Comments by "" (@neutronalchemist3241) on "Metatron"
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@storagebox1793 No. the first invasion was a massive three-pronged expedition led by the two most renown Mongol generals and a son of the Gran Khan himself. Only at Mohi the Mongols had 70.000 cavalrymen, plus infantry, auxiliaries, chinese engineers, servants, etc. The expeditionary force in Hungary alone easily exceeded the 100.000 men. Then there was the second column, that raided Poland with 10.000 men (one tumen), and the third, that followed the Danube. 20.000 men (two tumens) were only the ones that pursued King Bela in Croatia, and had been defeated in a series of ambushes, because the Dalmatian terrain was not favourable to Mongol tactics.
Plagues tend to be lethal for the siegers too.
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Historically they didn't inflict those casualties. And this has little to do with using the phalanx correctly. The phalangites were not using the sarissas incorrectly.
Flat terrains are not so common in Greece. If you can accept battle exclusively in flat terrains, and cannot move from there, you are going to lose anyway.
Some centurion (not "the Roman Commander") did so, and, the fact that some centurion did so talks of the fact that they were frustrated, not frightened for the losses. As already said: "In all the engagement between the phalanx and the developed (not early time) legion, at first the phalanx advanced, because the legion couldn't break through a perfectly formed phalanx, but the legion suffered negligible losses. Then something happened, and at that point the legion adapted and slaughtered the phalangites". Fact is tha the phalanx needed TOO MUCH THINGS going its own way.
Had the Generals maintained control and kept the Phalanx stationary then the battle would have been inconclusive in the best case, OR the legion would have outflanked the phalanx (you must keep contact with the enemy to prevent it to manuver, and that was important for the phalanx, since the legion was faster and easier to manuver).
I've not talked of "Greece". However Rome used a fraction of his forces in the Macedonian wars, and the legionaries at that time were conscripts as well. However, as said, having a cavalry so dominant that it could dispatch the enemy cavalry, then regroup and invest the back of enemy infantry WAS NOT A GIVEN, it was not like the others didn't know the horses. To the roman cavalry was not requested to be so dominant, it was enough for them to keep the other occupied (a goal that you can accomplish even with an inferior cavalry)
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@federicogiana Columbus was backed by the most renown cartographer of his time, Toscanelli, whose map placed Japan more or less where in reality is west Mexico. That's why Columbus thought to have reached a group of islands east of Japan, because, in his map there was no physycal place for a continent between those islands and Japan. The problem was not that much the circumference of the Earth, but the extension of Asia, that, at that time, everyone thought it was much more extended that it really is.
That's also why, once reached the continent, in his third voyage, he immediately wrote instead it was a new continent (that he called "Paria"). Because, on his map, at that latitude, there should have been no land mass capable to sustain the rivers he saw.
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In all likelyhood the Iliad is based on a real war, but Troy being the city on the Hisarlik hill is debatable. We know it was considered that in Hellenistic and Roman period, but we also know that it was a tourist attraction. In Hellenistic period, in "Troy", there were, IE, the tombs of heroes that didn't even die there.
There's no guarantee that the entire city wasn't a tourist trap.
The city had been abandoned at the start of the Iron Age. It's entirely possible that, at the end of the "Greek dark age", when the poems on the Trojan war had become famous, people started to search for the city sung there in the region of the Troad, but the memory of the real location had been lost. Then the people that lived around Hissarlik hill reasoned "look at the fine ruins we have here. The shore, the rivers, all seems pretty similar to the poem. And all these people are searching for Troy. Let's THIS be Troy." and proceeded to make Santa Claus' village. Then Santa Claus' village influenced the later narrations of the poem, so the location and the poem became even more alike.
Infact the location is pretty similar, yes, but none of the Hisarlik's city strata really line up with the events of the poem. We have to mix up two separate levels to have a big city in the Mycenean period (but destroyed by an heartquake, not a war), and a city destroyed by a war (but too late for the Myceneans to have done that).
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Infact the "Vesuvius" we know, the central cone visible at 2:18, didn't exist back then. What existed, and the Romans called "Vesuvius" was the semi-circular ridge of Mt. Somma, also visible there. It was there that, for example found refuge the rebels of Spartacus, and it was its internal, very steep, slope (while the external slope was covered in vineyards) that they descended using vine branches as ropes.
that of 79 AC had precisely been the last of a series of explosions, thousands of years apart, that destroyed the old vulcanic edifice of Mt. Somma.
The Romans didn't, and couldn't, recognize the Vesuvius as a Volcano. Because it had nor the shape, nor the activities they could attribute to a volcano.
While the "campi flegrei" shown continuous signs of volcanic activity, even without erupting (hence the name) the Vesuvius didn't. It was absolutely quiet.
The current central cone formed in the subsequent two millennia of effusive eruptions, and infact it was lower than the ridge of Mt. Somma still in 18th century depictions.
See R. Cioni, R. Santacroce e A. Sbrana, "Pyroclastic deposits as a guide for reconstructing the multi-stage evolution of the Somma-Vesuvius Caldera".
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+b33lze6u6 He really was a genius, way ahead of his time. Mind that he had to fight (usually obtaining great victories) with what he had at disposition. Few african hevy infantry, the rest mercenaries from Gaul, Spain, Balearic Islands, Numidia, all with different fighting styles, often not really reliable, but he managed to extract the best from every one of them often using even their weakness at his advantge, and always perfectly using the environment as a weapon that worked for him.
But, like Napoleon centuries after, he, in the end, trained his own enemies. The Roman generals of the late part of the war were wastly superior to those of the early part, cause they grew up studyng Hannibal's strategies. At Zama, Scipio simply made that Hannibal could'nt invent anything. The final disposition of his men, in a long line, was to avoid every surprise, to prevent any outflanking maneuver, and rely only on the strenght of the heavy infantry.
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Moreover, the "Vesuvius" we know, the central cone visible at 2:18, didn't exist back then. What existed, and the Romans called "Vesuvius" was the semi-circular ridge of Mt. Somma (also visible in the picture. It was there that, for example found refuge the rebels of Spartacus, and it was its internal, very steep, slope (while the external slope was covered in vineyards) that they descended using vine branches as ropes.
That of 79 AC had precisely been the last of a series of explosions, thousands of years apart, that destroyed the old vulcanic edifice of Mt. Somma.
The Romans didn't, and couldn't, recognize the Vesuvius as a Volcano. Because it had nor the shape, nor the activities they could attribute to a volcano.
The current central cone formed in the subsequent two millennia of effusive eruptions, and infact it was lower than the ridge of Mt. Somma still in 18th century depictions.
See R. Cioni, R. Santacroce e A. Sbrana, "Pyroclastic deposits as a guide for reconstructing the multi-stage evolution of the Somma-Vesuvius Caldera".
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To say that fluting strenghten the armor is, unfortunately, an oversemplification.
1) For the same area covered and the same thickness, a fluted plate is heavier.
2) For the same area covered and the same weight (that's the real limitation of what a man can carry) a fluted plate is thinner.
3) For the same area covered and the same weight, a flat, or almost flat, fluted plate, is stiffer, less prone to be bent, so is a better protection against blunt weapons.
4) For the same area covered and the same weight, a flat, or almost flat, fluted plate is more prone to be pierced, cause is thinner, and cause the flutes are less likely to deflect the blows, and more likely to offer them an orthogonal surface where they can have the maximum effect, so is a worst protection against piercing weapons.
5) the stiffening effect of fluting decreases as long as the curvature of the plate increase (infact the section of a sphere is naturally resistant to be bent, think of the helmet, or the pauldron), until, for a certain curvature, the effect is reversed, and flutes actually makes the plate less stiff.
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Is difficult to find datas for Germanic people of Roman times, but Viking males, form skeletons found (usually we find burial of high-class people, so the average height is probably overestimated, since in ancient times they tended to eat better and so be taller than the average peasant) had an average height of 172cm. We already talked about legionaries but, from skeletons, the average male population of Herculaneum (and there are no class differencies there, since they all perished in a natural disaster) was of 169cm, so the Germanic people were probably on average taller than the Romans, but nothing so dramatic.
Several Roman sources said of one or another Gaul or Germanic population, that they were very tall, but often the Romans first seen the warrior elite. People that eat very well since childhood, and so were taller than the average.
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The reaction of the eastern European powers to the battle of Legnica and Mohi, that ultimately led to the repulsion of the Mongol attempts to invade Europe, was that to increase the number of heavy knights and crossbowmen in the army and decrease that of light cavalry and foot soldiers, precisely cause the heavy cavalry and the crossbowmen, despite teir small number, proved to be very effective at Mohi.
The mounted archers infact seems to be a higly flexible force, but really have many limitations. They need a lot of space to be effective (infact a mounted archer, to fight a knight, has to throw the arrows while retreating), and are mostly useless in night battles, while a formation of heavy cavalry need only 100m of plain ground to launch a charge, and crossbowmen can be shielded from arrows and be lethal for the horses.
Another innovation was to not be involved in huge pitched battles, where the superior coordination of the Mongols would have given them the high ground over the undisciplinated European nobles, but to fight them in smaller skirmishes, where a big coordination was not needed.
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"easier to train" was the reason crossbows became the ranged weapon of choice on northern Italy, the land of merchant municipalities. It was great for citizen's militia, since a shopkeeper, training on sunday after the mass, could kill a trained and fully kitted knight.
Obviously, once you have a lot of crossbowmen available, the professional ones are better, and the Genoese were professional.
However, if you see the recruitment standards, the Genoese companies recruited among the lower strata of the population, or among artisans in economic difficulties, that decided to became mercenaries (even if the Genoese crossbowmen were not really mercenaries, since only the Republic of Genoa could sell their services), even for just a period. So people without, or with little, experience were recruited and intensively trained in a short period. The same with archers was nearly impossible. An archer was the son of an archer, that trained since childhood.
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Moreover, the "Vesuvius" we know, the central cone visible at 2:18, didn't exist back then. What existed, and the Romans called "Vesuvius" was the semi-circular ridge of Mt. Somma (also visible in the picture. It was there that, for example found refuge the rebels of Spartacus, and it was its internal, very steep, slope (while the external slope was covered in vineyards) that they descended using vine branches as ropes.
that of 79 AC had precisely been the last of a series of explosions, thousands of years apart, that destroyed the old vulcanic edifice of Mt. Somma.
The Romans didn't, and couldn't, recognize the Vesuvius as a Volcano. Because it had nor the shape, nor the activities they could attribute to a volcano.
The current central cone formed in the subsequent two millennia of effusive eruptions, and infact it was lower than the ridge of Mt. Somma still in 18th century depictions.
See R. Cioni, R. Santacroce e A. Sbrana, "Pyroclastic deposits as a guide for reconstructing the multi-stage evolution of the Somma-Vesuvius Caldera".
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@renettedescartes "Yes, you don't need a professor to know Romans were shorter than germans"
But you need some research to know of how much.
