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Holy hell I finally made it through the entire thread. It only took a few months of sporadic downtime  On the subject of time machines, wouldn't you need to also travel an exceptionally long distance to actually arrive at the point in space the earth occupied thousands of years ago? If you just went back 2000 years from where you are now you'd just end up floating in the void.
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Sep 20, 2019 14:33
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Speaking of Ghengis Khan - is it a hard g or soft g? I’ve always heard gang-is but someone I knew at one point said it jeng-is and I honestly don’t know what is technically correct.
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Sep 20, 2019 14:48
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Thanks for the pronunciation assistance. Would help if I spelled his name right.Platystemon posted:Kind of. I thought the galaxies were moving away from the location of the big bang not necessarily each other. There should be a point where all of the prior traveled paths of the various galaxies intersect.
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Sep 20, 2019 16:08
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cheetah7071 posted:This is physics not history but everything is moving away from everything else. There is no central point of origin. The space itself is "stretching" rather than galaxies "moving". Every point on the surface is moving away from a point in the balloon, though. If you could uniformly inflate a balloon from the center, each point would be equidistant. Even if not uniform, it would be possible to trace a path from each point based upon its expanding motion that would all cross through some central point. The big bang happened at a spot. It may not be the exact "center" of the universe, but everything is still expanding relative to that spot. We can only observe the movement relative to other actual bodies, but that doesn't mean that they do not come from a central origin. To say there is no central point kindof runs counter to the entire theory of the big bang. Granted it's been 10 years since I took physics I&II in college, but afaik the big bang is still the consensus universal origin. On topic, I think it was Fauxton who mentioned it, but teaching the Romans how to make a good chronometer probably would have resulted in a lot more sea-exploration than before. The chronometer changed western nautical navigation in an extreme way. It's crazy to me that polynesian people were able to navigate without it.
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Sep 20, 2019 17:21
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cheetah7071 posted:I edited my post with a bit of a clarification. You're not wrong that the big bang happened at a point, but in the intervening 12-13 billion years that point has expanded to become the entire universe. And if you traced the motion of everything in the intervening time, they would necessarily intersect at some spot. skasion posted:The Big Bang did not occur at a central point. For there to be a central point means that there’s a space with a center and parts that are not central. There wasn’t. All space and everything in it was compacted into one point and the point didn’t have a “location” because there’s nothing relative to which it could be located. The “spot” at which the Big Bang took place is “absolutely everywhere”. I get that there was no relative location comparable prior to the big bang, but afterwards there absolutely is because everything is moving outward from the spot where the bang occurred. Even if you could not label it relative to anything else prior to the bang, afterwards everything is expanding from the point where everything once was, and is traceable back to some spot.
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Sep 20, 2019 17:33
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cheetah7071 posted:From our viewpoint, the place it traces back to is us, because we observe everything moving away from us. The big bang happened here, at earth, how special! If actually measurable, the origin point could be calculated in similar fashion to how we know that the planets revolve around the sun and not the earth. That’s why I said measure how things are expanding relative to each other. Tunicate posted:Everything sees itself as motionless, and the rest of the universe moving away from it in all directions. Things are not moving at the same speed and in the same direction, though. The relative differences is how you extrapolate where things are moving from.
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Sep 20, 2019 17:46
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Apologies for the derail. Maybe we just need to check the antiplano to see if they atlanteans had figured this out or not.
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Sep 20, 2019 18:00
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Dalael posted:A bit of a cheap unecessary shot but okay Not saying it as a way to attack you, brother. It was an amusing derail a few years back. I just thought it would make a funny joke in the thread. I didn't mean any offense to you personally.
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Sep 20, 2019 18:27
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Exodus was written contemporary to the babylonian exile in the same way MASH was written about a contemporary war but set as one in the past.
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Oct 17, 2019 21:08
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euphronius posted:Uh MASH was on air longer than the Korean war took place. It was a story about something current framed as a historic event. I wasn't trying to say the exodus was real. Just comparing story telling elements and the reasons for the story in the first place.
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Oct 17, 2019 21:19
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Some early semitic tribe leaving egypt during the bronze age collapse isn't a crazy at all thought to believe. That's a plausible movement of people. The story of slavery and pyramid building is pure mythology. But the bronze age collapse is full of entire groups of people moving to different areas, so it isn't irrational to correlate the two.
