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Don Gato posted:IIRC if the fruit is still growing on the tree, it's your neighbor's fruit but if it falls that makes it yours. Not sure about edge cases like shaking the branch to make the fruit fall. In that case I assume you just murder your neighbour after collecting all their fruit.
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Jul 5, 2019 00:57
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Antifa Poltergeist posted:I wonder how much of the Santorini eruption was the drive for the sea people, I know there is a significant difference between the time of the eruption and the time they show up in Egypt, but I'm wondering if it wasn't the kind of event that scared a bunch of people,and they spent the next centuries just getting further away from it. It wasn't. It happened centuries too soon.
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Jul 5, 2019 01:01
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Edgar Allen Ho posted:In that case I assume you just murder your neighbour after collecting all their fruit. Right idea, wrong order.
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Jul 5, 2019 19:22
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Edgar Allen Ho posted:hot take incoming: any society that considered "successor of Rome" to be a sign of legitimacy was/is a legitimate successor of Rome. The Roman Empire never died, it just franchised!
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Jul 6, 2019 02:13
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Epicurius posted:No. The Praetorian guard's job was to protest the Emperor and his family. I know this is a typo, but it still sums up what praetorian guard really did.
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Jul 6, 2019 11:03
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Re: bronze my understanding is that the Chinese made some bomb as gently caress bronze. Something something casting techniques. Don’t know if the metal was somehow superior but the production techniques of metal objects were apparently pretty great.
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Jul 6, 2019 16:51
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The Shang made poo poo tons of bronze ritual vessels in addition to weapons, chariots, and other more mundanely useful stuff. IIRC the kings developed a bronze racket (since you can’t just make it out of stuff anyone in the yellow river valley can find) and parceled it out to aristos as a patronage/status system.
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Jul 6, 2019 17:11
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Shang Bronze was great:  I also really like the bronze of the Sanxingdui culture, which neighbored the Shang. It seems they were not literate so unfortunately we know very little about their culture. There bronze tends to be more naturalistic than that of the Shang, and often featured animal motifs. Unfortunately its hard to find good pictures, but below is one of their masks.  One of the things that gets me about all this Chinese bronze is just the enormous quantity of it it that they were just burying in the ground. So many thousands of kilograms worth of metal placed in tombs, not only with kings but also with nobles. That first ritual vessel I posted was over 800 kg. Where did the Chinese even get their copper and tin anyway? They clearly had a pretty good supply considering they were able to spend it so lavishly.
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Jul 6, 2019 17:45
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Don’t know about the tin but copper is crazy common. All over Eastern Asia iirc.
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Jul 6, 2019 17:54
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Tin is quite rare in general. I don't know about the circumstances in China specifically but the bronze age trading network seems to have existed in large part as a way to get tin from Cornwall and Cyprus to somewhere useful
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Jul 6, 2019 18:05
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There's a lot of tin in what's now southwest China, Thailand, and Malaysia.
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Jul 6, 2019 18:24
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Squalid posted:One of the things that gets me about all this Chinese bronze is just the enormous quantity of it it that they were just burying in the ground. So many thousands of kilograms worth of metal placed in tombs, not only with kings but also with nobles. That first ritual vessel I posted was over 800 kg. Repeating skasion a bit here, but bronze had sacred properties to the ancient Chinese, it was valued more than gold, and was integral to burials and all sorts of rituals. Here's a vessel inscribed with text for revering an ancestor for instance:  This went well past the Shang, too, on for like another thousand years, even after iron started to become widespread. Basically everything we know about Western Zhou comes out of text lifted from bronze vessels from when a king of whomever had one made to confirm a ritual. Also the regions south of the Yangtze in general were super rich in copper and tin (also Manchuria/Korea); not so much up north. Bronze was basically limited to nobles up north (maybe by requirement? I forget but the Western Zhou took what the Shang had started and ran with it; there were all sorts of prohibitions on this sort of stuff dependent on rank) but in the south it shows up regularly even in the graves of commoners. skasion posted:The Shang made poo poo tons of bronze ritual vessels in addition to weapons, chariots, and other more mundanely useful stuff. Actually, not so much on this part. I mean I guess like drinking vessels and so on, but (most) tools would keep on being wood/bone/stone until iron became widespread. And for most peasants, for a fair while after that too.
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Jul 6, 2019 21:34
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I was thinking bronze “cowries” and “spades” and such, proto-money basically. I guess that might be more a Zhou thing though.
