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PawParole posted:Mao didn't found the CCP The overall point isn't wrong, though. China's nationalism can't be the only cause for popular opinion being way behind historiography in Europe or the USA (with the way "5000 years of history" keeps getting mocked?). It's not even the only region for which that's true.
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Dec 14, 2020 02:51
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I figured it had to be something like that. Unfortunate since the other way around works so much better.
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Dec 14, 2020 03:10
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My favorite thing is when op-ed writers write a big piece trying to explain Chinese politics/society/foreign policy with like, Confucius or the construction of the Great Wall. Just imagining these people writing about how Italian sentiments towards the European Union really stem from the writings of Machiavelli
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Dec 14, 2020 04:17
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Kevin DuBrow posted:My favorite thing is when op-ed writers write a big piece trying to explain Chinese politics/society/foreign policy with like, Confucius or the construction of the Great Wall. Just imagining these people writing about how Italian sentiments towards the European Union really stem from the writings of Machiavelli a more apt comparison would be Plato, in terms of age
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Dec 14, 2020 04:35
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Kevin DuBrow posted:My favorite thing is when op-ed writers write a big piece trying to explain Chinese politics/society/foreign policy with like, Confucius or the construction of the Great Wall. Just imagining these people writing about how Italian sentiments towards the European Union really stem from the writings of Machiavelli And yet I see explanations about how Christianity or the “Protestant work ethic” explain US decisions on the regular.
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Dec 14, 2020 04:38
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ulmont posted:And yet I see explanations about how Christianity or the “Protestant work ethic” explain US decisions on the regular. yeah those are actually relevant tho. christianity as it exists in the US drives a lot of batshit decisions and the "protestant work ethic" is, in practice, in the US, simply the conviction that those who do not work should die, which is in general essential to understanding the worst structural problems
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Dec 14, 2020 04:41
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PeterCat posted:Do we know how the pyramids were made? We may not know exactly how it's done, but the way people say it, they mean its a complete mystery.
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Dec 14, 2020 05:02
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FreudianSlippers posted:The original word seems to have been ,,mýri" so swamp/marsh/bog. For gently caress's sake. If the translators wanted it to sound archaic, the could have just used "mire" instead of "mead" and it would've been more accurate, being as it's actually the same word.
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Dec 14, 2020 05:37
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Jazerus posted:yeah those are actually relevant tho. christianity as it exists in the US drives a lot of batshit decisions and the "protestant work ethic" is, in practice, in the US, simply the conviction that those who do not work should die, which is in general essential to understanding the worst structural problems Ah, but you see when I broadly generalize an entire culture and ascribe their behavior to some centuries-old stereotype, then it's good and accurate and necessary. Of course, half the reason I hate things like that is because it hits right into my general lack of social awareness so I don't understand any of it. It falls right out of my head, so I don't have any other counterexamples to cleverly compare it with.
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Dec 14, 2020 06:19
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Dalael posted:We may not know exactly how it's done, but the way people say it, they mean its a complete mystery. In some places there are still remnants of the ramps they built against the sides of buildings to haul the blocks to the top. Egypt had lots of sand and they used it for all sorts of construction assistance. The Great Hypostyle Hall at Karnak was built with layers of sand. They built three of the walls first, then they'd roll in sections of columns. Once they were all properly placed, they'd fill the room to the top of the column sections with sand and roll in the next batch. The ramp to the side of the building just got bigger and bigger the higher they went. Once they were to the top, they started carving and painting the walls and columns, pulling the sand out as they went to lower themselves back down. They did this sort of thing when building everything. If they needed elevation, they built a ramp of sand and dragged their materials on sledges to where they were needed. They did the same thing with the pyramids, the Sphinx, and everything else. Sand was their scaffolding. There are certainly cases where we don't know exactly how they built stuff, but we can make some pretty good guesses given what we do know about how they operated. Lots of sand and lots of manual labor and lots of time to do it.
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Dec 14, 2020 06:48
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Kylaer posted:Is this meant to be something else, or is it saying that he got plastered in between sabotaging his own spear and going out to fight? There's at least one viking who fell into a vat of mead and drowned.
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Dec 14, 2020 08:07
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Kylaer posted:Is this meant to be something else, or is it saying that he got plastered in between sabotaging his own spear and going out to fight? Some of the spears and javelins had an easily detachable rivet attaching the spearhead to the shaft. It could be removed before throwing, so that the enemy couldn't throw the weapon back at you as easily. His spearhead was just too loose.
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Dec 14, 2020 08:40
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Jazerus posted:yeah those are actually relevant tho. christianity as it exists in the US drives a lot of batshit decisions and the "protestant work ethic" is, in practice, in the US, simply the conviction that those who do not work should die, which is in general essential to understanding the worst structural problems How about you take your hot takes about American politics somewhere else.
