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Lead out in cuffs posted:These guys range as far north as Sudan: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/African_clawless_otter It is otterly baffling.
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Mar 26, 2022 14:51
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I've toyed with the idea of doing a deep dive/a paper looking at the effects of extinction and how it effects how modern archaeologists look at the archaeological record/make assumptions about what animal was depicted.
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Mar 26, 2022 16:36
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It's wild to me that there used to be lions and tigers running around places like Iran and Turkey. Hell I think Caspian tigers only went extinct about a hundred years ago.
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Mar 26, 2022 17:14
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CoolCab posted:can someone remind me where this quote i remember comes from, i think it was a roman historian aristocrat bragging about the power of the empire. it's something like (might be prefaced with "back in the good old days"?) "a roman citizen could carry a pot of gold on their heads and walk from one end of the empire to the next without being hassled". i don't think it was literal but it was a way of them saying security was/used to be much better and roman prestige would keep all the other imperial subjects subjugated and cowed. i probably heard it on History of Rome. I think that was about the Mongolian empire under Genghiz Khan, and said that a virgin could walk across it carrying a pot of gold without being molested or robbed. e: reddit link with a source Zopotantor fucked around with this message at 18:28 on Mar 26, 2022 |
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Mar 26, 2022 18:26
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AAAAA! Real Muenster posted:Egypt had (has?) otters?
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Mar 26, 2022 18:58
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Zopotantor posted:I think that was about the Mongolian empire under Genghiz Khan, and said that a virgin could walk across it carrying a pot of gold without being molested or robbed. ah, thanks!
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Mar 26, 2022 19:14
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Zopotantor posted:I think that was about the Mongolian empire under Genghiz Khan, and said that a virgin could walk across it carrying a pot of gold without being molested or robbed.. i wouldn't mess with anyone doing that poo poo either
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Mar 26, 2022 19:15
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Zopotantor posted:I think that was about the Mongolian empire under Genghiz Khan, and said that a virgin could walk across it carrying a pot of gold without being molested or robbed. How bout a printer?
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Mar 26, 2022 19:17
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Gaius Marius posted:How bout a printer? No one approaches, but it isn't because they're scared of the ye olde cops
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Mar 26, 2022 19:41
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Telsa Cola posted:I've toyed with the idea of doing a deep dive/a paper looking at the effects of extinction and how it effects how modern archaeologists look at the archaeological record/make assumptions about what animal was depicted. I'd read that.
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Mar 26, 2022 23:42
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CoolCab posted:can someone remind me where this quote i remember comes from, i think it was a roman historian aristocrat bragging about the power of the empire. it's something like (might be prefaced with "back in the good old days"?) "a roman citizen could carry a pot of gold on their heads and walk from one end of the empire to the next without being hassled". i don't think it was literal but it was a way of them saying security was/used to be much better and roman prestige would keep all the other imperial subjects subjugated and cowed. i probably heard it on History of Rome. i've heard that quote about vlad dracul's wallachia too
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Mar 26, 2022 23:51
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Telsa Cola posted:I've toyed with the idea of doing a deep dive/a paper looking at the effects of extinction and how it effects how modern archaeologists look at the archaeological record/make assumptions about what animal was depicted. I'd be very interested in reading that as well
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Mar 27, 2022 00:13
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Gaius Marius posted:How bout a printer? Stop being ridiculous. It'd be a printing press.
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Mar 27, 2022 11:00
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Mad Hamish posted:There's a book of ancient Greek jokes out there, many of which still hold up because they're either making fun of Shelbyville and its stupid inhabitants or they're boomer jokes about their horrible wives. There's actually a joke in Xenophon's Anabasis, I don't recall exactly why but they're discussing getting their hand on some treasure, and Young Talented Athenian suggests sending the Spartan who should be uniquely competent, what with the crypteia and all. The Spartan nods sagely agreeing the idea has merit, but seeing as the treasure in question in fact a public one they should send the Athenian, as they are the real experts in subtilising public funds.
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Mar 27, 2022 14:48
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Just shared a taxi to the airport with Chris Wickham and his wife Leslie Brubaker in Vienna. Small world, lol.
