they've reduced the fertility. Here is a transcript of a radio interview with him from 2007. https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=9105956
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Oct 13, 2019 12:55
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Epicurius posted:I'm pretty sure that the answer is that you still get fertile soil in areas without earthworms through simple decomposition of organic matter. Yeah, I'm pretty much ignorant on things like agriculture and even I know that that you get fertilizer by letting
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Oct 13, 2019 15:38
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Regarding dung beetles in Australia: the big issue that motivated dung beetle introduction was the massive numbers of Australian bush flies that dung pads produced as the flies breed in them.
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Oct 13, 2019 17:42
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Our compost pile has little critters in it that I think are called woodlice? They're apparently crusteceans instead of worms. I hope they're good for the stuff, because there's a lot of them writhing in the middle.
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Oct 13, 2019 19:29
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Epicurius posted:I'm pretty sure that the answer is that you still get fertile soil in areas without earthworms through simple decomposition of organic matter. Earthworms increase soil aeration and can mix organic matter throughout the soil, but they aren't the only way y ol u get soil fertility. Oh word, I'm still just learning about dirt but it's really interesting and complex I guess earthworms entering biomes where they usually don't hang can be a recipe for trouble - it just seems like they make everything better (for species needing nutrient-rich soil anyway) where they pop up here in northern Europe. Worms -> hummus = profit 
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Oct 13, 2019 20:46
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As I understand it, worms are full of microbes which are what is breaking down the organic matter. This process also happens without worms, presumably the worms speed this up.
Weka fucked around with this message at 21:28 on Oct 13, 2019 |
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Oct 13, 2019 21:21
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yeah so as Epicurius mentioned earthworms can aerate soil, however in places where they are not native they are such efficient decomposers that they will consume the entire surface layer of loose leaf litter and debris, leaving only a dense heavy layer of digested soil. This creates all kinds of problems. The worms out compete native fungi and invertebrate decomposers, ground nesting birds and salamanders that nest and shelter under litter are exposed, and some plants may struggle to put roots through the denser surface layer. Fortunately while earthworms are bad, there's a major limit in regards to the threat that they pose: Earthworms are really slow. If people don't move them intentionally it takes ages for them to spread so if they are absent from a location as long as people don't bring them in it will remain safe for the foreseeable future. also I don't think anyone has ever had a problem with woodlice. Adorable little guys :3 Apparently the common earwigs aren't native to North America though? and used to be invasive, but I think they're essentially naturalized now.
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Oct 14, 2019 00:52
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professor metis posted:why did i google this The line about the sound that they make tipped me over from "hmm, fascinating" to "nnnNNNOOO" Libluini posted:There was a scandal in France a couple years ago when Zoologists finally took notice that the country was slowly being invaded by new species of flatworms. Out of curiosity, do we know where the invasive flatworms came from? I want a New Zealand species to be the invasive menace, for once
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Oct 14, 2019 03:33
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sullat posted:Our compost pile has little critters in it that I think are called woodlice? They're apparently crusteceans instead of worms. I hope they're good for the stuff, because there's a lot of them writhing in the middle. I think you will find that they are actually miniature Doritos chips.
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Oct 14, 2019 05:27
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Tias posted:Worms -> hummus = profit I'm pretty sure you're supposed to use chickpeas.
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Oct 14, 2019 09:22
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Tree Bucket posted:The line about the sound that they make tipped me over from "hmm, fascinating" to "nnnNNNOOO" I've looked the article in question up again and it seems the hammerhead flatworms (five species, two of which were unknown) originally came from tropical and subtropical regions in South-East Asia. The specimens found in France can be up to a feet in length, they have those cute brown stripes on them and oh yeah, they're toxin-secreting predators eating our earthworms and insect larvae. Interestingly, they seem to have invaded France by traveling on-board the soil of potted plants shipped between countries. The article also mentions how some of the invaders have done the same thing to subtropical regions in the US, but biologists in France decided to ignore Worm War I for decades. That's even stupider then I remembered!
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Oct 14, 2019 10:37
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Libluini posted:Interestingly, they seem to have invaded France by traveling on-board the soil of potted plants shipped between countries. International plant trade is hilariously destructive
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Oct 14, 2019 10:42
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Ras Het posted:International plant trade is hilariously destructive
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Oct 14, 2019 13:23
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some guy at least 2200 years ago posted:Long ago, in the time of Yung Ch'eng, Ta T'ing, Po Huang, Chung Yang, Li Lu, Li Hsu, Hsien Yuan, Ho Hsu, Tsun Lu, Chu Jung, Fu Hsi, and Shen Nung, the people knotted cords and used them. They relished their food, admired their clothing, enjoyed their customs, and were content with their houses. Though neighboring states were within sight of each other, and could hear the cries of each other's dogs and chickens, the people grew old and died without ever traveling beyond their own borders. At a time such as this, there was nothing but the most perfect order.
