Edit: also this wasn’t really in any way limited to the Roman era. Lots of groups such as the celts, Persians, possibly even ancestral groups of the Greeks and Romans themselves all got their start as these kinds of nomad invaders, and they didn’t really stop until Scandinavia christianised and the Russians took over the steppes.
I think you mean the Turks, because while the Persians were nomadic they had established their civilized foothold by the 9th century BCE, and they never moved very far away from their homeland (around the Caspian sea).
The turks on the other hand were hard-core horse nomads, who came from the steppes north of the black sea, embroiled themselves in the Arab-Byzantine conflict and decided "Lets take this shit for ourselves" once the old Islamic empires were on the decline.
The Turks too later on, but for early contemporary civilizations the Persians were still considered to be not far from nomads, they could converse with scythians, were thought to be cousins with if not the same people as the Aryans that had invaded India, and famously every Persian was supposed to know how to ride a horse, shoot a bow, and tell the truth. Certainly even by the time of Cyrus they were well settled, but they had nomadic origins.
As we're getting closer to the 100th anniversary of the end of WWI, it's worth remembering the toll that war took on the land. Even today, there is a region of France that is a literal no man's land of toxic and shattered landscapes - the Zone Rouge:
Damn that is like something out of a movie. I had no idea that amount of ordinance was still left in the ground. That is staggering to even think about how much time and effort it will take to clean up.
In 1931, author and anthropologist Zora Neale Huston tracked down the last living survivor of the Middle Passage, Kossula, who was renamed Cudjo Lewis, and befriended him. She documented his story in a book titled Barracoon, after the prison he was placed into in Africa to await being shipped. Completed in the 1930s, the manuscript was never published, instead languishing in the archives of her work.
Hurston seemed to assume that anyone deluded enough not to realize that would wake up if African-Americans were allowed to tell their own stories. (In one of her great quotes, she wrote that she always felt “astonished” when people discriminated against her: “How can they deny themselves the pleasure of my company? It’s beyond me.”) Here’s a scene of one of her early conversations with Kossula:
“I want to know who you are and how you came to be a slave; and to what part of Africa do you belong, and how you fared as a slave, and how you have managed as a free man?”
His head was bowed for a time. Then he lifted his wet face: “Thankee Jesus! Somebody come ast about Cudjo! I want tellee somebody who I is, so maybe dey go in de Afficky soil some day and callee my name and somebody dere say, ‘Yeah, I know Kossula.’ ”
EncA Fool with CompassionPronouns: He, Him, HisRegistered Userregular
It should be stated that Hurston, while highly successful in marketing herself, had absolutely atrocious habits in her anthropological studies. She is almost single-handedly responsible for the demonization of Vodou practices in the US and her actions in her studies of Haitian Vodou practitioners led to at least one man being beaten after she used his name after agreeing for anonymity. She also heavily plagiarized other African-american scholar's works in her own, robbing the stories others gave to more ethical anthropologists in Haiti and claiming their works for her own.
Barracoon's interviews, as with many she published, may be significantly embellished if not entirely fictional.
+1
BlackDragon480Bluster KerfuffleMaster of Windy ImportRegistered Userregular
Damn that is like something out of a movie. I had no idea that amount of ordinance was still left in the ground. That is staggering to even think about how much time and effort it will take to clean up.
A sense of scale, the opening salvo by the Germans at Verdun numbered some 2 million shells. With another 50-60 million shells thrown by the French and German combined over the next 10 months.
Of those 60 millions shells, only around 60% properly detonated on impact, leaving a full 40% still in the area undetonated and less than half of those have been properly disposed of since 1918.
Now consider those numbers and realize that numbers of a similar scale were also used at the Somme, Paschendale, etc...
No matter where you go...there you are. ~ Buckaroo Banzai
And all that with hundred year old technology and population levels, World War 3 is going to leave some seriously wild shit lying around for the hyperintelligent amphibian archaeologists of the future
Do you like my photos? The stupid things I say? The way I am alive? You can contribute to that staying the same through the following link
And all that with hundred year old technology and population levels, World War 3 is going to leave some seriously wild shit lying around for the hyperintelligent amphibian archaeologists of the future
It's Indiana Jones, except we're the primitive civilization leaving death traps behind.
