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Azathoth posted:i am debating creating a history thread thread where we go back through the old history threads and look at the posts and see if we can get any understanding of the history of the time from the different history that they were look at then lol sounds good
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Nov 11, 2021 02:19
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somethingawful histography? i'm down
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Nov 11, 2021 02:19
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Ghostlight posted:you'll have to find information on those yourself There's some debate as to what came first, cities or agriculture, particularly in regards to Gobekli Tepe.
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Nov 11, 2021 11:48
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Ornamental Dingbat posted:Please create a pre-neolithic history splinter thread if you want to discuss it more. your knapped axe looks like a dishrag
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Nov 12, 2021 03:21
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going wild for these knappy headed hoes
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Nov 12, 2021 03:28
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Nov 13, 2021 01:13
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why you gotta bring loss into this
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Nov 13, 2021 01:21
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Communist Thoughts posted:that debt book seems pretty good, anyone got any other good history deep dive books? michael hudson's ...and forgive them their debts is a history of debt, finance, and debt forgiveness throughout the ancient near-east. there will hopefully be a sequel at some point covering the same topic in greek and roman antiquity.
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Nov 13, 2021 20:05
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https://mobile.twitter.com/father_rmv/status/1459188750311956482
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Nov 14, 2021 15:59
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https://mobile.twitter.com/BasQuetzal/status/1460440812752412673
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Nov 17, 2021 01:35
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you cavalry rush them on their left.
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Nov 17, 2021 01:42
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romans used the maniple formation to break the phallanx
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Nov 17, 2021 03:21
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throw marbles in their path, or roller skates. like dominos
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Nov 17, 2021 03:27
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Throw anything that can outmaneuver them in, they can't turn worth poo poo and rough terrain breaks up the formation.
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Nov 17, 2021 03:27
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construct an elaborate narrative using cutouts and audio from old gangster movies to scare them away.
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Nov 17, 2021 03:29
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Nov 17, 2021 03:31
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you drone strike them with hellfire missiles
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Nov 17, 2021 03:34
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Two words: Atom Bomb
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Nov 17, 2021 03:39
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i'm changing my answer to "a trench"
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Nov 17, 2021 05:48
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Archers, or mangonels if you're in castle age.
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Nov 17, 2021 06:25
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Nov 17, 2021 06:37
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Nov 17, 2021 08:32
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Real hurthling! posted:romans used the maniple formation to break the phallanx just keep throwing spears at them until they get tired and pissed off and break formation. phalanxes didnt have rotation of individual fighters on the front ranks iirc? the maniple is mentioned many for its ability to just keep fighting for longer than anyone else can stand
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Nov 17, 2021 11:53
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thats a big part of it. the checkerboard gaps in the maniple also cause the phalanx to lose cohesiveness as the soldiers who enter combat stop their charge but those further down the line have to go further to meet the enemy. the phalanx is powerful its is just too cumbersome to adapt to tactics designed to defeat it. the romans moved on from the maniple to a different organization shortly after conquering everybody that used phalanx polybius posted:For no speculation is any longer required to test the accuracy of what I am now saying: that can be done by referring to accomplished facts. The Romans do not, then, attempt to extend their front to equal that of a phalanx, and then charge directly upon it with their whole force: but some of their divisions are kept in reserve, while others join battle with the enemy at close quarters. Now, whether the phalanx in its charge drives its opponents from their ground, or is itself driven back, in either case its peculiar order is dislocated; for whether in following the retiring, or flying from the advancing enemy, they quit the rest of their forces: and when this takes place, the enemy's reserves can occupy the space thus left, and the ground which the phalanx had just before been holding, and so no longer charge them face to face, but fall upon them on their flank and rear. If, then, it is easy to take precautions against the opportunities and peculiar advantages of the phalanx, but impossible to do so in the case of its disadvantages, must it not follow that in practice the difference between these two systems is enormous? Of course, those generals who employ the phalanx must march over ground of every description, must pitch camps, occupy points of advantage, besiege, and be besieged, and meet with unexpected appearances of the enemy: for all these are part and parcel of war, and have an important and sometimes decisive influence on the ultimate victory. And in all these cases the Macedonian phalanx is difficult, and sometimes impossible, to handle, because the men cannot act either in squads or separately.