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Jul 6, 2019 21:44
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cheetah7071 posted:Tin is quite rare in general. I don't know about the circumstances in China specifically but the bronze age trading network seems to have existed in large part as a way to get tin from Cornwall and Cyprus to somewhere useful Cyprus was copper mostly, not tin. In fact I'm pretty sure the word Copper is related to the name of the island
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Jul 6, 2019 23:42
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Koramei posted:Actually, not so much on this part. I mean I guess like drinking vessels and so on, but (most) tools would keep on being wood/bone/stone until iron became widespread. And for most peasants, for a fair while after that too. I'm not super informed on the subject but I feel like this was probably the norm in most of the bronze age world, with bronze mostly being too rare for everybody to use I tried to find pictures to prove this but it was kind of hard so I gave up. I was browsing through the British Museum's online collection and it was a total mess, there weren't pictures of most objects and some of those they did have pictures for had no descriptions. Here's one Egyptian sickle, but hell maybe its pre-bronze age, idk.  The complete description: Group of Objects Wooden sickle with blade composed of flints(some now lost); Hieroglyphic inscription. also I found this sweet Shang bronze owl 
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Jul 7, 2019 04:59
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That owl has seen things.
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Jul 7, 2019 05:56
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Everybody gets that look after a few years in China.
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Jul 7, 2019 06:00
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Why bother with bronze if it is just for ornamental purposes, rather than just copper? I thought the entire point was better mechanical properties.
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Jul 7, 2019 06:10
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I would imagine religious/alchemical beliefs from the ability to create a new metal out of multiple ingredients play a role. Copper is also really soft. Same reason you use gold alloys instead of pure gold. A copper only thing is going to get bent up and broken real fast.
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Jul 7, 2019 06:15
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"I'm so rich that even my corpse can afford bronze" e: the question wasn't just about burial stuff on rereading but still
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Jul 7, 2019 06:39
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Grand Fromage posted:Everybody gets that look after a few years in China. lol
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Jul 7, 2019 07:02
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Scarodactyl posted:Why bother with bronze if it is just for ornamental purposes, rather than just copper? I thought the entire point was better mechanical properties. Oh I didn’t mean to give the impression it wasn’t used for useful things, it still was. Weapons, chariot fittings, armor were all made of bronze (for the nobility). It’s just things like tools that it wasn’t used for much. Also even aside from that, it’s not just ornamental—it’s spiritual. To them it had a very meaningful application.
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Jul 7, 2019 13:09
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cheetah7071 posted:"I'm so rich that even my corpse can afford bronze" https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=N1eNW7GG_Q8
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Jul 8, 2019 04:41
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Imagine you live in a warm climate with no air conditioning or climate control of any kind, and you sweat and shave ALOT. You do things outside, with tools that get wet sometimes. You will love bronze because it doesn't corrode anything like how iron does (which is basically immediately). Julius Caesar knew perfectly well the value of iron, and he invaded the Tin Isles for the glory of the Republic
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Jul 8, 2019 15:16
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Bronze also makes better blades than wrought iron, straight up. It’s harder and holds an edge better. Iron became dominant because it was cheaper to make and in some ways easier to work (you need significantly hotter fire to work it which is probably a big reason why bronze came first, but it’s hot-worked, not cast and then worked cold, which once you have the technology to melt iron properly makes it way easier to knock out a bunch of blades/spearheads/axeheads/arrowheads in a hurry), not because it yielded superior products at first. I would think you’d have to wait for the Romans with their big steel military-industrial monopoly for that.
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Jul 8, 2019 15:50
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And don't forget the high salinity of the Med and the damage a constant seabreeze will do. I lived in an ocean front condo for a year, and thought it would be cool to have the door and windows open alot. Nine months into the lease there was a crash from the kitchen. Ran in to find an artsy wrought iron wine rack had collapsed, eaten through in several places to the point it just came apart under its own weight and 2 whole bottles. Granted I have no idea how long that wine rack was there, but drat.
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Jul 8, 2019 17:01
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skasion posted:Bronze also makes better blades than wrought iron, straight up. It’s harder and holds an edge better. Iron became dominant because it was cheaper to make and in some ways easier to work (you need significantly hotter fire to work it which is probably a big reason why bronze came first, but it’s hot-worked, not cast and then worked cold, which once you have the technology to melt iron properly makes it way easier to knock out a bunch of blades/spearheads/axeheads/arrowheads in a hurry), not because it yielded superior products at first. I would think you’d have to wait for the Romans with their big steel military-industrial monopoly for that. That's interesting from a technological progress point of view, no? If you can afford to stick with the better bronze blades over the wrought iron you miss out on that sweet steel further on down the road.