And all that with hundred year old technology and population levels, World War 3 is going to leave some seriously wild shit lying around for the hyperintelligent amphibian archaeologists of the future
It's Indiana Jones, except we're the primitive civilization leaving death traps behind.
And we're totally better at it than people used to be! Now we can rig a deadly trap that will remain potent for hundreds of thousands of years!
A dart trap would realisticly be useless less than century later.
"The western world sips from a poisonous cocktail: Polarisation, populism, protectionism and post-truth"
-Antje Jackelén, Archbishop of the Church of Sweden
And all that with hundred year old technology and population levels, World War 3 is going to leave some seriously wild shit lying around for the hyperintelligent amphibian archaeologists of the future
It's Indiana Jones, except we're the primitive civilization leaving death traps behind.
And we're totally better at it than people used to be! Now we can rig a deadly trap that will remain potent for hundreds of thousands of years!
A dart trap would realisticly be useless less than century later.
This is not a place of honor....
+1
MayabirdPecking at the keyboardRegistered Userregular
Hobby Lobby's vast collection of stolen artifacts, 3800 antiquities looted from Iraq and bought off the black market for the owners' Biblical hoarding collection, have been returned to Iraq where they belong. They'd been seized by federal agents before, so Hobby Lobby doesn't get its money back.
It's not exactly a cool thing from history, but it's kinda adjacent, since it's a good thing that was done and it's related to history.
I've always wondered how you handle this type of situation. Hobby Lobby obviously has the artifacts seized because they were acquired illegally. However how do collections in all of today's modern museum's who acquired them through direct conquest in Napolean's case, or through early archaeology (grave robbing). And how can a culture that has no direct linguistic or meaningful connection to the creators of objects thousands of years old in Iraq have a right to possess them?
0
EncA Fool with CompassionPronouns: He, Him, HisRegistered Userregular
I've always wondered how you handle this type of situation. Hobby Lobby obviously has the artifacts seized because they were acquired illegally. However how do collections in all of today's modern museum's who acquired them through direct conquest in Napolean's case, or through early archaeology (grave robbing). And how can a culture that has no direct linguistic or meaningful connection to the creators of objects thousands of years old in Iraq have a right to possess them?
Most museums have a system of establishing provenance for objects of questionable origin. But for something as old as Napoleon its probably a lost cause in most cases for having records.
I mean people often tend to also forget that the Empire didn't really fall, literally in the East, and in the West it slowly changed and developed into new forms. There was a reason why Charlemagne was crowned Emperor of the Romans, in Rome, by the Pope, and it wasn't just because it looked cool on his CV.
In it's youth, Rome live in Italy, then it moved east to Byzantium, then Ottomans killed it, stole its clothes and claimed to be it.
And the Holy Roman Empire kept on trying to pretend it was Rome.
Russia did the same.
"The western world sips from a poisonous cocktail: Polarisation, populism, protectionism and post-truth"
-Antje Jackelén, Archbishop of the Church of Sweden
Then we went on to Greece, and the Greeks led us to the edifices where they worship their God, and we knew not whether we were in heaven or on earth. For on earth there is no such splendour or such beauty, and we are at a loss how to describe it. We know only that God dwells there among men, and their service is fairer than the ceremonies of other nations. For we cannot forget that beauty. Every man, after tasting something sweet, is afterward unwilling to accept that which is bitter, and therefore we cannot dwell longer here.
Hobnail on
Do you like my photos? The stupid things I say? The way I am alive? You can contribute to that staying the same through the following link
Damn that is like something out of a movie. I had no idea that amount of ordinance was still left in the ground. That is staggering to even think about how much time and effort it will take to clean up.
A sense of scale, the opening salvo by the Germans at Verdun numbered some 2 million shells. With another 50-60 million shells thrown by the French and German combined over the next 10 months.
Of those 60 millions shells, only around 60% properly detonated on impact, leaving a full 40% still in the area undetonated and less than half of those have been properly disposed of since 1918.
Now consider those numbers and realize that numbers of a similar scale were also used at the Somme, Paschendale, etc...