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Nov 17, 2021 15:57
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Real hurthling! posted:thats a big part of it. the checkerboard gaps in the maniple also cause the phalanx to lose cohesiveness as the soldiers who enter combat stop their charge but those further down the line have to go further to meet the enemy. Why would the phalangites break their formation? The quote from Polybius is about the inflexibility in general of the phalanax vs the maniple system. It is also debated as to whether they fought in the checkerboard vs forming a solid line at the point of contact with the enemy, since that means that the roman maniples would always be flanked.
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Nov 17, 2021 16:34
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Real hurthling! posted:thats a big part of it. the checkerboard gaps in the maniple also cause the phalanx to lose cohesiveness as the soldiers who enter combat stop their charge but those further down the line have to go further to meet the enemy. The Romans also eventually moved back into using phalanxes - the evidence we have for say Strasbourg is that the Romans were fighting with long spears, round shields, close order. Spears are very good! Even the manipular system wasn't a strong counter to phalanxes, just an ultimately successful one - consider Pydna, one of the canonical examples of the success of the Roman system over the Macedonian system, where the Romans reacted with frustration and despair at their inability to fight the phalanx up until the Romans withdrew into uneven terrain, which prevented the phalanx from working as intended. It's also extremely easy to overstate how well we understand the manipular system. Like there's a lot of controversy, guesswork, and ambiguity about what it actually looked like.
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Nov 17, 2021 17:21
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same with most fighting tactics and styles across most of the planet, hence a lot of experimental archaeology and history to try to recreate these things, which is cool
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Nov 17, 2021 17:27
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No one fought a phalanx head on and won unless it was a severe mismatch in troop quality or with another, better phalanx. The Roman maniples were successful because it is a rare situation wherein a phalanx can perfectly maintain its formation with no gaps caused by terrain or some other event. The legions allowed each maniples centurions to make command decisions and exploit weaknesses. I think it was Pydna mentioned above where a centurion saw a gap and threw his entire maniple into it, forcing it wider and creating chaos in the phalanx. They were also more maneuverable in general, which led to numerous cases of roman generals outmaneuvering phalanx employing generals. This was also a situation made worse by the successor kingdoms phalanxes being of a significantly inferior quality than Alexander's. His were known for the insane amounts of drill and ability to do things like rotate the flanks out to form a spearwall on the sides to address a flanking enemy and other complex maneuvers. The successor kingdoms chewed each other up for decades and one of the ways they addressed the lack of ability to train good phalangites was to make the sarissa's even longer than in alexanders time, to get even more spearpoints on line. This means they got even more clunky and hard to organize, and extremely dependent on trying to move as little as possible, since they hard to get 5-7 rows of spears all in a line to function properly, and even moving around a hedge or boulder is a significant problem for poorly trained guys. Alexander's troops would likely not have failed in the same ways the successor kingdoms did against the legions. Like Pydna would likely have not seen that gap cause the failure, since the phalangites would have reacted, fought the legionaries hand to hand where needed while the phalanx formed up behind them and then crushed the maniple that tried to get in. WoodrowSkillson has issued a correction as of 17:50 on Nov 17, 2021 |
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Nov 17, 2021 17:47
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good points^^Tulip posted:It's also extremely easy to overstate how well we understand the manipular system. Like there's a lot of controversy, guesswork, and ambiguity about what it actually looked like. very true! and of course that quote comes after a long preamble about the particulars of terrain and other factors that allow weaker tactics to defeat stronger ones. WoodrowSkillson posted:Why would the phalangites break their formation? The quote from Polybius is about the inflexibility in general of the phalanax vs the maniple system. It is also debated as to whether they fought in the checkerboard vs forming a solid line at the point of contact with the enemy, since that means that the roman maniples would always be flanked. yeah i agree it seems really stupid to do. i am as suspicious of exactly how this was supposed to work as you are but polybius seems to think it was so tho it would be very hard for anyone observing to describe exactly what was going on with so many moving parts or to know why a particular unit failed to stay in its ranks, let alone generalize a military doctrine from it just sharing the source i knew of not trying to measure my mil hist dick.