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Mar 27, 2022 15:31
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ChubbyChecker posted:i've heard that quote about vlad dracul's wallachia too That one felt more plausible, between the specific risk of taking the cup (Vlad) and it not moving around.
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Mar 27, 2022 18:50
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I heard a similar story. An envoy was visiting Wallachia and saw a bag of gold coins sitting next to a well. He asked why nobody had taken it, and they replied that nobody would dare to for fear of Vlad's justice
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Mar 27, 2022 19:47
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What did the Blues and Greens in Byzantine Rome do? Most descriptions I've read of them paint them as basically soccer hooligans. In particular, I recently read a book clearly based on Byzantium that described them as having grown out of labor unions for the chariot racers, which is wildly different from every other depiction I've read. And it also doesn't seem to square with the Blues and Greens absorbing the Whites and Reds, so I'm wondering if there's any accuracy to their depiction as positive organizations.
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Mar 27, 2022 21:32
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LLSix posted:What did the Blues and Greens in Byzantine Rome do? Most descriptions I've read of them paint them as basically soccer hooligans. The exact nature of the Blues and Greens in the Byzantine era is a bit unclear, but its worth noting there are two separate groups that I think you are conflating. Each faction (the Blues and Greens, and in earlier centuries also the Reds and Whites) was an organization that acted somewhat like a modern sports team. They owned the horses and chariots, and they fielded chariots in the races. In many races, multiple chariots of the same faction worked together as a team. The factions also owned most of the chariot racers as well, since most chariot racers were slaves. A successful chariot racer could win their freedom, and become extremely famous and wealthy. A few managed to become among the richest men in the empire even). However, this was uncommon and many chariot racers died young as slaves. The book you read is taking major liberties with their adaptation of this system. The factions were not a union in any way, they were the owner/employer of the racers. During the Byzantine era, and possibly earlier than that, the races were funded entirely by the emperor, and so the factions became completely subordinated to the emperor. In addition to the actual organization that fielded chariots for races, the factions each had a group of fans, who were not employed or owned by the organization, but who supported them in races. This part of the relationship is very similar to modern sports teams and their fans. It sounds like in the book, these two separate groups are merged. In reality, the organization and the fans of the organization were separate groups of people. However, there was also a political aspect of chariot racing and chariot factions. During chariot events in Constantinople before the 8th century or so, the emperor would make statements to the crowd, which were relayed by heralds so everyone heard them. These statements would be addressed to the fans of the Blues and Greens, either one at a time or all at once. The crowd would then answer back, and if they didn't like what the emperor had to say, riots could result. How organized the fans were, and how much these riots were based on coherent political disputes vs sports hooliganism is rather unclear. One issue is that the word used by Byzantine authors to describe the fans of a particular faction is "deme," which can also just mean "people," so its sometimes unclear who exactly ancient authors are talking about. It's also unclear if the fans of a faction had any political role outside the Hippodrome (the race track). There is no evidence that there were fixed districts in the city for each faction's supporters to live in or anything like that, and the groups of fans may not have existed in any organized sense outside of the Hippodrome.
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Mar 28, 2022 02:04
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8zwE6iRvspw
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Mar 28, 2022 19:30
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Edgar Allen Ho posted:It's wild to me that there used to be lions and tigers running around places like Iran and Turkey. Hell I think Caspian tigers only went extinct about a hundred years ago. Humans are mass extinction events for megafauna. Also, goats.
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Mar 29, 2022 06:50
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There is a trope about times of peace and prosperity in Chinese history that "cities left their gates open even at night and travelers did not take anything which had been forgotten by the wayside".
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Mar 31, 2022 01:07
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Taishi Ci posted:There is a trope about times of peace and prosperity in Chinese history that "cities left their gates open even at night and travelers did not take anything which had been forgotten by the wayside".