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Oct 17, 2019 22:10
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skasion posted:Here’s the thing, the Egyptians knew where the Israelites were around the time of the Bronze Age collapse. It was in Egyptian-dominated Canaan with the other Canaanites, busy getting laid waste by Merneptah, according to his stele. That makes a lot of sense.
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Oct 17, 2019 23:09
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Also, isn't there an ever present issue in the ancient world of people just dumping trash on streets? I seem to recall discussions here that in some places streets have risen enough on top of accumulated refuse that things that used to be ground level are now basements.
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Dec 15, 2019 22:46
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underage at the vape shop posted:They did, they hung stuff up in their houses and it became a permanent part of the decor, even if you sold the property Even in modern times, a lot of things hung on the wall can become fixtures that stay with the house through sale.
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Dec 19, 2019 02:19
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The Byzantine Empire was the Roman Empire. If you called them Greek, you'd get tossed out on your rear end. The term Byzantine was just applied to them by a German historian forever ago.
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Mar 30, 2020 00:41
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Does anyone know the original name of the city that became Rome?
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Mar 30, 2020 02:51
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Vincent Van Goatse posted:If you mean the legendary version of Rome's founding it's Alba Longa. Gotcha. I just recall somewhere earlier in this thread discussion of how ancient cities were typically named after their patron deity or whatever, and the early Romans just kidnapped everyone's god and stashed it in Rome to bring them into the fold without pissing them off or necessarily destroying their culture. All the while the real name and patron of Rome was kept secret. Rome was the people, not the city. I'm probably misremembering that.
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Mar 30, 2020 03:12
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Rockopolis posted:Troy? Nah, that's where Romans came from. I'm more interested in Latins they merged with to start the kingdom.
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Mar 30, 2020 03:20
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It’s because the welsh did not fight like warrior poets for their freedom. The welsh were never as rowdy as scots. Hadrian’s wall didn’t block off wales, for example.
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Apr 9, 2020 12:05
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The roman one mentioned barbary lions aka the extinct north african lion. Those were smaller than what we think of now as an african lion and would probably get hosed up more often than not by a much larger tiger.
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Apr 18, 2020 12:23
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Fish of hemp posted:Which makes me wonder when the inflation was first observed and theorized? I'm not sure about the first use of word "inflation" in this context, but people were aware of the effects of devaluing currencies across all sorts of ancient cultures. The bank of england has specifically tracked inflation in the pound since the 1700s.
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Apr 28, 2020 15:19
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WoodrowSkillson posted:the concept of inflation is big difference though, I do not have the answer, but the point is the Romans for example knew devaluing their currency was bad, but not that just making more coins was also bad. that leap seems to have taken an absurdly long time It looks like the origin comes from the mid 1500s when philosophers at the time studied the effect of American gold and silver on Spain and Europe.
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Apr 28, 2020 15:33
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Epicurius posted:There's a whole body of literature on looking at the way medieval audiences understood plays. You might want to take a look at this thesis, about medieval and early modern audiences and their response to dramas. Reminder to read that and all Shakespeare like you're a Appalachian moonshiner. That's closer to what english sounded like back then than modern british english. It all flows so much better.
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Jun 14, 2020 18:10
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SlothfulCobra posted:France and Spain also got totally overrun by Germans, Scandinavians, and Arabs, and still somehow kept a Latin language after the dust settled. Formerly-Roman Britain also wasn't completely overrun in the way that France and Spain were, because the Welsh Kingdoms held out. Look at it like this - how much latin are people speaking the levant? Rome held that area much longer than tin island. Latin did not spread everywhere even when rulers spoke it for centuries. France, Spain, and Italy had common folk speaking latin. In further off locations, latin never took root as the common language so once the romans were gone people just kept talking like they did before.
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Jul 3, 2020 20:19
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Schadenboner posted:Pre- or Post-1066 though? From some point after the saxon invasion until 1066 its basically old english afaik which is most like the modern language frisian. The two are mutually intelligible. After 1066, though, french bleeds into the old english creating middle english that is fully formed into what we would recognize as modern english in the 1500s. The shift of language in those 500 years is so stark that english and englisc are unintelligible. If you haven't seen it, here's Eddie Izzard talking to a frisian farmer in old english: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OeC1yAaWG34
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Jul 4, 2020 14:06
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I tried to think of a good zero pun but could naught.