It's nearly required listening, as far as I'm concerned, but Dan Carlin in his Blueprint for Armageddon series discusses the sheer numbers of artillery quite a few times. It's staggering every time I hear it.
I've been reading up a lot on WWI lately and the more I read, the more amazing it becomes. Also, the extent to which WWI shaped the 20th Century and the modern day cannot be overexaggerated. So much modern shit started in and just after WWI.
Also I recently discovered that my neighbor is a bit of a military history buff, so he and I have been geeking out. I bought him a copy of The War That Ended Peace and The Guns of August; and I just finished War That Ended Peace myself. If you ever get a chance to read it, the quotes and descriptions that the author provides for Kaiser Wilhelm hold truly striking similarities to DJT.
Great wars change society, because each society is pushed to its utmost.
That women in almost every European and North american country gained the right to vote either in the period 1918-1921 or 1944-1945? Not a coincidence.
Wartime demands meant that women HAD to be allowed to be integrated into the open society, and not just relegated to the lowest-tier jobs or as homemakers. Once all that talk about women being unsuited to independence or for difficult jobs has been shown to be pure bullshit, then that other bullshit about "well, they can't be enfranchised" goes right out the window as well.
"The western world sips from a poisonous cocktail: Polarisation, populism, protectionism and post-truth"
-Antje Jackelén, Archbishop of the Church of Sweden
In it's youth, Rome live in Italy, then it moved east to Byzantium, then Ottomans killed it, stole its clothes and claimed to be it.
I always felt like at some point you run into the Empire of theseus problem with the Byzantine empire, though. Especially after the arab conquests and fall of the exarchate of Ravenna.
I mean is an empire centered in Greece and Anatolia that had abandoned Roman military and social structures for a much more contemporary medeival setup and barely held a few vestiges of territory in Italy really the Roman empire anymore?
In it's youth, Rome live in Italy, then it moved east to Byzantium, then Ottomans killed it, stole its clothes and claimed to be it.
I always felt like at some point you run into the Empire of theseus problem with the Byzantine empire, though. Especially after the arab conquests and fall of the exarchate of Ravenna.
I mean is an empire centered in Greece and Anatolia that had abandoned Roman military and social structures for a much more contemporary medeival setup and barely held a few vestiges of territory in Italy really the Roman empire anymore?
Well, politically it has had continuous existence.
How many parts of you can we replace and it be still you?
Because we have replaced all parts of you, several times.
Anyway, the parts were not really replaced, the empire grew, and then it shrank, but the part if started growing from, and where it shrank to, were different.
In it's youth, Rome live in Italy, then it moved east to Byzantium, then Ottomans killed it, stole its clothes and claimed to be it.
I always felt like at some point you run into the Empire of theseus problem with the Byzantine empire, though. Especially after the arab conquests and fall of the exarchate of Ravenna.
I mean is an empire centered in Greece and Anatolia that had abandoned Roman military and social structures for a much more contemporary medeival setup and barely held a few vestiges of territory in Italy really the Roman empire anymore?
You could make a similar argument about 21st Century California vs: a loose federation formed in and around 1770s Philadelphia...
In it's youth, Rome live in Italy, then it moved east to Byzantium, then Ottomans killed it, stole its clothes and claimed to be it.
I always felt like at some point you run into the Empire of theseus problem with the Byzantine empire, though. Especially after the arab conquests and fall of the exarchate of Ravenna.
I mean is an empire centered in Greece and Anatolia that had abandoned Roman military and social structures for a much more contemporary medeival setup and barely held a few vestiges of territory in Italy really the Roman empire anymore?
You could make a similar argument about 21st Century California vs: a loose federation formed in and around 1770s Philadelphia...
Eh, more like if the South had won the civil war and taken everything east of the Mississippi, and 21st century California/ Arizona/ New Mexico was calling itself the US but was still populated mostly by and eventually led by spanish speaking latinos. There was a political coninuity, it was just a really weird one.
In it's youth, Rome live in Italy, then it moved east to Byzantium, then Ottomans killed it, stole its clothes and claimed to be it.
And the Holy Roman Empire kept on trying to pretend it was Rome.
Russia did the same.
