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Winter is pretty brutal in Northern China IIRC
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Mar 6, 2023 07:02
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| # ? Jun 10, 2024 18:12 |
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Yeah you get storms from the steppe that are practically sandstorms and it's cold as hell. Interesting point about Buddhism being the war religion, can you recommend some article on that? It kind of makes sense but I haven't really thought about it that way.
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Mar 6, 2023 07:50
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pidan posted:Yeah you get storms from the steppe that are practically sandstorms and it's cold as hell. God, I read that so long ago. I'm...think I first read that in Kenneth Chen's Chinese Transformation of Buddhism? The fundamental logic is mostly comparative: in Confucianism, immortality is achieved through your remains being on your family's land and the conintued veneration by your descendants, and Taoist immortality is "you literally are immortal," both of which are very uncomforting if you die on the campaign trail. It's fairly easy to get caught up in the issue that Buddhist canon has some very clear proscriptions against violence, but its important to remember that so do Judaism and Christianity, and that hasn't really stopped either of those from having full-on militant religious orders and crusades and so on. My own general perspective is that religions that survive for long periods of time have to conform their teachings to the interests of the politically powerful. Politically powerful people don't like being told that killing their neighbors to seize their land is not merely abstractly vaguely wrong, but very explicitly horrendously wrong, so if you want your religion or philosophy to thrive, you...figure something out. Feel like I should take a moment to clarify how I'm using "northern China" here. Some of the stuff that we think of today as northern China, notably Inner Mongolia and the three Manchurian provinces, would in a lot of Chinese history simply be "not China." I'm referring to basically the Yellow River Valley and North China Plain, with the dividing line between north n south being the Qinling-Huaihe line. Which can still get pretty bad winters! But Beijing is more the northern limit of the area I'm talking about than its center.
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Mar 6, 2023 10:15
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Just to nitpick, in practice a Taoist who achieves immortality becomes an ethereal spirit. This makes the decision of dozens of emperors to die of mercury and vermillion poisoning make a little bit more sense. I've read that these wraiths can be seen in landscape paintings enjoying an eternity of contemplating nature but I've never been able to pick one out.
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Mar 6, 2023 13:42
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War and Pieces posted:Just to nitpick, in practice a Taoist who achieves immortality becomes an ethereal spirit. This makes the decision of dozens of emperors to die of mercury and vermillion poisoning make a little bit more sense. I've read that these wraiths can be seen in landscape paintings enjoying an eternity of contemplating nature but I've never been able to pick one out. Good nitpick.
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Mar 6, 2023 20:46
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Tulip posted:It's fairly easy to get caught up in the issue that Buddhist canon has some very clear proscriptions against violence, but its important to remember that so do Judaism and Christianity, and that hasn't really stopped either of those from having full-on militant religious orders and crusades and so on. My own general perspective is that religions that survive for long periods of time have to conform their teachings to the interests of the politically powerful. Politically powerful people don't like being told that killing their neighbors to seize their land is not merely abstractly vaguely wrong, but very explicitly horrendously wrong, so if you want your religion or philosophy to thrive, you...figure something out. Theravada buddhists are literally some of the most hardcore anti communists out there, although that doesn't really have much to do with premodern history. Lol
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Mar 6, 2023 20:53
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If you see the buddah on the road, force him to work in your sweatshop.
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Mar 7, 2023 04:50
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Highly relevant to the discussion of the historicity of the Greek Phalanx https://youtu.be/inbbdH3qdpQ
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Mar 8, 2023 18:22
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https://twitter.com/FromKulak/status/1633651085847019520
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Mar 9, 2023 06:45
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I'm not going to read that; there is a loving mountain of evidence that (Knights in particular) wore bright heraldry to identify each other in battle.
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Mar 9, 2023 07:09
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Doesn't that person have a history of scalding hot history takes?
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Mar 9, 2023 07:18
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Slavvy posted:Doesn't that person have a history of scalding hot history takes? who, the person in the rhodesian shirt that someguy keeps posting??