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Jul 7, 2020 02:40
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Omnomnomnivore posted:Super fascinating. The Polynesian form of navigation is the best form of open ocean traveling short of modern technology. European open ocean navigation was pretty much drive straight north-south and then east-west and vice versa prior to the marine chronometer (which came after the colonization of the Americas). This is because you can trivially determine your latitude using astronomical bodies, but determining longitude is not possible without some sort of assistance. Although dead reckoning will get you so far, people had no real way of knowing how far east or west they had gone once they got out into the open ocean. This is a big part of why even in the mediterranean sea, sailors stuck close to shore when traveling. Polynesian navigators, on the other hand, observed waves and ocean currents to determine where islands and land were so they could sail directly to them. They essentially drew accurate charts of the entire pacific ocean using straw as they were sailing. Modern GPS makes all of this moot, but prior to that the chronometer was still how most ships determined their east/west travel distance via dead reckoning.
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Jul 8, 2020 23:56
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Safety Biscuits posted:Or serial killers! I’m not saying that they were exact, but that’s the general method of travel because they could not tell how far they had gone east or west. Of course compass heading does not equal course over ground. They would adjust based upon currents/winds to make sure they were traveling in the direction they wanted. Taking advantage of currents isn’t out of line with this, but that isn’t what the polynesians were doing. Polynesian people were actively charting the entire pacific based upon currents. Prior to the chronometer, sailors only had an educated guess via dead reckoning about how far east or west they had actually traveled.
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Jul 9, 2020 12:00
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Bar Ran Dun posted:Ehh they could do things like count knots and keep a record over a whole day. But that stuff is really hard to do well and one would have to be really practiced to be good at it. It was really loving hard. The nautical chronometer changed the game completely when it came to sailing. Dead reckoning refers to a specific charting technique where you project where you should be on a chart based upon speed and heading. When you can take an actual fix using landmarks or celestial bodies, you compare it to your DR to determine your course over ground and direction/strength of currents.
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Jul 10, 2020 00:58
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Bar Ran Dun posted:You are lecturing a merchant mariner who did SOLAS work for nearly 15 years. That said cel nav would be a weak area for me personally. The point is it was not impossible to do, but that it took a years of experience and intelligence and natural skill to do well. Small errors accumulate and build over time basically. The chronometer makes it much easier and opens up a much larger number of people capable of navigating well. Definitely not trying to lecture. Didn't know your background and what you knew already. I'm a former navy SWO. Definitely not as much time at sea as you. I personally can't do any celestial nav, either, but I can use a stadimeter. One of our skippers was big on that and would have had us outside at night with a sextant if he could.
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Jul 10, 2020 03:01
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Pretty sure anyone who worked metal in ancient poland was familiar at least in passing that the tin they used came from tin island.
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Jul 15, 2020 15:06
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You might have a chance if you somehow had the smallpox vaccine prior to the colombian exchange.
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Jul 24, 2020 01:24
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Fellblade posted:Florianus He was done using the dreamworks algorithm.
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Jul 26, 2020 19:34
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FreudianSlippers posted:Lol if you're a Christian and think there is any form of afterlife prior to judgement day. nah god realized there was no way he could go through billions in a day so he just takes applications on a rolling basis.
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Jul 30, 2020 23:18
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Rome's secret name is actually COVFEFE.
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Aug 4, 2020 15:40
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Funny how a thousand years of time between the trojan war and plutarch stretched the distance in time from the war to zoroaster from 5 centuries to 5 millennia.
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Aug 5, 2020 01:00
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Weka posted:Wikipedia has the Olmec and the Maya on a couple of lists of bronze age civilizations. Am I correct in thinking neither group made bronze? The olmecs predated most american metallurgy, however the americas did work with copper and copper-alloys from around 600 AD.
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Aug 13, 2020 21:47
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Someone plotted the last 12k years of temperatures above/below the 20th century average. https://twitter.com/alxrdk/status/1295016785180270594
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Aug 17, 2020 13:51
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Kemper Boyd posted:What if I just want a horse that isn't a cowardly dumbass but one that I can respect. Such creature does not exist. Horses have two emotions: fear or anger and no horse dies from natural causes because they are some of the dumbest animals to walk the earth
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Aug 23, 2020 14:18
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a fatguy baldspot posted:What’s up with the secret name of Rome? Rome is the name of the people and republic, but was not the name of the city. Ancient peoples believed a specific deity protected cities and were often named after that being. The Romans, rather than crushing the defeated’s idols would transfer them back to HQ so that they became part of the Roman pantheon. Rome’s guardian and true name is a closely kept secret because capturing that god would give you power over the Romans.
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Aug 24, 2020 12:45
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