Roman/ancient history: Checkmate, Atenists

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

Dante: Feb 8, 2003

What's the current theory on Arianism and it's popularity? The theory that for example donatism fucks up any serious administrative church and had to go seems reasonable, but all of a sudden you have arianism being professed by some emperors and the army. I don't really buy that the average joe/emperor/army unit was deeply troubled by Jesus being a platonic demiurge or not. There has to be some sociopolitical reasons behind it _{because historical materialism rules}.

Dante fucked around with this message at 12:03 on Feb 7, 2013

# ¿ Feb 7, 2013 11:59

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# ¿ Apr 26, 2024 19:05

Dante: Feb 8, 2003

Slim Jim Pickens posted:

Stuff like taboos arise out of cultural reality rather than the other way around. Any steppe culture that focused on ground-melee combat would have been obliterated.

This is one of those things (the directionality of change in terms of culture) I've always assumed, but only read evidence for within my subset of interest. Has there ever been any good (non-race theory) books on "culture as a product" as a general historic concept?

# ¿ Jun 28, 2013 19:02

Dante: Feb 8, 2003

That is the dumbest thing. From what we know of linguistics and neurology it's pretty clear that all humans have an i-language, which is basically an innate biological capacity for language which is our system of thought. All external languages (english, korean, dutch etc) are essentially cultural norms that plug into this i-language while flipping some parameters (like if they're head-first or not). We have some inkling of when this evolutionary change happened because of the the explosion of self-expression, creativity etc in the archeological record. This is what Jared Diamond once called the Great Leap Forward.

Dante fucked around with this message at 12:40 on Jul 4, 2013

# ¿ Jul 4, 2013 12:30

Dante: Feb 8, 2003

Obdicut posted:

Well, that's a pretty significant weakness.

The latter is simply a theory, though, it's not a demonstrated fact that this evolutionary change happened. It's a very contentious area.

If you looked back on human history from a more distant perspective, you'd be tempted to come up with some evolutionary explanation for the huge outpouring of creativity in the past three centuries, too.

The evolutionary change obviously happened, because we're the only species on the planet with this feature. There's a debate on when it happened specifically and if any of our extinct relatives also had it as there's evidence of symbolic thought (pendants, burial rites) but not much else. Humans uniquely have a recursive (therefore infinite) language, and from what we can tell of animal communication (and here I'm simplifying) they always have a direct correspondence to something concrete. So something like a finite number of signals for something like help, hunger or enemy or a range of articulation that still means something specifically (this bird might sing a little different, but it's still recognisable as a mating call). Human language is just a completely different beast, we just have in common that we communicate vocally.

Yeah you can debate if the great leap forward constitutes a good date for this change instead of continuos cultural change, but it obviously happened at some point.

Dante fucked around with this message at 13:12 on Jul 4, 2013

# ¿ Jul 4, 2013 12:54

Dante: Feb 8, 2003

Real estate developers bulldoze 4000 year old pyramid

# ¿ Jul 4, 2013 13:04

Dante: Feb 8, 2003

Phobophilia posted:

As for the insane jump in development over the last few hundred year? What it boils down to is better trade networks and communications allowing continuous and rapid cross-pollination of ideas. Before, large developments required some spectacularly brilliant man to come up with that breakthrough and hopefully have enough social clout to make their idea take root. You had one peasant come up a new agricultural tool and it won't spread beyond his village he'll take it to his grave. These, days, any bright middle class person (person, not man!) can come up with something clever and potentially have the world take notice.

This isn't entirely correct, it's not the lack of ideas/cross-pollination or whatever that were the major hindrances, but rather the lack of organisational capacity in a society. The classic example here is the breakdown of the western roman empire, when the technological level of societies actually went backwards simply because there was no institutional structure to support it anymore. Agricultural technological developments is a special case of this because of agricultural intensification (See Boserup).

Dante fucked around with this message at 13:42 on Jul 4, 2013

# ¿ Jul 4, 2013 13:33

Dante: Feb 8, 2003

fspades posted:

Let me just say I'll do some more reading about it, including the book's sequel "Bicameral Mind 30 Years On" and then get back to you about if they found any credible evidence for it or not. I'm just curious about it.

People migrated to the australian continent tens of thousands of years before this "bicameral mind" broke down. This means A. Aboriginals didn't become conscious until the Europeans toddled off their ships and B. That the rash of uncontacted tribes that integrated with the modern world in the 70s in Papa New Guinea suddenly became concious in a couple of years at most. From that it follows that it can't be a neurological evolution at all, and that the theory is that somehow a certain cultural development rewires our brain and makes us conscious. That also means that a child that grows up without cultural contact will have this bicameral mind.

This is obviously completely untrue.

edit:

This is horrible

Dante fucked around with this message at 14:13 on Jul 4, 2013

# ¿ Jul 4, 2013 13:43

Dante: Feb 8, 2003

Ras Het posted:

I'd rather not worry too much about what's "true" or "false", but what works. If an outlandish theory has explanatory value and some sort of poetry to it, I'd rather relish it than some bland and unexplainable reality.

Ah yes, postmodernist science

# ¿ Jul 5, 2013 01:46

Dante: Feb 8, 2003

The Entire Universe posted:

I'd love to have someone come across a sealed amphora filled with something like 1700-year old wine or olive oil or (as long as I'm not anywhere nearby) garum.

