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I spent 25 years reading and loving alternate histories and now I loving despise them. Counterfactuals are stupid.
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Jul 25, 2020 05:23
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The reasons are A: So many things hinge on events that were unrecorded. Somebody choosing to go to the bathroom at a different time might have changed history more than your big event of divergence. B: Once you get off the track of "known" history, which in itself is so full of unknown stuff and argued over details that it is barely known, literally anything can happen. Even the most realistic alternate history is fantasy bullshit C: Most alternate histories are just authors pushing their views on what should have happened, or certain kind of readers getting to hear what they want to hear. It's wish fulfillment. Lastly, if it's an alternate history that doesn't involve aliens or portals or something, it always clothes itself in a bullshit layer of seriousness. Alternate history is Serious Fiction for Serious People. gently caress you!
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Jul 25, 2020 05:30
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Spartan culture really suffered after the Romans started using instagram
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Jul 25, 2020 17:48
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Omnomnomnivore posted:Are we sure that Vespasian didn't intimidate senators by taking a poo poo in front of them, tell his tailor his clothes needed more room for his dick, or terrify the passengers of his boat-chariot by driving it into the Tiber? Vespasian's horses "accidentally" drive his aqua-cart into the lake at his country estate and he says "Oh poo poo, I think I'm becoming a god"
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Jul 27, 2020 05:27
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Arglebargle III posted:All living bison are beefalo genetically. The population bottleneck was pretty extreme. I hope time travel gets invented quick so I can eat some actual buffalo steaks In my imagination, all buffalo killed and skinned and left to rot on the Plains by ruthless 19th century hunters were immediately skeletonized by time travellers sending meat to the future without altering the timeline
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Jul 29, 2020 04:49
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E: no
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Jul 29, 2020 06:19
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Nobody mentioned these people https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ministerialis A lot of people in this thread have watched HBO's Rome, imagine Posca with power and position but he's still a slave.
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Jul 30, 2020 06:18
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Imagine the CEO of a Fortune 500 company but he's a slave.
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Jul 30, 2020 06:21
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Here's my guide about when do you think Roman people are no longer Roman, it's in order from 27 BC to 887 AD, spanning 914 years. Pick your point of divergence where "Byzantine" started. 1. Creation of the Principate 2. Majority of people who live under Roman authority are no longer native Latin speakers 3. First non-Italian Emperor 4. Extension of citizenship to all inhabitants of the Empire 5. Rome no longer the capital of Rome 6. Diocletian puts on the diadem 7. Establishment of Constantinople 8. Establishment of Nicene Christianity as the state religion 9. Theodosius dies, last time Rome is divided into Eastern and Western halves 10. Last Western Roman Emperor deposed, Empire is unified in name 11. Last claimant to the Western Empire is killed 12. Last native speaker of Latin as Emperor 13. Last major monument in the Roman Forum erected by an Emperor 14. Last Emperor visits Rome* 15. End of Roman control over Rome 16. Abolition of the Senate 17. Abolition of the title of Consul Teriyaki Hairpiece fucked around with this message at 05:02 on Aug 1, 2020 |
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Aug 1, 2020 04:58
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SlothfulCobra posted:Basing the end of Rome on the end of Roman control over Rome sounds like circular logic. quote:I think the classic answer by a lot of laymen's standards is that Rome was over after it was no longer involved with the people who would become their descendants. quote:Or involved with the philosophical basis that would become part of the state that they live in.
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Aug 1, 2020 06:33
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galagazombie posted:As for when you can divide "Eastern Roman Empire" from "Byzantine" It's gotta be the Arab Conquests. It was a rapid and near total replacement of drat new everything. Religion, Ethnicity, Territory, Population, Culture, How the government worked, How the military worked, How the people saw themselves, etc. and was also apparent enough in its own time that we start seeing that other states start claiming they are Roman successor states and getting away with it. And before you mention the Goths in Italy they were still claiming nominal subservience to Constantinople, not being a equal or greater "Roman Empires". The switch from Republic to Principate pales in comparison. The only real way you could say it wasn't the end of Rome is if you say the Principate and Dominate are different states/empires. Which in my opinion is a legitimate argument to make, but then that just changes to statement to "The Roman Dominate fell during the Arab Conquests". This is okay. I don't agree with it, but I get it. It's an informed opinion that is backed up by facts.