Is difficult to find datas for Gauls and Germanic people of Roman times, but Viking males, form skeletons found (usually we find burial of high-class people, so the average height is probably overestimated, since in ancient times they tended to eat better and so be taller than the average peasant) had an average height of 172cm. We already talked about legionaries but, from skeletons, the average male population of Pompeii and Herculaneum (and there are no class differencies there, since they all perished in a natural disaster) was of 168cm, so the Germanic people were probably on average taller than the Romans, but nothing so dramatic. The difference in average height between Italian and Scandinavian males today is of about 4 cm.
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1) First crusade. Gerusalem had been taken only with the arrival of the Genoese. Among them, the crossbowmen, that neutralised the Mameluc archers.
2) 1192, battle of Jaffa. Richard, a far better military commander than Philip VI, deployed the crossbowmen, by far the most numerous troops he had, behind a defensive hedge of spears. From there, the crossbowen destroyed Saladin's cavalry, that outnumbered the Christians 4 to 1.
3) 1248, battle of Parma, Holy Roman Emperor Fredrick II decisively defeated by the Lombard league (with the complete loss of the army, camp, crown, banner, scepter and seal), among them, the Genoese crossbowmen.
And obviously many naval battles, (Meloria, Curzola...).
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It depends on what "Germans" you are speaking of. In 1st century Arminius, being the commander of the Roman cavalry, simply led Varus legions into a trap, but it had been a "one of".
During the migration era, the number of German tribes pushing on the limes was too high to simply repel all of them. The Romans had to decide whom admit, romanize, and use to defend the same limes, and which fight. In the end, however, the same existence of extremely strong Roman armies near the border, that were linked to the same territory (cause much of the soldiers had there their families and tribe of origin), accentuated the separatist tendencies, of the external parts of the empire.
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Is difficult to find datas for Gauls and Germanic people of Roman times, but Viking males, form skeletons found (usually we find burial of high-class people, so the average height is probably overestimated, since in ancient times they tended to eat better and so be taller than the average peasant) had an average height of 172cm. We already talked about legionaries but, from skeletons, the average male population of Pompeii and Herculaneum (and there are no class differencies there, since they all perished in a natural disaster) was of 168cm, so the Germanic people were probably on average taller than the Romans, but nothing so dramatic.
Several Roman sources said of one or another Gaul or Germanic population, that they were very tall, but often the Romans first seen members of the warrior elite. People that eat very well since childhood, and so were taller than the average.
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The "carmina triumphalia" (the legionaries making fun of their general during the triumph) also have another explanation.
Pre-Marian Roman army was a militia of free citizens. Yet when the army assembled out of the city walls, in front of the temple of Mars, to go to war, one citizen was given an absolute power over the others.
That was a necessity, but was in contrast with the Roman "usual" mindset.
During the subsequent triumph, into the pomerium, at the end of the campaign, the general was celebrated but, at the same time, he was stripped of that power. He returned a citizen among the other citizens, and the carmina triumphalia underlined that. They reminded to the former commander he had no more the power to punish his former men.
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That's pretty interesting.
It has to be noted that Pirrhus, a refined and valued Hellenistic commander, faced a very "fresh" legionary model. The Romans had just adopted it, in the Samnitic wars, that had just ended when the Pyrrhic war begun.
At that time, the Romans used the manipulary system as a way to fight frontal battles on rough terrain. there was not really a tactical use of the maniples.
On the other side, having noticed that, in Italy, battles were not fought only on plains, Pyrrhus adapted the phalanx, intermixing the squares of phalangites with the more mobile formations of his Italic allies.
As a result, Pyrrhus generally managed to inflict to the Romans more severe losses that he suffered, but not to gain a decisive victory, and his losses were less replaceable.
Hannibal, that was an admirer of Pyrrhus, noted this weakness, and he made sure to fight vs. the Romans only "annihilation battles", where the entire enemy formation was destroyed for little cost of his own. If there was not that possibility, he preferred to concede a limited defeat that to gain a costly victory.
Unfortunately (for the Hellenistic rulers) Hannibal "trained" the Romans to use their maniples tactically. To move them sideways, to encircle, to make faints and ambushes.
As a result, when the Romans, right after the second Punic war, clashed with the Hellenistic rulers in Greece and middle east, it seemed a clash between professionals and amateurs. The phalanx could still held its own in a pure frontal battle, but too many things had to go its way for it to work and, as soon as something got wrong, it ended in a massacre.
And those were still Republican Roman armies. A militia of citizens.
In the last clashes, when the post-Marian reform professional Roman army clashed with the last phalanxes in the east, the legionaries won with ridiculous ease.
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An estoc is a specialised anti-armor sword. It usually has no cutting edge, because the possibility to cut a man in armor is negligible. It has instead a thin, sharp tip, to be able to trust trough armor gaps. It can be used with one hand, two, or half-swording The knight's impact spear is an entirely different thing. The infantry spear is much less accurate when used one-handed, it offers no protection for the hand, and its large head is less capable to pass trough gaps. The spear-ish competitor of the estoc is the spetum(spiedo)-ranseur(brandistocco). Infact they were used in the same period.
Bludgeoning weapons often requires many hits to be effective against a good armor, and are of little use in grappling.
From several chivalric challenges-duels fought during the Siege of Barletta (1502-1503) we know that the estoc was a favourite of the fighters when armors had reached the highest point of their evolution. IE, in the most famous of those challenges (the one that saw 13 Italians vs. 13 French) the equipment of the Italian knights was: A knight's spear, two estocs (one to the saddle, one to the belt), and an axe (specifically an heavy "peasant's" axe, not a waraxe). Several spetums were stuck to the ground, to be eventually used by the knights that had lost the other weapons.
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Columbus was backed by many scholars. Among them the most renown cartographer of his time, Toscanelli, whose map placed Japan more or less where in reality is west Mexico. That's why Columbus thought to have reached a group of islands east of Japan, because, in his map there was no physycal place for a continent between those islands and Japan. The problem was infact not that much the circumference of the Earth, but the extension of Asia, that, at that time, everyone thought it was much more extended that it really is and, at the same time, everyone palced Japan more far from China that it really is (see, for example the orb of Behaim).
That's also why, once reached the continent, in his third voyage, he immediately wrote instead it was a new continent (that he called "Paria"). Because, on his map, at that latitude, there should have been no land mass capable to sustain the rivers he saw.
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Columbus was backed by many scholars. Among them the most renown cartographer of his time, Toscanelli, whose map placed Japan more or less where in reality is west Mexico. That's why Columbus thought to have reached a group of islands east of Japan, because, in his map there was no physycal place for a continent between those islands and Japan. The problem was not that much the circumference of the Earth, but the extension of Asia, that, at that time, everyone thought it was much more extended that it really is and, at the same time, everyone palced Japan more far from China that it really is (see, for example the orb of Behaim).
That's also why, once reached the continent, in his third voyage, he immediately wrote instead it was a new continent (that he called "Paria"). Because, on his map, at that latitude, there should have been no land mass capable to sustain the rivers he saw.
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@tylerstevenson8085 At this point I don't know if you can think. What "the majority" has to do wit the topic now? The majority of trade is made with, and the majority of travels are done in, the immediate proximity. That means that trading and traveling outside the immediate proximity is impossible? The majority of what you eat is not pepper. That means pepper doesn't exist?
I already said, we were talking of seafaring capability in Roman times, not if you could navigate the entire route from te city of Rome to India. Egypt was Empire too. IT DOESN'T MATTER WHERE THE STARTING POINT OF THE VOYAGE WAS AS LONG IT WAS IN THE EMPIRE. To keep on argumenting that Rome is in the Mediterranean, so part ot the trip from India to specifically the city of Rome had to be done overland, at this point, is beyond stupid (it was even at the start, really). So stop being beyond stupid and using dumb arguments.
Majority of trade between Rome and India was made by sea. Is "by sea" even if the goods were disembarked at Mios Hormos, on the Red sea, shipped on the Nile to Alexandria, and then put on another ship to Rome. Or if they didn't reach the city of Rome at all. THE EMPIRE WAS NOT ONLY THE CITY OF ROME.
The original comment was about the supposed inability of the Romans to navigate the ocean. In reality Romans happened to navigate the ocean.
When Egypt was not part of the empire, the same route was followed by someone else. The goods were transported mainly BY SEA anyway.
Yeah. The problem is EXACTLY that, with "Rome" you mean only the city. Otherwise you had not came up with that nonsense of " a completely sea bound route from India to Italy was impossible" (and so? What it has to do with the ability of navigating the Ocean?)
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He talked about average, and that's the average. On average, for the same body weight, men are about 1/3 physically stronger than women and, since men are on average bigger and heavier, that difference is closer to 50% IRL.
That's reflected on high level competitions, where men and women train the same.
In weightlifting, the discipline that's closer to be of pure physical strenght, there are two categories 55kg and 81kg where the body weight limit is the same for men and women, so are directly comparable.
The current world record for 55kg category, snatch, clean& jerk and total are: men 135kg, 166kg, 294kg; women 102kg, 129kg, 227kg.
The current world record for 81kg category, snatch, clean& jerk and total are: men 175kg, 207kg, 378kg; women 127kg, 158kg, 283kg.
So, when technique don't really count, men are around 33% stronger for the same body weight.
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Columbus was backed by many scholars. Among them the most renown cartographer of his time, Toscanelli, whose map placed Japan more or less where in reality is west Mexico. That's why Columbus thought to have reached a group of islands east of Japan, because, in his map there was no physycal place for a continent between those islands and Japan. The problem was not that much the circumference of the Earth, but the extension of Asia, that, at that time, everyone thought it was much more extended that it really is and, at the same time, everyone palced Japan more far from China that it really is (see, for example the orb of Behaim).
That's also why, once reached the continent, in his third voyage, he immediately wrote instead it was a new continent (that he called "Paria"). Because, on his map, at that latitude, there should have been no land mass capable to sustain the rivers he saw.
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Columbus was backed by many scholars. Among them the most renown cartographer of his time, Toscanelli, whose map placed Japan more or less where in reality is west Mexico. That's why Columbus thought to have reached a group of islands east of Japan, because, in his map there was no physycal place for a continent between those islands and Japan. The problem was not that much the circumference of the Earth, but the extension of Asia, that, at that time, everyone thought it was much more extended that it really is and, at the same time, everyone palced Japan more far from China that it really is (see, for example the orb of Behaim).
That's also why, once reached the continent, in his third voyage, he immediately wrote instead it was a new continent (that he called "Paria"). Because, on his map, at that latitude, there should have been no land mass capable to sustain the rivers he saw.
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Even having the right equipment and know-how, to take even a small fortress needed weeks, or months, and a far larger army. That's why they had been so successful for so long. It was a very expensive warfare for the attackers. To try to speed things by dividing the army and attacking many fortresses at once, meant to loose the biggest advantage the Mongols had, their command chain, able to cohordinate tens of thousands men during a battle. It had already been noted in the first invasion that Europeans tended to win small scale engagements, when cohordination was much simpler. And infact, in the subsequent Mongol attempts of invasion, Hungarians and Poles exploited that. they built more fortresses, increased their mounted units, and divided the campaign in multiple small scale engagements instead of seeking big pitched battles.
