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ilmucche posted:Since helmets chat is already going on, how did they manage the tradeoff between blind spots and protection that helmets/visors would have? I don't know if there's an explicit monograph on this that's generally accepted as 'the good one' but it's something that people have absolutely put a ton of thought into and varies over time. Worth noting that peripheral vision was probably less of a concern than hearing; ancient soldiers were not exactly trying to spot snipers or machine gun nests, but they DID have to listen for orders and keep marching pace with drums and such even in combat. Cavalry helmets its worth noting were actually typically more open than infantry, because staying in formation while riding on horseback is more visual and because a very important role for cavalry is recon. My understanding is that you always bring a helmet if you can afford it, and the more of a 'pure' heavy infantry you're talking about the heavier-duty the helmet.
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Oct 14, 2022 22:37
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Helmets are always a matter of tradeoffs - more protection = more weight, impaired hearing, impaired visions and less stamina in a fight due to the weight and being in a hot, enclosed space. Helmet design will take into account the possible threats the wearer will face while bearing in mind the tradeoffs. A hoplite in a phalanx will have a heavy helmet with a tough faceplate with few gaps, since their biggest threat is getting stabbed in the face with a spear, and they will generally be fighting bunched up in a tight formation so situational awareness is less important. Contrast a late Republic/early Imperial Roman soldier who has a totally open faced helmet but with ear/cheek flaps, which makes sense as they both have a large shield to protect themselves (though so does the hoplite, though used differently) and are expected to fight and maneuver in a more dynamic fashion. It can't be stressed enough how much having your face covered in combat *sucks*. As such the general trend though history is for open faced helmets, since the loss of situational awareness and general suckiness of a closed face helmet was not considered worth the trade-off. In periods where military technology was such that full face helmets were extremely valuable, such as the Hundred Years War, helmets that covered the face were usually visored or able to worn in such a way that the face went uncovered so that you could spend the majority of the time uncovered then "button up" as needed. Even then, a lot of people just didn't bother, as we can see art where people are wearing helmets such as sallets which often have visors, but in several cases have been removed. It should be stressed that it's clear that the question of helmet design and protection vs comfort was an ongoing debate through all the periods helmets were in use, especially in the medieval period where metallurgy meant that you had a lot of options with what you could do with armour.
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Oct 14, 2022 23:32
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Cool, yeah i was wondering how those tradeoffs were handled. for something like gladiatorial fights would they have gone with more visor and face covering then? they'd be staring at 1 opponent so it'd be easier to track? I'm thinking of the like samnite helmet that you see in movies and stuff
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Oct 15, 2022 03:04
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Gladiatorial gear had very different reasoning behind it than anything made for the battlefield. The Secutor's helmet, for example, was purposefully very difficult to see out of with only its two little eye-holes, helping to make the traditional match between the Secutor and Retiarius more even. I don't think any physical examples survive, but written sources write about Gladiatorial helmets that have no vision at all, for "comedy" matches between two blind opponents.
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Oct 15, 2022 09:43
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Gladiator helmets still matched their opponents - secutor helmets had very narrow vision slits as they were paired against the retarius, who had a trident, so face protection was valuable. However as stated there was still a theatrical element so practicality was not the only concern. It's theorised that a lot of the gladiator gear was based on the opponents Rome faced anyway. A lot of stuff to do with gladiators is speculative anyway as there is not a lot of direct commentary on what the deal with gladiators was, most of what we know is reconstructed piecemeal from mosaics and passing comments in other texts.
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Oct 15, 2022 11:55
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MikeCrotch posted:Gladiator helmets still matched their opponents - secutor helmets had very narrow vision slits as they were paired against the retarius, who had a trident, so face protection was valuable. However as stated there was still a theatrical element so practicality was not the only concern. Is it one of those things where everyone knew what it was about, so nobody bothered to write a detailed explanation?
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Oct 15, 2022 14:19
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We do know people loved the fisherman vs fish gimmick match.
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Oct 15, 2022 17:49
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Tunicate posted:We do know people loved the fisherman vs fish gimmick match. What a hook!
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Oct 15, 2022 18:02
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Did they ever make any progress deciphering the indus valley script?
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Oct 15, 2022 23:49
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IIRC some of the roman gladiatorial gear was just the poo poo they looted from their opponents in battle, and some of the combatants themselves were, too.
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Oct 15, 2022 23:54
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Gladiatorial combat was basically just pro wrestling except slightly more lethal.