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Oct 14, 2019 13:28
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Guildencrantz posted:I'm pretty sure you're supposed to use chickpeas. Fun fact about my education: my teacher makes us eat dirt, particularly hummus, whenever she can. (She has a phd in earth)
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Oct 14, 2019 15:05
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Ras Het posted:International plant trade is hilariously destructive Wal-Mart managed to spread a lot of really loud tree frogs from Puerto Rico to Hawaii that way.
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Oct 14, 2019 21:43
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KiteAuraan posted:Wal-Mart managed to spread a lot of really loud tree frogs from Puerto Rico to Hawaii that way. They are named ‘Coqui’ and are our national symbol and we are proud to export them 
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Oct 15, 2019 02:46
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Tias posted:dirt, particularly hummus, This is offensive to chickpeas.
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Oct 15, 2019 04:18
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I'm reading The Medieval Machine: The Industrial Revolution of the Middle Ages by Jean Gimpel, which has as its thesis the claim that Europe in the 9th through 12th centuries had an industrial revolution at least as major as the later one we're more familiar with. It was first published in 1975 which would usually make me leery but this copy is a reprinting from 2003, which means somebody at least thought the scholarship still held up. I almost feel like I'm learning more about the 1970s than the middle ages though. From the foreword: quote:The creative span of these great technological eras lasted for some two and a half centuries before symptoms of decline became apparent. Our own last two decades demonstrate that today Western technological society is revealing much the same pattern of history as its medieval predecessor. This was written right on the cusp of computers entering every aspect of our lives Another choice quote that I feel says more about the author than about history (in the context of a type of gear mechanism having been invented in china 800 years earlier but not seeing widespread use anywhere until medieval europe): quote:In fact, it is a feature of Chinese technology that its great inventions--printing, gunpowder, the compass--never played a major evolutionary role in Chinese history. There's some real cool stuff in this book besides the weird asides like this though. Like apparently the Romans had watermills nearly as sophisticated as the ubiquitous mills from a thousand years later, but they were limited in scope by two things--one, outside of major rivers, the Mediterranean doesn't have many streams that don't dry up in the summer (so Rome could have mills powered by the Tiber but much of Italy was too far from a plausible river/stream), and second, a watermill had the flour output of roughly 40 people grinding with hand mills, but for much of Roman history it was cheaper to just buy 40 slaves than to build a watermill. cheetah7071 fucked around with this message at 20:24 on Oct 16, 2019 |
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Oct 16, 2019 20:22
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cheetah7071 posted:I'm reading The Medieval Machine: The Industrial Revolution of the Middle Ages by Jean Gimpel, which has as its thesis the claim that Europe in the 9th through 12th centuries had an industrial revolution at least as major as the later one we're more familiar with. It was first published in 1975 which would usually make me leery but this copy is a reprinting from 2003, which means somebody at least thought the scholarship still held up. Have you ever heard of Lewis Mumford? He's sort of forgotten today but he was a pretty important American intellectual in the 20th Century. I just discovered him earlier this month. He delves into much the same topic, analyzing technology and "the machine." It's as much philosophy and criticism as it is history and I like it that way. You can get pretty much every one of his books off archive.org.
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Oct 16, 2019 21:11
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cheetah7071 posted:This was written right on the cusp of computers entering every aspect of our lives edit: a whole lot of very good 30yw stuff was published in the 60s as special editions of this one German economics magazine, not as books. it makes it loving impossible to find them outside of university libraries these days. If i become super wealthy I'd like to buy the copyright to those "books" and reprint them as real books this time, to make them available for people who might not have the opportunity to visit an academic library HEY GUNS fucked around with this message at 21:35 on Oct 16, 2019 |
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Oct 16, 2019 21:30
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Gimpel was a weirdo crank but Medieval Machine is still a good read.