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Dec 14, 2020 08:41
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cheetah7071 posted:a more apt comparison would be Plato, in terms of age I want to read a satirical article calling the West a Platonician civilization.
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Dec 14, 2020 08:50
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ChubbyChecker posted:How about you take your hot takes about American politics somewhere else. was this really necessary? i was not going to make any followup posts to that one. i will now, though, to clarify what i meant since it apparently wasn't clear that i wasn't just dropping a hot take on modern politics. the myths used to "explain" the decisions of the US, and the west in general, are much morre relevant than those used to explain China's decisions in the west, even if they are also somewhat outdated. this is part of how china's history and culture are treated as mystically different, ancient, inscrutable, etc. etc. which is the annoying historical misconception we were discussing
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Dec 14, 2020 15:18
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Dec 14, 2020 15:33
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no. there is a difference between bringing politics into the discussion and talking about how colonial attitudes toward china lead to lovely "historical" explanations predicated on ancient history, while western nations are ascribed explanations for their behavior and characteristics that are from the modern or at least early modern. i genuinely am not understanding the pushback here since this sort of historiographical discussion is well within the scope of the thread
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Dec 14, 2020 15:54
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Of course Britain wants out of the EU, it makes perfect sense given their druidic heritage.
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Dec 14, 2020 16:24
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sebzilla posted:Of course Britain wants out of the EU, it makes perfect sense given their druidic heritage. This being the ancient history thread, let's note that Brittany in France had druids too and is called what its called for a reason...
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Dec 14, 2020 18:41
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feedmegin posted:This being the ancient history thread, let's note that Brittany in France had druids too and is called what its called for a reason... Didn’t the bretons move there from England during the saxon migrations?
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Dec 14, 2020 18:49
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feedmegin posted:This being the ancient history thread, let's note that Brittany in France had druids too and is called what its called for a reason... Understand this and you will understand the history of Armorica. The region's history is defined above all by a single ethnic struggle: between indigenous Armoricans and the "Breton" colonists who expropriated their lands, suppressed their identity, and and imposed an alien language.
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Dec 14, 2020 18:51
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FreudianSlippers posted:The original word seems to have been ,,mýri" so swamp/marsh/bog. so a Mire? Kassad posted:The overall point isn't wrong, though. China's nationalism can't be the only cause for popular opinion being way behind historiography in Europe or the USA (with the way "5000 years of history" keeps getting mocked?). It's not even the only region for which that's true. who mocks it outside of posters on this thread? The average person absolutely believes in the stereotype of the ancient and unchanging “East”. It suits the human mindset to have a place that’s far away have access to ancient wisdom, just like there’s always a far away country where the streets are paved with gold. Delthalaz posted:Understand this and you will understand the history of Armorica. The region's history is defined above all by a single ethnic struggle: between indigenous Armoricans and the "Breton" colonists who expropriated their lands, suppressed their identity, and and imposed an alien language. Are you quoting someone.
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Dec 14, 2020 22:58
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PawParole posted:who mocks it outside of posters on this thread? The average person absolutely believes in the stereotype of the ancient and unchanging “East”. It suits the human mindset to have a place that’s far away have access to ancient wisdom, just like there’s always a far away country where the streets are paved with gold. It just doesn't point to this resulting from China working hard to spread that narrative.
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Dec 14, 2020 23:14
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As much as I Have Thoughts about the PRC let's not have them here, please.
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Dec 15, 2020 01:13
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Cool conversation shifter: What crop was the most world-changing coming from the New World to the Old? I say tobacco, because eating is for suckers.
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Dec 15, 2020 01:47
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Poop.
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Dec 15, 2020 01:51
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Potatoes, I don't think there's a single culture in this planet that doesn't have potatoes as an ubiquitous part of it's cuisine. Tolkien had to put potatoes into lotr, even when it messed up his carefully crafter lore because it was too hard to imagine a quaint english village not eating them
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Dec 15, 2020 01:54
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Gaius Marius posted:Potatoes, I don't think there's a single culture in this planet that doesn't have potatoes as an ubiquitous part of it's cuisine. Tolkien had to put potatoes into lotr, even when it messed up his carefully crafter lore because it was too hard to imagine a quaint english village not eating them Are potatoes native to Middle-Earth proper, though? They could have been a Numenorean import like pipe-weed.
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Dec 15, 2020 02:00
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I believe he wrote in his papers that it was a similar foodstuff that later went extinct or somesuch thing
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Dec 15, 2020 02:03
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GoutPatrol posted:Cool conversation shifter: What crop was the most world-changing coming from the New World to the Old? Maize and potatoes are up there, chili peppers too. Peanuts are maybe in the top 10 along with cacao Telsa Cola fucked around with this message at 02:30 on Dec 15, 2020 |
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Dec 15, 2020 02:27
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It's maize. 19% of all calories eaten by people around the world come from corn, and it's a major livestock feed as well. Potatoes and other tubers make up 5%.