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Nov 17, 2021 17:59
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Real hurthling! posted:good points^^ sorry if i came across as making GBS threads on you, that was not my intent. this poo poo is just fun to talk about. Sometimes the pike phalanx might have gotten out of place because the Romans deliberately held some guys a bit further back, but its unlikely they would just keep right on marching, exposing their flanks, just because there was no one in front of them. I think what Polybius is describing is more that the Romans did not just let themselves get chewed up at the front of the phalanx, but will instead work to flank them, or try and use a core of soldiers to actually get past the spears and start mixing it up somewhere on the line, and then when the phalanx gets unaligned, the reserves then swarm the weak points and the phalanx collapses, which is what we see happen multiple times around that time. I might have been a bit too short in my initial response. Though as i've been typing and thinking about it, coming back to the whole successor state phalanxes being lovely, if the Romans could indeed bait them into a full on charge, it is indeed possible that some of them would do a lovely job stopping themselves, and causes some disorder at the front. But it still seems unlikely that it would be a common occurrence that they just blew by some dudes and go for another 50 yards.
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Nov 18, 2021 00:21
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Creeshun Arrchurs!
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Nov 18, 2021 00:27
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slingers and calv  poor fuckers are gonna have a bad time
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Nov 18, 2021 00:28
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One of my weird pedantic things is that I hate the portrayal in video games that slingers are just primitive, short range archers. Slings have crazy range and absolutely will kill people! They're a really useful weapon that armies frequently gave to even their heavy infantry (mostly for hunting). The pro-con of slings isn't just "if you aren't smart enough to make bows, you use slings."
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Nov 18, 2021 00:37
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Tulip posted:One of my weird pedantic things is that I hate the portrayal in video games that slingers are just primitive, short range archers. Slings have crazy range and absolutely will kill people! They're a really useful weapon that armies frequently gave to even their heavy infantry (mostly for hunting). The pro-con of slings isn't just "if you aren't smart enough to make bows, you use slings." Yeah in Xenophon's Anabasis, he says that the hoplites are constantly being harassed by slingers and peltasts and they can't do poo poo because there's no way a hoplite will be able to catch a slinger. So they go through the ranks and find everyone from Crete and Rhodes and give them a bow and a sling, respectively.
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Nov 18, 2021 00:40
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they drilled holes to make the bullets whistle so enemies would lose their nerve if a volley missed instead of simply not noticing that anything was thrown at them.
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Nov 18, 2021 00:42
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was there no fuel similar to petrol that would let them throw something like a molotov cocktail? that'd do it
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Nov 18, 2021 00:46
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read the frequently recommended book: Greek Fire, Poison Arrows & Scorpion Bombs: Biological and Chemical Warfare in the Ancient World lots of stories about burning pots of oil, pitch, heated sand, etc being thrown about. they would also soak rags in pitch and form them into big burning catapult balls that would splash all over their target. for primary sources, in de bello gallico caesar says a roman camp was hit with sling bullets made of red hot plastic clay that gooped on stuff and flaming javelins appear in a ton of battles. just imagine you are wearing armor and get hit with a load of 1000 degree sand that gets into all the little crevices. ugggh
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Nov 18, 2021 01:13
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sullat posted:Creeshun Arrchurs! treeareeeeye!!
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Nov 18, 2021 03:17
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Ghostlight posted:we could really do with an ancient history thread. Based on historical precedent it'd only get colonised by historiographers and mil-hist aficionados. Source:this thread.
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Nov 18, 2021 20:28
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How did slavery became a major economic model in Americas? Because as I understand it, direct slavery had "fell out of fashion" in Europe in favor of serfdom and guilds and church didn't find it very christian. So how did it happen again in the new world?
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Nov 20, 2021 12:17
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