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Cast_No_Shadow posted:Did anyone catch BBC 4's "Unnatural History: Amazon" the other night? Looking at civilisations and archeology in the amazon and how burning down huge chunks of it is revealling that holy poo poo was this place heavily populated before smallpox and the idea of a pristine untouch jungle is a misconception. I have done some fieldwork on the Yucatán Peninsula and its pretty amazing how much is out there, its pretty great driving through and seeing countless overgrown mounds that are most likely sites. There still is a poo poo ton of work to do and thats just the stuff that is easily accessible.
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Nov 22, 2015 04:23
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Libluini posted:
It gets better, there were two competing theories about how to decode it, one from a British guy and the other was from a Russian. However this was pretty much during the Cold War so you figure out who most people went with. Guess who turned out to be correct?
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Mar 4, 2016 21:09
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I am currently taking a Mayan history/ethnography course that is pretty focused on Spanish influence and Native american resistance during the colonial periodGreyjoyBastard posted:The Spanish pretty much purged the tiny, elite corps of knot-scribes and -couriers, so we don't actually know a whole lot about the contents. Which is really weird considering how they handled the literate portion of the Mayan society.
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Mar 13, 2016 07:29
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Jaramin posted:It's sorta 6 of one, half dozen of the other, since they destroyed much of the Mayan writing while leaving the literate class intact and destroyed the Inca literate class while leaving most of the writing(maybe) intact. From what I understand Landa had a freak out session and felt betrayed after finding out the Mayans still were doing their religious rites, this led to him burning everything. Before that they kinda didn't have a concentrated effort to destroy them.
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Mar 13, 2016 09:28
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Vavrek posted:I remember clearly a point made by a friend in a political philosophy class we had years ago. That day, the class's topic was censorship, and we were going over detailed reasons for and against it. The professor, I think, put forward the idea that you could think of censorship of intellectual studies as not causing lasting, permanent harm, because information which was one day suppressed could always be (re)discovered later, in a more permissive time. (An awful example, off the top of my head, would be the Nazi's rejection of "Jewish Physics". Assuming, for the moment, that there was any actual good to antisemitic censorship, you'd get that benefit, and could discover relativity later.) Not a strong argument in favor of the practice, just a claim that its harms might not be as great as they're made out to be. See also Diego De Landa and the Maya.
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Apr 22, 2016 20:10
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Alhazred posted:In a surprise twist De Landa is also one of the reasons why we know so much about the Maya: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Relaci%C3%B3n_de_las_cosas_de_Yucat%C3%A1n Yeah Its actually my area of study. But its a more of a "I wrote down loads of stuff about them and their history so we can convert them better and then burned all their books and ancestor's remains because y'all couldn't just except the loving embrace of Jesus." Then a "These guys are pretty cool lets record them for future generations".
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Apr 24, 2016 00:09
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FAUXTON posted:because piss is being sprayed at it in a stream and rain is just falling on it as drops I think I'm more confused why he is worried about being hit with rain from sidewalks while not worrying about you know, the rain hitting him from being outside in the rain?
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May 14, 2016 03:28
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Slim Jim Pickens posted:Do you want to have a conversation about the relative velocities of piss vs rain? Sure, I would wager the numbers are pretty close but pee velocity debates are sadly a derail.
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May 14, 2016 03:46
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Everybody has touched on it before but yeah its has to do with settlement patterns, what groups of people succeeded and what we can find. I took a California Archaeology course and we touched on it a bit due to the coastal archaeology. Basically people will move if they need too because walking those distances in unmapped,untouched and natural terrain takes massive amounts of energy, and there is no reason for you to move if you don't have to. Id imagine people moved to a spot that could support them for a long time, probably generations and then the supporting capacity for the area was hit and a portion moved on. Another aspect of migration patterns was Coastal migration where a group would use boats and just hit certain points along the coast as they made their way down the west coast. This one from what I understood was pretty plausible and what sites we do have seem to support the idea but most of what would be sites are either underwater or tons if sand now since the sea levels increased. (This is why the BART construction hit some human remains and artifacts while constructing the cross bay line)
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Jun 8, 2016 22:34
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Arglebargle III posted:But the most ancient sites are so few, and dating is tricky, can you really say they moved slowly with the data points you have? Meanwhile, contemporary human behavior argues against glacial (literally!) speeds of migration. Historical nomadic bands move around large distances within the space of a few hundred years. We've got a lot of written evidence for that. I don't know if you have seen the west coast of the Americas but it is some the most brutal terrain all along it, with pretty much every type of landscape included. Got past those sick mountains? Hope you like desert! Got past that? Have a solid wall of swamp and jungle. Most nomadic groups that travel large distances most likely either have animals to assist or the landscape is easy for them to traverse and generally the same type.