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Oct 16, 2019 21:33
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cheetah7071 posted:I'm reading The Medieval Machine: The Industrial Revolution of the Middle Ages by Jean Gimpel, which has as its thesis the claim that Europe in the 9th through 12th centuries had an industrial revolution at least as major as the later one we're more familiar with. It was first published in 1975 which would usually make me leery but this copy is a reprinting from 2003, which means somebody at least thought the scholarship still held up. I should probably pick up that book since I was reading a bit about this subject on my own. Inspired by the time traveling discussion in this thread and that old recurring question of just how dark the dark ages really were, I went around looking up when and where big tech advances happened. I noticed a lot of important changes happened in that 9th-12th century period, but they're often things nobody usually thinks about. For example that was when the first spinning wheel was developed and spread around the world. It's one of the first steps towards automating textile production, before the 10th century all thread was made by hand with a hanging spindle. It doesn't seem like much, but spinning wheels and other related developments must have dramatically increased productivity and the amount of manufactured goods available. Apparently the Domesday book recorded over 5,000 watermills in England, and it was almost certainly under counting. That's a tremendous amount of mechanical power. Power that I don't think would have been available to the average Roman Briton in the second century, and was only gradually built up over many generations following the Roman conquest. Still the Roman mill complexes we have found were pretty impressive.  here's a model of one mill site archeologists have found powered by an aqueduct in southern France. It's estimated to have had something silly like 16 wheels.
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Oct 17, 2019 00:30
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I remember a thesis in my high school history text book was that the large number of year-round, navigable rivers was one of the key reasons North America was so prosperous for the Europeans. The earlier comment about seasonal Mediterranean rivers made me think of it again.
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Oct 17, 2019 01:52
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Another neat fact about ancient technology, I found out the first drilled wells were made in China sometime around 0 AD. These were deep shaft mines that could go hundreds of meters deep without needing someone to actually crawl to the bottom and hand dig down with a shovel. They were built primarily to extract salt brine, but by the Qing dynasty some of them were probably the first natural gas wells. And everything was made of bamboo Men use a percussive drill to dig a well. After 1000 AD flexible bamboo cable replaced solid tubes and allowed wells to be drilled as deep as 1000 meters. Sichuan was also apparently one of the primary centers for producing gunpowder, primarily because they could mine potassium nitrate there in quantity. Now everything I read describing this said they were primarily extracting it from limestone caves where it can naturally accumulate, but I wonder if they were also able to extract potassium or other minerals from the brine, besides table salt? Something interesting to think about.  Large bamboo derricks for extracting brine, early-mid 20th century https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oi8bp68C0HI video showing how brine was brought to the surface using bamboo tubes.
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Oct 17, 2019 03:47
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How did this whole, "Pyramids were built by slaves" idea came about? is it just what's been told for millenias or is there an actual start to this?
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Oct 17, 2019 17:33
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Dalael posted:How did this whole, "Pyramids were built by slaves" idea came about? is it just what's been told for millenias or is there an actual start to this? It's a commonplace misapprehension based on a cursory cultural knowledge of the Biblical Exodus narrative. Exodus presents Hebrews as slaves in Egypt, employed in part to build structures —> pyramids are famous Egyptian structures —> pyramids built by slaves. This sort of fake factoid completely glosses over the fact that the part of Exodus where the idea of Hebrews building structures comes from has them making clay bricks, and the pyramids are made from stone.
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Oct 17, 2019 17:45
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I would be surprised if pyramids were not partially built by slaves doing the worse most dangerous parts.
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Oct 17, 2019 17:49
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LingcodKilla posted:I would be surprised if pyramids were not partially built by slaves doing the worse most dangerous parts. Current academic thought is that the grunt work of pyramid building was done by Egyptian peasants as part of a corvee system post-harvest.
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Oct 17, 2019 17:53
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Epicurius posted:Current academic thought is that the grunt work of pyramid building was done by Egyptian peasants as part of a corvee system post-harvest. Did they have an option to stay home?
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Oct 17, 2019 17:55
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LingcodKilla posted:Did they have an option to stay home? where do you feel serfs land on the freedom/slavery continuum? that will tell you whether, in your opinion, the pyramid workers were slaves or not. in an ancient context, these people were definitively not slaves, though.
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Oct 17, 2019 17:57
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Jazerus posted:where do you feel serfs land on the freedom/slavery continuum? that will tell you whether, in your opinion, the pyramid workers were slaves or not. in an ancient context, these people were definitively not slaves, though. Serfs are just slaves you don’t have a responsibility to feed or cloth.
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Oct 17, 2019 17:59
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The workers were fed and housed, and participation was part of the Egyptian religion. Trying to understand it in terms of modern economic transactions doesn't make sense.
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Oct 17, 2019 18:03
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LingcodKilla posted:Did they have an option to stay home? No. It was a tax. But they weren't slaves. "Slave" was a specific social class in ancient Egypt, and the farmers who were conscripted into labor gangs (and paid, btw) weren't members of that class. It's the same way that we don't tend to call WWII draftees "slaves", even though they didn't have the option to stay home either.
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Oct 17, 2019 18:12
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