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The problem was the number.
Mongols conquered many fortified cities, and many fortresses located in strategic points. Because they were important and worth the effort.
Because even having the right equipment and know-how, to take even a small fortress needed weeks, or months, and a far larger army. That's why they had been so successful for so long. It was a very expensive warfare for the attackers.
In western Europe there were tens of thousands of fortresses whose garrisons were capable to resist for weeks or months against far larger armies, and dividing the horde in multiple small columns to attack many fortresses at the same time was a bad idea. Already in the first invasion, it had been noticed that Europeans tended to win small scale engagements. The real difference was the Mongol chain of command, capable to effectively cohordinate tens of thousands of men in pitched battles, while European commanders still led from the front, so knew what was happening only close to them.
In the subsequent attempts of invasion, Hungarians and Poles exploited that advantage. They built more fortresses, increased the number of mounted units, and divided the campaign into multiple small engagements instead of seeking big pitched battles.
Then there is the fact that in Europe, praires ends in Hungary (that's why both the Huns and the Hungars came there before the Mongols). Western Europe was more forested, and so much less favourable to steppe riders.
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There was a minimum height to join the legion.
Surely there was some potentially exceptional warrior among the ones excluded but, since, once into it, the legionaries were all trained the same way, it was more efficient to train the ones that were more phisically gifted from the start, that wasting resouces to train the weaklings, and then selecting few exceptions among them.
In ancient warfare, strenght and stamina counted A LOT, and weapons, as well as training, are expensive items, you want to give them to the ones that are likely to use them more effectively.
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@Heeroneko Deadpool had not been created to represent anyone, bar a parody of Spiderman's habit to talk while fighting. His description, given by Cable himself, that first hired him, was "a lethal idiot" (and he was not meant give idiots a representation). Him, or any other character, being "something" is not "representation", is simply having some charateristic, which I think is more so what you meant.
A character made for representation instead, IE, is the defunct "Snowflake", whose introduction described as being "not binary". Because obviously the first thing I want to know of a superhero is who he/her wants to fuck...
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@Heeroneko That's representation. The character is meant not to have a personal trait. Is meant to represent. To be an example of. Characters that are meant to represent are bound to be abysmal, because there's no way to decently write a character that's meant to represent a community.
Unfortunately, a lot of people make this mistake. Critics tend to acritically (isn't that funny?) exalt characters made like that, because they "spread the right message", regardless of the quality of the work, and who dare to object is labeled as a homophobe, misogynist, and worse. And, among those who label, other than the aforementioned critics, there are the members of the minorities. Not the members that really read the comics, yeah, who KNOWS the media, KNOWS that those characters are terrible, but you don't need to really read comics to be vocal on twitter about "how they should be made".
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1) There's nothing wrong in making a documentary / series even on the only known sample, until it's also higlighted that's the only known sample and not the norm. Yasuke, Abram Petrovic Gannibal... why not? Someone wants to make a TV series on the life of a fictional Black African (from a group Living in North Africa, or coming from south of the Sahara with a caravan) that enlists as an auxiliary in the Roman Army, participates in one or more campaigns, earns citizenship, becomes centurion, is honourably discharged, starts living as a civilian Roman citizen in some part of the Empire and even obtains some minor public office (more was impossible without having followed the cursus honorum)? Good, as long as is historically accurate.
2) In a documentary, you can highlight the various possibilities. In a series, when you can only make a choice, it's better to stick to the most widely accepted interpretation, but the interpretation of a minority of scholars, as long as it's a legitimate and discussed scientific theory , is acceptable.
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+Jeffery Wells
The armors shown are not intended for foot soldiers. They were incredibly costly items that only a few could afford. The level of craftsmanship involved in their making was so high that fluting or not the plates was only a question of preferred style, not of cost. A well equipped foot soldier of the same period would have worn a brigandine over a mail shirt, or a simple breastplate, with a single piece, or a simple two piece, helmet as a complement.
The fact that a flat surface is more apt to deflect blows, while the flutes are less likely to deflect the blows, and more likely to offer them an orthogonal surface where the blows can have the maximum effect, means exactly that the flat surface does not need to be thick enough to stop the weapon, but only enough to deflect it. Once the blow (of the quarrel, spear, pollaxe, halberd...) is deflected, it's power had not been absorbed by the armor, but is simply directed elsewhere. The percentage of the force that the armor has to absorb is higher the more the incoming angle of the blow is closer to 90 degrees.
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+Jeffery Wells Please. First, is sufficient to look at the sabatons of the gotic armors to see that they were not made for someone that had to walk. Those armors were not only only intended only for cavalry, but specifically for heavy cavalry.
Second. The man who could pay for a complete armor like the ones shown could easily equip himself not only with one, but with several war horses, so why on he earth should he have to fight on foot? To die more easily?
Third. Hardly any of those armors were designed for real fights at all. The armors survived until now were primarly parade armors (and that's why they survived), and secondarily joust armors. On the battlefield, even the knights tended to wear far lighter armors (IE the Italian corsaletto. Not by chance Giovanni de Medici was buried in one). Even more, since, at the same time those armors were developed, the heavy cavalry was at it's end. Following the example of the Venetian Stratioti, the european armies were relying more and more on light cavalry, and this led to a lightening of the armors (that soon would have consisted only of a curiass and an helmet).
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-- For the same area covered and the same weight, a flat, or almost flat, fluted plate is more prone to be pierced, cause is thinner, and cause the flutes are less likely to deflect the blows, and more likely to offer them an orthogonal surface where they can have the maximum effect.
Note thet the flutes on the frontal pieces of historical armors are not horizontal (so more likely to deflect the tip of the piercing weapons away from the body) but vertical, so likely to direct the tip of the piercing weapons towards the throat or the groin, exactly where nobody would want them to go. That means that, in all likelyhood, they started as simple hornanents and demonstrations of the ability of the blacksmith.
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As I said: "for the same area covered and the same weight, A FLAT, or almost flat, fluted plate, is stiffer".
Unfortunately there are not flat surfaces on an armor. The stiffening effect of fluting decreases as long as the curvature of the plate increase (infact the section of a sphere is naturally resistant to be bent, think of the helmet, or the pauldron), until, for a certain curvature, the effect is reversed, and flutes actually makes the plate less stiff. The stiffening effect of a very moderate fluting on an already curved surface is minimal.
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Herodotus,The Histories, Book V.22; Alexander I of Macedon (ancestor of Alexander the Great') wanted to compete in the games, but the other athletes opposed to it, since the games were for Greeks, and not for barbarians. Alexander was finally allowed to participate, after having "demonstrated" (read: "invented a story that") his dynasty originated from kings of the Greek city of Argos, but that was valid only for him, not for the Macedonians. They were still barbarians.
Moreover, Dio Chrysostom (Discourses, 2.23) wrote that Alexander I nickname was "philhellene" ("friend of the Greeks", so not a Greek himself).
Still Thrasymachus (On Behalf of the Lariasaeans) called Archelaus, grandson of Alexander I "a barbarian".
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The oplite phalanx relied on his "pushing" power, so the oplites usually did a brief run, mantaining the formation, first to clash with the enemy line. Exactly in the same moment, the legionaries threw their pilum at once.
Imagine the scene. Much of the oplite shields become unmaneuvrable, with one or more pilum stuck to them. Many oplites of the first line die. The ones behind them stumble on the dead bodies and on the spears on the ground, then, without the time to regroup, the legionaries arrive.
As for the Macedonian phalanx, the Romans lured it on rough terrain, where it could not mantain it's unity. Once divided the phalanx, the sarissas were only a bother.
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+pypy1986820 And, thinking about Caesar, we have to think about it's enemies.
At Alesia he reportedly faced 85.000 armed Gauls barricated into the city and 240.000 outside it. We know, from the aftermats, that the first number was quite accurate, the second can be exaggerated, but, even admittting he doubled it, that means that the Romans were facing 200.000 armed men. Those were not professional soldiers, but probably most of them had already fought in battles or duels in their life, since disputes and skirmishes were common between the celtic tribes. Their equipment was usually composed of a long iron sword or an axe, a shield, a spear, a helmet and, at least for the wealtier of them, a mail armor (the Romans actually adopted the "lorica hamata" and the helmet with cheeckplates from them, centuries before). They could use (and used in the Gallic War) javelins and bows as well, and had a cavalry, altough not efficient as a medieval one (no stirrups).
A similar army, at Agincourt, would have walked over the English due to the sheer strenght of numbers, longbows or not. Probably they could have walked over the English and the French at the same time.
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Sorry, but I've never talked about impossibilities or combat capabilities. I was talking about numbers. "Romans could field tens of thousands of professional soldiers in armor". Medieval armies were "huge" when they reached, or barely passed, 10.000 men.
"When numbers are similar" a heavy medieval knight is a great weapon, but heavy medieval knights are extremely expensive items. Numbers will not be similar, since 10.000 knigts were more or less all that a powerful medieval state could deploy. 10.000 legionaries were a relatively small contingent.
However, it had been the legionaries that made those fortifications. They didn't found them there. Do you think they would have been incapable to make the battlefield impracticable to horses? Is not that they didn't know how to dig, or sharpen poles. The English did, and, with all the due respect, they were not 45.000-50.000 Legionaries capable to build 16 km of double fortification around the city.
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+buckwheat219970 In Italy still survives the expression, when someone is in a close dispute, "essere ai ferri corti" ("to be at the short irons", were the "short irons" are the short bladed weapons, like the daggers). It originates exactly in that period, when, in most cases, after the knights grown tired and can't lift the sword (or mace, hammer, axe...) any more, the final blow was given by the winner with the short blade through the openings in the plates (armpits, neck, eyes...)
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There had been variations, with the katana made in wartime that thended to be less sharp and more resistant, but in general japanese swords are more brittle and prone to breakage than a European sword of the same size, in exchange of them being sharper. Katanas are not really made for parrying, they are made to bring a single deadly slash to an uncovered part of the enemy's body, or to die in the attempt.
Samurai doesn't use shields cause, for most of their history, they had been mounted archers that used the tachi / katana as their secondary weapon, and mounted archers (see Parts, Huns, Mongols...) doesn't use shields (you can't use it while throwing, it doesn't cover the horse...).
Other than the samurai, the foot soldiers were mostly conscript peasants, and those were rarely armed with more than a spear in Europe too.
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All in all the Swiss squares were not that different from the Macedonian phalanx, that the Romans defeated easily even before the Marian reform. Obviously, in that case, the tactic was not to directly attack the front of the enemy formation, but to lure the enemies on rough terrain, where they could not mantain it, or to take advantage of the superior mobilities of the cohorts to attack the flanks. The Swiss were much more disciplined than the average infantry formation of medieval time, but not more disciplined than the oplites or phalangites.