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Mar 9, 2023 07:19
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I read a piece with that thesis a few weeks ago, not sure if it was the same one. Their argument was: medieval clothes would have bright colours when they were new, but they would lose colour very quickly when people traveled and were exposed to the elements. And since clothes were expensive, people would wear them as long as they could. Therefore, showing people in bright colours is not authentic, unless the clothes were supposed to be new. For example, an army on the march or a guy adventuring in a swamp should have clothes that had most of the dye stripped. It makes some sense on the face of it. I figure the truth is somewhere in the middle. If you can only buy new clothes once every few years, cloth makers will be expecting that and will dye things in such a way that they don't instantly bleach out at the first sign of water or sunlight. On the other hand, there's only so much you can do to prevent that. Either way I think the main goal of movie costumes isn't to look authentic but to look aesthetic. Films that want to look like medieval imagery still go for brightly colored clothing (e.g. The Green Knight) and films that want to look generic Hollywood cool will go for muted tones and leather coats, e.g. that film about Timothée Chalamet as Henry V. Wouldn't the world be a boring place if we were all alike. E: it should be noted that it wasn't really possible (for Europeans??) to dye cloth black until the renaissance or so, at which point people went fairly nuts with it and black has stayed fashionable ever since. pidan has issued a correction as of 07:31 on Mar 9, 2023 |
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Mar 9, 2023 07:29
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edit never mind your edit preemptively answered my question
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Mar 9, 2023 07:32
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Regular soldiers’ clothing would certainly be worn and faded to at least some degree, and made with less expensive dyes, but you bet your rear end a knight is travelling around with several changes of clothes so he can look as fancy as possible when arrayed for battle. If we’re talking 13th to 14th century, you’d even make sure your horse had a fresh caparison emblazoned with your heraldry.
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Mar 9, 2023 09:32
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You can just redye clothing if you wanted to freshen it up. Unlike weaving a new piece of fabric, it's simple enough that any peasant could do it. There were economical dyes like woad or madder were commercially produced/traded because they were actually colourfast. But the real cheap dyes were just made in people's backyards from local nuts or roots or rusty filings and whatever else could add colour for a short time. Most regular people only needed to be colourful for special occasions so it was fine.
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Mar 9, 2023 10:38
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Look up the Bocksten Man, you'll see medieval people look like people in the LotR movies.
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Mar 9, 2023 10:48
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Agean90 posted:my back starts to hurt just taking too long to do the dishes I think people itt massively underestimating how much it would suck to do farming where the highest technology you have is a plow and an ox you need to pay someone to use. dude can you imagine just having some clay dishes and trying to get them clean with soda ash or whatever the gently caress you probably don't even have enough of + don't know enough to care to wash it that good
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Mar 9, 2023 11:01
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Grevling posted:Look up the Bocksten Man, you'll see medieval people look like people in the LotR movies. Short?
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Mar 9, 2023 12:08
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mawarannahr posted:dude can you imagine just having some clay dishes and trying to get them clean with soda ash or whatever the gently caress you probably don't even have enough of + don't know enough to care to wash it that good scouring surfaces with sand or whatever other abrasive in water works well with or without soap. soap without scouring is the real pain in the rear end and i'm not sure if that was ever much of a thing.
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Mar 9, 2023 12:37
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pidan posted:E: it should be noted that it wasn't really possible (for Europeans??) to dye cloth black until the renaissance or so, at which point people went fairly nuts with it and black has stayed fashionable ever since. im fairly sure that at least the chinese knew how to make black dyes way back when
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Mar 9, 2023 13:03
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Weka posted:Short? Clothing was what I meant but that too.
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Mar 9, 2023 13:15
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pidan posted:Either way I think the main goal of movie costumes isn't to look authentic but to look aesthetic. Films that want to look like medieval imagery still go for brightly colored clothing (e.g. The Green Knight) and films that want to look generic Hollywood cool will go for muted tones and leather coats, e.g. that film about Timothée Chalamet as Henry V. Wouldn't the world be a boring place if we were all alike. They absolutely should have bust out the technicolor Britannia hereldry for the titular scene in The Last Duel  this is just sad
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Mar 9, 2023 13:39
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Grevling posted:Clothing was what I meant but that too. Yeah, preserved suits of armor are tiny by today’s standards. Not only built for thin dudes, but also pretty short ones, usually in the 165-175 cm range
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Mar 9, 2023 16:02
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mawarannahr posted:dude can you imagine just having some clay dishes and trying to get them clean with soda ash or whatever the gently caress you probably don't even have enough of + don't know enough to care to wash it that good https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ydoRAbpWfCU Don't have to imagine, here's a documentary where they test it and show you.
