Roman/ancient history: Checkmate, Atenists

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

zoux: Apr 28, 2006

Nessus posted:

Well that's no fun.

I can tell you about growing up as a Young Earth Creationist and what they told us the flood was, scientifically (all water was held back by the firmament and the great deluge was THE LORD letting all this water fall through at once)

# ¿ May 8, 2023 15:52

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# ¿ May 10, 2024 13:07

zoux: Apr 28, 2006

Did they even have glaciers in Australia?

# ¿ May 8, 2023 21:17

zoux: Apr 28, 2006

Concerning, seems like Tasmanian devils had unfettered access to the main continent before the ice age ended

# ¿ May 8, 2023 21:24

zoux: Apr 28, 2006

They hunted the woolly unextended cab into extinction.

# ¿ May 29, 2023 16:18

zoux: Apr 28, 2006

I presume they had heard about the wheel before then right

# ¿ Jun 6, 2023 22:37

zoux: Apr 28, 2006

What was the conception of the idea of "history" to those Dawn of Man civs?

# ¿ Jun 6, 2023 23:13

zoux: Apr 28, 2006

Mister Olympus posted:

i mean who couldn't. gotta imagine millenia-old patchouli gets funky, think of how bad grandma's house already is

"Is my college roommate buried here"

# ¿ Jun 13, 2023 14:27

zoux: Apr 28, 2006

Pizza was famously invented by Gaius Minimus Caesar

# ¿ Jun 28, 2023 16:15

zoux: Apr 28, 2006

FFT posted:

From first principles (i.e. I am talking out of my rear end) it's a hell of a lot more hassle to go "fetch the mounting stool!" than it is for someone nearby to get on one knee so the other knee can be used as a step.

That can gently caress up knees and legs, whereas backs are somewhat armored or at least have the support of all four limbs.

So, again, still speaking entirely out of my rear end, it does make a sort of sense as both a power move and not injuring soldiers.

The best thing to do is to capture a Roman emperor and use him.

# ¿ Jun 30, 2023 14:54

zoux: Apr 28, 2006

Big sausages were considered garish in those times.

# ¿ Jul 6, 2023 15:54

zoux: Apr 28, 2006

Does Akhenaten count?

# ¿ Jul 13, 2023 18:38

zoux: Apr 28, 2006

it didn't go over well though.

# ¿ Jul 13, 2023 18:52

zoux: Apr 28, 2006

As the self proclaimed King of all Saiyans, Vegeta would be anathema to republican Rome.

# ¿ Jul 20, 2023 16:23

zoux: Apr 28, 2006

We kind of had a similar debate regarding flood mythologies, wondering if perhaps they were harkening back to the end of glaciation. That's a lot more recent than h. floresiensis. I don't think there was a consensus reached but I don't know how you corroborate that sort of thing outside of like a Congo situation where the face-clapping gorillas are discovered to still exist.

# ¿ Aug 3, 2023 14:54

zoux: Apr 28, 2006

I'd be interested if there was any evidence of Homo on Homo violence. I know there's some speculation that Neanderthals were extirpated by early us, but I'm not aware of any other evidence of interactions, for good or ill, among our genus. I can't imagine they were positive if they were anything like us.

# ¿ Aug 3, 2023 15:23

zoux: Apr 28, 2006

two fish posted:

I really wonder how our early ancestors would have viewed the other species around at the time. They would have definitely lived in a time before we had concepts like race, ethnicity, or nationality, and with how localized human populations were at the time, all of your surrounding population would have looked quite similar to you. So, what happens when you interact with the Neanderthals? They look very different from you and may or may not be able to speak. You even had Homo erectus living well into the time period of Homo sapiens, and they were even further from us than Neanderthals were. I guess there's no way to really know, but would they have all been seen as human, but weird? Or as non-human?

On one hand, you look at the way modern humans divide people up and assume that the different "races" are different, better, and worse than one another, when there actually is no difference, you'd have to think that given an actual different species with actual differences, better or worse, between them would lead to unimaginable violence. On the other hand, these are all modern concepts and I'd be interested to know if an early tribe of h. sapiens would feel any more or less kinship with another tribe of h. sapiens over another extant homo tribe, or would just consider them "other" and leave it at that.

It is probably better that there was only the one extant species when we got into the modern age, I can't imagine the violence that modern humans would do to another sapient primate species

# ¿ Aug 3, 2023 15:41

zoux: Apr 28, 2006

Scarodactyl posted:

I really don't enjoy it when you come up with gross, bizarre historical hypotheticals and I think everyone would appreciate it if you refrained.

I don't give a poo poo personally.

What's the current scholarship on the Toba bottleneck, fake or possibly real?

# ¿ Aug 3, 2023 16:04

zoux: Apr 28, 2006

Race is just the modern framing we use. The Romans were absolutely trying to wipe out every Carthaginian despite that lacking that conception. Race is just one of the more salient "other" categories in the modern world.

# ¿ Aug 3, 2023 16:34

zoux: Apr 28, 2006

Eldoop posted:

Again, this was highly socially determined. The ideas of "Rome" and "Carthage" and the conflict between them came out of a historical context. They didn't just get dropped onto the map, see each other, and start battling to the death. If every Roman was just naturally baying for Carthaginian blood, Cato the Elder wouldn't have ended all his speeches with calls for Carthage's destruction because it would've just been a given, rather than a goal that had to be pushed forward constantly. Everything depends on what came before.

The results are indistinguishable, and thus we can make some educated guesses about results in other possible situations involving two different groups of individuals.

# ¿ Aug 3, 2023 16:44

zoux: Apr 28, 2006

Nessus posted:

There seem to be a considerable number of nations and ethnic groups in the current day, despite advances in military technology. Shouldn�t we be down to one, or a handful widely separated, if this is such an incredibly likely outcome of the presence of other groups?

There's also insane amounts of conflict that has only somewhat lessened because we now live under the umbrella of total extinction - which we still might trigger. Looking at the geopolitical situation over the last 100 years shouldn't lead you to the conclusion that humans are very good at cooperating across [x] lines.

# ¿ Aug 3, 2023 16:56

zoux: Apr 28, 2006

They probably couldn't take all the shrill counting and had to do something.

# ¿ Aug 3, 2023 17:28

zoux: Apr 28, 2006

I know that speciation is a tricky thing but wouldn't the fact that early hominids were interbreeding evidence that they were barely separate species, if at all?

# ¿ Aug 3, 2023 20:43

zoux: Apr 28, 2006

Grand Fromage posted:

if you saw a Neanderthal walking around today you'd know.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tTkF8tomobA&t=26s

# ¿ Aug 3, 2023 20:49

zoux: Apr 28, 2006

Wait, so it is actually true that dragon myths came from dinosaur bones?

# ¿ Aug 5, 2023 17:11

zoux: Apr 28, 2006

Because it's a giant pig that makes corpses or because it looks like a dead pig

# ¿ Aug 7, 2023 14:19

zoux: Apr 28, 2006

CrypticFox posted:

"Dam" means "spouse," which doesn't have much in common with "corpse."

Oh this guy's never met my wife, I tell ya

# ¿ Aug 7, 2023 19:11

zoux: Apr 28, 2006

In the Stephen Moffat Dracula show (it's ok) there's a scene where Dracula first encounters modernity in like, an estate house, and he's just blown away by everything in this dilapidated shack of a home. Says something to the effect that this very poor woman is living a life of luxury that the wealthiest ottoman sultan would envy.

I do think about that sometimes, how every night I sleep on better sheets and mattresses than Ghengis Khan ever did, I eat better food than any English king, spend my days in climate controlled, fully lit and perfectly clean structures surrounded by technologies that would seem magical to the most learned scholar of Rome.

So was there any luxury available to the elites of the past that overshadows our quotidian consumption in a modern, industrialized country?

# ¿ Aug 9, 2023 16:40

zoux: Apr 28, 2006

I'll take the AC

# ¿ Aug 9, 2023 17:13

zoux: Apr 28, 2006

euphronius posted:

Genghis Khan probably slept on better bed then you ever did .

AC is a big improvement the ancients never had

But they could sit in sea side villas all day which is nice

They drank fermented horse milk and Genghis Khan probably had fleas in his bed.

# ¿ Aug 9, 2023 19:22

zoux: Apr 28, 2006

Oh yeah? The chinese had memory foam?

# ¿ Aug 9, 2023 19:28

zoux: Apr 28, 2006

Ain't no adobe bricks or windcatcher gonna make Houston livable in August.

# ¿ Aug 9, 2023 20:17

zoux: Apr 28, 2006

feedmegin posted:

There's a fair chance the current one eats better than you do, I would expect.

He lives in England so I doubt it

# ¿ Aug 10, 2023 15:04

zoux: Apr 28, 2006

Nowadays you'd have people drinking lead performatively to prove it's just more lib propaganda

"They say molten metal is hot, but look, it's a cool silver color"

# ¿ Aug 10, 2023 20:03

zoux: Apr 28, 2006

Cinnabar is such an appetizing name though. Galena, that I wouldn't eat.

# ¿ Aug 11, 2023 15:05

zoux: Apr 28, 2006

CrypticFox posted:

Professional gladiators could also be superstars the same way modern athletes are today. Literary sources mention people going wild over star gladiators, and graffiti from Pompeii includes some fawning messages from fans directed towards their favorite gladiators.

You could make insane bank racing chariots

# ¿ Aug 22, 2023 19:01

zoux: Apr 28, 2006

Close as hell to Naples as well, and there's tons to do there as well. Pompeii is great, and it is an enormous site with tons to see, but it's also going to be crowded.

Italy was one of the places that really lived up to the hype as far as historical tourism goes. We went on a med cruise a few years ago that started in Rome, went to Naples, several of the Cyclades, Ephesus, Istanbul, and Athens and it was really cool visiting the three most famous cities in the history of western civilization. We flew in early to Rome and booked a private tour for two days, and we got two days in Istanbul as well.

We booked full days too, saw everything we could, wasn't terribly relaxing but it was definitely the most interesting, and my favorite, vacation I've ever taken. Relatively affordable for what you get too.

Also the acropolis is fake they rebuilt it in the 70s!

# ¿ Aug 23, 2023 15:01

zoux: Apr 28, 2006

Heimlicus, you've saved the praetor's life! Any boon is yours!

# ¿ Aug 30, 2023 16:15

zoux: Apr 28, 2006

Here's the good doc himself on the subject.

quote:

One day in 1972 I was reading an article in the Sunday New York Times Magazine about accidental deaths. What caught my eye was that choking to death was number six on the list. Three thousand people a year died from choking in this country alone. This particularly piqued my interest because, in the 1950's I had developed the Reversed Gastric Tube esophagus replacement operation and, through much of my career, had become involved in evaluating patients' swallowing problems.

What was most striking was how choking usually occurred in the most ordinary circumstances. The object on which most people choked was a piece of food or, with children, a toy, a coin, or any small object they happened to put in their mouth. Yet you rarely heard of these deaths. Only when a prominent person died - such as Ethel Kennedy's sister-in-law, Joan Skakel, who choked to death on a chunk of meat, did you read about it in the newspaper. Two music stars, band leader Tommy Dorsey and pop singer Mama Cass Elliot, lost their lives to choking. I later learned that Claudius I, Emperor of Rome, had also choked to death accidentally - not strangled by a rival, as is commonly believed.

As always, the first step was to research the subject in the medical journals. I discovered that since 1933, the American Red Cross had been teaching people to save choking persons by slapping them on the back. As I read further, I realized there was no scientific basis for that recommendation. In fact, all reports from 1854 (Gross SD: A Practical Treatise on Foreign Bodies in the Air-Passages. Philadelphia, Blanchard & Lea, 1854) to the present prove hitting a person on the back drives the object downward, lodging it more tightly in the airway. Choking persons, who can still breathe, even with a piece of food in their throat, often die when back slaps cork their airway.

"Pop Goes the Cafe Coronary" (the editor's title) appeared in Emergency Medicine in June 1974. The term "Caf� Coronary" had emerged to describe the frequent situation where a person chokes to death on food in a restaurant. More often than not, horrified onlookers thought the person was having a heart attack. (This was before a universal symbol for choking that I designed - hold your hand around your throat - was widely popularized.) Even the best doctors didn't know what to do about choking. In my article, I described one incident where a physician had tried to perform a tracheotomy with a kitchen knife on his choking wife. He literally slit her throat, cutting her carotid artery in the process, and she died of a hemorrhage. Yet, one of the recommendations, before the Heimlich maneuver came along, for saving choking victims was to slit open the trachea in the neck with a knife.

Historical consensus is that Claudius was poisoned though

# ¿ Aug 30, 2023 18:00

zoux: Apr 28, 2006

What's wofa?

# ¿ Aug 30, 2023 20:26

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# ¿ May 10, 2024 13:07

zoux: Apr 28, 2006

Offler posted:

My favorite baffling tautology is the La Brea tar pits, aka the the tar tar pits. Just because the name combines two very living languages that are both spoken by millions of people today in the area.

Same with the Los Angeles Angels

# ¿ Sep 6, 2023 14:22

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