I think over half of Europe claimed to be Rome at some point.
I am looking at you, Romania.
Romania actually doesn't come from "We're rome", it's from Wallachians calling themselves carriers of the roman cultural heritage.
Wallachia was for a very long time a roman border province, and Wallachia spoke their own evolved version of latin (early romanian) while everyone around them spoke slavic, germanic or hungarian languages (really. Look at a map of romance languages and see the isolated blob that is Romanian and it's various sublanguages).
So for them it was a point of pride to say "We're roman citizens, we carry the roman heritage. Our neighbours to the north are barbarians, our neighbours to the south are bulgarians and turks". It's not a coincidence that the princes of Wallachia sometimes referred to themselves as Domnitor (derived from the latin Dominus. Ie, Ruler).
And they fought pretty fiercly for it too. Vlad Dracul and his son Vlad the Impaler...Princes of Wallachia. It puts a slightly different light on their cruelty if you see it in the light of viewing themselves as the last in a long line of romans.
"The western world sips from a poisonous cocktail: Polarisation, populism, protectionism and post-truth"
-Antje Jackelén, Archbishop of the Church of Sweden
Hobby Lobby's vast collection of stolen artifacts, 3800 antiquities looted from Iraq and bought off the black market for the owners' Biblical hoarding collection, have been returned to Iraq where they belong. They'd been seized by federal agents before, so Hobby Lobby doesn't get its money back.
It's not exactly a cool thing from history, but it's kinda adjacent, since it's a good thing that was done and it's related to history.
Wait. The comic/pun wasn't a theoretical joke? It was real?
MayabirdPecking at the keyboardRegistered Userregular
All this talk about WWI and the Roman Empire reminds me of something I read once about how Western history could be divided up entirely in relation to the Roman Empire.
First, there's pre-Roman times. Then, Roman Republic. Then Roman Empire. Then the times when the Eastern Empire still existed (which is basically the medieval period, since it is considered to end at the Fall of Constantinople). But after that, there's a period of Roman successor states, where the Ottomans, Russians, and Germans/Prussians plus a few others claim to be the successors of the empire, which only actually ends in 1922 when the Ottoman Empire was abolished and became the Republic of Turkey (basically, WWI ended the successor states, only the Ottomans took a few extra years to transition). Only since 1922, not quite a hundred years, have we been in a truly post-Roman era.
(This historian absolutely did not recommend that we seriously divide up time periods like this, only saying it could be done as a thought exercise.)
I've been reading up a lot on WWI lately and the more I read, the more amazing it becomes. Also, the extent to which WWI shaped the 20th Century and the modern day cannot be overexaggerated. So much modern shit started in and just after WWI.
Great wars change society, because each society is pushed to its utmost.
That women in almost every European and North american country gained the right to vote either in the period 1918-1921 or 1944-1945? Not a coincidence.
Wartime demands meant that women HAD to be allowed to be integrated into the open society, and not just relegated to the lowest-tier jobs or as homemakers. Once all that talk about women being unsuited to independence or for difficult jobs has been shown to be pure bullshit, then that other bullshit about "well, they can't be enfranchised" goes right out the window as well.
Funny thing about war mobilization - the German Empire refused to mobilize its women for the war, because of whatever excuses. It was a double-whammy because both they had to support war widows on soldiers' pensions (which became increasingly slim as funds ran out) but also had millions of jobs left unworked because all the men and boys were fighting. They would not let those widows work the factory and farm jobs, which ended up accelerating their defeat.
Hobby Lobby's vast collection of stolen artifacts, 3800 antiquities looted from Iraq and bought off the black market for the owners' Biblical hoarding collection, have been returned to Iraq where they belong. They'd been seized by federal agents before, so Hobby Lobby doesn't get its money back.
It's not exactly a cool thing from history, but it's kinda adjacent, since it's a good thing that was done and it's related to history.
Wait. The comic/pun wasn't a theoretical joke? It was real?
What comic/pun?
