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Colombus' pear-earth was based on his observation that the North Star wasn't fixed in the sky, and so he reasonably extrapolated that toward the North there is a physical extrusion of the Earth toward Heaven.
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Apr 29, 2021 01:07
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MonsieurChoc posted:And what is modern Capitalism but mass human sacrifice to the God called Economy? 
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Apr 29, 2021 01:08
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The celestial pole was legitimately four times farther from Polaris in Columbus’ day than it is in ours. He would have seen the distance between it and the horizon varying by up to seven degrees as the Earth rotated, but he was a dumbass for associating that with his own position and not with the rotation of everything else in the sky.
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Apr 29, 2021 01:19
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it's funny that he assumed a top-like shape but didn't conceive of precession
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Apr 29, 2021 01:33
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This series of comments on AskHistorians goes into why Columbus was so wrong about the westward distance to the Far East and what his contemporaries thought about it.
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Apr 29, 2021 02:34
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Platystemon posted:This series of comments on AskHistorians goes into why Columbus was so wrong about the westward distance to the Far East and what his contemporaries thought about it. Excellent link, thank you very much!
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Apr 29, 2021 04:48
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I keep thinking about mouth coins and god drat what a miserable era. was that only a Mediterranean thing or did sub-Saharan African and Indian and Chinese people do that as well
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Apr 29, 2021 14:16
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wearable money as either a necklace of coins with holes in them or currency as a wire of precious metals that could be cut to pay for things were found in china/mesopotamia respectively. cant do either and get your cool face out there tho like the greeks and romans wanted. coin images were a major early propaganda vector
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Apr 29, 2021 14:23
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Real hurthling! posted:a wire of precious metals that could be cut to pay for things that sounds really cool, is there any (short) article about it you know of? also sounds like it could be counterfeited/debased a lot easier than a standard coin
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Apr 29, 2021 14:55
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indigi posted:I keep thinking about mouth coins and god drat what a miserable era. was that only a Mediterranean thing or did sub-Saharan African and Indian and Chinese people do that as well mouth coins were a big thing in the world of Gor if I recall Real hurthling! posted:wearable money as either a necklace of coins with holes in them or currency as a wire of precious metals that could be cut to pay for things were found in china/mesopotamia respectively. another popular choice was to just chop up a precious metal object and pay with the bits and pieces
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Apr 29, 2021 14:58
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indigi posted:that sounds really cool, is there any (short) article about it you know of? also sounds like it could be counterfeited/debased a lot easier than a standard coin how do you counterfeit a length of pure metal? youd think that people would notice pretty much immediately just by look and weight
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Apr 29, 2021 15:04
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indigi posted:I keep thinking about mouth coins and god drat what a miserable era. was that only a Mediterranean thing or did sub-Saharan African and Indian and Chinese people do that as well what do you mean mouth coins?
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Apr 29, 2021 15:07
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Coins you keep in your mouth. Its pretty self-explanatory
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Apr 29, 2021 15:16
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you gotta pay the reaper somehow and the mouth is a better purse for a dead man than the one at the other end
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Apr 29, 2021 15:20
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Cerebral Bore posted:how do you counterfeit a length of pure metal? youd think that people would notice pretty much immediately just by look and weight dye it a different color or something idk
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Apr 29, 2021 15:27
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bedpan posted:another popular choice was to just chop up a precious metal object and pay with the bits and pieces yeah scales were required for most transactions. indigi posted:that sounds really cool, is there any (short) article about it you know of? also sounds like it could be counterfeited/debased a lot easier than a standard coin i no longer have jstor access sadly but if you search for like "mesopotamia silver coils" you'll get some good results the coils look like this  some times they were cut into ringlets of a known weight and strung on something, sometimes they were left whole and wrapped around something or perhaps even worn on the arm/wrist. Zedhe Khoja posted:what do you mean mouth coins? the burial practice of putting charon's toll in the mouth of a loved one may have its origin in people being used to carrying small amounts of change in their mouths to avoid theft in the crowded marketplace due to a lack of pockets. there is not much evidence of this theory besides a few literary references like one i mentioned a few posts ago where a character in Aristophanes' "the birds" exclaims that he swallowed his obol (coin) when he looked up to see a kite flying overhead. but its a funny theory to run with so i support it - even tho there is evidence of other cultures doing coins in the mouth in other parts of the world too so who knows. certainly not a drop out phd candidate like me thats more than a decade removed from research at this point.
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Apr 29, 2021 15:27
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indigi posted:that sounds really cool, is there any (short) article about it you know of? also sounds like it could be counterfeited/debased a lot easier than a standard coin less easy than you might think, originally coins were just a handy way to have an easily dividable amount of precious metal, and you would still weigh them out. there wasn't any kind of real "official value". And you can catch counterfeits very easily in that method of payment because the density of precious metals was both well known, and easily destinguishable even to a layman. Silver is more or less the same density as lead, and gold is twice that.