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Jun 8, 2016 22:38
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Kemper Boyd posted:It's more of a thought exercise than an actual theory, which is more about how little we know about most of our planet's history than dalaeling it up and being certain there was a Great Crustacean Empire at one point. Send in the mantis shrimp, this soft shell knows too much.
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Jun 11, 2016 09:12
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Grand Fromage posted:I'm not an art historian but: many Buddhist temples in Japan have protector statues called Nio. These are the Japanese versions of Vajrapani, a Buddhist protector deity. In the Greco-Buddhist art the Nio were based on, the depictions of Vajrapani were derived from the standard images of Herakles. Here's a side by side comparison from GIS. Edit: Nevermind its answered in your first post. I can search my college data base for a citation if it helps.
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Nov 4, 2016 08:13
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Doctor Malaver posted:I just found out that we had Caligula's actual wooden ships, enormous, but they were destroyed in WWII. There is a ton of super cool poo poo we had and probably had that got bombed to poo poo in WW2. One of the reasons we were able to decipher the Mayan Glyphs is cause some soldier dude rushed into a library that was being bombed and nabbed some papers which he later used to essentially translate it.
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Nov 6, 2016 08:35
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Friendly Humour posted:http://suburra.com/blog/2009/11/11/the-ph-d-candidate-who-said-too-much-a-drug-history-whitewash/ The joke/truth in the archaeological world at least is classical archaeologists are all pretentious elitist snobs so that is probably a factor. For a long time all the sexual and "obscene" works that came from Greece and Rome either got destroyed or locked in a vault somewhere and hidden from public view and knowledge since it ruined the "clean" image of the classic societies. Telsa Cola fucked around with this message at 02:44 on Dec 6, 2016 |
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Dec 6, 2016 02:39
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Friendly Humour posted:Reading the first 20 pages of his book, yeah he definately comes across as a smug twat. But failure in your duty as an authority is something so deeply offensive to me, there is very little that could ever justify it. It is blasphemy. Does he go into what his actual chapter was and the evidence he was using? It is totally possible that he got censored but it is totally possible he was being an idiot with his evidence and thats why it got cut out.
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Dec 6, 2016 05:27
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Teriyaki Hairpiece posted:Do you think that Ancient Romans didn't get sunburned because they didn't have the acronym SPF? His argument is not that they didnt get addicted but that it was not recognized or recorded as such. Its not super far fetched since I believe we only have rough sketches of what PTSD was viewed like in the past.
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Dec 6, 2016 06:37
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Teriyaki Hairpiece posted:I'm saying of course they'd have something because a culture will always have terms for and concepts built around matters of the human body no matter how different that culture is. Universal stuff like boners or pooping or, yes, physical addiction. Physical addiction is a much more complicated phenomenon though then pooping and one we don't fully understand today. Its why I brought up the concept of PTSD, Roman soldiers probably had it but I don't know that there any records that phrase it as something more deeply impacting to the psyche then a lack of courage. Edit: Is there anything about allergic reactions in ancient recordings? That might be another good one. Telsa Cola fucked around with this message at 06:51 on Dec 6, 2016 |
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Dec 6, 2016 06:47
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And we (or at least I) are not arguing that it didn't exist but that it was not recognized as such. I think you are looking at the phenomenon with the hind sight of like thousands of years of medical and psychological knowledge and not looking at it as how it would be viewed during the time period. Edit: The symptoms of alcohol withdraw are similar to fever symptoms so they might have lumped them together. Telsa Cola fucked around with this message at 07:06 on Dec 6, 2016 |
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Dec 6, 2016 07:00
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ulmont posted:I was just reading something that suggested that allergic reactions to cats were a possible reason they were associated with black magic. Interesting. Do you have an article name? I would love to read that. Did they postulate why dogs were not as well since people can be allergic them and often times both?