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Aug 2, 2020 06:37
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Grand Fromage posted:We might be talking past each other about different things, then. I'm saying the identity of the Roman people didn't change. The rise of Islam being a break point in periodization is fine and good, I agree with it. I don't agree with ever using the term Byzantine, but that's a particular windmill I tilt at. I hate it too and people who are okay with it are wrong.
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Aug 2, 2020 19:26
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Scarodactyl posted:Honestly one big distinction is how the art looks to a modern viewer (really different and, overall, not so hot from the ERE) and that's probably more important to most modern viewers than any political crap. When you say "modern viewer" you mean you, right? Because "some people say" type talking is usually just a way for a person to state their own opinion in a backhanded way.
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Aug 2, 2020 20:28
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SlothfulCobra posted:and the bulk of their armed forces were some kind of german that would never be deemed properly integrated despite being under Roman influence for over a century. We actually have English words with Greek or Latin roots that have been around since the oldest Old English: they're words the Angles and Saxons picked up from Romans on the European mainland before they even invaded the island of Britain.
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Aug 2, 2020 20:31
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If you want an East Asian metaphor for Charlemagne's coronation, imagine that Genghis Khan had proclaimed the Yuan Dynasty right after his conquest of the Jin while the Southern Song were still a going concern.
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Aug 3, 2020 03:26
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galagazombie posted:You seem to be under the impression that I'm arguing that arguing the traditional Romulus Augustulus line, but I'm not arguing that. I agree that it was still the Roman Empire after the West "fell". Hell I outright stated it was acceptable to claim the Principate and Dominate were not the same state/empire. I specifically pointed out the Arab Conquests centuries after Romulus Augustulus as the point when it's no longer reasonable to say the state based out of Constantinople is "Rome". The government of Taiwan has some continuity with the ruling state of China but no one seriously claims they're the Chinese Empire. Even the Taiwanese don't believe it and only keep pretending so they don't get invaded by the PRC as part of a bizarre piece of political theatre. The essential problem is that they weren't some successor state trying to give themselves the name or enrobe themselves in the dignity of days gone by. They were Rome. Even when there was a Western Empire, pre or post Theodosius, Constantinople was the senior partner. Even before Constantinople existed Diocletian made his capitol at Nicomedia. The East, the Greek speaking East, was the center of Rome even before Marcus Antonius joined the gods. And past all that, past all the historical facts and figures, the essential truth remains that "Byzantine" is just some bullshit term made up by uninformed academics centuries after the Empire went down in fire and flame. None of you all are going to argue for phlogiston theory, right? The "Byzantine Empire" term is roughly contemporaneous
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Aug 3, 2020 05:43
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How about Daqin?
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Aug 3, 2020 18:00
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I want you all to shed a single tear for the teenage Teriyaki Hairpiece who, equipped only with the primitive internet of 2002 and the books of his local library, tried to figure out if there was a connection between the Ancient Roman "caupona" and the surname of Alphonse Capone. In 2020 you can find out in about 15 seconds that there is definitely not.
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Aug 11, 2020 02:02
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Mesoamericans had way more technological progress than Europeans: turning a bunch of bullshit grass into life-giving corn took thousands of years of careful progress and hard work.
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Aug 14, 2020 04:26
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Would there be a market for a business that seeks to bury and preserve your remains and a few possessions after you die for future archaeologists to dig up? Like "listen we promise we will hide you and a few grave goods in a place as out of the way as possible so that only scientists thousands of years in the future will find you"
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Aug 15, 2020 06:10
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SlothfulCobra posted:There are laws about disposal of human remains. Dunno what exactly they are though. Probably not allowed unless the land is privately owned, definitely none of it in protected areas like a national park. There's plenty of isolated places in the world. If you wanted to be naturally preserved and didn't want to be found for a few thousand years I think the best bet would be to get stashed somewhere in one of the mountain ranges in the Sahara, such as the Tibesti.