After the marian reform, we have to take in account military engineering too. Even on a seemingly favourable terrain for the pikemen's squares, Romans could easily dig or build obstacles that would have made impossilbe to mantain the formation. That's an often overlooked topic. A battle vs a legion was not only a battle vs shield and short sword. It's a battle vs a military system that in no time could build fortifications, trenches, traps, and make a terrain impracticable for the enemy.
That doesn't mean that the Roman victory would be a given fact, obviously. Even the Romans had their bad days. But, assuming both the formations to have a capable commander, one that know how to get the best from his men, to me the legion had more possibilities.
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*There could be, and had been used, multiple phalanxes. The pikemen had always more columns cause they came from different places, and, like for the oplite phalanx, the unity of a column depended from the fact that its members came from the same place and thrusted each other. Furthermore, among the Swiss, every column was free to decide wether to attack or rethreat. The coordination was scarce.
*To have different kind of soldiers into the same formation is not necessarily an advantage. If you have not enough pikemen to keep the enemy infantry at bay, and not enough swordsmen to fight them in close quarters, it will end in a slaughter anyway. Furthermore, phalangites had swords as well, and they had been easily defeated.
*The legion evolved a lot during the years as well. But, until the advent of firearms, I don't see advantages in the pikemen squares over the legion.
*Is like saying that, since a AA station can shoot down an attack helicopter, while a tank will have a hard time versus it, the AA station will easily win versus the tank. It doesn't work that way. The pikemen squares evolved exactly to counter the cavalry, but they generally never fought vs other kind od organized infantry. Legions instead fought vs many kind of organized infantry. Pikemen would have been nothing new to them, only a variation of the Oplite-Macedonian phalanx they knew well.
And, as said, there is the military engineering to take into account. At the Bicocca the Swiss were defeated mainly by the mere presence of a sunken road transverse to the battlefield. To make better obstacles would have been child play for the legionaries.
That's my opinion.
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*Pike squares put togheter men of the same origin. For this cause, often there had been competition, and not cohordination, between the Swiss columns on the same battlefield.
*Gauls too fought in close formaftions of spearmen. Formations of spearmen were nothing new for the Romans. They saw it before.
*Is not a question of numbers, but of numbers for the same area. In a certain area there could be only a certain number of men. Too few pikemen, and the enemies will find their way to fight in close quarters, and at that point the pikemen will be only an hindrance. Too few swordsmen, and they will not make any difference. If combined formations would have been ALWAYS an advantage, the Romans would have kept the hasta between their squares, or the phalangites would have kept the oplites between theirs. They didn't cause it was not an advantage.
*I never said the Romans were invincible. I said: "That doesn't mean that the Roman victory would be a given fact, obviously. Even the Romans had their bad days. But, assuming both the formations to have a capable commander, one that know how to get the best from his men, to me the legion had more possibilities."
*Infact, once other organized infantries begun to appear on the battlefield, initially copying the Swiss (cause they were then the only example of efficient infantry available) the pikemen square formation begun to change, incorporating more and more other kind of soldiers (cause heavy cavalry was no more the primary threat) and resembling less and less a pikemen square, until the ones that remained more faithful to the original formation had been the first to be throughly and repeatedly beaten. It doesn't seems a demonstration of strenght of the pikemen squares vs other forms of infantry.
*The phalanx could too. There is simply a trade-off between lenght of the spear and number of lines of soldiers employed, and so the effectiveness of the defense, and time employed to change formation.
After the harquebuses became the main infantry weapon, the pike remained in use only to protect them from the cavalry charges. It had been abandoned as soon as the bayoned was invented, and a musket with a bayonet is a short spear. So short spears and no shields are the best formation ever? No. Simply shields were useless vs firearms.
And, as said, there is the military engineering to take into account. A battle vs a legion is not only a battle vs shield and short sword. It's a battle vs a military system that in no time could build fortifications, trenches, traps, and make a terrain impracticable for the enemy. Historically the pikemen squares did nothing similar, and did not cope well with natural or artificial obstacles.
Thanks to you.
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The civilizations that relied on the shield-spear combination , almost always used a variation of the "shield wall" tactic, with the two opposite formations in close contact, pushing one vs the other, the shields locked, and the spear used to hit in the spaces left between the shields.
It's a formation that doesn't need much training to be effective. It only needs it's memebers so thrust eachoter (infact it was good for the citizens of the same city-state, ot the inahbitants of the same fiord).
On the other hand, this formation is not very deadly. The slaughters se saw in the Greek wars almost always happened during the cavalry's chase after one of the two formations was broken.
The Romans used the shield offensively. Their shields were not locked, but used to hit the enemy, or cover his field of view. In this case the gladium gives to the soldier more possibilities. He can instantly decide to hit the enemy's foot, or the leg, ot the shoulder, every square inch of bare skin, without having a long rod behind him to hinder his movements. Furthermore the gladium's blade can't be grabbed if the thrust fails to hit, and the gladium is lighter than the spear, so it's wielder can hit faster and more times first to be tired.
This way of fighting was much deadlier. A legion was not a pushing machine with a secondary thrusting capability. To go against a legion with the idea of pushing it back was like to go against a chainsaw with the idea of pushing it back.
On the other hand, this kind of formation needs much more training to be effective.
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Roman society was sexist (like all the societies of that time), but not as sexist as the Greek one. Roman women could study (actually, until they worn the "toga praetexta", male and female children were considered equal), and, altough they couldn't have a political career, it was considered normal for them to have a political influence, talk with men that were not their relatives, participate in banquets with the men and so on. Roman women usually worn the "stola" that covered more than the tunic, but could leave arms, neck and even the shoulders uncovered. The choice to cover or not the hair was of them, we have depictions of Roman women with or without the hair covered by the "palla" (a kind of mantle).
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It's because people are people that we can't be sure if the city on Hisarlik hill is historical Troy.
We know it was considered that in Hellenistic and Roman period, but we also know that it was a tourist attraction. In Hellenistic period, in "Troy", there were, IE, the tombs of heroes that didn't even die there.
There's no guarantee that the entire city wasn't a tourist trap.
The city had been abandoned at the start of the Iron Age. It's entirely possible that, at the end of the "Greek dark age", when the poems on the Trojan war had become famous, people started to search for the city sung there in the region of the Troad, but the memory of the real location had been lost. Then the people that lived around Hissarlik hill reasoned "look at the fine ruins we have here. The shore, the rivers, all seems pretty similar to the poem. And all these people are searching for Troy. Let's THIS be Troy." and proceeded to make Santa Claus' village. Then Santa Claus' village influenced the later narrations of the poem, so the location and the poem became even more alike.
Infact the location is pretty similar, yes, but none of the Hisarlik's city strata really line up with the events of the poem. We have to mix up two separate levels to have a big city in the Mycenean period (but destroyed by an heartquake, not a war), and a city destroyed by a war (but too late for the Myceneans to have done that).
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A 1st century 9000 men (to keep the numbers even with the English at Agincourt, even it it would have been a very little army for Roman standards) strong Roman army would have been equipped with 90 carroballiste, capable to throw a 132cm long projectile to 650m, so they would have had the range advantage even vs the English longbows. Almost every legionary would have been equipped with a 400m range (so on par with a longbow) capable sling. The 1st century lorica segmentata was a very good protection against projectiles (it had been said that it had been deeloped to cope with Parthian composite bows), much better than anything the average English longbowman had (they were not unarmored, but the quality of protectioon varied wildly).
Romans used several times the anti cavalry "square" formation (it was round in their case) using the pila as spears. Horses doesn't crush into dense packs of spears bristling infantry. Long pikes obviously were an advantage but, in medieval history, several times infantry formations less disciplined than the Romans, and without Swiss pikes, resisted to cavalry charges (IE at Legnano). Medieval knights had the advantage that usually they fought vs. very undisciplined militias, whose formations were very easy to disrupt.
Mind too that most depended on the time too. Had the Romans some hour to build even very simple fortifications, even only the stimuli and campus liliorum (field traps for cavalry), the cavalry charge would have been complitely neutralized.
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Is difficult to find datas for Germanic people of Roman times, but Viking males, form skeletons found (usually we find burial of high-class people, so the average height is probably overestimated, since in ancient times they tended to eat better and so be taller than the average peasant) had an average height of 172cm. We already talked about legionaries but, from skeletons, the average male population of Pompeii and Herculaneum (and there are no class differencies there, since they all perished in a natural disaster) was of 168cm, so the Germanic people were probably on average taller than the Romans, but nothing so dramatic.
Several Roman sources said of one or another Gaul or Germanic population, that they were very tall, but often the Romans first seen members of the warrior elite. People that eat very well since childhood, and so were taller than the average.
For the Romans, once you were a citizen, you were a citizen, period.
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@TheLoyalOfficer First crusade, Jerusalem had been taken only with the arrival of the Genoese, among them the crosbowmen, that neutralised the Mameluc archers.
Battle of Parma, 1248. Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II decisively defeated by the Lombard League (lost the entire army, camp, crown, banner, scepter and seal), among them, 600 Genoese crossbowmen.
And obviously several naval battles (Meloria vs. Pisa, Curzola vs. Venice...)
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@rotwang2000 Several times pike or pike and shot formations had been defeated by cavalry, but I don't know of instances where they had been defeated by cavalry charging directly into the formed square. Cavalry had to use other tactics, based on its superior maneuverability (attack without giving the pikemen time to form the square, bypass the pike formation and attack the camp, disrupt the square by other means before the charge...).
However is not correct to state, as often did, that the pike killed the heavy cavalry. In reality pure pike formations and heavy cavalry, in western Europe ended at the same time, around 1520 in the Italian Wars, both killed by artillery and arquebusies (while the light cavalry survived, since it was more apt to use those flanking tactics). In Eastern Europe heavy cavalry survived for long (Winged Hussars) even in the age of pike-and-shot.
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Samurai was a personal service, and the personal samurai of Nobunaga Oda should have committed seppuku after his death.
Obviously it was common for a daymo to pass some of his samurai to his relatives, especially sons, if it was needed. He could do it at any time, even moments before his death, but it wouldn't have made sense in that occasion, since in the Honnō-ji incident Oda Nobunaga only had about 30 people with him, while Nobutata, already a famous general, had 2000 warriors with him, so he didn't really need the adjunctive "protection" Yasuke would have provided.
It seems more probable that, not being a samurai, but being loyal to the Oda clan, with the death of Nobunaga, Yasuke reached Nobutada to help him in his last stand.
But it can be speculated instead that, not wanting his friend to die there, and knowing that, for a Christian, suicide was a capital sin, Nobunaga had simply said to Yasuke "you are the samurai of Nobutada now".
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And, actually, Columbus never called the Native Americans "Indians".
When he reached the Caribbeans, he believed to have reached a group of islands east of Japan (because in his map there was no space for a continent at that latitude), so it would have been silly to call the inhabitants "indians".
