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FishFood posted:They also highlight more hierarchical societies that are not urban or agricultural: the way people organize themselves is not determined by whether or not they have large, urban societies or small, nomadic or semi-nomadic ones, it's determined by a combination of environmental factors and the active choices of people themselves. And this is of course before you get into subsidiary cultures that people can be in. One might be a resident of a nation, a citizen of a town, and a member of a craft guild, as well as a member of your local church and perhaps in a festival group as well. Each of these groups might be more or less egalitarian.
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Jul 10, 2023 19:39
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I think there was a Coptic group that selected leadership by drawing of lots by the whole community.
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Jul 11, 2023 01:04
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Cyrano4747 posted:I mean, I'll grant you that flat out ignoring sexuality and gender is a pretty serious problem, and I'm not going to downplay or mitigate that in the slightest, but saying that the other is a silly critique isn't correct either. So the thing is that I consider it a not super substantial criticism because ultimately its less "Graeber is an ancient aliens guy" and more "Graeber has, across all his works, a pretty irritating level of hyperbole." Its more a writing tic of his that has grated on me across all his works, though sometimes people fail to recognize it as a literary device and stylistic choice. Obviously people use hyperbole all the time and even if I personally find the extent to which the gravy boi kept doing it, I'm not willing to throw out everything a person says because they engage in a little hyperbole, its a pretty common literary device, for example: Cyrano4747 posted:Frankly I kind of reject the notion that you can have a situation with a group of the animal Homo sapiens sapiens where hierarchies are totally absent. They can be more or less pronounced, but I can't think of a single example of a human society - be it large or small - that has been truly egalitarian to the point that every individual is considered to be the absolute equal of all others. Even something as simple as acknowledging that one person has a specific skill or tallent - say, they can weave baskets better than the other people in the group - is going to confer a degree of social prestige that can then be leveraged within the group.
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Jul 11, 2023 01:30
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The Pompeian pizza argument is now on Youtube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eEgSGkp8nMA
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Jul 11, 2023 18:28
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Offler posted:The Pompeian pizza argument is now on Youtube. Lol at the motto on the Great Seal coming from an erotic recipe for pesto.
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Jul 11, 2023 19:41
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Offler posted:The Pompeian pizza argument is now on Youtube. Pomegranate! The red thing I was wondering about was a pomegranate!
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Jul 11, 2023 20:30
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Very unevenly distributed. My piece only got six seeds! I'm truly stuck in hell.
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Jul 11, 2023 21:07
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The last instruction in the recipe is "put on whatever toppings you think you see in the fresco" so it's not authoritatively pomegranate. Looks nice though, would eat pomegranate on flatbread
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Jul 11, 2023 21:20
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Tineus Rubrenus approaching the innkeep "Is there a rule about your date eating all of the fully loaded pomegranate slices?"
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Jul 11, 2023 21:26
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"More things about society than you realized are arbitrary" and "the processes that brought about our present situation are not monotonic" are pretty appealing ideas, even if they are presented through too-convenient pop history.
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Jul 11, 2023 23:01
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a fatguy baldspot posted:Is there anywhere to read about the Chinese search for horses? Sounds fascinating. Fiction, but Guy Gavriel Kay’s Under Heaven (or wait maybe River of Stars) is a fictional story about a Chinese official who ends up with a bunch of valuable horses right before An Roshan’s rebellion. Kay’s good with historical accuracy, my old Chinese history professor was actually his consultant.
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Jul 12, 2023 18:25
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Bongo Bill posted:"More things about society than you realized are arbitrary" and "the processes that brought about our present situation are not monotonic" are pretty appealing ideas, even if they are presented through too-convenient pop history.
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Jul 12, 2023 18:27
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There's something I've been curious about, with regards to the waning days of the Western Roman Empire. I'm aware that it wasn't so much of an instant collapse as it was a gradual decline, but what became of the remaining military as the state fell apart? Did any of the legions migrate to the East, or did they just disband and get lost to history? Or, did they just integrate into the military of the Gothic kingdoms?