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Apr 29, 2021 15:34
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Help, I’ve Been Kidnapped by Maenads and Turned into an Incel (involuntary celebrant)
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Apr 29, 2021 16:08
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This talk of using your mouth as a pocket for coins reminds me of Aristophanes' The Wasps, where this practice is mentioned twice:quote:Philocleon: quote:Philocleon: Philocleon is an old man who is addicted to being a juror, they would be paid a fee of three obols but it was time consuming and so often done by elderly, in effect it was almost a pension scheme. In the first quote he is in a debate with his son who is trying to make him stop being a juror, in the second one they've set up a mock trial at home for Philocleon's benefit. Oops, didn't see that Aristophanes had already been talked about, well there's this one too. Grevling has issued a correction as of 17:11 on Apr 29, 2021 |
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Apr 29, 2021 16:53
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Open mouth kissing his children
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Apr 29, 2021 17:32
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Speleothing posted:Open mouth kissing his children No no you misunderstood, my daughter was just french kissing me for 5 minutes to harvest all the money I keep in my mouth
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Apr 29, 2021 17:57
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Juvenal was another cynical acidic "nite Krewe" write from ancient times.
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Apr 29, 2021 17:59
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Maybe this is obviously wrong but couldn't the coins in the mouth thing be a joke? Like he's so old he's already one foot in the grave, so might as well have the grave money there in his mouth all the time?
Terrible Opinions has issued a correction as of 18:58 on Apr 29, 2021 |
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Apr 29, 2021 18:27
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in that The Birds play quote he says he had a meal sack, so he clearly had sack tech available, and yet Euelpides still stuck his money into his mouth
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Apr 29, 2021 18:52
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Speleothing posted:Open mouth kissing his children tom brady through the ages
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Apr 29, 2021 19:16
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maybe our ancestors just really enjoyed chewing on metal constantly
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Apr 29, 2021 19:29
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Drunkboxer posted:in that The Birds play quote he says he had a meal sack, so he clearly had sack tech available, and yet Euelpides still stuck his money into his mouth he means he was on his way to fill his meal sack at the market like a grocery bag having swallowed his obol he has to walk home with empty meal sack. they definitely had purses for coins, the word was fiscus (hence english fiscal) but if you were an average poor dude you never had that much more cash than a handful you intended to spend right away and also could not afford the gang of clients to roll with you as bodyguards to make flashing a bag of coins around possible.
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Apr 29, 2021 19:30
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Real hurthling! posted:he means he was on his way to fill his meal sack at the market like a grocery bag my point was that he could stow his coins in the meal sack then exchange them for food
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Apr 29, 2021 19:36
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I mean I hate to second guess our coin chewing, daughter kissing ancestors, but
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Apr 29, 2021 19:38
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Crusader posted:maybe our ancestors just really enjoyed chewing on metal constantly sometimes i dream about pennies in my mouth
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Apr 29, 2021 19:38
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Drunkboxer posted:my point was that he could stow his coins in the meal sack then exchange them for food good point but how would he fit the whole bag in his mouth?
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Apr 29, 2021 19:47
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Real hurthling! posted:good point but how would he fit the whole bag in his mouth? Ooh that’s easy, he could unhinge his jaw like a snake!
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Apr 29, 2021 19:48
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Drunkboxer posted:I mean I hate to second guess our coin chewing, daughter kissing ancestors, but keep your incestors, they arent my ancestors.
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Apr 29, 2021 19:57
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I swallowed a quarter when I was a kid and I never pooped it out. could still be in there for all I know
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Apr 29, 2021 20:05
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ancient people were real freaks
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Apr 29, 2021 21:08
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quote:In Classical Athens, obols were traded as silver coins. Six obols made up the drachma. There were also coins worth two obols ("diobol") and three obols ("triobol"). Each obol was divisible into eight "coppers" (χαλκοί, khalkoí). In some other cities the obol was instead divided into twelve coppers.[6] During this era, an obol purchased a kantharos and chous (3 liters or 6 pints) of wine.[7] Three obols was a standard rate for prostitutes. I guess at least silver is at least kinda antibacterial and presumably doesn't taste coppery (??) so that makes it the tiniest bit less gross
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Apr 29, 2021 22:29
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 My face when I swallow too much silver
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Apr 29, 2021 22:55
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didn’t they have ledgers?
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Apr 29, 2021 22:59
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twoday posted:I guess at least silver is at least kinda antibacterial and presumably doesn't taste coppery (??) so that makes it the tiniest bit less gross table wine or real wine
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Apr 29, 2021 23:35
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Romans swallowed a lot of metal. There’s the whole lead issue, now coins, and of course the notorious M.L.C.. 
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Apr 29, 2021 23:42
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