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basic locomotive wheels are only really useful if you have animals strong enough they can carry more weight than will already fit on their back and no one in america had animals like that give them a few oxen instead of genociding them with smallpox and it probably wouldnt take them that long to figure it out
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Oct 7, 2021 13:52
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Platystemon posted:The oldest known use of the wheel is the potter’s wheel. relevant quote: quote:Potter's wheels were not used prior to European contact and are only used today by a limited number of Native American artists. quote presented without context: quote:In the mid to late 3rd millennium BC the fast wheel was developed,
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Oct 7, 2021 13:53
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Some Guy TT posted:basic locomotive wheels are only really useful if you have animals strong enough they can carry more weight than will already fit on their back and no one in america had animals like that give them a few oxen instead of genociding them with smallpox and it probably wouldnt take them that long to figure it out what about a wheelbarrow
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Oct 7, 2021 14:05
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indigi posted:what about a wheelbarrow i think the historic wheelbarrow is almost more like a sledge with a wheel in it where you put stuff on both sides of the wheel, but i can't remember what they're called.
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Oct 7, 2021 14:07
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In the very limited pottery experience I have, I was underwhelmed by the potter’s wheel. I’m sure it’s really helpful if you’re making a bunch of amphoræ for your industrial olive oil industry, but on the scale of a household or a village, meh. The way I see it, getting all the wood to heat the kiln is many times more work than forming the pot out of coils or whatever. Now, lathes, those are legit.
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Oct 7, 2021 14:09
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In addition to rubber tires and smooth roads, bicycles need very well manufactured bearings otherwise the friction between the wheel and the axel is too much. The metallurgy and precision didn't really exist until maybe 200-300 years ago.
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Oct 7, 2021 14:11
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Speleothing posted:In addition to rubber tires and smooth roads, bicycles need very well manufactured bearings otherwise the friction between the wheel and the axel is too much. The metallurgy and precision didn't really exist until maybe 200-300 years ago. a bit like the alleged "romans invented steam engines! but they didn't use them because of slaves." chestnut, there are examples all over of someone demonstrating a proof of concept but being hundreds or thousands of years behind tolerances and metallurgy to make it safe, practical or affordable.
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Oct 7, 2021 14:15
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indigi posted:what about a wheelbarrow according to wiki despite the wheelbarrow being around for a long time it wasnt all that commonly used and this interesting factoid quote:By the 13th century, the wheelbarrow proved useful in building construction, mining operations, and agriculture. However, going by surviving documents and illustrations the wheelbarrow remained a relative rarity until the 15th century.[32] It also seemed to be limited to England, France, and the Low Countries.[33] would seem to imply that the conquistadors themselves probably didnt know what wheelbarrows were
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Oct 7, 2021 14:18
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The wheelbarrow was used more widely in China. Here’s an article from Low‐Tech Magazine about them. Don’t take everything they write as gospel, but it can be a good primer.
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Oct 7, 2021 14:29
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Hodgepodge posted:iirc the wheel was invented at least once in north america but only used for kid's toys because there wasn't something horselike enough to get much use out of it or neighbors who had combined those and handy technical advances and then shared the results in some form, etc My tour guide in Tikal said almost exactly that. The old timey Mayans were laying down pyramids that worked as observatories and lined up with the stars during an equinox or whatever, they were an organized society with a celebrated class of scientist-priests. They had circles and they had nerds and it appears they had the concept of spinning, I'm sure they were capable of conceiving of a circle that isn't two dimensional. If nothing else, they'd have seen a log roll down a hill, it doesn't take a genius to see that and say "hey what if we did that but with slices of log," and they clearly weren't without geniuses. The utility of the thing just isn't there in their conditions, though. There are no pack animals in the universe as far as you know, there aren't great roads between here and whoever you're trading with, you're in the loving jungle at it's 90 degrees and 90% humidity at night and the ground is wet as poo poo and everything is impenetrably overgrown in almost every direction, I'd say your best bet for moving stuff around is probably lots of dudes with backpacks if the stuff is small, or rolling it on logs or pulling it on some kind of sled if it's big. They also didn't invent coolers that could keep ice frozen for a long time, or parachutes, or anything else that didn't make sense based on what they were working with.
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Oct 7, 2021 14:49
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Real Mean Queen posted:I'd say your best bet for moving stuff around is probably lots of dudes with backpacks if the stuff is small, or rolling it on logs or pulling it on some kind of sled if it's big. this seems like using wheels. The logs are just long wheels. like if mayans were rolling stuff on logs then they had, and used, wheels
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Oct 7, 2021 14:53
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I'd make the distinction between wheels on a fixed axle and dragging stuff over rolly things on the ground.