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Jul 12, 2023 20:56
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By the end of the western empire most legions* were more or less in the same place permanently and are recruiting from local populations. The days of legions being recruited from one location and deployed to another were long over. I'd have to do a little more reading to give you a longer answer but, generally speaking, most of these soldiers would just end up becoming the army of whoever the new local warlord was. He was probably already their commander, or a leader of their people, when they were still "Roman" anyway. *If there was a legion in an area at all. Rome was increasingly relying on the foederati to defend the empire. Edit: I should have also clarified, by the tail end of the empire, the legion as you are probably imagining it does not really exist anymore. It was not uncommon for armies or units to still be called a legion, but in terms of strength they numbered in the hundreds, or perhaps a thousand, rather than the 5,000-6,000 man unit that existed in the republic or empire at it's prime. Jamwad Hilder fucked around with this message at 22:20 on Jul 12, 2023 |
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Jul 12, 2023 21:35
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In the dying days of the Empire there was also a whole thing about a lot of Rome's armies not being actual "Roman Legions" but instead the Romans paying for the services of Franks, Goths, and whatnot, who would eventually just take over once proper imperial-roman control faltered. Or when whoever claimed to be Emperor stopped returning phone calls. There was some blurriness over how much they nominally held some still-existing empero as some kind of authority, but after those groups got taken over by foreign invaders like Arabs and Lombards, the chain of custody fully was gone. I guess it's also worth noting that "post-Roman" Europe went through a lot of mass-migrations of populations sorting themselves out and funding new ways to live as the old cities crumbled, which might've been facilitated a bit by the fact that all that territory was full of Roman roads and had most of the geography documented. Areas outside of Roman control were still connected and accessible for people who wanted to travel, even though travel would've been less safe or certain compared to when it was all united.
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Jul 12, 2023 23:26
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SlothfulCobra posted:In the dying days of the Empire there was also a whole thing about a lot of Rome's armies not being actual "Roman Legions" but instead the Romans paying for the services of Franks, Goths, and whatnot, who would eventually just take over once proper imperial-roman control faltered. Or when whoever claimed to be Emperor stopped returning phone calls. There was some blurriness over how much they nominally held some still-existing empero as some kind of authority, but after those groups got taken over by foreign invaders like Arabs and Lombards, the chain of custody fully was gone. To some extent this was a continuous element rather than a break. Rome went through many iterations of "we want to supplement our legions with things that are not quite legions but are pretty close." They even used the same term, foederati, as was used for pre-social war second class soldiers. That tradition and intellectual continuity is part of what was necessary for the social systems not just to persist but also to change.
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Jul 12, 2023 23:51
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Are there any documented cases of a formerly "Roman" military grouping (like a legion), or some sort of high-ranking figure (like a general), continuing life as part of one of the new kingdoms? I suppose the closest example I can think of is Syagrius, who inherited a weird successor state, but are there other examples?
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Jul 13, 2023 00:10
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It's also worth mentioning that the armies of the end of the Western empire are often categorized as being "barbarian mercenaries" but the truth is they were well equipped, disciplined, and an effective fighting force, even if they were a shadow of what the Roman army used to look like. They were the primary defense for the empire for over a century after all.
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Jul 13, 2023 00:12
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A lot of the soldiers also weren’t legions anymore but border guards who lived in fort/towns on the border and I guess stayed there.
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Jul 13, 2023 01:27
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What do we know about Cleopatra's relationship with the indigenous Egyptian population? Compared to her dynastic predecessors and other successor states, did she make any attempt to even slightly loosen the Greek racial hierarchy? I heard mention that things got at least slightly loosened towards the late Ptolemaic age where at least rich non-Greeks could ascend to a certain degree. Was the extent of it just her learning Egyptian and posing herself as a relatively more Egyptian-friendly ruler? Were her entreaties to the native population mostly just surface level gestures and attempts to wield them as a tool in her dynastic battles?
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Jul 13, 2023 01:31
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Punkin Spunkin posted:What do we know about Cleopatra's relationship with the indigenous Egyptian population? Compared to her dynastic predecessors and other successor states, did she make any attempt to even slightly loosen the Greek racial hierarchy? I heard mention that things got at least slightly loosened towards the late Ptolemaic age where at least rich non-Greeks could ascend to a certain degree. Was the extent of it just her learning Egyptian and posing herself as a relatively more Egyptian-friendly ruler? Were her entreaties to the native population mostly just surface level gestures and attempts to wield them as a tool in her dynastic battles? acoup just did an article on a broader question which includes that: https://acoup.blog/2023/05/26/collections-on-the-reign-of-cleopatra/ The short answer is that the view that she was more friendly with the natives is mostly illusory. She learned the language, but she also learned a bazillion other languages, so that doesn't really demonstrate a specific attachment to Egypt. She makes donations to Egyptian temples and portrays herself in Egyptian clothing in some art, but those were both things other Ptolemies did. If her goal was to wield the natives in dynastic battles, it failed utterly: she got herself into a civil war which she was losing so badly that even Caesar said "okay let's just hole up and wait for reinforcements"
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Jul 13, 2023 01:49
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CrypticFox posted:A similar case is the graves of Saudi royalty. Saudi royals are buried in plain, unmarked graves, wrapped in an unmarked cloth shroud, following Wahabist practice also used by many other Saudis who are not royalty. This is the grave of King Abdullah, who died in 2015: The Saudis all decided that everyone’s graves should look like that so destroyed the historical import graveyards of Mecca.