When, in his third voyage, he reached South America, he immediately recognised it was a continent (because the rivers were too big to came from an island) and a new one, (because at that latitude he couldn't still have reached east Asia), and called it "Paria". The name stood on European maps for decades, before being replaced by "America". Today it only indicates the Gulf of Paria, where he landed.
So, had the Native Americans been called after Columbus, they would be called "Parians".
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@alicelund147 They didn't care. They didn't think the matter was worth of a teological sanction. And infact Copernicus, a Catholic Canon, never thought to have written something against the doctrine.
Catholic Church took a position only 60 years later. Mostly because it had been invested on the matter by Ptolemaic scientists, that didn't know any more how to respond to Galileo that, being, other than a great scientist, a skilled polemist, ridiculed them.
Galileo had been condemned mostly because the "Dialogue" that he was advised to write presenting a balanced view of the two teories, was far from balanced, and the advocate of Ptolemaic system in the book, starting from the name ("Simplicio", "the simple one") made a fool of himself, and for having said that "Church should teach to the souls to reach the stars, not how the stars work". He was right of course, but the autority is not happy to be told what they could do or not.
Had he been more careful, Galileo could have proposed the same theories, and much more, without problems.
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Romans used several times the anti cavalry "square" formation (it was round in their case) using the pila as spears. Regardless how armored their rider is, horses don't crush into dense packs of spears bristling infantry. Long pikes obviously were an advantage but, in medieval history, several times infantry formations, less disciplined than the Romans and without Swiss pikes, resisted to cavalry charges (IE at Legnano). Medieval knights had the advantage that usually they fought vs. very undisciplined militias, whose formations were very easy to disrupt.
Mind too that most depended on the timing also. Had the Romans some hour to build even very simple fortifications, even only the stimuli and campus liliorum (the field traps they developed to cope with cavalry), the cavalry charge would have been complitely neutralized before the first knight reached a scutum.
Late medieval armors were not impenetrable. A knight on foot was difficult to cope with, but for how long? For how many minutes a fully enclosed knight could keep his guard high and swing his weapon against the scuti? At Agincourt the French were killed by their own fatigue. Switching lines, legionaries could fight for hours.
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Because documentaries are not about artistic licences and suspending someone's disbelief, so they should be as accurate as the means employed allow (so, IE, in a documentary about prehistoric Africa produced, with very limited resources, by a Japanese amateur production using voluntary cast, is acceptable to use Japanese actors)
And, even in historical fiction, it seems quite ridicolus, to insert people for the sake of inclusivity, while at the same time telling to the pubblic "we all know there were only white males in this expedition. Just ignore the diverse ones, or pretend they are believable".
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If we wanted to be very precise he was NOT convinced of having landed in Japan, but on a group of islands east of Japan, because that's what his map said (he was still not at the longitude of Japan, and he knew it).
He landed in the American continent in his third voyage, 1498, in the Paria peninsula, Venezuela, and recognised it to be a continent, because the Orinoco river, that he saw, was too big to be sustained by an island. He named it "Paria".
Still in the map of Waldseemuller (1507) that's often said is the reason we call the continent "America", in reality "America" is the name given to south America and "Parias" is the name given to central and north America.
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As for ancient tradition, in Rome the "pater familias" had any right on his family, even to kill his wife and children on the spot. This ancient tradition, however became less and less accepted as time progressed and, in late republican time, even the killing of a slave was no more considered acceptable.
This is reflected in the TWO kind of Roman marriages.
In the marriage "cum mano" ("with hand"), the most common in ancient time, the father of the bride placed her hand in that of the husband. In that way he transferred to the husband every right he had over her. From this kind of marriage, divorce was impossible.
In the marriage "sine mano" (without hand), that became prevalent in 1st century BC, and practically had completely replaced the other by 1st century AD, there wasn't that part, and so the bride remained nominally under the authority of her father. That meant that her husband had no right to abuse of her in any way and for any reason, even infidelity, and she could leave her husband's house AT ANY MOMENT.
That also mean that, the moment her father died, a Roman woman was completely free. She could inherit, carry on her businesses, etc. without being under the authority of anyone. Since high class Romans usually married very young women, that meant also that Rome was full of rich and relatively young widows with a lot of economic power.
Being cum manu or sine manu, Romans had one wife at a time, even if it was common, for high-class Romans, to have lovers, even official ones. IE Servilia, mother of Brutus (Caesar's assassin), and widow of another Marcus Brutus, was the most known of Caesar's lovers.
Gladiators were celebrities. They had a lot of sex.
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@undertakernumberone1 The fact that there's a gorget doesn't mean you want to be hit there anyway. Neck is a weak spot of human body. Full of important things and not very apt to take hits.
You claimed fluting was advantageous. Here's a simple point: had fluting been SO advantageous as you CLAIM... it would've replaced flat armor extremely quickly because the knights would've noticed: "hey, since we put that stuff on our armour, far less of us die!". Instead fluted armor had been fashionable for a certain perod in a certain place, and then abandoned, while flat armors went on until napoleonic era (and not for fashion. Napoleonic curiasses could still protect from projectiles). People weren't stupid. Yes, they adopted it because it fit the fashion, but then they noticed it was not worth it.
You can weld the fluting to the armor if it's advantageous.
Maces and the likes are better faced by a continually curved surface than a fluted one. That's why modern motorcycle helmets are not fluted.
Physics doesn't change, The shot trap issue is with shots being "trapped", by the shape of the vehicle, in hitting a certain part of the vehicle 90° instead of glancing off.
The fact that there's a gorget doesn't mean you want to be hit there anyway. Neck is a weak spot of human body. Full of important things and not very apt to take hits.
So those versions have a shot trap, to have the full force of the hit discharged where the vertical fluting encounters the orizontal one. Better than the hit reaching the throat, but far from ideal anyway.
Infact those are NOT shot traps. Projectiles are meant to penetrate that external "armour".
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In weightlifting, the discipline that's closer to be of pure physical strenght, there are two categories 55kg and 81kg where the weight limit is the same for men and women, so are directly comparable.
The current world record for 55kg category, snatch, clean& jerk and total are: men 135kg, 166kg, 294kg; women 102kg, 129kg, 227kg.
The current world record for 81kg category, snatch, clean& jerk and total are: men 175kg, 207kg, 378kg; women 127kg, 158kg, 283kg.
So, when technique don't really count, men are around 1/3 stronger for the same body weight.
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Dude. There were tons of ways to obtain citizenship in Ancient Rome. IE St. Paul was a Roman Citizen, despite non having any connection with the city by ancestry.
Dude, that's an impossibility only for you. YOU give importance to the country of origin. Romans didn't. The ancestors of someone that lived into the empire being from Nubia, China or Mars, was not important for them.
In all evidence, it was not the only way. As already said, black people, could very well born into the Empire. Once a black man came, for whatever reason, to live into the Empire (because he did born there, or arrived there), he could become an auxiliar, or manage to acquire citizenship and become a legionary.
And your source says: "Provinciales were those people who fell under Roman influence, or control". "People", not "nation". A black man that lived in Tunis or Alexandria was as "provinciales" as a white man living in there.
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Actually Columbus never called the Native Americans "Indians".
When he reached the Caribbeans, he believed to have reached a group of islands east of Japan (because in his map there was no space for a continent at that latitude), so it would have been silly to call the inhabitants "indians".
When, in his third voyage, he reached South America, he immediately recognised it was a continent (because the rivers were too big to came from an island) and a new one, (because at that latitude he couldn't still have reached east Asia), and called it "Paria". The name stood on European maps for decades, before being replaced by "America". Today it only indicates the Gulf of Paria, where he landed.
So, had the Native Americans been called after Columbus, they would be called "Parians".
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Columbus was not an idiot. He was backed by many scholars. Among them the most renown cartographer of his time, Toscanelli, whose map placed Japan more or less where in reality is west Mexico. That's why Columbus thought to have reached a group of islands east of Japan, because, in his map there was no physycal place for a continent between those islands and Japan. The problem was not that much the circumference of the Earth, but the extension of Asia, that, at that time, everyone thought it was much more extended that it really is and at the same time everyone palced Japan more far from China that it really is (see, for example the orb of Behaim).
That's also why, once reached the continent, in his third voyage, he immediately wrote instead it was a new continent (that he called "Paria"). Because, on his map, at that latitude, there should have been no land mass capable to sustain the rivers he saw.
It's pretty strange to denounce Columbus' racism when the Norses called the natives Skræling and their first contact consisted in capturing and killing eight of them.
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Err... no.
"Punus" in latin means "Phoenician".
Romans literally called those "Phoenician wars".
BTW, all of the elephants of Hannibal died in the Battle of Trebia, at the start of the campaign, bar one, that died soon after, before reaching Etruria.
We know that Hanno Barca, Hannibal's own brother, outright refused Muttines to act as his co-commander in Sicily, because Muttines was "half African". That's the level of contempt the Barcids had for Africans.
Romans didn't mint coins of Hannibal. He was their enemy, you know?
But WE HAVE the coins minted by his father, Hamilcar and his brother Hasdrubal during their rule over Spain (and some attributed to hannibal too) and they didn't sport any black trait.
Since you are at it, you can look at the Numidian coinage, to see how the Numidians (that were really N. African, not Semites like the Carthaginians) depicted themselves.
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@nzrbroadcasting1421 For the North the cause was the secession. States had not the right to secede. The southerners were "rebels", and that's all.
For the South, the main cause were the increased limitations on slavery. All the new territories west of Mississippi were free states and that put slave states in minority. By 1858, 17 free states, which included California (1850), and Minnesota (1858), outnumbered the 15 slave states. In mid-1861, with the addition of Oregon (1859) and Kansas (1861), the number of free states had grown to 19 while the number of slave states remained at 15. Washington D.C. formed with land from two slave states, abolished slavery in 1850. The path was quite evident. Lincoln (a known abolitionist) being elected President was the final straw.
All the slave states that gave an explanation of the motives of secession, specifically mentioned the plight of the "slaveholding states" at the hands of Northern abolitionists.
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@davepx1 Inquisition did born to prosecute heretics. Only lately, and quite reluctantly, they started to pay attention to whitchcraft. For medieval scholars, that were practically all ecclesiastics, magic didn't exist. They would have laughed at the idea of someone acquiring powers by making a pact with the devil. Magicians were scammers.
The witch hunt started, for both parts, with the Reform.
Also, at the start, Inquisition relied only on witness testimony, and forbid torture. Only in 1252 Pope Innocent IV introduced torture in Inquisition trials (to make them more similar to contemporary civilian trials), but under much strictier conditions than those admitted by civilian autorities. IE the defendant should have never risked death or mutilation by torture, and the confession given under torture could not be used in the actual trial. It had to be repeated by the defendant that didn't risk to be tortured again. According to some scholar that looked into the minutes of the trials, torture had been used in less than 1% of the Inquisition trials even after its introduction.
