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This Thread Will Go Down in [History]

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  • ZellpherZellpher Registered User regular
    I have completed my archival internship (they gave me a certificate and everything, it was very sweet) and am now qualified for a BA in History. I just gotta wait for them to send the damned paper diploma to me in January.

    Now to move somewhere very far away for a job and save up for grad school!

  • MayabirdMayabird Pecking at the keyboardRegistered User regular
    It reminds me of the Bog Walkers in Mad Max

    That's how I found this out. I was reading something about the world building and someone offhandedly wondered if George Miller knew about the stilt walkers of Landes, which I immediately googled and thus came across the article about Sylvain Dornon.

  • ZibblsnrtZibblsnrt Registered User regular
    edited August 2016
    Kana wrote: »
    This guy's a little dry, but I like how he really goes in depth on armor and looks at the engineering and theory behind their design. It really makes you appreciate how much experience and expertise went into their creation.

    Digging into armour history gets pretty fun if just for how intricate the design processes can get.

    I spent awhile on a Roman armour kick in undergrad, and they were probably one of the neatest ways of following Roman history through successive designs over the generations. If you took a bunch of legionary helmets that were typical of their time and lined them up in a row, you'd be able to take a reasonably good crack at figuring out when each one dated from by their design and some knowledge of the chronology. They transition from Greek-derived designs to a simpler Italian one, get way more elaborate when those incredible Gallic smiths start showing up in the picture, adopt a bunch of per-conflict innovations over the next while, and then get simpler again as the empire contracted and the main centres of really good armour work started to decline or fall away.

    One of my favorite bits is how you can tell if a helmet was made before or after the Dacian Wars of 101-106. The Dacians were fond of a weapon called the falx, which was basically what you get if you take a scythe blade built to a sword's toughness and stick it on the end of a short spear haft:

    360px-AdamclisiMetope34.jpg

    Carvings showing battle scenes from the war suggest that the main way of using the falx was a nice unsubtle two-handed overhead swing that looked like it would readily convert a typical Roman into a pair of typical hemi-Romans. Rome won out in the end of course, but they also made more of a point of stressing that these guys and their gear meant business than they did for a lot of their other neighbors.

    During and after the war, the Roman military spent some time adjusting gear in response to their experiences there. Here's a couple examples of Roman helmet types from that period, with the one inspired from the wartime experience being fairly obvious:

    360px-Helmet_typ_Weissenau_01.jpg
    preview_eweisenautheilenhofencarasseverinromania21copy0.jpg

    It's just kinda neat seeing them hurriedly clamp on some "but - but - but - I like my skull!" augmentations, including making the brow ridge really solid instead of just being something to turn glancing blows. They started as field modifications by individual soldiers and passed into standard issue once people further up the chain realized that hey, that makes sense.

    Soldiers also added other changes to their kit, like rigging up some ad-hoc armored sleeves for their right arm - the other stayed safely behind their shield, while the right arm had to be exposed at least some of the time to actually engage falxmen.

    Later on in their history you can actually see the state's decline in the gear, as features start vanishing from helmets over time. When the Empire lost Gaul - the source of their best metalwork and most of their best smiths; the best imperial helmets were called the Gallic type - their equipment almost immediately devolved back to much older styles, with simpler shapes, fewer protective features that were now costly in time and effort, and usually made out of several pieces riveted together instead of one well-shaped bowl.

    arthur1.gif

    In summary, it's fun seeing how much of a culture's history, economy, etc. you can piece together or corroborate by looking at their material culture.

    Zibblsnrt on
  • Metzger MeisterMetzger Meister It Gets Worse before it gets any better.Registered User regular
    Why eere Gallic smiths so renowned for their metalworking?

  • TefTef Registered User regular
    From memory, they just had access to various metals, including precious metals. Making jewellery and functional metal objects was profitable, so many areas established it as a cultural tradition over time

    help a fellow forumer meet their mental health care needs because USA healthcare sucks!

    Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better

    bit.ly/2XQM1ke
  • ZibblsnrtZibblsnrt Registered User regular
    edited August 2016
    That was more or less it, yeah. Gaul was richer in (easily-accessible) metals than Italy, plus had more convenient access to things like tin (which makes your bronze a lot easier/cheaper to work with, which is itself a nice source of wealth) through trade compared to the Mediterranean.

    Gallic cultures also simply held metallurgy in higher esteem as a trade/skill than some of the neighbors did - probably in part because of the mineral wealth of the area - which would've meant it would be easier to find people and craft traditions that really knew what they were doing. The region actually had that reputation up through Charlemagne's time.

    Zibblsnrt on
  • FencingsaxFencingsax It is difficult to get a man to understand, when his salary depends upon his not understanding GNU Terry PratchettRegistered User regular
    Also, it was closer to Spain, where the good steel was.

  • ZibblsnrtZibblsnrt Registered User regular
    Yeah, Spain was probably the richest part of the republic/empire in terms of the amount/value of stuff they could pull out of the ground. A lot of Spanish cultures at the time were pretty closely related to Gallic ones as well, so there was some mixing of traditions like that. They were generally way less accommodating to the "being conquered by the Romans" thing though; you generally looked to Spain for the mines (and practice fighting against rebels who didn't like the mines) and Gaul for the talent.

    (Spain's also where Rome figured out the whole gladius thing; they first saw them in the hands of Carthaginian allies during the Spanish campaign. They called it the Hispanic Sword for centuries afterwards.)

  • StraightziStraightzi Here we may reign secure, and in my choice, To reign is worth ambition though in HellRegistered User regular
    edited September 2016
    History! Linguistics! And a little bit of humor!

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H3r9bOkYW9s

    Straightzi on
  • VeeveeVeevee WisconsinRegistered User regular
    edited September 2016
    In case anyone cares about the history of videos on youtube, here's the original upload from the original creators 2 years earlier than that video

    *link removed*

    Veevee on
  • StraightziStraightzi Here we may reign secure, and in my choice, To reign is worth ambition though in HellRegistered User regular
    Whoops, I didn't check that. Fixed mine.

  • ZibblsnrtZibblsnrt Registered User regular
    edited September 2016
    So we were discussing museum labels for a bit at work today in terms of how they've changed or not-changed over time, and we ended up stumbling over the fact that the things are a teensy bit older than we had anticipated.

    In the 1920s one Leonard Woolley was excavating a Babylonian site in southern Iraq when he found a building that was full of wildly varying artifacts. None of them made sense in that context, their ages spanning most of a thousand years and often as not having little to do with the Babylonians themselves. But someone obviously put them there. And they couldn't have been loot or treasure, since some were just mundane detritus instead of gold or iron or other precious materials.

    Then he started finding some clay rods, usually sitting near one of the artifacts, with writing on them.

    Describing the items in question.

    In three languages, which you could get at by rotating the rods to find the explanation you were best able to read.

    So yeah! A woman named Ennigaldi or Ennigaldi-Nanna lived in Babylon in the 500s BCE as the daughter of King Nabû-na'id, the last Neo-Babylonian king. He took an interest in the region's past - possibly to the point of being one of the first archaeologists - and his daughter was well bitten by the history bug. Ennigaldi was already quite educated - she was managing a venerable religious academy training the priesthood - and took on the project of establishing a formal museum, complete with exhibition halls, labels, and a range of interests beyond just assembling a shiny, spectacular collection. It was operating around the 540s or 530s BCE.

    Some of the items were things like statues or pieces of monumental ones, but others were simple: boundary stones, or a few bricks or other fragments from ancient ruins which Ennigaldi or her father recovered in the course of expeditions around the empire. In life they were probably set up on display in a few organized halls, each with its label-rod explaining what the item was, when it was made and where it came from.