+1
BlackDragon480Bluster KerfuffleMaster of Windy ImportRegistered Userregular
Then we went on to Greece, and the Greeks led us to the edifices where they worship their God, and we knew not whether we were in heaven or on earth. For on earth there is no such splendour or such beauty, and we are at a loss how to describe it. We know only that God dwells there among men, and their service is fairer than the ceremonies of other nations. For we cannot forget that beauty. Every man, after tasting something sweet, is afterward unwilling to accept that which is bitter, and therefore we cannot dwell longer here.
Yeah, just his emissaries witnessing the Divine Liturgy in Hagia Sophia was enough to make Vladimir the Great convert to Orthodox Christianity and make it the official religion of Novgorod/Rus. He then negotiated for the hand of Anna Porphyrogenita (god, I hope I spelled that right) in marriage, she was the beloved sister of Basil Bulgaroktonos, pretty much the most successful Byzantine emperor to reign after the death of Justinian I and Theodora, so a fairly big deal. This cemented an alliance that secured the Northern flank of said empire and let them focus on expanding Eastward again, till the Seljuk Turks kicked Romanos IV's ass at Manzikert and later Alexis I was forced to call for aid from Latin Christendom and inadvertently started the First Crusade (which was militarily unnecessary from a Byzantine perspective by 1097 when they arrived, as Alexis had managed to negotiate a truce with the Sultan of Rum and had reestablished his hold on western Anatolia).
1000 years of Russian history was shaped, and forever affected by the fact the Patriarch of Constantinople knew how to party.
No matter where you go...there you are. ~ Buckaroo Banzai
+6
MayabirdPecking at the keyboardRegistered Userregular
There had been a tradition of the White House hosting an iftar every year, a Ramadan evening fast-breaking feast. Muslim American community leaders and such would be invited to attend and there would be a photo op and that sort of thing.
This tradition, though it wasn't annual back then, dates back to Thomas Jefferson in 1805. A Tunisian diplomat had arrived for negotiations at the end of the First Barbary War. When Ramadan occurred during that time, Jefferson had a special dinner made up just after sunset so the diplomat could attend and feel welcome, because those sorts of small but kind gestures are how soft power and diplomacy are done. Incidentally, the story mentions that Jefferson had purchased an English translation of the Quran, which was later transferred to the Library of Congress along with the rest of Jefferson's extensive personal library.
Trump of course promptly cancelled the iftar tradition, because of course he did. Also the original story referenced in the article I linked, which was on a State Department website, has apparently been wiped from existence because I can't locate it anymore.
And all that with hundred year old technology and population levels, World War 3 is going to leave some seriously wild shit lying around for the hyperintelligent amphibian archaeologists of the future
It's Indiana Jones, except we're the primitive civilization leaving death traps behind.
Did they ever figure out a good way to warn future people away from digging around in toxic waste storage sites? Because that shit isnt going anywhere for a while
There were some really interesting articles a few years back about people trying to assess the best ways to indicate danger without necessarily being able to predict/use language or cultural understanding.
My first thought is to make it look as dangerous as possible, lots of sharp pointy bits, but then that could become "what treasures could be hidden behind such a formidable fortress?" and the problem loops around.
How do you keep people away without making it enticing to those who see the danger as a feature, not a bug?
First they came for the Muslims, and we said NOT TODAY, MOTHERFUCKER!
And all that with hundred year old technology and population levels, World War 3 is going to leave some seriously wild shit lying around for the hyperintelligent amphibian archaeologists of the future
It's Indiana Jones, except we're the primitive civilization leaving death traps behind.
Did they ever figure out a good way to warn future people away from digging around in toxic waste storage sites? Because that shit isnt going anywhere for a while
I believe the current plan is to have a strange and ambiguous pictogram that only makes sense if you're in the mindset of the designer and could easily mean the exact opposite if you look at it slightly differently.
+10
L Ron HowardThe duckMinnesotaRegistered Userregular
I liked the idea of glowing cats myself, and introducing a religion around that.
Posts
The Turks too later on, but for early contemporary civilizations the Persians were still considered to be not far from nomads, they could converse with scythians, were thought to be cousins with if not the same people as the Aryans that had invaded India, and famously every Persian was supposed to know how to ride a horse, shoot a bow, and tell the truth. Certainly even by the time of Cyrus they were well settled, but they had nomadic origins.
Read through the thread, as it is a look at how this region still bears the scars of the war a century ago.