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And, actually, Columbus never called the Native Americans "Indians".
When he reached the Caribbeans, he believed to have reached a group of islands east of Japan (because in his map there was no space for a continent at that latitude), so it would have been silly to call the inhabitants "indians".
When, in his third voyage, he reached South America, he immediately recognised it was a continent (because the rivers were too big to came from an island) and a new one, (because at that latitude he couldn't still have reached east Asia), and called it "Paria". The name stood on European maps for decades, before being replaced by "America". Today it only indicates the Gulf of Paria, where he landed.
So, had the Native Americans been called after Columbus, they would be called "Parians".
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Columbus was backed by many scholars. Among them the most renown cartographer of his time, Toscanelli, whose map placed Japan more or less where in reality is west Mexico. That's why Columbus thought to have reached a group of islands east of Japan, because, in his map there was no physycal place for a continent between those islands and Japan. The problem was not that much the circumference of the Earth, but the extension of Asia, that, at that time, everyone thought it was much more extended that it really is and, at the same time, everyone palced Japan more far from China that it really is (see, for example the orb of Behaim).
That's also why, once reached the continent, in his third voyage, he immediately wrote instead it was a new continent (THAT HE CALLED "PARIA", NOT "WEST INDIES"). Because, on his map, at that latitude, there should have been no land mass capable to sustain the rivers he saw.
Had been for him, Native Americans would have been called "Parians".
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Is difficult to find datas for Gauls and Germanic people of Roman times, but Viking males, form skeletons found (usually we find burial of high-class people, so the average height is probably overestimated, since in ancient times they tended to eat better and so be taller than the average peasant) had an average height of 172cm. We already talked about legionaries but, from skeletons, the average male population of Pompeii and Herculaneum (and there are no class differencies there, since they all perished in a natural disaster) was of 168cm, so the Germanic people were probably on average taller than the Romans, but nothing so dramatic.
Several Roman sources said of one or another Gaul or Germanic population, that they were tall, but often the Romans first seen members of the warrior elite. People that eat very well since childhood, and so were taller than the average.
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Where did you get the 1.5m height?
Is difficult to find datas for Germanic people of Roman times, but Viking males, form skeletons found (usually we find burial of high-class people, so the average height is probably overestimated, since in ancient times they tended to eat better and so be taller than the average peasant) had an average height of 172cm. We already talked about legionaries but, from skeletons, the average male population of Pompeii and Herculaneum (and there are no class differencies there, since they all perished in a natural disaster) was of 168cm, so the Germanic people were probably on average taller than the Romans, but nothing so dramatic.
Several Roman sources said of one or another Gaul or Germanic population, that they were very tall, but often the Romans first seen members of the warrior elite. People that eat very well since childhood, and so were taller than the average.
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They had great problems in Indochina and Korea, simply because there was no more grassland, and their tactics were no more useful there. The same for the two tumens (20.000 men) that pursued King Bela in Dalmatia and were defeated in a series of ambushes. In Europe grassland ends in Hungary (that's why all the steppe raiders, Huns, Hungars, Mongols, ended there).
The Mongols previously took fortified cities and strategic fortresses, because they were worth the effort, but In western Europe there were tens of thousands of fortresses capable to stand a siege for weeks or months. It was a completely different warfare, and a very expensive one. Even having European engineers, to conquest even small fortresses could keep months. To try to speed things by dividing the army and attacking many of them at once, meant to loose the biggest advantage the Mongols had, their command chain, able to cohordinate tens of thousands men during a battle. It had already been noted in the first invasion that Europeans tended to win small scale engagements, when cohordination was much simpler. And infact, in the subsequent Mongol attempts of invasion, Hungarians and Poles exploited that, building more fortresses and dividing the campaign in multiple small scale engagements instead of seeking big pitched battles.
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It's a small-scale relief attack.
Mind that, while the two did that, the Romans, in that very same sector, were in a very dire situation. The fortification they built around Alesia was hard pressured by the Gauls arrived to to aid Vercingetorix, and on the verge of collapse.
The rationale of such a move, apart the personal feud, was that, if the soldier is in front of the fortification, for the time he is there, the fortification is not under pressure, and those moments of relative quiet are very important for the defenders. It gives them the time to think, help the wounded ones, better dispose themselves, replenish the stock of projectiles, chek the fortifications and the armors, and be ready for when the enemies will renew the assault, AND is a morale boost for the common legionary to see that, in any case, a Roman soldier could stand in front of many enemies and kill them without retaliation.
Assuming the story was real, probably Pullo saw that his men were scared, tired, and increasingly simply mechanically reacting to the attacks instead of acting to anticipate them, and so they needed that boost, while the Gauls needed to know that it would have not been easy.
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Italian males have currently an average height of 176.5cm (measured 2004), they are taller than American and English males, (175.3 for both, measured 2012- 2014), French (175,6, measured 2004) and Germans (175.4cm, measured 2007).
Is difficult to find datas for Germanic people of Roman times, but Viking males, form skeletons found (usually we find burial of high-class people, so the average height is probably overestimated, since in ancient times they tended to eat better and so be taller than the average peasant) had an average height of 172cm. We already talked about legionaries but, from skeletons, the average male population of Herculaneum (and there are no class differencies there, since they all perished in a natural disaster) was of 169cm, so the Germanic people were probably on average taller than the Romans, but nothing so dramatic.
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Cleopatra didn't rule a country "populated by black people". Egyptians didn't depict themself as black in first place (with the specific exception of the rulers of the 25th dinasty, that were Kushites, and is telling that them, being black, wanted to be depicted differently from the previous rulers). At the time of Cleopatra they had been governed by a Greek dinasty for almost three centuries and, after them they'll be governed by Romans.
Cleopatra wasn't "steeped in the habits of African culture". Ptolemaics remained proudly Greeks to the bone. They adopted only Greek names, ruled over Egypt from a city of Greek culture, founded by a Greek, speaking Greek, and their greatest achievement had been a Greek library.
There are no depictions of Jesus made while he was alive. There are many depictions of Cleopatra made when she was alive, and they had not been made by "those who whised she was white". They had been made by her subjects by her order.
There are no excavations of Cleopatra's relatives at all. Not even one. If you are referring to the pretended tomb of Arsinoe, she can be anyone. Given the circumstances of her death, it was most unlikely for Arsinoe to have a mausoleum. The body died at the wrong age, and her race had not been determined, her DNA cannot be examined, the head is missing, and craniometry to determine race is a scam even when is not based on old pictures.
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ALL of Cleopatra ancestors, maternal and paternal, up to Ptolemy I, founder of the dinasty, were not only Greek, but Macedons. Mostly of the same, inbred, family. We KNOW her entire family tree.
Had ALL ot your ancestors been Chinese, not only your grandmother, it wouldn't have counted where you were born, you would have looked 100% Chinese.
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That's not really true. Until 14th century (see 14th century crisis, or crisis of the late middle age) farming land was abundant and there was no shortage or forestry goods. So the workload was rather light, nothing comparable, for example, with that of a worker during industrial revolution.
things changed with 14th century because, due to population rise, farmland started to become scarce, so may people, had to employ themself as day laborers, the price of food rised, and more work hours were needed just to earn enough to survive.
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To give some chronology, the earliest traces of iron smelting (so no hammering of meteoric iron) date back to 2200-2000 BC Anatolia.
From Hittite documents, Iron items were common, altough extremely expensive around 1800 BC. From around the same age we have some small iron jewels, likely smelted. Given the fact that Iron is a crappy material for jewelry (harder to form in complex shapes than gold, silver, or copper alloys, and prone to rust) it was evidently the fact that, for some reason, it was extremely hard to obtain that justified its use.
The situation was still the same around 1325 BC. We don't know if Tutankhamun's iron dagger was meteoric or smelted, but, due to the fact that it was evidently not made for its Egyptian-made handle, it was almost surely imported and, form it's original position, it was probably the most prized item of his funerary equipment. More than his gold dagger, or any other golden object.
Hittite documents point to the fact that instead, around 1200 BC, iron had become common and cheap. From this period is the most ancient big and complex iron item we have, an Hittite iron sword, surely smelted. In Ugarith had been found an iron sword bearing the name of Pharaon Merneptah (died 1203 BC), so Egyptians had access to the same tecnology.
So, there had been some technological improvement, between 1325 BC and 1200 BC, that made iron cheap and available in good quantities. While the technology remained practically unchanged in the eight previous centuries.
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Actually Columbus never called the Native Americans "Indians".
When he reached the Caribbeans, he believed to have reached a group of islands east of Japan (because in his map there was no space for a continent at that latitude), so it would have been silly to call the inhabitants "indians".
When, in his third voyage, he reached South America, he immediately recognised it was a continent (because the rivers were too big to came from an island) and a new one, (because at that latitude he couldn't still have reached east Asia), and called it "Paria". The name stood on European maps for decades, before being replaced by "America". Today it only indicates the Gulf of Paria, where he landed.
So, had the Native Americans been called after Columbus, they would be called "Parians".
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@sergarlantyrell7847 A bascinet with aventail and without visor is not that much of a knightly helmet, if not worn under a great helm, for when things became serious.
Is an evolution we seen several times. Kights first wore a nasal helmet with hausberk, not really different form that of infantrymen. Then that protection was considered too light, and evolved first into the enclosed helmet, then in the great helm, to wear over the cervelliere, or over the bascinet (evolved from the cervelliere, probably in Italy that too). At that point the protection was too bulky, knights tended to not use the great helm any more over the bascinet, that was too light, so it evolved into the visored bascinet, and then into the great bascinet, that was too bulky again.
In Italy, the standard, or pixane, replaced the aventail (that must be worn over the cuirass, if you wanted to be able to remove the helmet at some point, and so was less safe). Once removed the aventail, and replaced it with the standard, the bascinet evolved in two directions, the sallet and the barbute. Early sallets were infact hardly distinguishable from early barbutes.
High end products tend to be more preserved that the simplest pieces, and city militias were not poor, but the barbute was a simple helmet to make by definition, and there are tons of preserved barbutes whose craftmanship was not better than that of the contemporary kettle hats.
http://vikingsword.com/vb/attachment.php?s=66f93c199c3eac6848997735ef636d45&attachmentid=36689&stc=1
https://farm2.static.flickr.com/1557/24368832943_8b6edf33d0.jpg
As already said, exactly as the Sallet, the barbute gained popularity with higher classes too, and was worn by cavalrymen too. Why not? For scouting or light skirmishes it had advantages over the heavier helmets. and there will always be someone that will prefer freedom of movements/breathability/less restricted vision over protection even in pitched battles.
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Columbus NEVER referred to the native Americans as "Indians".
Columbus was backed by many scholars. Among them the most renown cartographer of his time, Toscanelli, whose map placed Japan more or less where in reality is west Mexico. That's why Columbus thought to have reached a group of islands east of Japan, because, in his map there was no physycal place for a continent between those islands and Japan. The problem was not that much the circumference of the Earth, but the extension of Asia, that, at that time, everyone thought it was much more extended that it really is and, at the same time, everyone palced Japan more far from China that it really is (see, for example the orb of Behaim).