    It's not clear if the museum was dedicated specifically as one, or if it was an adjunct to Ennigaldi's school, but really the lines between those sorts of things are blurry enough in the here and now, much less back then when people were usually a little less rigid about defining institutions. The empire collapsed at the end of Nabû-na'id's's reign when the up-and-coming Persians conquered it, leaving the fate of the king, Ennigaldi, and her museum unclear ever since.

    I'm not sure what my favorite bit about it is: that we've got recognizable museums that far back, that we know a woman was the first curator in history whose name we have, that her tastes in collections were surprisingly varied, or that even that far back people fussed over accessible language in labeling.

    Zibblsnrt on
  • GvzbgulGvzbgul Registered User regular
    A neat article from Cracked about how the past was a crazy place, and about how, for all of the "2016 is the worst" memes, we can't match up to craziness of the past.
    4 Stories From When Terrorism Was Extremely Common

  • masterofmetroidmasterofmetroid Have you ever looked at a world and seen it as a kind of challenge?Registered User regular
    This is one of the nice things about being interested in History

    A deeply comforting and well proven belief that yes, things could actually be way worse

  • ZibblsnrtZibblsnrt Registered User regular
    I think I've realized my favorite thing about Ennigaldi and her museum:

    2,500 years ago, there was a museum attached to a royal palace, and that museum had things on display as anonymously unglamorous as random bricks excavated from a forgotten site so old it was a sandblasted ruin even then, and the curator took care to make sure said bricks had a readily available, trilingual label so as many people as possible could get their description, provenance and historical context.

    This means that huge goddamned nerds were very much a thing at least as far back as when ironworking was still kind of the state of the art.

    The time and cultural gaps there might as well be different planets, but I feel a hint of kindred spirit in the details we've been able to dig up since the site was excavated in the 1920s. Those little moments of empathy and humanizing Dusty Names In Inscriptions are far and away one of the things I enjoy the most about the discipline, and it's always a fun surprised to run into something that dorkily specific that far back in the past.

  • MayabirdMayabird Pecking at the keyboardRegistered User regular
    Did some reading into that amazing museum history.

    320px-Belshalti-nannar%27s_museum_label.jpg

    A translation of the text off one of the cylinders by Woolley:
    "These are copies from bricks found in the ruins of Ur, the work of Bur-Sin king of Ur, which while searching for the ground-plan [of the temple] the Governor of Ur found, and I saw and wrote out for the marvel of beholders."

    They even went so far as to mark which items were replicas!


    I can't help but think this would be an amazing museum exhibit, a reconstruction of the First Museum.

  • ZibblsnrtZibblsnrt Registered User regular
    Mayabird wrote: »
    Did some reading into that amazing museum history.

    A translation of the text off one of the cylinders by Woolley:
    "These are copies from bricks found in the ruins of Ur, the work of Bur-Sin king of Ur, which while searching for the ground-plan [of the temple] the Governor of Ur found, and I saw and wrote out for the marvel of beholders."

    They even went so far as to mark which items were replicas!


    I can't help but think this would be an amazing museum exhibit, a reconstruction of the First Museum.

    Yep, pretty much everything about it's awesome.

    There's museums today which slack off on identifying replicas, at least in their exhibits. (They'd damned well better in their records, but even then..)

    To give you an idea of the scope Ennigaldi was going for on her search for Various Stuff, Bur-Sin was thirteen or fourteen centuries dead by the time she was excavating his old stomping grounds. It's not necessarily enough time for things to vanish entirely, but it's definitely enough time that the city had declined from a major imperial capital to a barely-inhabited backwater with hints of neat stuff underneath the occasional mound. Just finding ground-plans tied to specific buildings would have been a significant task.

  • Lost SalientLost Salient blink twice if you'd like me to mercy kill youRegistered User regular
    Awww BUTTS I missed all the talk about reliquaries and bejeweled bodies. That shit is my jam. Even though I know I brought it up last year during Halloween Month I kinda want to do it again.

    RUVCwyu.jpg
    "Sandra has a good solid anti-murderer vibe. My skin felt very secure and sufficiently attached to my body when I met her. Also my organs." HAIL SATAN
  • DaMoonRulzDaMoonRulz Mare ImbriumRegistered User regular
    Happy Independence Day, USA!

    3basnids3lf9.jpg




  • RMS OceanicRMS Oceanic Registered User regular
    DaMoonRulz wrote: »
    Happy Independence Day, USA!

    ?

  • ChicoBlueChicoBlue Registered User regular
    On this day America and Great Britain signed a thing in Paris that said America got certain fishing rights.

    Oh and it also acknowledged sovereignty or something.

  • RMS OceanicRMS Oceanic Registered User regular
    Oh that.

    Also five months before that Controller General Fleury gave up trying to deal with the French budget deficit, which would eventually lead to the French Revolution.

  • honoverehonovere Registered User regular
    Gvzbgul wrote: »
    A neat article from Cracked about how the past was a crazy place, and about how, for all of the "2016 is the worst" memes, we can't match up to craziness of the past.
    4 Stories From When Terrorism Was Extremely Common

    Yeah the 60s to 80s seem like they were pretty crazy in that regard compared to most of the maybe 10 to 20 last years in the US and Europe.

  • DaMoonRulzDaMoonRulz Mare ImbriumRegistered User regular
    Geronimo Day of Note: On this date in 1886 Apache warrior Geronimo surrendered for the last time to U.S. Army general Nelson A. Miles at Skeleton Canyon near the U.S.—Mexico border.

    From "Assassination Vacation":
    In one ultimate Pan-American moment, Geronimo himself strutted past [President McKinley's] coffin. One of the Indians riding in the faux battles staged at the [Pan-American Exposition], the sexagenarian Apache warrior who fought the Mexicans as a young man and then the Americans after they defeated the Mexicans was still technically a U.S. prisoner of war in the custody of armed guards. He enclosed a card with a memorial wreath for McKinley. He wrote, “The rainbow of hope is out of the sky. Heavy clouds hang about us. Tears wet the ground of the tepees. The chief of the nation is dead. Farewell.” Geronimo had probably buried so many people by then he could knock out a eulogy in his sleep. (excerpt)
    — Sarah Vowell

    14192151_10154522854314343_6817683169626143064_n.jpg?oh=24674bf2549dc455dafa1b8fa25f0498&oe=587FA80D


    Image: Geronimo - Apache (1905) by Edward S. Curtis. Curtis' description: "This portrait of the historical old Apache was made in March, 1905. According to Geronimo's calculation he was at the time seventy-six years of age, thus making the year of his birth 1829. The picture was taken at Carlisle, Pennsylvania, the day before the inauguration of President Roosevelt, Geronimo being one of the warriors who took part in the inaugural parade at Washington. He appreciated the honor of being one of those chosen for this occasion, and the catching of his features while the old warrior was in a retrospective mood was most fortunate." Northwestern University Library, Edward S. Curtis's 'The North American Indian': the Photographic Images, 2001.

    Link to Northwestern Library's Archives of The North American Indian

    @Poorochondriac Have you ever come across 'The North American Indian' before? It seems like the kind of thing that's well-intentioned but can go pretty wrong pretty quick.

    3basnids3lf9.jpg




  • Indie WinterIndie Winter die Krähe Rudi Hurzlmeier (German, b. 1952)Registered User regular
    edited September 2016
    tumblr_ocy7kg8Jwe1s7e5k5o1_540.jpg

    Members of the American Nazi Party listening to Malcolm X’s speech at a Nation of Islam meeting in 1961
    On Sunday, June 25, 1961, Rockwell and ten troopers attended a Black Muslim rally at Uline Arena in Washington. They watched in awe as convoys of chartered buses unloaded hundreds of passengers outside the arena and the Muslim vendors made a killing on official souvenirs and literature. The Nazis were frisked at the door of the arena by several well-dressed but stern-looking Fruit of Islam guards. A special guard greeted Rockwell, said into his walkie-talkie that the “big man was coming now,” and escorted them to seats near the stage in the center, surrounded by eight thousand Black Muslims. They were encircled by black journalists, who wanted to know Rockwell’s thoughts. He told reporters he considered the Muslims “black Nazis.” “I am fully in concert with their program and I have the highest respect for Mr. Elijah Muhammad.” Rockwell pointed out his only disagreement with the Muslims was over territory. ‘‘They want a chunk of America and I prefer that they go to Africa.”

    Overt anti-Semitism, it turned out, was something the two groups could bond over. While Rockwell pushed his hatred of Jews to frothy extremes, Muhammad backed a range of racist theories, including the hoax that the Jews had financed the slave trade. (Malcolm X was cagier about his anti-Semitism, often deferring to Muhammad's conspiracy theories rather than offering his own.) To publicly rage against Jews in the summer of 1961 may have offended the general public even more than it would today. Six thousand miles away, the Adolf Eichmann trial, in Israel, had captivated the world and dramatically increased coverage of Holocaust atrocities.

    Indie Winter on
    wY6K6Jb.gif
  • StraightziStraightzi Here we may reign secure, and in my choice, To reign is worth ambition though in HellRegistered User regular
    edited September 2016
    This isn't really history, but I have no idea where else to post it.

    But I've been reading this story this morning.

    And it is absolutely fascinating.

    Framed

    (it's a six part longform about a PTA mom who gets framed for drug possession in a model community in California)

    Edit: It does have a few instances of autoplaying audio clips (they show up when you scroll down to them), so watch out for those. They're a cool addition though, I recommend listening to them still.

    Straightzi on
  • DepressperadoDepressperado I just wanted to see you laughing in the pizza rainRegistered User regular
    Straightzi wrote: »
    This isn't really history, but I have no idea where else to post it.

    But I've been reading this story this morning.

    And it is absolutely fascinating.

    Framed

    (it's a six part longform about a PTA mom who gets framed for drug possession in a model community in California)

    Edit: It does have a few instances of autoplaying audio clips (they show up when you scroll down to them), so watch out for those. They're a cool addition though, I recommend listening to them still.

    that was entirely bonkers

  • StraightziStraightzi Here we may reign secure, and in my choice, To reign is worth ambition though in HellRegistered User regular
    Straightzi wrote: »
    This isn't really history, but I have no idea where else to post it.

    But I've been reading this story this morning.

    And it is absolutely fascinating.

    Framed

    (it's a six part longform about a PTA mom who gets framed for drug possession in a model community in California)

    Edit: It does have a few instances of autoplaying audio clips (they show up when you scroll down to them), so watch out for those. They're a cool addition though, I recommend listening to them still.

    that was entirely bonkers

    The whole thing seems pretty open and shut after the first two parts. Like, obviously there has to be evidence found and arrests made and a trial conducted, but the whole thing fits together right away.

    And then it just keeps going, and it does not stop being bizarre.

  • PolaritiePolaritie Sleepy Registered User regular
    So for how long was the American navy infinitely superior before
    Straightzi wrote: »
    Straightzi wrote: »
    This isn't really history, but I have no idea where else to post it.

    But I've been reading this story this morning.

    And it is absolutely fascinating.

    Framed

    (it's a six part longform about a PTA mom who gets framed for drug possession in a model community in California)

    Edit: It does have a few instances of autoplaying audio clips (they show up when you scroll down to them), so watch out for those. They're a cool addition though, I recommend listening to them still.

    that was entirely bonkers

    The whole thing seems pretty open and shut after the first two parts. Like, obviously there has to be evidence found and arrests made and a trial conducted, but the whole thing fits together right away.

    And then it just keeps going, and it does not stop being bizarre.

    ...I don't... I don't know how to respond to that madness.