PSN:Furlion
It's strange how some old photos grab you, I feel like I recognise some of those guys
https://www.paypal.me/hobnailtaylor
Until now.
Barracoon's interviews, as with many she published, may be significantly embellished if not entirely fictional.
A sense of scale, the opening salvo by the Germans at Verdun numbered some 2 million shells. With another 50-60 million shells thrown by the French and German combined over the next 10 months.
Of those 60 millions shells, only around 60% properly detonated on impact, leaving a full 40% still in the area undetonated and less than half of those have been properly disposed of since 1918.
Now consider those numbers and realize that numbers of a similar scale were also used at the Somme, Paschendale, etc...
~ Buckaroo Banzai
Hell North Africa too with all the landmines.
https://www.paypal.me/hobnailtaylor
It's Indiana Jones, except we're the primitive civilization leaving death traps behind.
And we're totally better at it than people used to be! Now we can rig a deadly trap that will remain potent for hundreds of thousands of years!
A dart trap would realisticly be useless less than century later.
-Antje Jackelén, Archbishop of the Church of Sweden
This is not a place of honor....
It's not exactly a cool thing from history, but it's kinda adjacent, since it's a good thing that was done and it's related to history.
Most museums have a system of establishing provenance for objects of questionable origin. But for something as old as Napoleon its probably a lost cause in most cases for having records.
And the Holy Roman Empire kept on trying to pretend it was Rome.
Russia did the same.
-Antje Jackelén, Archbishop of the Church of Sweden
https://www.paypal.me/hobnailtaylor
It's nearly required listening, as far as I'm concerned, but Dan Carlin in his Blueprint for Armageddon series discusses the sheer numbers of artillery quite a few times. It's staggering every time I hear it.
I've been reading up a lot on WWI lately and the more I read, the more amazing it becomes. Also, the extent to which WWI shaped the 20th Century and the modern day cannot be overexaggerated. So much modern shit started in and just after WWI.
Also I recently discovered that my neighbor is a bit of a military history buff, so he and I have been geeking out. I bought him a copy of The War That Ended Peace and The Guns of August; and I just finished War That Ended Peace myself. If you ever get a chance to read it, the quotes and descriptions that the author provides for Kaiser Wilhelm hold truly striking similarities to DJT.
That women in almost every European and North american country gained the right to vote either in the period 1918-1921 or 1944-1945? Not a coincidence.
Wartime demands meant that women HAD to be allowed to be integrated into the open society, and not just relegated to the lowest-tier jobs or as homemakers. Once all that talk about women being unsuited to independence or for difficult jobs has been shown to be pure bullshit, then that other bullshit about "well, they can't be enfranchised" goes right out the window as well.
-Antje Jackelén, Archbishop of the Church of Sweden
I always felt like at some point you run into the Empire of theseus problem with the Byzantine empire, though. Especially after the arab conquests and fall of the exarchate of Ravenna.
I mean is an empire centered in Greece and Anatolia that had abandoned Roman military and social structures for a much more contemporary medeival setup and barely held a few vestiges of territory in Italy really the Roman empire anymore?
Well, politically it has had continuous existence.
How many parts of you can we replace and it be still you?
Because we have replaced all parts of you, several times.
Anyway, the parts were not really replaced, the empire grew, and then it shrank, but the part if started growing from, and where it shrank to, were different.
You could make a similar argument about 21st Century California vs: a loose federation formed in and around 1770s Philadelphia...
I think over half of Europe claimed to be Rome at some point.
I am looking at you, Romania.
Eh, more like if the South had won the civil war and taken everything east of the Mississippi, and 21st century California/ Arizona/ New Mexico was calling itself the US but was still populated mostly by and eventually led by spanish speaking latinos. There was a political coninuity, it was just a really weird one.
Romania actually doesn't come from "We're rome", it's from Wallachians calling themselves carriers of the roman cultural heritage.
Wallachia was for a very long time a roman border province, and Wallachia spoke their own evolved version of latin (early romanian) while everyone around them spoke slavic, germanic or hungarian languages (really. Look at a map of romance languages and see the isolated blob that is Romanian and it's various sublanguages).