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Mar 9, 2023 18:52
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Take the plunge! Okay! posted:Yeah, preserved suits of armor are tiny by today’s standards. Not only built for thin dudes, but also pretty short ones, usually in the 165-175 cm range Is this "everyone was short" or like how you have to have a certain build to be a jockey? Slim Jim Pickens posted:You can just redye clothing if you wanted to freshen it up. Unlike weaving a new piece of fabric, it's simple enough that any peasant could do it. There were economical dyes like woad or madder were commercially produced/traded because they were actually colourfast. But the real cheap dyes were just made in people's backyards from local nuts or roots or rusty filings and whatever else could add colour for a short time. Most regular people only needed to be colourful for special occasions so it was fine. The sense I get is it's a lot like tie dye - it'll be real fresh at first, and then wear down. Then you dye over it and get cool patterns and rock and roll. There's a technique to getting the color to stick so you'd of course get a range of wear based on the cloth, the skill, etc. In some of the more entrenched hippie communities there's a natural dye fashion thing thats been happening as long as I've been aware. The difference is compared to modern dyes, which give you like this kinda spectrum:  vs this:  Still definitely a rainbow but there's something... earthy there. This company does madder and indigo too, so a range of fastness. Maybe this is splitting hairs but I never liked "technicolor" for the latter - there's definitely a bright variety but it feels very, smeared almost. mawarannahr posted:dude can you imagine just having some clay dishes and trying to get them clean with soda ash or whatever the gently caress you probably don't even have enough of + don't know enough to care to wash it that good Soda ash reminds me so much of like when you accidentally get dishwasher detergent in the sink, like it almost feels pre-lathered. idk I don't think it would be so bad as long as I could boil poo poo
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Mar 9, 2023 20:14
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Redmayne, cuckoo and golden order are all clearly visible there
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Mar 9, 2023 20:31
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JamesKPolk posted:Is this "everyone was short" or like how you have to have a certain build to be a jockey? People were short. Commoners around ten centimeters shorter than nobles. We have data for Britain for the past two thousand years and some eras were almost at twentieth century levels, notably the peak Roman era and the early Middle Ages. Probably due to warm climate and abundance of food. The late Middle Ages were dire. Health and nutrition are factors, but so is overpopulation, all three affecting the poor workers from the Industrial Revolution era negatively as well.
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Mar 9, 2023 20:49
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Take the plunge! Okay! posted:People were short. Commoners around ten centimeters shorter than nobles. We have data for Britain for the past two thousand years and some eras were almost at twentieth century levels, notably the peak Roman era and the early Middle Ages. Probably due to warm climate and abundance of food. The late Middle Ages were dire. Health and nutrition are factors, but so is overpopulation, all three affecting the poor workers from the Industrial Revolution era negatively as well. 
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Mar 9, 2023 20:52
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Terrible graph cause you can't tell which line is what
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Mar 9, 2023 20:55
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Slavvy posted:Terrible graph cause you can't tell which line is what height is the one that went up a lot lately
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Mar 9, 2023 20:58
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gently caress you for posting that without a legend
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Mar 9, 2023 21:00
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If you quoted what you could see of text in the legend you'd find the source. you dont have to be upset, although it is discourteous to do such a sloppy snip job of it  http://oro.open.ac.uk/53774/ has a link to the pdf manuscript
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Mar 9, 2023 21:03
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Slavvy posted:Doesn't that person have a history of scalding hot history takes? the last part of that article uses a jacket in the all quiet on the western front remake to ask whether wwi was the first holocaust, so yes
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Mar 9, 2023 21:03
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Cuttlefush posted:If you quoted what you could see of text in the legend you'd find the source. you dont have to be upset, although it is discourteous to do such a sloppy snip job of it they should of invested some of their additional wages into more CMs imo
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Mar 9, 2023 21:08
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loving economists
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Mar 9, 2023 21:10
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JamesKPolk posted:Is this "everyone was short" or like how you have to have a certain build to be a jockey? I've never heard of a knight being excluded for being too tall, and there's plenty of descriptions of tall knights, it was just that nutrition sucked for everyone, even if it sucked less for the ranks of society from which knights were drawn. Childhood nutrition in particular makes a huge difference in terms of overall size as an adult, and even if knights might never have actually experienced famine themselves, crop failures were a regular thing up until quite recently. It isn't a great comparison, but think of knights a little like modern athletes. Even knowing what we know now about nutrition, we still have plenty of professional athletes under 6' and 200 lbs. Go back a century and look at the size of pro athletes and it's a whole other world. You hear people who are 6' 200 lbs described as if they were goliaths. Like, just to put this into numbers, from the 20s to the 40s offensive linemen in football, who are among the largest athletes, were on average about 220 lbs. Today it's about 100 lbs heavier, but that was the largest athletes around coming in at 220 lbs when that is now closer to the size of a running back.
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Mar 9, 2023 21:10
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Slavvy posted:Doesn't that person have a history of scalding hot history takes? yes theyre some guy tt's latest twitter obsession
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Mar 9, 2023 21:14
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imo this and the modern history thread should be no tweet zones, minus maybe interesting ones
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Mar 9, 2023 21:14
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| # ? Jun 10, 2024 18:12 |
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JamesKPolk posted:
I think modern hippies are a problematic comparison, because they deliberately want earthy colors for the aesthetic. In medieval times, people mostly didn't care about that (with some exceptions), because they had no "chemicals" to compare them to. So they'd dye things multiple times one over the other to achieve brighter and different tones than you can get from any one plant dye. That said, I bet the average new cloth was still more "earthy" than our modern ones, but bright colors like pink and green wouldn't have been rare.
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Mar 9, 2023 21:45
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