    Steam: Polaritie
    3DS: 0473-8507-2652
    Switch: SW-5185-4991-5118
    PSN: AbEntropy
  • ShortyShorty touching the meat Intergalactic Cool CourtRegistered User regular
  • ShortyShorty touching the meat Intergalactic Cool CourtRegistered User regular
    the further I get in this story, the more I want Lifetime to make a really triumphantly terrible movie about it

  • StraightziStraightzi Here we may reign secure, and in my choice, To reign is worth ambition though in HellRegistered User regular
    Shorty wrote: »
    the further I get in this story, the more I want Lifetime to make a really triumphantly terrible movie about it

    It really does feel like a Lifetime movie.

  • DisruptedCapitalistDisruptedCapitalist I swear! Registered User regular
    Reminds me of Bonfire of the Vanities.

    "Simple, real stupidity beats artificial intelligence every time." -Mustrum Ridcully in Terry Pratchett's Hogfather p. 142 (HarperPrism 1996)
  • tynictynic PICNIC BADASS Registered User, ClubPA regular
    not the point of the story, but jesus christ
    In Irvine, she found a master-planned city where bars and liquor stores, pawnshops and homeless shelters had been methodically purged, where neighborhoods were regulated by noise ordinances, lawn-length requirements and mailbox-uniformity rules

    I get a panic attack just thinking about that

  • Houk the NamebringerHouk the Namebringer Nipples The EchidnaRegistered User regular
    tynic wrote: »
    not the point of the story, but jesus christ
    In Irvine, she found a master-planned city where bars and liquor stores, pawnshops and homeless shelters had been methodically purged, where neighborhoods were regulated by noise ordinances, lawn-length requirements and mailbox-uniformity rules

    I get a panic attack just thinking about that

    I lived in Irvine for about a year.

    It's the safest, most bland hell you could ever imagine. Luckily it's also not very big so it's pretty easy to escape back to humanity.

    (Also to be fair, they do have liquor stores, just big, well lit ones with working security systems.)

  • MulysaSemproniusMulysaSempronius but also susie nyRegistered User regular
    The only person I felt any sympathy for was the daughter, who had to deal with her mom's neuroses. Well, all the kids, really.

    If that's all there is my friends, then let's keep dancing
  • StraightziStraightzi Here we may reign secure, and in my choice, To reign is worth ambition though in HellRegistered User regular
    tynic wrote: »
    not the point of the story, but jesus christ
    In Irvine, she found a master-planned city where bars and liquor stores, pawnshops and homeless shelters had been methodically purged, where neighborhoods were regulated by noise ordinances, lawn-length requirements and mailbox-uniformity rules

    I get a panic attack just thinking about that

    The part of that that absolutely killed me was the payoff at the end
    “I feel safe here,” she says.

  • Metzger MeisterMetzger Meister It Gets Worse before it gets any better.Registered User regular
    Fuckin... Neighborhood councils or whatever are so goddamn dumb.

    Fuck you, Mindy, I'm gonna put up a fuckin piggy shaped mailbox if I goddamn please IT'S MY FUCKING HOUSE YOU BUSY BODY

    WHY DO PEOPLE WANT SO BADLY TO LIVE IN THE MOVIE PLEASANTVILLE WHAT THE FUCK

    God it just makes me so angry. Like, "oh no these are the approved paint shades in this neighborhood and I'm afraid we'll have to ask you to please remove the basketball hoop from your driveway."

    How is any of that shit allowed? Who the hell made fuckin Chad and his wife the Supreme Overlords of the neighborhood?


    Sorry. That shit just... I just don't understand it I guess.

  • Lost SalientLost Salient blink twice if you'd like me to mercy kill youRegistered User regular
    Shorty wrote: »
    the further I get in this story, the more I want Lifetime to make a really triumphantly terrible movie about it

    Oh man I was just talking to @Jennerose about this this morning (well, my morning). One of the things I said was "Jill Easter looks like she IS the woman they cast to play her in the Lifetime original movie."

    So yeah that article is craaazyyyyy.

    Related, I am so all about the return to the serialized storytelling format.

    RUVCwyu.jpg
    "Sandra has a good solid anti-murderer vibe. My skin felt very secure and sufficiently attached to my body when I met her. Also my organs." HAIL SATAN
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