Squizzle posted:

over a long enough timeline, all societies trend toward temporarily wearing interesting hats

FAUXTON posted:

hey let's hear more about what your idea of progress looks like

FAUXTON posted:

Oh come now, not even a little bit of detail on what you're arguing against here?

Grand Fromage posted:

Let's not do this in here actually.

Tunicate posted:

When the game mechanics stop working well

Squizzle posted:

glad to encounter a fellow ritually pure interpreter of omens

zoux posted:

*Eagle flying north shot out of the sky by skilled bowshot, also has my exact face*
*turns to harsupex* Is that bad

sullat posted:

Yeah there were multiple mass death plague events over the 400 years or so; however it seems like the first one(s) that spread in the early 1500s were extremely devastating. Although there aren't ya know, extensive written records it's hard to get precise figures but thanks to the early conquistadors being like "hey, there's a ton of people here" and the later ones being like, "wow, there's nobody here but a lot of arable land, weird, eh?" seems to point that way.

Nessus posted:

I don't follow, it sounds like a lot of these regions had been cultivated and had been fairly recently abandoned (if perhaps not like literally last week, or even last year). Do you mean that the expansion moved so fast that those areas didn't have time to revert to wilderness with much less sign of previous habitation?

Elden Lord Godfrey posted:

I'm more impressed by how economically valuable North Africa, that is the thin strip of land from present day Algeria to Libya, was to the Roman metropole. I mean I get it was built on top of Carthage, but still, it's not a huge amount of land and it abuts the desert. Was it a case of a high proportion of coastal access supporting intensive market-oriented agriculture? Or was it a case of a longer growing season making the territory just that much more agriculturally productive.

Radia posted:

no, that's not true. none of those places are coastal

How! posted:

Going through my dads coin collection- thought this thread might appreciate this!

Radia posted:

you're not thinking with like.. your wider mind, maaan. the only places coastal are those that we WANT to be coastal

Radia posted:

it was the land locked nature of the western roman empire that made it collapse. the east, where they knew mesopotamia was part of the mediterranean coast, was able to survive far longer.

Elissimpark posted:

condimentum speciale, but it's garum. Cheese would be Romano. Lettuce is Egyptian, apparently. Sesame seeds also used by ancient Egyptians.

gently caress, I'm working nightshift and now craving garum burger.

FreudianSlippers posted:

Garum is proof that Thailand is the true successor to Rome.

Nessus posted:

I think the big difference was the missionary impulse. A little witnessing goes a long way. As does having your western outlying territories colonize and expropriate several large continents

Gaius Marius posted:

And the same thing with Islam

bob dobbs is dead posted:

rome declared for centuries that it had never and would never fight an offensive war, neither. that's more of an instance of the general tendency for states to baldfacedly lie

Nessus posted:

How’d that hold up once they got east of Afghanistan (everyone forgets about the huge numbers of Malaysian and Indonesian Muslims)

euphronius posted:

The Egyptians invented it. The Persians invented it. Celtic beliefs were erased who knows. There are monotheistic interpretations of Hinduism. Sikhism is arguably monotheistic. I don’t know about Chinese religions.

And I still argue Christianity is not monotheistic. If it monotheistic is then Hinduism is too

Edit

Forgot Rastafarianism

SlothfulCobra posted:

There are a number of monotheistic religions outside of Aten and Abraham, even if they aren't as big. I think you could also see polytheism as something that could be forced onto religions externally even if it can be a lot less chaotic to just shoehorn in the existence of other gods into somebody else's theological framework.

It's also not like polytheism totally prevents religious conflict either; while it sure is nice and convenient where everybody just decides that somebody else's gods are either different names for their own or distant members of the same pantheon that are being worshipped in a weird and funky way, that is not the only possible response, and there's plenty of room to cause offenses over taboos. There were five sacred wars over Delphi.

Squizzle posted:

the idea of monotheïsm/ploytheïsm as distinct and knowable aspects of a belief system or culture—that this became so widespread and unquestioned is to me the weirder, more fundamentally transformative thing. know who believes in an ultimate source of all reality??? a whole buncha peoples!!! a lot of them have names for it and impute some character, or at least moral preference, to it!!!! and everything else in reality, including many supernatural entities, is/are existentially downstream from that ultimate reality. “our encompassing reality and its divine servants and doings are monotheïsm and angels and miracles; their encompassing reality and its divine servants and doings are polytheïsm and magic” is not the sorta neutral position that it is uncritically taken to be by [gestures expansively around]

Jazerus posted:

what's not to love? these freaks that love to go to war handle all of the business of defending your poo poo for you and even have the courtesy to set up reliable supply lines so they aren't constantly devastating friendly territory just by walking through it. you're connected into a trade network that might as well be globalized by the standards of the ancient world. you don't get hassled about religion^* or culture or anything really. sucks that your great-grandparents had to live through a nasty conquest and all that it entails but it's done, might as well enjoy the upsides. that's not to say that roman rule didn't suck tremendously for some people, sometimes, or that the lovely parts of roman society like slavery weren't lovely. but the durability of the empire depended on making it not suck for most people most of the time and the imperial elite were generally aware that that was the implicit social contract everything rested on

^{*monotheism not included}

MeatRocket8 posted:

Movies never show barbarians with moustaches. Probably because it would look too modern. But moustaches were definitely popular among them.

Brawnfire posted:

"This... This enterprise."

Elissimpark posted:

"Stone...uh..henge?"
"Fucks sake, Steve, it's not a henge!"

Mad Hamish posted:

Actually, while I'm thinking of it, the pyramids in ancient Egypt also had names. The Great Pyramid's proper name is Khufu's Horizon, and the name of Djedefre's pyramid (Khufu's successor) is Djedefre's Starry Sky.

WoodrowSkillson posted:

to me i think its the conflict between human altruism and limited resources. In the prehistorical period, people were absolutely altruistic. They cared for the sick or the disabled and they valued old and infirm members of their tribe/band/village. however when they are forced to migrate, or some event causes resources to no longer be as prevalent and other groups are now direct rivals, its literally a survival situation. That same willingness to protect their own will lead to taking very drastic and harsh actions against rival groups because there is no safety net, no one to look out for your tribe if poo poo goes south.

if things are not too desperate, border clashes and skirmishes might settle disputes over hunting/foraging grounds, or access to chert or other resources. but if one or both groups have their backs to the wall, doing something as nasty as killing the rival group in their sleep becomes a valid and "necessary" act. Not doing so might mean your loved ones starve, and if the rival band is similarly desperate, its a matter of when, not if, one of those exceedingly violent acts is done to you.

zoux posted: