Dalael posted:

New pyramid remains discovered south of Cairo

Jerusalem posted:

I can't wait to see those mosaics cleaned up

skasion posted:

We frankly don't know that they did. It's clear that statues were to some extent painted (or gilded, or decorated in other ways) but the notion that they were all painted in the same sorts of super bright flat color has limited basis in reality. We're talking about centuries of artists each working in their own way here, but the only visual representation of it that we have are the results of some guy analyzing the scraps of pigment that still remain nearly 2000 years later and attempting to extrapolate that to the whole artwork.

Jerusalem posted:

This also rules. 14,000 years ago is crazy to think about (on a human scale at least).

homullus posted:

We have a late Roman cookbook.

the romans posted:

179 Gruel and Wine
Pultes Oenococti

Porridge and wine is thus made:
1 flavor the pulse well with wine
2 and immerse in the juice dainty morsels.

Jamwad Hilder posted:

The reason we have recipes for dormice and bird tongues and not "regular" stuff is because they're delicacies/complicated to make. You wouldn't write down a sandwich recipe, would you? I assume you just know that you put some meat, cheese, lettuce, etc between bread. There's no reason to write it down because basically everyone in the world knows how to make a sandwich or something like it. I realize that there's probably a recipe for everything, even sandwiches, on the internet now, but I think the example still gets the point across.

sullat posted:

peer posted:

Unless you're black, gay, a woman, etc

Jazerus posted:

a monophyletic clade is a group that consists of all organisms descending from the same common ancestor

a paraphyletic clade is a group that is defined by some other standard and, as a result, either includes species from multiple lineages or arbitrarily excludes some lineages. for example reptile is paraphyletic because it excludes mammals, birds, and dinosaurs even though their origins are within the group that is considered to make up the reptiles.

phylogenetics/cladistics makes a lot of sense once you get into it and is really interesting but there's a lot of barriers to understanding it up-front

P-Mack posted:

Yes future researchers will never be able to understand a ten story apartment building with a plain brick facade without at least 300 extant examples.

Grand Fromage posted:

Yeah. There's really no way of knowing what future historians will want to study so it is in our interest to preserve a representative sample of everything possible.

Think of how useful the Vindolanda tablets are, and those are literally just garbage leftover from everyday correspondence. The ancient equivalent of a bunch of hotmail accounts. Nobody would've thought "man people in 2000 years are really going to want to read about my socks" but here we are.

CommonShore posted:

There are even things in my area (Prairie Canada) from 50, 100, 150 years back which already puzzle local historians who have to piece things together from a few poorly-archived pictures. When the style of the commonplace changes, the old commonplace gets very quickly forgotten.

(I have a much better illustrative example near the top of my memory but It's not coming to the surface - I'll post later if I can think of it )

-There was a synagogue in my town at one point. People argue about the exact location because the records aren't there, and it just dwindled and disappeared rather unceremoniously, to be replaced with housing somewhere along the way. I've never seen a picture.
-The exact locations of several WW1/WW2 training grounds in the area are now matters of dispute.

Squalid posted:

Not really? I mean they aren't really much like a katana at all besides (sometimes) having a curved blade. They're obviously an expensive weapon that probably wasn't ever used en mass, but they are plenty of archaeological examples that were sharp and clearly intended for battlefield use. They would obviously cut better and stab worse than a similar straight sword while the contemporaneous epsilon axes from which they are derived would have performed no better against armor, having similar blade morphology. Epsilon axes were very similar especially to earlier sickle sword designs, but probably more fragile.

The Khopesh came well before anything else that could be called a sword, although there were short daggers at the time. In 2000 BC close quarters combat was mostly settled with the ax or mace, and a khopesh is pretty clearly a step up.


Assyrian bronze sickle sword, ca. 1307–1275 B.C.


Early Minoan and Levantine straight swords

Cyrano4747 posted:

I don't know that exact example, but from what I can tell most of the time it's some marginalized ethnic, tribal, religious, etc group trying to lay claim to an ancient heritage. It's understandable and tragic because the legacy of colonialism means that a LOT of those groups essentially had their cultures and histories eradicated. Being able to lay claim to a long tradition that culminates in you is a really powerful thing, and something a lot of people are sadly lacking. It also has political utility if a group wants to lay claim to some ancient birthright.

Kanine posted:

if anyone in the thread is interested in historical woodworking, here's a cool vid of how shingles are made with hand tools starting with a log

fishmech posted:

It's likely that the "Spanish Flu" wouldn't have spread as fast or been as bad if there hadn't been tons of extra soldiers being shipped about and tons of people already living in worse health from wartime shortages and things like that.

Ynglaur posted:

Twilight?

cheetah7071 posted:

Tom Holland is probably my favorite pop history writer because of his ability to construct a narrative out of historical facts but with only one exception his books don't really attempt to have interesting scholarly insights--they're just telling the history as a story.

Mr Enderby posted:

Wait is this still RTW mechanics, because that totally sounds like something that Romans would think.