So for them it was a point of pride to say "We're roman citizens, we carry the roman heritage. Our neighbours to the north are barbarians, our neighbours to the south are bulgarians and turks". It's not a coincidence that the princes of Wallachia sometimes referred to themselves as Domnitor (derived from the latin Dominus. Ie, Ruler).
And they fought pretty fiercly for it too. Vlad Dracul and his son Vlad the Impaler...Princes of Wallachia. It puts a slightly different light on their cruelty if you see it in the light of viewing themselves as the last in a long line of romans.
-Antje Jackelén, Archbishop of the Church of Sweden
Wait. The comic/pun wasn't a theoretical joke? It was real?
WoW
Dear Satan.....
First, there's pre-Roman times. Then, Roman Republic. Then Roman Empire. Then the times when the Eastern Empire still existed (which is basically the medieval period, since it is considered to end at the Fall of Constantinople). But after that, there's a period of Roman successor states, where the Ottomans, Russians, and Germans/Prussians plus a few others claim to be the successors of the empire, which only actually ends in 1922 when the Ottoman Empire was abolished and became the Republic of Turkey (basically, WWI ended the successor states, only the Ottomans took a few extra years to transition). Only since 1922, not quite a hundred years, have we been in a truly post-Roman era.
(This historian absolutely did not recommend that we seriously divide up time periods like this, only saying it could be done as a thought exercise.)
Funny thing about war mobilization - the German Empire refused to mobilize its women for the war, because of whatever excuses. It was a double-whammy because both they had to support war widows on soldiers' pensions (which became increasingly slim as funds ran out) but also had millions of jobs left unworked because all the men and boys were fighting. They would not let those widows work the factory and farm jobs, which ended up accelerating their defeat.
What comic/pun?
Yeah, just his emissaries witnessing the Divine Liturgy in Hagia Sophia was enough to make Vladimir the Great convert to Orthodox Christianity and make it the official religion of Novgorod/Rus. He then negotiated for the hand of Anna Porphyrogenita (god, I hope I spelled that right) in marriage, she was the beloved sister of Basil Bulgaroktonos, pretty much the most successful Byzantine emperor to reign after the death of Justinian I and Theodora, so a fairly big deal. This cemented an alliance that secured the Northern flank of said empire and let them focus on expanding Eastward again, till the Seljuk Turks kicked Romanos IV's ass at Manzikert and later Alexis I was forced to call for aid from Latin Christendom and inadvertently started the First Crusade (which was militarily unnecessary from a Byzantine perspective by 1097 when they arrived, as Alexis had managed to negotiate a truce with the Sultan of Rum and had reestablished his hold on western Anatolia).
1000 years of Russian history was shaped, and forever affected by the fact the Patriarch of Constantinople knew how to party.
~ Buckaroo Banzai
This tradition, though it wasn't annual back then, dates back to Thomas Jefferson in 1805. A Tunisian diplomat had arrived for negotiations at the end of the First Barbary War. When Ramadan occurred during that time, Jefferson had a special dinner made up just after sunset so the diplomat could attend and feel welcome, because those sorts of small but kind gestures are how soft power and diplomacy are done. Incidentally, the story mentions that Jefferson had purchased an English translation of the Quran, which was later transferred to the Library of Congress along with the rest of Jefferson's extensive personal library.
Trump of course promptly cancelled the iftar tradition, because of course he did. Also the original story referenced in the article I linked, which was on a State Department website, has apparently been wiped from existence because I can't locate it anymore.
3DS: 0473-8507-2652
Switch: SW-5185-4991-5118
PSN: AbEntropy
Did they ever figure out a good way to warn future people away from digging around in toxic waste storage sites? Because that shit isnt going anywhere for a while
https://www.paypal.me/hobnailtaylor
My first thought is to make it look as dangerous as possible, lots of sharp pointy bits, but then that could become "what treasures could be hidden behind such a formidable fortress?" and the problem loops around.
How do you keep people away without making it enticing to those who see the danger as a feature, not a bug?
I believe the current plan is to have a strange and ambiguous pictogram that only makes sense if you're in the mindset of the designer and could easily mean the exact opposite if you look at it slightly differently.