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Mar 31, 2022 12:53
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Alhazred posted:There's a guy who sells honey in the street where I work who often leave his stand unattended with a sign that says where people can send their money if they want to buy some. There’s a strawberry farm a little north of Santa Cruz CA which has an open til system. They’ve said that they make more than they should since people giving extra outweighs their losses due to shrinkage. Good strawberries, too. Telsa Cola posted:I've toyed with the idea of doing a deep dive/a paper looking at the effects of extinction and how it effects how modern archaeologists look at the archaeological record/make assumptions about what animal was depicted. I don’t remember if it was this thread, but I seem to remember a theory that the animal Anubis is based off of is possibly an extinct species of caninae. Does anyone know more about this? The North Tower fucked around with this message at 06:05 on Apr 2, 2022 |
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Apr 2, 2022 06:01
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The North Tower posted:I don’t remember if it was this thread, but I seem to remember a theory that the animal Anubis is based off of is possibly an extinct species of caninae. Does anyone know more about this?
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Apr 2, 2022 09:38
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cowboy
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I think it's Set you mean.
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Apr 2, 2022 10:22
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Set_animal
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Apr 2, 2022 11:27
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I think that the Greeks and romans thought the Set animal was some sort of donkey, which combined with the ancient Egyptian belief that Asiatics worshipped Set (Hyksos did) caused the romans to levy accusations of Onolatry at Jews and Christians.
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Apr 2, 2022 15:15
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PawParole posted:I think that the Greeks and romans thought the Set animal was some sort of donkey, which combined with the ancient Egyptian belief that Asiatics worshipped Set (Hyksos did) caused the romans to levy accusations of Onolatry at Jews and Christians. Yahweh = Set makes a surprising amount of sense if you think of it from the Greco-Roman syncretic-by-default perspective. (Not saying there's an actual connection in origin between Judaism and Egyptian religion, although I suppose it's possible.) I remember reading about an Ancient Greek symposium recounted by Plutarch about the question "Who is the god of the Jews?" (i.e., from an interpretatio graeca point of view), and one of the answers proposed was "Egyptian Typhon," i.e., Set. (Another proposal was Dionysus, based on a dubious attempt to etymologically connect his epithet "Sabazios" with "Sabaos" and "Sabbath.") Set is supposed to be a god of deserts, storms, violence, and foreigners, who doesn't get along with the other Egyptian gods - it sort of fits.
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Apr 2, 2022 16:52
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Ghost Leviathan posted:I think it's Set you mean. Oops—yes, Set—that’s why my searches came up empty. Thanks for the info from everyone who posted. From the Wiki (which is very clear that the answer is ‘we don’t really know yet’) for the benefit of others: “Egyptologist Ken Moss[8] suggested the Set animal is in fact the Saluki: It is one of the oldest breeds of domesticated dog, has a curved snout, and nearly identical body to the hieroglyph, and is native to the region; when the Saluki runs, its ears and tail become vertical.” The North Tower fucked around with this message at 05:35 on Apr 4, 2022 |
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Apr 4, 2022 05:28
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I got a Q for the linguistics nerds: was there a point (if it's knowable at all) where the standardized, written Latin was indecipherable to someone who spoke vulgate Latin? I don't mean later on once the dialects had evolved into Spanish or whatever, but during the Latin speaking period. Comparable to Classical Chinese, which was still the main written form of Chinese into like the 1800s but a completely distinct language that a regular Chinese speaker can't parse. I don't think written Latin was ever that divergent but I realized I don't know.
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Apr 5, 2022 21:05
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Grand Fromage posted:I got a Q for the linguistics nerds: was there a point (if it's knowable at all) where the standardized, written Latin was indecipherable to someone who spoke vulgate Latin? I don't mean later on once the dialects had evolved into Spanish or whatever, but during the Latin speaking period. Comparable to Classical Chinese, which was still the main written form of Chinese into like the 1800s but a completely distinct language that a regular Chinese speaker can't parse. from wikipedia: quote:To some scholars, this [the features shared by all romance languages but not by classical latin] suggests the form of Vulgar Latin that evolved into the Romance languages was around during the time of the Roman Empire (from the end of the first century BC), and was spoken alongside the written Classical Latin which was reserved for official and formal occasions. Other scholars argue that the distinctions are more rightly viewed as indicative of sociolinguistic and register differences normally found within any language. Both were mutually intelligible as one and the same language, which was true until very approximately the second half of the 7th century. quote:By the 8th century, the situation was very different. During the late 8th century, Charlemagne, holding that "Latin of his age was by classical standards intolerably corrupt",[45]: 6 successfully imposed Classical Latin as an artificial written vernacular for Western Europe. Unfortunately, this meant that parishioners could no longer understand the sermons of their priests, forcing the Council of Tours in 813 to issue an edict that priests needed to translate their speeches into the rustica romana lingua, an explicit acknowledgement of the reality of the Romance languages as separate languages from Latin.