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Dec 15, 2020 02:42
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How much of that is just from the way industrial farming works today though? Has maize always been that much of a staple? Whereas conversely potatoes absolutely revolutionized agriculture in huge chunks of the world by opening hillside and mountain farming, leading to a big demographic boom.
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Dec 15, 2020 06:12
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Klyith posted:None of the above. It's a weapon that is very useful for roman heavy infantry organization & tactics, and not at all with post-roman military. Roman legionaries didn't actually do much protecting for their neighbouring legionaries. They were spaced around 3 - 6 feet apart, and their shields were too narrow to extend that far. The basic legionary tacticwas to use the big personal shield defensively, while making quick stabs when opportunity provided. They did throw javelins before contact though. There is no evidence that the Romans swapped individual soldiers in battle, as depicted in HBO's Rome. Rather we only have evidence that they rotated whole cohorts, which is still a mark of discipline and training. Javelins were very common in Iberia, well into the 1500s and past the Medieval period. They are recorded in various other places, and weren't abandoned for lack of professional armies. If anything, they were a hallmark weapon of unprofessional warfare, like the kind that rival villages and petty knights would get up to. They were commonplace weapons because of their simplicity and utility for hunting large game. Your image of medieval armies is all over the place. Men-at-arms is a late medieval thing in Western Europe, they were professional mounted soldiers who made up a big proportion of period armies. Their contemporary infantry was heavily armoured, professional, and frequently composed of mercenaries like Swiss Pikemen or Landsknechten. This was well past the age of peasant levies or bands of nobles and their cousins/nephews. Even in the early medieval period, peasant levies weren't untrained guys with pitchforks. The levies were village militias, coming out of a period where centralized authority was lacking and banditry/raiding was common. The armies of peasants are like the armies of Early Rome, they're decently wealthy farmers that own military equipment and go to fight every summer.
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Dec 15, 2020 06:44
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GoutPatrol posted:Cool conversation shifter: What crop was the most world-changing coming from the New World to the Old? Surely tomatoes have to be in the mix, as far as cuisine defining staples go.
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Dec 15, 2020 06:51
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Slim Jim Pickens posted:Roman legionaries didn't actually do much protecting for their neighbouring legionaries. They were spaced around 3 - 6 feet apart, and their shields were too narrow to extend that far. The basic legionary tacticwas to use the big personal shield defensively, while making quick stabs when opportunity provided. They did throw javelins before contact though. Is that only after they were reformed into maniples? I thought they started out as more typical phalanxes with shield walls. Slim Jim Pickens posted:There is no evidence that the Romans swapped individual soldiers in battle, as depicted in HBO's Rome. Rather we only have evidence that they rotated whole cohorts, which is still a mark of discipline and training. I was under the impression that was the show's attempt at depicting a whole cohort rotation, with all the soldiers slipping through the lines at once, and we don't particularly know how the actual rotation was done.
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Dec 15, 2020 07:05
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PawParole posted:Are you quoting someone. Just making a joke — guess it fell flat
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Dec 15, 2020 07:33
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SlothfulCobra posted:Is that only after they were reformed into maniples? I thought they started out as more typical phalanxes with shield walls. We don't know how they fought, there are no sources to support any particular read on how far apart legionaries were. Experimental archaeology suggests that around a three foot box is needed for someone equipped like a legionary to use their weapons and not interfere with their neighbors, but that's about as far as you can go. We can assume there was not a standard distance and formations were adapted to what they were facing, though, since that we do have some evidence for--the testudo shows they had different formations for different purposes. If you stand with your arms outstretched that's probably about as far apart as legionaries were in a standard formation, but the simple fact is nobody knows. There's not actually much evidence for Romans using phalanxes in the past either, it's long been assumed but again, lack of sources. Grand Fromage fucked around with this message at 07:59 on Dec 15, 2020 |
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Dec 15, 2020 07:57
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Delthalaz posted:Just making a joke — guess it fell flat Nah it was good just a testament to how hard you nailed the tone
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Dec 15, 2020 08:14
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Gaius Marius posted:Potatoes, I don't think there's a single culture in this planet that doesn't have potatoes as an ubiquitous part of it's cuisine. Tolkien had to put potatoes into lotr, even when it messed up his carefully crafter lore because it was too hard to imagine a quaint english village not eating them Most cultures don't have potato as an ubiquitous part of their cuisine.
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Dec 15, 2020 11:01
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Chamale posted:It's maize. 19% of all calories eaten by people around the world come from corn, and it's a major livestock feed as well. Potatoes and other tubers make up 5%. At least 15% of that is just Americans that way a lot and literally every single food product in America contains maize.
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Dec 15, 2020 12:01
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