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Aug 15, 2020 18:06
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Just have all your grave goods made of highly radioactive uranium ceramics.
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Aug 17, 2020 04:42
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You could have an incredibly small nuclear reactor powering a mechanism that mixes and releases a nerve agent, which would protect your tomb for thousands of years. Or, at least, it would kill the first people to break the seal on your tomb and not offer any protection against the ones who came after.
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Aug 17, 2020 06:04
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Jeb Bush 2012 posted:even if it doesn't protect your tomb in the long run, it should be good for your mystique when your tomb eventually gets plundered for museum pieces, especially if you carve some vague warnings about curses into the walls "May all people who defile my tomb eventually suffer hair loss, decreased sexual function, loss of bowel control, reduced mental acuity, and a lack of audience for their repetitive stories"
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Aug 17, 2020 06:15
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Vincent Van Goatse posted:He also took prodigious quantities of it as part of an immortality treatment. If we haven't opened his tomb, he could be still alive and hanging out in there.
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Aug 17, 2020 16:19
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The greatest food makers in human history were the sausage makers of Lucania, because their sausages impacted the human experience enough that 2000 years later hundreds of millions of people still call sausages "Lucanians"
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Aug 24, 2020 02:49
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Alhazred posted:Roman children wasn't named in the order in which they were born, but after the month they was born in. Quinctius didn't get his name because he was the fifth child but because he was born in july. Yeah Japanese children were named in the way the comic references but not Romans. The author is probably just conflating the two.
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Aug 25, 2020 02:14
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Lawman 0 posted:Was racism against the goths simply a result of their earlier raids or was it something else that made Roman's mad? By the 5th century they were the wrong type of Christian
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Aug 31, 2020 06:53
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Miss Broccoli posted:gently caress, Rome was literally a pillar of Mussolini's fascism. Fetishising the ancients has been there from day dot There was this real rash of Italian Renaissance strongmen trying to pretend they were descended from cultured ancient Roman families of Senatorial rank when their ancestors were actually Gulbus Capracaresser or Guthrum the Statue-Basher. And that was 500-odd years ago!
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Sep 1, 2020 06:01
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I'm really sorry for posting about posting but I've been reading and commenting in this thread for over 8 years and the second I saw how many new posts there were, I knew in my heart some wackjob was spouting off about their pet theory. Cetea, you stand in the footsteps of Kings 
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Sep 10, 2020 04:07
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In 21st century culture, we have a visor called the green eyeshade. It's associated with accountants and poker dealers, people who have to do fine work under bright lights. The green filter it imparts helps protect against eyestrain. It's a relatively new thing, having been invented in the 19th century. Except it's not! Pliny the Elder commented on how pleasing emeralds were to look at and look through. He also said that Nero watched gladiatorial games either through an emerald or in the reflection of an emerald, presumably to avert eyestrain. It's up to us to imagine how this actually worked in practice. Giant cut emerald sunglasses?? A big round flat emerald angled towards the sand that he could peer at??
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Sep 10, 2020 04:56
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| # ¿ May 12, 2024 23:13 |
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Cetea posted:If you're talking about the concept that using a different language to communicate can change your personality and worldview, it's pretty well researched at this point (arguably people do say that it could also depend heavily on the environment where you're speaking, but certainly the etymology of words do change how people perceive them): Okay here I want to speak to you clearly: You are a crazy person. You need to understand that no crazy person thinks they're crazy. All of them think they are right and correct in what they say and do. You're in that category, firmly. Your ideas about civilization are complex and ever changing but at the core you sem to believe that discrete societal changes lead to a society that "moves forward". Whether those changes are writing or who knows what. You've got a classic internet person poisoned by different historical games perspective, where you believe civilizations inexorably advance from a low point to a higher point. The reality is more complicated.
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Sep 10, 2020 05:58
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