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Apr 5, 2022 21:22
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Grand Fromage posted:I got a Q for the linguistics nerds: was there a point (if it's knowable at all) where the standardized, written Latin was indecipherable to someone who spoke vulgate Latin? I don't mean later on once the dialects had evolved into Spanish or whatever, but during the Latin speaking period. Comparable to Classical Chinese, which was still the main written form of Chinese into like the 1800s but a completely distinct language that a regular Chinese speaker can't parse. Well to phrase it differently, when Classical Latin starts to get incomprehensible, the vulgar forms are evolving into the Romance languages. So it's a hen/egg question. Taking French as an example, by the 842 Oaths of Strasbourg we're far into a language distinct from Classical Latin and unintelligible with it, but was the language of Northern France still "Latin" in say the 600s?
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Apr 5, 2022 21:29
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How much was vulgar Latin used as a written language? I would've thought that especially as literacy was declining in Europe, anyone who was significantly literate and spoke a kind of latin would just be taught in how to read the formal stuff. I imagine the points where most formerly latin territory was ruled by groups that primarily spoke languages other than latin as a first language would speed up the degradation, but they would probably be more likely to write in their own languages rather than try to transliterate what they could of vulgar latin. SlothfulCobra fucked around with this message at 22:34 on Apr 5, 2022 |
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Apr 5, 2022 22:31
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SlothfulCobra posted:How much was vulgar Latin used as a written language? Not at all, but non-literate people would still be exposed to classical Latin through law, religious services, literary performances etc
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Apr 5, 2022 22:52
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Plays and comedies were exceedingly popular yeah.
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Apr 5, 2022 23:36
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Grand Fromage posted:I got a Q for the linguistics nerds: was there a point (if it's knowable at all) where the standardized, written Latin was indecipherable to someone who spoke vulgate Latin? I don't mean later on once the dialects had evolved into Spanish or whatever, but during the Latin speaking period. Comparable to Classical Chinese, which was still the main written form of Chinese into like the 1800s but a completely distinct language that a regular Chinese speaker can't parse. SlothfulCobra posted:How much was vulgar Latin used as a written language? I would've thought that especially as literacy was declining in Europe, anyone who was significantly literate and spoke a kind of latin would just be taught in how to read the formal stuff. “Vulgar Latin” is definitionally what isn’t the “written language”. It’s a modern term that somewhat approximates, but also somewhat obfuscates, a Latin name which makes the point quite obvious: “sermo vulgaris”, common speech. We find documentary evidence of this only in context where it deviates from the “standard” of literary Latin, because that is the only context in which the term has meaning. There was no standardized language of “sermo vulgaris” to write and that was the whole point. It was literally just how people talked (not necessarily just poor people either), however that happened to differ from the “proper” Latin of rhetoricians and grammarians at any given time and place. Even Mr Proper Speech himself, Cicero, wrote a fair bit about the importance of not getting too far from common parlance in oratory, so that you come out with something so poetic and so perfectly artistic and grammatical that nobody can actually understand what you mean. Good article about this idea of Vulgar Latin and how it developed, vs the ideas that actual Romans had about the vulgar forms of their language
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Apr 6, 2022 00:44
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Goliath was a Greek, his real name was probably a cognate of Kallides.
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Apr 6, 2022 11:27
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Apr 6, 2022 11:33
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April 1 eh?
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Apr 6, 2022 13:37
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