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Dec 6, 2016 07:49
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ulmont posted:The reference I saw was just a throwaway: Whoa, thanks a ton for all the effort.
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Dec 8, 2016 02:57
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nothing to seehere posted:I can't remember the details of the paper, but it came from DNA analysis of different maize crops. The conclusion was that for the first 1000 years or so of maize being grown by humans, the corns would still be too small to be able to eat or get much nutrition out of. However, you would be able to mash up the micro-corns and use it to make weak alcohol. So the authors theorised that maize was grown for a long period before it was worth growing for food soles for the purpose of making alcohol, and only after than was going on for awhile did we breed maize crops it was worth farming for the food alone. Ehhh, Sumpweed and Goosefoot, a semi-staple food plant in the Northeast follows the same small to large (though not as drastic as corn) trends and there is no evidence that I know of that it was used for alcohol. Basically they were easyish to grow in large quantities, making the small sized corns/seeds a non issue since you had a gently caress ton. Their use predates the arrival of corn in that area as well. Once you get it localized and semi domesticated in your environment the caloric cost for them goes way down and you can start seed selection. Also the same argument for alcohol can be used for soups and broths which is what Sumpweed and Goosefoot are used for a lot. Its possible it was grown for food purposes first and since both processes share the same stage (mashing them up and adding water) its possible that using it for alcohol split off from there, but I would say its more of a side benefit then the sole purpose. Telsa Cola fucked around with this message at 03:24 on Dec 12, 2016 |
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Dec 12, 2016 03:10
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Squalid posted:We know for sure hunter gatherers produced fermented beverages from wild fruit so I don't see why producing it from grain is much more of a stretch. In the southwest US saguaro fruit was traditionally brewed into wine, I'm sure people were doing similar things in Europe Someone correct me if I am wrong, but I don't think the issue is that we don't believe grains were brewed into beer but rather whats up for debate is the idea of what grains were first grown for, food or alcohol.
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Dec 15, 2016 09:04
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Grand Fromage posted:Corn's crazy because who the gently caress figured out soaking in lye to release nutrients? It's limewater mostly, much of the geology in the area is limestone and its powdery as poo poo and gets everywhere (and then sets like cement) when disturbed so I can see it happening accidentally. Edit: Its a mixture of slaked lime and ash. Those would be two major by products of cooking Limestone in a wet environment so with all the key ingredients being readily available and floating around in close proximity I can see it happening. Telsa Cola fucked around with this message at 03:38 on Dec 16, 2016 |
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Dec 16, 2016 03:24
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Grand Fromage posted:Ah that makes sense. The leap to realizing it's necessary without any real scientific method or understanding of chemistry or nutrition or anything is still impressive though. This is tentative but they honestly might not have realized it until after they started doing it, apparently it makes the corn easier to process and taste and smell better so there are easily noticeable benefits to doing it. Ill try to pin down some sources on that when I no longer am dying from finals.
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Dec 16, 2016 03:45
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Im leaning towards the dating being hosed up, the issue with something that old and hell even stuff ~14,000 years old is that the coast lines and other areas where you would find signs or early habitation are now underwater which makes getting evidence difficult as hell. A reminder, its really hard to get agreement that humans were in the americas by anything around 14,000 due to lack if sites, so something that hard is not going to gain main stream traction. Telsa Cola fucked around with this message at 23:07 on Apr 26, 2017 |
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Apr 26, 2017 23:04
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cheetah7071 posted:I think for a while, evidence of pre-Clovis stuff really was sketchy, including several high profile sites that ended up being definitively proven post-Clovis. That kind of thing will really make people set in their thinking even as additional evidence comes out that's more definitive. Small correction, the common theory (or at least the one I was taught recently) for boating is that they essentially shore hoped along siberia and then along Beringia, using boats to move faster and past the glaciery bits and landing for shelter or to camp for X amount of years before moving on. This is hard to prove for certain because almost all the sites would be under water now. There seems to be a semi even split nowadays between walking or boating (Its most likely both and different groups did it at different times with different techniques) Boating across the pacific is an idea that gets some traction but the distances involved are really loving far and the evidence for it is sketchy. Its possible that the early sites located in south america are the result of people boating down from the north. Telsa Cola fucked around with this message at 03:40 on Apr 27, 2017 |
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Apr 27, 2017 03:37
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Let me tell you about the trans-atlantic boating theory I heard once...
