Roman/ancient history: Checkmate, Atenists

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Ask/Tell > Roman/ancient history: Checkmate, Atenists

kiminewt: Feb 1, 2022

This is more related to the pre-cheese topic and I'm sure this has been talked about but what's this thread's opinion on The Dawn of Everything?

I'm about halfway through. It's interesting but its points are a bit muddled I feel.

# ¿ Jul 10, 2023 11:29

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# ¿ May 21, 2024 10:20

kiminewt: Feb 1, 2022

It seems obvious but then again, I have no idea when the "order" of alphabets was "decided".

I know that in biblical Hebrew they used letters as numbers in ascending alphabetical order. But Roman numerals were not in alphabetical order AFAIK.

According to Wikipedia, it was used much later in the Latin alphabet.

Wikipedia posted:

Alphabetical order as an aid to consultation started to enter the mainstream of Western European intellectual life in the second half of the 12th century, when alphabetical tools were developed to help preachers analyse biblical vocabulary

kiminewt fucked around with this message at 18:40 on Jul 21, 2023

# ¿ Jul 21, 2023 18:35

kiminewt: Feb 1, 2022

That's what happens when you don't have late-stage capitalism corporations that can constantly reboot and remake properties. I feel sorry for them.

# ¿ Jul 28, 2023 17:07

kiminewt: Feb 1, 2022

PittTheElder posted:

Adding to the prehistoric war stuff, the Tollense Valley site is fascinating as well: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tollense_valley_battlefield

We do not know (and because these people did not leave records, will never know) why these people were fighting, or what the fighting was like, but we do have this site that shows that a few thousand combatants (we must rely on estimates but the current figures are on the order of 4000-5000) fought a battle over a river crossing - probably a bridge or a causeway - somewhere around 1200 BCE. That number of people has a lot of implications about how they got there too; that large a figure is not groups that could have just bumped into each other, that's at least one force that was organized, provisioned and supplied in some way, and led to that spot, and likely campaigning against another group similarly organized. Typically that organization would suggest the existence of some sort of state, but we have no other evidence for states in this period in this region, and it was thus previously assumed that they did not exist yet.

So were there state level organizations fighting over territory or trade routes? Who organized the labor that built the bridge? Lots of fun stuff to speculate about, but sadly very difficult to find concrete answers for.

There's a half hour podcast episode of Tides of History on this which is interesting, if you're into that sorta thing.

# ¿ Aug 9, 2023 08:08

kiminewt: Feb 1, 2022

When talking about digital archiving and societies having no idea what people will want preserved, a modern example I can think of is the SA 9/11 thread.

In one of the few examples of live online reactions to the event, the thread pops up in various publications. As I'm sure you've seen, large amounts of the thread were wiped in real time, presumably to make it easier to read or same arcane technical reason. Some mod even deleted specific posts that they deemed useless.

# ¿ Oct 17, 2023 10:09

kiminewt: Feb 1, 2022

Cyrus is written KRS(H) in the bible and they pronounced it Koresh when I was in bible class in grade school. Then in English I heard it with the soft C as Cyrus.

I did not bother to find out which, if any, is correct because I never had to say it out loud. 2024 goals.

# ¿ Jan 1, 2024 17:00

kiminewt: Feb 1, 2022

Gaius Marius posted:

I can't believe these groups of humans are engaging with activities common to groups of humans.

Kind of a silly sentiment but the opposite "noble savage" / "colours of the wind" sentiment that's very popular in american society is equally dumb (even though no one is really thinking of the Aztecs with those).

edit: gently caress, terrible snipe. please don't paint me with all the colours of the wind

# ¿ Mar 13, 2024 12:47

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# ¿ May 21, 2024 10:20

kiminewt: Feb 1, 2022

FreudianSlippers posted:

Objectively Bad without exception:
-Genocide
-Colonialism
-Slavery

Objectively good things:
-Sunshine
-Lollipops
-Rainbows
-The Terror

I recall the rainbow in Judaism being a symbol signifying God's promise to not destroy humanity and whenever he feels like destroying it he sends one up. So, not a good thing.

Also makes me wonder how people would attach symbolism to something that has a very obvious correlation with natural phenomena and that you can induce to occur yourself. But it's quite possible this symbolism is a more modern invention.

# ¿ Apr 8, 2024 11:58

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Ask/Tell > Roman/ancient history: Checkmate, Atenists