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Oct 7, 2021 15:15
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wheel is a rolly thing that goes on the ground qed e: tbh at first I figured that pre-european contact americans must have had useful wheels one way or another and then I just learned about the travois which is a good example of why other types of getting around besides wheels were more practical quote:Although considered more primitive than wheel-based forms of transport, on the type of territory where the travois was used (forest floors, soft soil, snow, etc.), rather than roadways, wheels would have encountered difficulties which would have made them less efficient. As such the travois was employed by coureurs des bois in New France's fur trade with the Plains Tribes. seems like you really need a sophisticated system of roads for wheels to be the most effective way to move. I'd guess a wheelbarrow would also be less worthwhile than just creating something like a travois that you can drag around. on the one hand you can spend all the effort required to make an effective and durable wheel on an axle (that will still inevitably fail when faced with difficult terrain) or on the other you can tie two sticks together with a bag between them and have something that's actually more effective Casey Finnigan has issued a correction as of 15:47 on Oct 7, 2021 |
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Oct 7, 2021 15:19
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all grand ideas but while not perfect for travel to many regions between the oceans rivers, lakes, and walking a canoe beats all of that. which is why so much european exploration and trade was done by canoe. i'm not even remotely certain what the real limits for someone from a PNW culture would be if they felt like traveling. considering raiding parties from the Haida (as a notable example due to a reasonably long travel distance) were just a regular thing that there were measures in place for responding to among the Sto:Lo and other people along the Fraser, for example, even routine conflict had a pretty large range on the coast. there were a few examples that came up in grad school (my sources are inaccessible sorry  ) of well documented cases of first nation canoe parties boarding and seizing well armed European vessels in the fur trade period in the PNW. i can't remember the details well either but i recall the cases ranging from roughly fairly polite piracy to literally a prank to prove they could do it.
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Oct 7, 2021 16:18
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if you wanna get from A to B, particularly goods, rivers were the cheapest, easiest and as such most used route all the way up to what, widespread adoption of the locomotive? buoyancy is rilly good.
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Oct 7, 2021 16:23
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CoolCab posted:if you wanna get from A to B, particularly goods, rivers were the cheapest, easiest and as such most used route all the way up to what, widespread adoption of the locomotive? buoyancy is rilly good. Yeah, will glaze the details because it's more modern history but the US went big with canals on canals on canals all over NE basically right as the ink was drying on the constitution and finished them up just in time for the railroads to obsolete them. But when they were started they were seen as the competitive advantage needed for the national economy to be globally competitive.
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Oct 7, 2021 16:29
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Dameius posted:Yeah, will glaze the details because it's more modern history but the US went big with canals on canals on canals all over NE basically right as the ink was drying on the constitution and finished them up just in time for the railroads to obsolete them. But when they were started they were seen as the competitive advantage needed for the national economy to be globally competitive. The whole reason why Chicago is a big city is that it is basically sited in the ideal place for both 1) pre-railroad travel as the farthest south-west place you can reach by shipping things on the Great Lakes (Duluth exists at the tip of Lake Superior for basically the same reason), and 2) early railroad travel as the farthest south place where early railroads could easily cross the Mississippi River. These two things combined made it the gateway to the enormous tracts of land in between the Mississippi and the Rockies, and is why, for example, the Amtrak map routes nearly all east-west lines through Chicago:  By the time engineering advanced enough to build railroad bridges over the Mississippi farther south, where the river is wider, Chicago was already a big enough city to have its own economic gravity and had already been built into the transportation network as the hub linking the eastern and western halves of the continent, and so the economic activity just never left.
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Oct 7, 2021 16:37
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Atlanta was founded as a railroad town, six years before a single train went through the area.
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Oct 7, 2021 16:54
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CoolCab posted:if you wanna get from A to B, particularly goods, rivers were the cheapest, easiest and as such most used route all the way up to what, widespread adoption of the locomotive? buoyancy is rilly good. Water still beats locomotive today. The numbers I'm seeing are that sea shipping is 1/3 as expensive as rail shipping. The friction and thus energy advantage of moving across a fluid that involves effectively no maintenance are really really loving hard to beat, and as mentioned the buoyancy thing means that you can have gently caress-off amounts of stuff moved by very few people.