Pretty sure this has happened a few times.

# ¿ Jul 17, 2013 01:35

Dante: Feb 8, 2003

Install Gentoo posted:

People, today, do in fact know how to carve out large stone blocks with hand tools. It also takes a long time to do it. It took the Egyptians a long time to do it too. It's time consuming work, it's not impossible work, it doesn't even need us to reinvent anything. We know how to organize people. The pyramids are not built to perfect dimensions, nor are all the blocks perfect. We know how to shape stone with basic tools. It is straight up already known.

You're making the mistake in thinking that there's something special going on that we need to know to replicate it. And that somehow no one knows how to carve and split up stone to high quality with simple tools today. Neither of those things are true.

This is true. Right across the road my workplace there's a building with a small army of masons inside that continually maintain the massive fuckoff stone cathedral in my city and they do it by chisel and handsawing stone, not by lasers or whatever people is imagining. The pyramids are not built with milimeter superprecision, and cutting stones with ANCIENT TOOLS is a trivial but supertedious business.

# ¿ Jul 24, 2013 21:07

Dante: Feb 8, 2003

What are some other podcast except Tides of History that is good? I strongly prefer history podcast that drops the theater play fantasy reimaginations and focuses on academic work (no Carlin).

# ¿ May 23, 2020 21:24

Dante: Feb 8, 2003

Thanks for all the great tips!

# ¿ May 24, 2020 00:25

Dante: Feb 8, 2003

Extrapolating the consquences of debt relief in ancient egypt into modern economies is nonsensical for a wide variety of reasons. Every modern economy has some function whereby a productive enterprise otherwise saddled by debt can retain it's productive capacity without dissolution through bankruptcy, and similarly there's some mechanic for individuals whereby debt doesn't starve you (personal bankrupcty, abolishment of debtors prison, minimum guaranteed income etc). That said there's empirical evidence that states can default without being frozen out of the bond market (argentina is the most common example) as the default-risk is priced into the bond, but that's very different from the idea that the US could say default on the roughly $1 trillion treasury bonds owned by China without crashing its economy and getting a skyrocketing interest rate. Actual sovereign defaults (like argentina) is actually either some form of repayment postponement (extending the payment schedule) or a debt restructuring whereby bondholders get paid less (basically the bond yield is reduced). Defaulting on debt is an asset-loss on someones ledger no matter how you twist.

Dante fucked around with this message at 15:01 on May 29, 2020

# ¿ May 29, 2020 14:48

Dante: Feb 8, 2003

physeter posted:

That modern economies have a more legislated, organized process to avoid catastrophe does not mean that catastrophe is not a threat, quite the opposite. Why wouldn't we analyze societies that didn't have this process so as to develop a more perfect system...?

I don't know what you mean by threat in this context, but analyzing debt relief in an ancient barter economy won't tell you anything about the consequences of defaulting on treasury bonds in a modern economy because they're entirely different systems. Economic history on ancient societies is interesting by itself, but it's sort of like analyzing how the content of precious metal in ancient coins declined due to currency debasement. It's interesting by itself to understand the economic forces of the era, but it's not applicable to how monetary systems in the contemporary period work in terms of inflation.

Dante fucked around with this message at 20:33 on May 29, 2020

# ¿ May 29, 2020 20:25

Dante: Feb 8, 2003

The expedition to find the endurance succeeded:
https://twitter.com/thehistoryguy/status/1501452764131598342?s=20&t=hqsx0M7436HY1_2mHTHGMA

# ¿ Mar 9, 2022 14:57

Dante: Feb 8, 2003

I'm aware that this is very much not ancient history, but I'll take the chance and ask anyway since most history buffs congregate here; I know very little about the history of the golden age of piracy/buccaneering age, does anyone have a good book on the topic to recommend - either a historical overview or books on specific people or occurences?

# ¿ Jun 10, 2023 15:43

Dante: Feb 8, 2003

I asked this thread for advice regarding seminal works on pirates, and got a great recommendation. I'll therefore try again even though it is still not strictly roman or ancient history;

Does anyone have a great book recommendation regarding the crusades? It can be about the crusades in general, or a specific one.

# ¿ Nov 24, 2023 19:02

Dante: Feb 8, 2003

I mean GGS isn't a scholarly book, you can find it in airports - but what's wrong with it? I assume like any 30 year old nonfiction book a lot of the empirical stuff is outdated or supplanted by now, but what parts of the main thesis have been rebutted? I remember there was a fairly big debate regarding the crop and calorie arguments a few years after its release.

# ¿ Mar 10, 2024 19:34

Dante: Feb 8, 2003

Going to abuse this thread again to ask for book recommendations that don't belong (apologies); What are the best books about japanese history pre-1900 that are available in english (or at least has a passable english translation)? Any pre-1900 period is fine.

# ¿ Mar 14, 2024 18:29

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# ¿ Apr 26, 2024 19:05

Dante: Feb 8, 2003

Koramei posted:

Japan Emerging e. Karl Friday is probably the most authoritative work out there at the moment, at least until the new version of the Cambridge History of Japan eventually comes out. For a less dense monograph, I quite like William Wayne Farris' Japan to 1600: A Social and Economic History.

Excellent, thank you!

# ¿ Mar 15, 2024 22:49

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