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Apr 27, 2017 04:00
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Yea I could honestly get by, sweets can be fulfilled with dates because dates are amazing.
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May 1, 2017 00:51
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Pretty sure ancient Rome and Greece got hit multiple times with pretty bad plagues so Honestly the whole "no plagues before 1500" is really dumb. As for worst place to be in history? East coast of America/Caribbean around the time of contact with Europeans. Your population just got literally decimated by plagues of strange new diseases, strange new people show up and murder and torture the gently caress out of you when the are not forcibly abducting you. If you are in the Caribbean your populations either get completely wiped out or you get worked to death on plantations before they use African slaves because they last longer.
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May 9, 2017 23:08
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cheetah7071 posted:I said smallpox, specifically, emerged in 1500 BC. Most diseases are younger than you'd think. Apologies, my brain is mush from finals week and I did not see the B.C in the original post and assumed AD.
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May 9, 2017 23:26
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This and also all the things people never recorded because, to them, it was everyday commonplace stuff.
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May 26, 2017 05:57
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P-Mack posted:What would be useful is preserving interiors, not facades. Except facades can include advertisements, graffiti and other informative poo poo. The outside of a building is in many ways as informative as the interior.
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May 26, 2017 14:36
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FreudianSlippers posted:Centuries from now someone is going to write a really dry and exhaustively detailed tome of a history book about goatse, tubgirl, and 2 girls 1 cup. Gonna put this on my todo list when it becomes historically significant in 75ish years.
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May 27, 2017 21:35
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snergle posted:Does anyone have good non wiki sources on intentional skull deformation? specifically why the huns did it. Asking for the gbs china thread I have no idea why the huns did it but for the Maya some evidence suggests that it was a method of easily determining social class and position as well as group allegiance. It might fulfill a similar role?
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Jun 15, 2017 18:45
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Is he also the one who murders a bunch of giraffes and thats the one that made people go "Dude what the gently caress"?
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Jul 7, 2017 04:52
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The whole "put poo poo out on the ground and sort it out from there" style of trading was also done along the western coast of North America when the Spanish,Russians and English were making first contact with the various groups that lived there.
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Aug 30, 2017 03:51
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Not to mention pretty much all the island ecosystems they gently caress up. Or the fact that humans allow them to have much higher population densities then they normally would.
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Sep 5, 2017 18:06
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Cyrano4747 posted:When I die I want someone to feed me into a bog wrapped in 16th century linens holding an iPad in one hand and a medieval crucifix in the other. At my feet will be copies of Turtledove's ACW books, rebound and labeled "A History of the North American Wars, 1865-1950" Enough of my colleagues have this as something they have jokingly planned so im pretty sure the future archaeologist will go "oh great we got another joker here" . Also if that happened we would just date you to the range of the easiest and most latish date possible which we would likely do by looking up the production years for that ipad. Given that other archaeologist will also uncover households with other items from a wide variety of times its not going to be super surprising to them I would wager. Telsa Cola fucked around with this message at 17:32 on Sep 10, 2017 |
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Sep 10, 2017 17:21
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I have never really gotten how people would think that the trick would work. While its not my focus I understand similar situations occur with Roman/Egyptian/Greek poo poo and people dont assume they are time travelers or whatever.
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Sep 10, 2017 17:34
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SlothfulCobra posted:Archeology has been a respectable academic field for at least a century by now, right? How many jokes for future archeologists have already been planted? These are less jokes and more very obvious weird poo poo but poo poo does get placed when backfill is done, both as a way to say "Hey this has been dug up to this point" and also as a secondary way to date it when that excavation was done. Lots of old news papers, I think I heard of a letter being placed once. If you do historic NA arch I have seen a poo poo ton of old tins and lunch boxes used as markers which is really neat.
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Sep 10, 2017 17:52
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