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Jul 13, 2023 02:48
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cheetah7071 posted:but she also she got herself into a civil war which she was losing so badly that even Caesar said "okay let's just hole up and wait for reinforcements" He was probably just saying that as an excuse to stay at her house overnight.
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Jul 13, 2023 05:54
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God willing their whole dynasty will look like that in a few decades
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Jul 13, 2023 08:42
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Tulip posted:if you read anything about xiongnu-han relations, 90% of the sources are existing in that state of anxiety all the time. the guys who just loving hate the xiongnu come across as refreshingly clear in their proto-racism Feels similar to how the Vikings supposedly would be trading or raiding depending on what seemed more profitable at the time. The attitude probably goes both ways. I just got a big pretty book on ancient Egyptian history, a DK one with a blue cover, finding the text mostly supplementary to the amazing photos. Learned among other things that what we think of as the iconic Egyptian art style seems to have been rather specifically a preferred style for tombs and associated murals and statuary, a lot of the smaller statues, miniatures and other styles of art are relatively varied. It seems like there was a particular house style- the very rigid but carefully proportionate and representative look, and there's even been found the grids that the artists used to get it just right. It also probably helps to scale it up for the big stuff. Probably the biggest standout exception I've seen so far is a series of drawings of wrestling, presented in a sequential style like a comic strip. Makes me wonder how much that signature style didn't necessarily preclude other styles, the royals and nobles just preferred a particular look for their tombs?
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Jul 13, 2023 09:41
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On the topic of Egypt, did they have philosophers or other big thinkers similar to what you would have seen in Greece? Did any of their writings survive?
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Jul 13, 2023 17:01
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What time period ?? That’s like a 5000 year span
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Jul 13, 2023 18:35
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Does Akhenaten count?
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Jul 13, 2023 18:38
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Maimonides is probably the most famous Egyptian philosopher in the west
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Jul 13, 2023 18:41
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The library of Alexandria was probably one of the most important centers for big brains for hundreds of years
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Jul 13, 2023 18:45
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euphronius posted:The library of Alexandria was probably one of the most important centers for big brains for hundreds of years Built by Greeks though, yeah?
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Jul 13, 2023 18:46
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Judgy Fucker posted:Built by Greeks though, yeah? It’s literally in Egypt ? Here is a big brain Egyptian https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eratosthenes
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Jul 13, 2023 18:47
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That's a fair point, I had intended what would be popularly called Ancient Egypt, but that itself is a very long timespan. I suppose the New Kingdom would be what I was thinking of.
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Jul 13, 2023 18:47
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euphronius posted:It’s literally in Egypt ? Well yeah, I inferred that poster was asking more about philosophers from the (more-) indigenous population and culture of Egypt.
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Jul 13, 2023 18:49
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If you are going new kingdom m, I agree with what someone said above : Akhenaten One of the first monotheists which turned out to be a pretty important idea.
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Jul 13, 2023 18:51
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it didn't go over well though.
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Jul 13, 2023 18:52
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In a certain sense, what’s the difference between a philosopher and a priest? If your worldview is centered around your religion as opposed to natural science, your philosophers will be focusing their efforts on that. Maybe it makes it less applicable to other cultures, but aren’t they fundamentally similar?
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Jul 13, 2023 18:53
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The words and roles are very broad and you are going to get caught up if you try and find essential meanings for them
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Jul 13, 2023 18:55
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Koramei posted:In a certain sense, what’s the difference between a philosopher and a priest? Depends on the third guy who walks into a bar. For this thread we could say... Julius Caesar
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Jul 13, 2023 22:43
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Do we know much about the training regimens of ancient organized militaries, like what you would have found in Rome? Were there exercises that they did daily, and did they have equivalents of things like firing practice?
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Jul 15, 2023 22:48
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