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Oct 7, 2021 17:23
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Tulip posted:that involves effectively no maintenance well,
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Oct 7, 2021 17:31
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indigi posted:well, listen, it's only maintenance if specific person has to pay for it, if it just kind of costs things to everyone it's free, that's how this works
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Oct 7, 2021 17:35
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Hodgepodge posted:all grand ideas but while not perfect for travel to many regions between the oceans rivers, lakes, and walking a canoe beats all of that. which is why so much european exploration and trade was done by canoe. its pretty wild how canoes are just now commonly understood to be primitive savage boats when nearly all water travel prior to the modern era was done by canoe hell even the polynesians managed to colonize every tiny middle of nowhere island in the pacific using nothing except canoes
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Oct 7, 2021 20:38
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Fish of hemp posted:Did they even have wheel? The Inca had the wheel, but never really used it for anything practical, probably because their empire was very mountainous. Not because of a lack of draught animals as they had llamas. E:  Real Mean Queen posted:Words If you don't get an answer here, try the Rome thread in A/T Weka has issued a correction as of 20:42 on Oct 7, 2021 |
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Oct 7, 2021 20:40
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What about doors made from a big circular rock? That’s kind of a wheel. 
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Oct 7, 2021 22:57
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Recognizing round stone doors as wheels is a slippery slope towards accepting other unsavory items as wheels. 
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Oct 7, 2021 23:04
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Real hurthling! posted:you could build a regular house in the courtyard i guess a lot of chateau/castle/estate owners do just live in the gatehouse now and the big house is just for show
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Oct 7, 2021 23:08
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lol if you don’t live in the highest room of the tallest tower
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Oct 8, 2021 04:39
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how else are you going to get a prince to come gently caress you
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Oct 8, 2021 13:54
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The world's oldest known victim of a shark attack: 3000 years ago this man was swimming outside the coast of Japan when he was attacked by a shark.
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Oct 8, 2021 17:10
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Alhazred posted:The world's oldest known victim of a shark attack: looks like this fellow joins Nanni on the list of the earliest know examples of someone getting just totally owned
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Oct 8, 2021 23:42
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"Pfff, don't be a wuss. You're more likely to find a tree with a million berries than be attacked by a shark."
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Oct 9, 2021 02:00
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Alhazred posted:The world's oldest known victim of a shark attack: https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/archaeologists-resolve-enigma-of-man-savaged-3-000-years-ago-in-japan-1.9945494
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Oct 9, 2021 05:01
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Rustius Barbarus posted:How come you haven't answered my last letter if you received the loaves of bread I sent you? First I sent you 15 loaves with Popillius and Dutoporis, then I sent you another 15 as well as a vase with the carter Draco. Do you realise how much wheat that used up! I even sent another 6 loaves with the cavalryman Thiadices, who said he could deliver them to you himself. Please have me some decorated knives made by the fort blacksmith, for my personal use and make them as beautiful as possible. Write to me so that I can send you some more bread in payment or even some money, whichever you wish. I want you to know that I am getting married. Once I am married I will let you know so that you can come and visit us.
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Oct 10, 2021 17:12
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if i got a bunch of stale old bread and knife specifications in the mail i would not reply either
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Oct 10, 2021 17:48
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Rustius Barbarus sounds like a pain in the rear end.
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Oct 10, 2021 18:06
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Drunkboxer posted:Rustius Barbarus sounds like a pain in the rear end. He does sound like a bit much. "HEY FUCKER WHY DIDN'T YOU WRITE ME ABOUT ALL THAT BREAD I SENT YOUR WAY HUH?!??
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Oct 10, 2021 21:31
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So were high quality knives worth a lot less than I thought, or bread a lot more than I thought, or does Julius owe rustius a favour we don't know about?
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Oct 10, 2021 22:00
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a loaf of bread is a big chunk of the daily calories for several people each and rustius sounds like he sent 3 dozen over. each loaf cost upwards of half a sestertius, or two asses (lol) so thats 18 sesterces. 4 of those to a denarius, a standard wage for a full day, gives us 4.5 denarii, or in raw value terms about 52 skilled professional manhours of labor. give the man his fancy blades Real hurthling! has issued a correction as of 23:08 on Oct 10, 2021 |
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Oct 10, 2021 23:06
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Real hurthling! posted:a loaf of bread is a big chunk of the daily calories for several people each and rustius sounds like he sent 3 dozen over. loving hell, I hope he got the knives.
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Oct 10, 2021 23:12
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Alhazred posted:So, two options: Either Rustius Barbarus' brother though that constantly getting bread in the mail was really annoying or Rustius Barbarus was extremely gullible who kept sending bread with couriers who ate them. at least the couriers didn't have to travel through enemy territory, only to be presented with lovely low-quality knives also it kinda just sounds like he was taking care of some business in the course of letting his bro know he got married and inviting his family over to chill and meet the wife so i can't really think too badly of the guy
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Oct 10, 2021 23:20
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