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Jul 8, 2019 17:52
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The other day when I was looking at sickles I found these crazy things.  Maybe these really qualify as stone age but the Sumerians apparently often used sickles made from fired clay, they're so doofy. They look poo poo, archaeologists have found tons of them though so I guess they worked. Although we may just have so many because unlike equivalent wooden tools they must last forever. GOD can you imagine upgrading from THAT to a bronze blade? You'd have felt like such a badass Squalid fucked around with this message at 05:11 on Jul 9, 2019 |
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Jul 9, 2019 05:08
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But ceramic blades are the hottest poo poo according to a documentary/infomercial I just watched.
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Jul 9, 2019 06:00
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Squalid posted:The other day when I was looking at sickles I found these crazy things. Were they socketed for stone blades, or did they seriously try to put an edge on earthenware?
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Jul 9, 2019 07:16
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The Lone Badger posted:Were they socketed for stone blades, or did they seriously try to put an edge on earthenware? no, in fact these fired clay blades appear to have replaced more ancient stone socketed sickles. my guess is once people started living in cities in the plains it became easier to just mass produce crappy clay sickles than import expensive wood and flint. Earlier people were probably mobile enough that it was less of an issue.
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Jul 9, 2019 08:45
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aphid_licker posted:That's interesting from a technological progress point of view, no? If you can afford to stick with the better bronze blades over the wrought iron you miss out on that sweet steel further on down the road. A similar situation was the development of metallurgy in Mesoamerica - obsidian was so much better than any primitive metal blades, so metal working techniques were primarily focused on cosmetic items, and to my knowledge, they never developed bronze or iron-working. It's very hard to see what technologies might lead in an interesting or useful direction if it starts off inferior to existing alternatives.
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Jul 9, 2019 09:55
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Wow that would have suuucked to work with. Imagine thinking "I wish I could afford stone tools" 
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Jul 9, 2019 09:59
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Angry Salami posted:A similar situation was the development of metallurgy in Mesoamerica - obsidian was so much better than any primitive metal blades, so metal working techniques were primarily focused on cosmetic items, and to my knowledge, they never developed bronze or iron-working. They did: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tlaximaltepoztli#Metallurgics
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Jul 9, 2019 10:49
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Mediterranean people had similar access to obsidian tools and traded in them extensively, a trade that dissipated after the discovery of bronze and never recovered. The real reason that Mesoamericans didn't go hogwild for bronze seems to have been cultural. They mostly made jewelry, ceremonial objects and bells out of it. 500 years of bell-making in what is today's Western Mexico. For whatever reason, with an isolated and very late pre-Columbian exception (Tlaxcala?), their armaments remain cloth armor and wooden weapons. If I had to make a completely wild guess, one contributing factor may have been that some or most of them were using copper and tin as currencies. No one wants to melt down their money to make a tool which would otherwise cost way less to just make out of poo poo you can pick up anywhere. It's a lovely tool sure, but it's way more economically sensible than using up a little copper ax that represents a small fortune. A handful of copper axes sufficient to make let's say a dozen spearheads? More money in currency value than some villages would see in a generation.
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Jul 9, 2019 14:47
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Cloth armor is extremely useful against things like arrows or swords.
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Jul 9, 2019 20:59
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Continuing my pet theory, I've always found it suspicious that the ax-head shape was the choice for Mesoamerican copper and tin currency. I'd say they actually did have a mini- and now long forgotten bronze age where they were turning out bronze tools. Those tools would have had great value, and over the centuries all that remained of them was the tool shape of the currency itself, economic value now inflated so far that the metals could no longer be used for a practical purpose without causing financial ruin. In short, the metals became so precious for trade purposes that they stopped using them for actual work.
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Jul 9, 2019 21:53
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HEY GUNS posted:Cloth armor is extremely useful against things like arrows or swords. People either never trying armour up, or armouring up with dumb post-apocalyptic trash can shields and poo poo always pisses me off in lovely zombie media. I have clothes in my closet that would easily stop a human bite. Like, a pair of loose jeans and a winter coat, bang, armour.
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Jul 9, 2019 21:56
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physeter posted:Continuing my pet theory, I've always found it suspicious that the ax-head shape was the choice for Mesoamerican copper and tin currency. I'd say they actually did have a mini- and now long forgotten bronze age where they were turning out bronze tools. Those tools would have had great value, and over the centuries all that remained of them was the tool shape of the currency itself, economic value now inflated so far that the metals could no longer be used for a practical purpose without causing financial ruin. In short, the metals became so precious for trade purposes that they stopped using them for actual work. Basically they ended up bartering so heavily in bronze axe heads that it became currency?
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Jul 10, 2019 00:00
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Also the Inca to the South were a fully bronze society, bronze weapons and tools abound. Metal axes were the weapon of choice for the Inca soldier.
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Jul 10, 2019 00:26
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