That's also why, once reached the continent, in his third voyage, he immediately wrote instead it was a new continent (that he called "Paria"). Because, on his map, at that latitude, there should have been no land mass capable to sustain the rivers he saw.
Had been for him, Native Americans would have been caleld "Parians".
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See the "Cesare Chiaramonti" (one of the three busts of Cesar we have that are considered temporarily closest to the living person, the others being the "Cesare Tuscolo", and the newly discovered "Cesare di Terracina", and compare it with Simon Merrells, that in "Spartacus, the war of the damned" played the part of Crassus.
they are nearly identical.
In the 2006 TV movie, Hannibal had been played by Alexander Siddig, that, while not technically being a middle eastern, or a north African (he's half English, half Sudanese), was physically pretty spot on.
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In all likelyhood the Iliad is based on a real war, but Troy being the city on the Hisarlik hill is debatable. We know it was considered that in Hellenistic and Roman period, but we also know that it was a tourist attraction. In Hellenistic period, in "Troy", there were, IE, the tombs of heroes that didn't even die there.
There's no guarantee that the entire city wasn't a tourist trap.
The city had been abandoned at the start of the Iron Age. It's entirely possible that, at the end of the "Greek dark age", when the poems on the Trojan war had become famous, people started to search for the city sung there in the region of the Troad, but the memory of the real location had been lost. Then the people that lived around Hissarlik hill reasoned "look at the fine ruins we have here. The shore, the rivers, all seems pretty similar to the poem. And all these people are searching for Troy. Let's THIS be Troy." and proceeded to make Santa Claus' village. Then Santa Claus' village influenced the later narrations of the poem, so the location and the poem became even more alike.
Infact the location is pretty similar, yes, but none of the Hisarlik's city strata really line up with the events of the poem. We have to mix up two separate levels to have a big city in the Mycenean period (but destroyed by an heartquake, not a war), and a city destroyed by a war (but too late for the Myceneans to have done that).
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Historically they did. As already said, multiple times medieval cavalry charges had been stopped by infantry that had not long pikes and was much less disciplined than the Roman one.
A pilum used as a spear is a spear.
Anti-cavalry square musketeer worked vs. cavalry charges because horses don't crush into dense packs of spears bristling infantry, regardless how armored or armed their rider is. Horses don't care if their rider is well protected or not, or what kind of weapon is wielding.
At the time of the battle of Agincourt, brigandines were not common (they had just been invented). "common" means little anyway, in late medieval armies the quality of the protective gearing varied wildly. Many English longbowmen only had some sort of padded vest and an helmet ( https://78.media.tumblr.com/1306ef25e5adce23a62dc270f899fba9/tumblr_nwsa530hAp1qbrih3o1_1280.jpg ). Moreover Projectiles tend to came from above, and even good quality brigandines are not that well protected from that direction, the lorica hamata had a double layer on the shoulder, and the segmentata was much better protected than any brigandine. Brigandines' protection is, at best, at the level of that of the Lorica squamata, that was more a flashy garement for parades than a battle armor, and longbowmen didn't had shields.
Ist century Roman armies had balista. Sige engines and gunpowder guns and cannons had not been used at Agincourt. Not that siege engines are so decisive in a pitched battle.
A sling bullet can achieve ranges in excess of 400 metres. Their range was on par with longbows for any realistic use. Legionaries carried and used them, because slings were lightweight, cheap and effective.
The cursus honorum was different. For the Romans to serve as an officer in the legion was not a meant to have a political career, a political career was something that only a successful officer could have. To be a good commander was the base of the political career.
1st centuries Roman armies were exceptionally well commanded. They were the peak of centuries of development in organised formation battles. From a Roman point of view, wedieval battles were only disorganized brawls.
The first of the "couple of loose things" is incomprehensible, sorry.
As already said, multiple times medieval cavalry charges had been stopped by infantry that had not long pikes and was much less disciplined than the Roman one. Cataphracts charged with spears, and their horses were better protected than average medieval ones. Stirrups had been ad advancement, but not a revolution.
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I already said the only times when knights beaten infantry was when the infantry was very undisciplined, chosen an unfavourable position, was bad led, etc.
Dude, read about horses. They don't don't crush into dense packs of spears bristling infantry, infact dense packs of spears bristling infantry stopped them many times. Medieval knights had the advantage that usually they fought vs. very undisciplined militias, whose formations were very easy to disrupt.
Square musketeers worked because horses dont crush into dense packs of spears bristling infantry.
Sorry, they have a range of 400m. Slings outrange bows for purely physical reasons (bullets, even when they are simple stones, loose less energy than arrows during flight, are less influenced by wind too, and Romans often used lead bullets, far more energy efficient) . Denegate uncomfortable truths is not going to bring you anywere. Slings had been used in war well into medieval times. They stopped being only with the diffusion of crossbows.
" I have slyngs smort and goode
The best archer of ilk one
I durst meet him with a stone
And gif him lefe to shoot
There is no bow that shall laste
To draw to my slynges cast"
("King Edward and the Shepherd" 14th century poem)
Sorry dude, but I know the difference between strategy, tactics and micro tactics, and I think that you simply don't recognise the difference between ancient and medieval battles. In Roman battle accounts you know the tactics they and their enemies used, because tactic was important for the Romans, and so they described them.
In Medieval battle accounts, tactic was rarely described and, when it was, almost everything seemed to happen by chance, because tactic was not considered important (and infact armies were "led from the front" even in late medieval times). Roman officers were supposed to have been trained in tactic, medieval commanders weren't, and, again, medieval cavalry had problems even with medieval militia infantries, worse armored, commanded, and less disciplined than the Romans were.
I already took Legnano as a sample.
You said: "without them you can't charge with lance.". That's simply not true. Cataphracts charged with spears, and their horses were better protected than average medieval ones (because they were in ancient times, and they know organized infantries would have targeted the horses). Stirrups had been ad advancement, but not a revolution. With stirrups the knight could charge having more hitting power for his lance, but that's an advancement, not a revolution, because cavalry charges are not stopped opposing a human body to the tip of the lance but opposing a spear, an obstacle, or both, to the horse.
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You can write it some more time. It doesn't make it real.
More, it can be reversed. It seems that Cavalry could win only when the enemy infantry chose an unfavourable position, chose to fight in loose formation, wasn't trained, didn't prepare the terrain or themself at all, even with simple tricks like grouping around a symbol (the Romans did, their insigna).
You don't like Legnano? How about golden spurs? There the secret weapon was a 90-150 cm long spear-club that had not been particularly successful before or after?
Humans are afraid, but humans can chose to act in a way that overcome fear, especially if they know that break the formation and flee will more easily led to their death. Discipline works this way, and Romans were disciplined. Infantries that medieval knights usually fought weren't.
Sorry, but your whole reasoning about sling is just rubbish both from physical and real stand point. Arrows have a much larger drag coefficient due to the large surface area of the arrow shaft and feathers. This is reflected in the very low ballistic coefficient for an arrow compared to bullets. Moreover, sling bullets naturally spin in air, Arrows does not spin significatively during flight, so they loose speed first. Both ancient accounts and modern test states the longer range of the sling.
Legionaries using slings in mass shooting is asserted both by ancient sources and modern archaeological findings, IE at Burnswark Hill.
I didn't say medievals didn't use any tactic. I said that the importance of tactic vas less stressed in mediaval times, both in accounts, training, and method of command. Romans using tactic is not exactly a secret. Almost every account of Roman battles of contemporary authors described the tactic used. The tactic used in most medieval battles is not described, and often had to be guessed.
Cavalry charges had been stopped/disrupted by short spears and simple ranged weapons.
Infact the medieval chain of command wasn't apt to direct large battles. The larger the battle, the more the Roman advantage.
You have not to "develop" the charge with lance under arm. It's fairly natural to use it that way on a horse. As already said stirrups had been ad advancement, but not a revolution. With stirrups the knight could charge having more hitting power for his lance, but cavalry charges are not stopped opposing a human body to the tip of the lance but opposing a spear, an obstacle, or both, to the horse. Actually the greater advantage of the stirrups came confronting with other riders, not infantrymen.
I talked about PROTECTION FOR HORSES. The Cataphracts, on average armoured their horses much more than even late medieval knights. They lived at the peak of the era of organized infantry, and it was taken for granted that the enemy, infantry would have targeted the horses. Medieval knights were used to much softer targets.
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"But this is untrue."
Only it's true. Medieval knights had the advantage that usually they fought vs. very undisciplined militias, whose formations were very easy to disrupt. The rare times disciplined (not Roman-level disciplined, only a little more disciplined than hastly formed militias) infantries showed up, they won. When disciplined infantries became the norm, it had been the end of the shock cavalry.
"I just wrote that legnano prove my point."
You can write it, that doesn't make it true. The Lombard league infantry was just barely more trained and motivated than the usual medieval infantry (it was a citizen's militia anyway), used the easiest trick one can think of to mantain the unity of the formation, and that had been enough.
"You meant battle of when Flemish..."...were just barely more trained, motivated and armored than the usual medieval infantry (citizen's militia anyway), chose to not fight in the ideal cavalry's playground, and that had been enough.
"Sorry but this is just theory" Sorry, but that's reality. That's how training and discipline works, and Legionaries were more trained and disciplined (and even better armored) than any medieval infantry. Cavalry charges were not stopped targeting the knights, but targetting the horses.
"Just BS whole of it."
You can ignore reality if you want, that doesn't change it.
Arrows have a much larger drag coefficient due to the large surface area of the arrow shaft and feathers. This is reflected in the very low ballistic coefficient for an arrow compared to bullets. Moreover, sling bullets naturally spin in air, Arrows does not spin significatively during flight (a dozen revolutions a second means little), so they loose speed first. Both ancient accounts and modern test states the longer range of the sling. The shape of the arrow tip head has very little effect at subsonic speed. The form of the tail is more important, and unfortunately, due to the feathers, the arrow is very poor. The calculated drag coefficient under 100ms for arrows is around 2.0 (1.6 for modern day competition arrows with streamlined point and tail), while for bullets is between 0.2 and 0.3, and is around 0.5 for a sphere. The actual world record for sling throwing is 431m with a stone and 471m with a metallic bullet.
"Im almost certain they meant auxilary slingers not main legionares."
The ability of the Balearic slingers was legendary, but many bullets found had latin inscriptions on them and, again, the practice of the sling by legionaries had been reported.
"You know this is logical error - absence of evidence is not evidence of absence"
You know this is a logical error. You can'd adfirm something existed because there isn't any proof of it, and "absence of evidence is not evidence of absence". We KNOW because there are evidences of that, that tactic was important for the Romans. We know specialized works on tactic existed and were renown in Roman times. We know how Roman generals prepared the battle and reacted to the development of them. The importance of tactic vas less stressed in medieval times, both in accounts, training, and method of command, because the method of command used couldn't sustain any complex tactic.