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Oct 16, 2022 00:01
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Here he is... who could it be? IT'S ME, COMMODUS  IT WAS ME ALL ALONG, COMMODUSaw son of a bitch
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Oct 16, 2022 00:19
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Lawman 0 posted:Did they ever make any progress deciphering the indus valley script? Not really. There's been a lot of computational work on that subject in the last 15 years, but it hasn't managed to decipher the script, or even answer some of the basic questions, like what language the script is recording (or if it is recording a language at all). One of the main problems is that the texts are so short. The average length is 5 symbols, and the very longest is 37 symbols. In addition, there are over 400 (the exact number is disputed) different symbols, and only around 4000 total texts. Many of those "texts" are seals that contain only one or two symbols as well, which are of limited use for decipherment since they provide no context to the symbols. That doesn't leave a lot to work with, and no amount of complicated computational linguistics methods have been able to get around these issues. The short length of texts and the large number of unique symbols means many different readings are possible, and its hard to disprove vague ideas. For example, if someone argues that a certain symbol means "cow," and another means "goat" there are no lengthy texts to plug that idea into to see if it makes sense. Most other ancient languages have been deciphered by a process of educated guesses that are then tested against texts to see if the idea works when applied in practice, but that process is impossible with Indus Valley texts, since texts aren't long enough for it to be clear whether a hypothesis for a symbol's reading makes sense or not. Over a hundred different people have made attempts at deciphering the script, but it's very hard to test whether their readings are correct or not. Probably not, since they couldn't meaningful test their ideas in the process of working out a decipherment. The problem may be unsolvable without future discoveries of longer texts (if those ever existed, which they may not have), or a bilingual inscription like the Rosetta Stone (which is theoretically possible, since the Indus valley had regular trade links with Mesopotamia and Elam).
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Oct 16, 2022 04:48
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At least there were still ongoing excavations in China and India, last time I checked. So finding more texts is at least a distinct possibility.
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Oct 16, 2022 09:19
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Trouble is most of the sites lie on or near the India-Pakistan border, which is not a terribly conducive place to conduct archaeology due to political tensions.
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Oct 16, 2022 15:31
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Are there any recorded instances of old soldiers saying that the new helmets are for pussies, and real men fight with their faces exposed? It's a big thing in every sport, with hockey goalies and baseball batters showing a surprising amount of resistance to wearing helmets.
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Oct 16, 2022 23:50
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The ones who did likely died much faster and wouldn't be represented as much compared to sports where people aren't intentionally trying to murder each other on purpose.
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Oct 18, 2022 01:17
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They sometimes do a little
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Oct 18, 2022 01:21
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Chamale posted:Are there any recorded instances of old soldiers saying that the new helmets are for pussies, and real men fight with their faces exposed? It's a big thing in every sport, with hockey goalies and baseball batters showing a surprising amount of resistance to wearing helmets. I mean, hitting a baseball is already famously one of the hardest things to do in sports, I can see people not wanting to give up even the smallest of advantages in being able to see the ball to hit it. Also the pitcher generally isn't throwing at your head, which helps as far as not getting hit in the face.
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Oct 18, 2022 01:32
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Chamale posted:Are there any recorded instances of old soldiers saying that the new helmets are for pussies, and real men fight with their faces exposed? It's a big thing in every sport, with hockey goalies and baseball batters showing a surprising amount of resistance to wearing helmets. In ancient and Roman periods I'm not sure - a helmet was usually the first piece of armour someone would get since its relatively cheap. Also we just don't have a lot of "ground level" texts of how things worked in that period to the level of people whining about specific bits of armour. However we do have one very big example of helmets being reintroduced to an army en masse, which is WWI. And in that war there were certainly a whole bunch of people complaining about the "pussification" of soldiers by giving them helmets instead of hats, so I can certainly imagine if there were any major changes to equipment for whatever reason there would be a bunch of of people both high up and on the ground complaining about it.
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Oct 18, 2022 10:25
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It's a struggle to get infantry to put their helmets on at all, good luck trying to make them wear closed ones.
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Oct 18, 2022 14:09
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Maybe if they install an air conditioner. Imagine wearing a full-face iron can in Mediterranean summer. Roman heavy cavalry were called “clibanarii” by analogy to “clibanus”, a furnace. (Probably actually a folk etymology attached to a Persian loan word, but still)
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Oct 18, 2022 14:18
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MikeCrotch posted:
I'm guessing that the ones making those complaints did not fight in the front lines?
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Oct 18, 2022 17:21
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Alhazred posted:I'm guessing that the ones making those complaints did not fight in the front lines? In the Soviet army in WWII wearing a helmet was considered cowardly by frontoviks (front line troops). Real soldiers wore a ushanka or a pilotka, like so: 
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Oct 18, 2022 17:42
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Lol the "put em in dresses" NFL CTE youtube commentators but for massive head wounds caused by shrapnel. Rub some dirt on it!
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Oct 18, 2022 18:10
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zoux posted:Lol the "put em in dresses" NFL CTE youtube commentators but for massive head wounds caused by shrapnel. Rub some dirt on it! It's been reported that the lieutenant in that photo was killed a few minutes after it was taken.
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Oct 18, 2022 18:13
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I imagine there's gotta be a pretty dramatic shift in perception around helmets with the switch over to guns, right? A solid hit from a bullet anywhere on your body has a pretty good chance of seriously loving your poo poo up even if it doesn't outright kill you, so your best hope when being shot at is that you just won't get hit. But if you're standing in a line fighting with spears or swords or whatever, you WILL get hit, repeatedly, and so you're looking to limit the damage by strapping stuff to your more important bits. In a hand-to-hand context that helmet is much more likely to be vitally important than in a gunfight.
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Oct 18, 2022 18:17
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Why did we stop using the brodie helmet?
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Oct 18, 2022 18:19
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Eldoop posted:I imagine there's gotta be a pretty dramatic shift in perception around helmets with the switch over to guns, right? A solid hit from a bullet anywhere on your body has a pretty good chance of seriously loving your poo poo up even if it doesn't outright kill you, so your best hope when being shot at is that you just won't get hit. But if you're standing in a line fighting with spears or swords or whatever, you WILL get hit, repeatedly, and so you're looking to limit the damage by strapping stuff to your more important bits. In a hand-to-hand context that helmet is much more likely to be vitally important than in a gunfight. No. There's a lot more nastiness on a modern battlefield than just bullets. Specifically small chunks of shrapnel thrown around by artillery (and, to a lesser extent, grenades). In modern wars these cause the majority of casualties, not bullets. Modern steel helmets are designed to protect against this sort of thing. They won't stop a direct hit from an artillery shell, obviously, but they can make the difference between a stray piece of shrapnel putting a hole in your skull or hitting your helmet and giving you a really bad headache. This became especially clear in WWI, when soldiers would take cover in trenches. The trench covered most of their body, but they suffered horribly from head wounds from shrapnel. This eventually led to the introduction of modern steel helmets. Edit: Hieronymous Alloy posted:Why did we stop using the brodie helmet? Because it doesn't protect your neck or the sides of your head. It's decent protection for shrapnel from above, like a soldier in a trench would be exposed to, but it isn't as good in other situations. Cessna fucked around with this message at 18:44 on Oct 18, 2022 |
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Oct 18, 2022 18:40
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with the switchover to guns yes helmets were temporarily obsoleted, or at least perceived to be. as the modern battlefield evolves out of the early modern one then you do start having a lot more shrapnel flying around and the helmet comes back (eventually, probably one or two wars later than it should have)
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Oct 18, 2022 18:57
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Same thing with body armor as well.
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Oct 18, 2022 18:59
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Eldoop posted:I imagine there's gotta be a pretty dramatic shift in perception around helmets with the switch over to guns, right? A solid hit from a bullet anywhere on your body has a pretty good chance of seriously loving your poo poo up even if it doesn't outright kill you, so your best hope when being shot at is that you just won't get hit. But if you're standing in a line fighting with spears or swords or whatever, you WILL get hit, repeatedly, and so you're looking to limit the damage by strapping stuff to your more important bits. In a hand-to-hand context that helmet is much more likely to be vitally important than in a gunfight. Right. It's a lot easier to armor effectively against a weapon propelled by someone's arm muscles instead of by gunpowder, and turn a "this would have crippled/killed you" hit into something that just leaves a bruise. On the battlefield of, say, the mid to late 1800s, firearms are sufficiently advanced and powerful that basically no helmet anyone could reasonably wear is going to provide meaningful protection, and explosive artillery and shrapnel aren't yet a sufficiently developed and recognized threat. So that's the era where helmets are essentially abandoned.
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Oct 18, 2022 19:30
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That all makes sense, it explains why we had such a golden age of military hats in the 19th century. Truly the forgotten victim of WWI
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Oct 18, 2022 21:36
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I remember reading in 1915 some French staff officers found that a LOT of people were getting fatal wounds in the head and they were standing in trenches covered in every direction except up and they put two and two together.
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Oct 18, 2022 22:26
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it was a very useful era for learning about what various regions of the brain did, because there were so many people walking around who had tiny regions of their brains already removed
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Oct 19, 2022 00:32
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Quick question for Iliad-boos: For how long does Achilleus drag Hectors body around behind his chariot? I'm re-reading The Firebrand, and it already seems comical that he does it for 24 hours.
Tias fucked around with this message at 08:42 on Oct 19, 2022 |
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Oct 19, 2022 05:47
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Three days? I haven't read it in a decade
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Oct 19, 2022 06:04
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It’s 12 days before Hector’s body is ransomed. Achilles isn’t driving in circles for all that time though. He gets up at dawn to drag the body round the tomb a couple times and then goes back to his tent for the rest of the day.
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Oct 19, 2022 12:08
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What an rear end in a top hat
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Oct 19, 2022 14:34
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Brawnfire posted:What an rear end in a top hat He’s literally the worst in the book. He’s a whiny petulant rear end in a top hat stomping on mortals worrying about his image. Hektor is defending his family and country and somehow his name gets warped through history to a negative connotation?
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Oct 19, 2022 15:40
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