"Again give me some evidence of that"
Already did.
"Not true, in Medieval times there were no one rule"
The "one rule" was that the medieval chain of command was too simple to effectively coordinate large armies. Still in late medieval times, and that's the case of Agincourt, the armies were led from the front.
"you cant charge with lance under arms without stirrups, becasue you fall from horse."
Falling or not from horse is only a question of how much force you impart to the hit. Thanks to the stirrups, Medieval knights could impart more force to their hits, even more than what a single arm could sustain, so they developed the lance rest (late 14th century). But, as already said, cavalry charges are not stopped opposing a human body to the tip of the lance but opposing a spear, an obstacle, or both, to the horse. Actually the greater advantage of the stirrups came confronting with other riders, not infantrymen.
"Depend of the time, and knigts money."
The time is that of the battle of Agincourt, and we can say that Cataphracts, ON AVERAGE (on average means that we are not confronting the richest and more armoured knight vs the poorest and less armoured cataphract, but what they used ON AVERAGE in battle) armoured their horses much more than even late medieval knights.
"Tell how late pikemen in Brigandine..."
Why should I? Late pikemen in brigandines were not even medievals, let alone the usual targets of medieval knights.
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"Funny beacuse you can say the same about romans"
Really not. Romans lived at the peak of centuries of development of organized infantry battles, and usually won.
"Give me one example of that,"
Already did. You only don't like them. Want more? Almogavars repeatedly beaten the French Cavalry, and all they generally had were a pair of javelins (with wich they targeted the horses), a short spear and a knife.
"Partialy true."
Heavy cavalry disappeared in short time. Light cavalry survived employing new tactics (like that of the Stradiots) that closely resembled those used by the Cavalry in Roman Times.
"never discypline infantry with short sword ans shield defend against charge."
Romans not only had short swords and shield.
"From what I found they were good train and armored. And fact that you think that city militia was bad trains meant you dont know nothing."
Unfortunately this reasoning shows that You know nothing.
The infantry of the Lombard Legue, like the Flemish one, were barely at the level of the pre-Marian reform Roman Army (an army of non-professional, yet motivated, citizens. Barely because Romans had however a form of organized training since childhood). Professional Legionaries were completely different beasts. They were the ones that build 31km of fortifications (the Caesar's side) vs 28km (Pompey's side) at Dyrrhachium. War was not only their job. They already industrialized it. In middle age there had not been anything remotely comparable.
"Sorry so you say that romans never run? never panicked?"
Please, spare the straw men for someone else.
"Yes, but must have posibility to target horse, with so short weapons you cant that.
You only can attack horse after lanc hit first row and most of this row is dead."
Horses don't crash into tight formations of spear bristling infantry.
"You know that why people uses polearm and pikes?"
Because that way to resist to charges is easier. Even Romans knew that. The "anti cavalry circle" was an emergency formation. At Pharsalus, foreseeing that Pompey would have tried to use his strong cavalry to break trough his right flank, Caesar prepared a line of spearmen. Having a little more time (few hours, not more) Romans could make any field completely impervious to cavalry. As already said, they already industrialised warfare.
"Bla bla show me some proof"
The Guinness book of records is not proof enough to you? Despite a much wider base of archers rehenactors none came close to 400m employing a longbow reproduction, while amateur slingers can exceed that distance even throwing simple stones. the drag coefficient of arrows had been calculated many times (IE H. O. Meyer "Applications of Physics to Archery", Physics Department, Indiana University, obtained 1.94 ± 0.14), that of bullets and spheres is available even on wikipedia.
"Again proof."
Again, it had been reported, and archaeological findings confirms it.
"Again not all armiers were led from the front,"
Cavalry heavy armies usually were, unless the commander was too old for it. In this case often another, younger, one was chosen to lead the army from the front anyway. When the army was not led from the front, the command chain was however no notably different. The commander could see better, but not command better. And that's why those armies kept on being commanded from the front until late middle age. In Roman times a Tribune could take the initiative (and they often did, IE at Cynoscephalae), because he saw a good occasion, or a danger.
In Medieval times each small group had the initiative because there was no way to coordinate them anyway. It was the only possibility.
Please, do not invent "logic errors". Are you that are confusing simple or complex chain of command, with winning or losing at Agincourt. It's obvious that, even in a brawl, someone wins in the end.
"Because importance of tactic was less stressed in medieval times dont meant that they dont use tactics and that individuals could not be great with command."
But we are not talking about individuals. We are talking about a social and military system that valued tactic, described tactic, and produced specific works about tactic that the commanders were able to read and appreciated, with a social and military system that didn't.
"That funny and show that you know nothing."
That's funny and show that you know nothing. The lance rest was not used to simply hold the weight of the lance, but to arrest the rearward movement of the weapon.
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1 I already did you all the infos. It simply seems that you refuse to read them, or your brain refuses to process them after you read. Physics is exactly the reason why longbows have shorter range than slings (compound bows outrange slings, but they weren't available at the time)
1,1 bows and crossbows HAD advantages over the sling, simply the range wasn't among them. Slings requires more training than bows to be used accurately (and crossbows requires even less training), so bows had an advantage for hunting and, once a society formed bowmen for hunting, it's easier to go further and train them for war than to replace the weapon entirely. Bows and crossbows can be used on ships and horses (slings requires space). Bowmen formations can be more packed (and so more easily protected by fences and trenches).
But, in a confrontation between Romans and medievals, this has little meaning, because the Roman slingers were already trained.
2 You simply ignored all the examples given saying that they werent valid because the cavalry wasn't in it's ideal conditions, or because you didn't know them.
Yeah. Romans used makeshift anti cavalry weapons. Or accurately prepared anti cavalry weapons. It was because they know what cavalry was and how to cope with it. That's exactly why cavalry is not a "win it all" weapon against them.
2,2 I already did actually. An armor is not some sort of impenetrable forcefield. Heavy armored late medieval knights had been killed by a lot of weapons that were not better at coping specifically with armors than those the Romans had. Falchions, daggers, short spears, and so on, even agricultural tools killed knights.
3 And, with those better charge techniques, longer lances, bigger horses ect. they had been stopped multiple times by infantry formations, less disciplined and trained than the Romans and without Swiss pikes.
4,1 Again, that's a straw men you built and continue to answer to. I never told of specific cases of bad leadership. I told of chain of command, literacy level, consideration for the tactic, education to it. "Yea, but in middle age there had been some gifted commander anyway" is not an answer like isn't "Romans lost this battle, so they were shit".
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1 I gave you the info and the references. You simply decided to ignore them. Besides, YOU DIDN'T PROVIDE ANYTHING TO BACK YOUR CLAIMS
1.1 Sorry, but bows requires less training to be used accurately for hunting (where no super strong bows are required). Once your society has formed bowmen for hunting, it requires less time to obtain bowmen for war simply training them to use bows with heavier draw weight than to replace the weapon entirely.
But, in a confrontation between Romans and medievals, this has little meaning, because the Roman slingers were already trained.
2 err... no. In neither of those battles the infantry was armed with "long poleweapons". In one they had normal spears no different from the ones the same Romans used (yeah, Romans knew spears and used them even if they weren't their primary weapon), in another they had short spears-clubs. As already said, Almogavars repeatedly beaten the French Cavalry, and all they generally had were a pair of javelins (with wich they targeted the horses), a short spear and a knife. They didn't search a terrain that was ideal for the cavalry to fight. Why should they had? Mind that Legnano was an "encounter battle", so the infantry prepared its line in haste. They didn't had the time to find any particular terrain.
2.2 You are so wrong. Plate armors are full of gaps to target. "half swording" infact was needed to be accurate enough to target them with a longsword. But to have knigtly weapons was no needed to kill a knight. Heavy armored late medieval knights had been killed by a lot of weapons that were not better at coping specifically with armors than those the Romans had. Falchions, daggers, short spears, and so on, even agricultural tools killed knights.
3 To call "idiotic" and "stupid" what you don't like, or understand, is not making you any favor. You are not particularly impressive, and the use of insults doesn't enhance the level of your arguments. Besides, "discipline is everything" is just another straw man of you. I never said it. If it's idiotic, it's only thank to you, because YOU wrote it.
Yeah, medieval cavalry often won. But medieval cavalry NEVER faced a an infantry disciplined, trained, and tactically deployed at Roman level. When medieval cavalry faced an infantry that was barely above the level of "hastly formed militia" they were used to fight, the medieval cavalry often lost, and without the infantry having to use superweapons.
Cavalry existed in Roman times. it's not like they didn't know horses.
4.1 To lie is not doing you any favor. I never told of specific cases of bad leadership. I told of chain of command, literacy level, consideration for the tactic, education to it.
You simply didn't demonstrate "late medieval combine arms" having any superiority actually. Romans combined: ENGINEERING, heavy infantry, light infantry, heavy ranged weapons, light ranged weapons, cavalry, elephants sometimes, allied troops using their specific weapons and so on, deploying them in complex formations and purposedly tactically moving them during the fight at any level (from the single legionaries switching lines to entire legions moving). In many medieval battles it didn't seem there was any "coordination" actually, the troops only were there, and it's not suprising, since medieval armies were usually led from the front, where the commander couldn't coordinate anything.
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The enemy doesn't care the number of push ups you can do. In historical warfare you have to lift a shield for hours, or draw a warbow, and there were no lighter shields for women, or lighter pull warbows, because their weight was already the minimum required for them to be effective.
War was a physical thing back then, much more than now. It had nothing to do whit few minutes of sparring, and to have bigger muscles and more stamina was a HUGE advantage. Women, apart few exceptions, weren't taken to the battlefield for the same reasons children and old people didn't, because IRL, in a melee, a 50kg woman doesn't stand a chance vs a 70kg man unles she trained MUCH more, but, "training for troops is a resource. It's not free, it has a cost. If you need more training for female soldiers to reach the same levels of male ones, then you are using the resource "training" inefficiently."
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@silver4831 I'm not forgetting. Here we were talking about HISTORICAL battlefields. Maybe you should have guessed reading about shields and warhammers, or the expression "War was a physical thing back then".
Simply female soldiers, like any soldier, NOW are carried on the battlefield on truck and their job is to pull a trigger. Physical requirements to be an effective soldier had been changed by technology.
NOW in many conflicts there are children soldiers too. They are cheap.
That's because automatic firearms changed the conditions on the battlefield.
IN THE PAST, to use children on a battlefield would have been considered ridiculous BEFORE being considered cruel.
Because a dozen of children would not have been a threat for a single men.
As for training, I already answered (you are being willfully ignorant about this?) "War was a physical thing back then, much more than now. It had nothing to do whit few minutes of sparring, and to have bigger muscles and more stamina was a HUGE advantage. Women, apart few exceptions, weren't taken to the battlefield for the same reasons children and old people didn't, because IRL, in a melee, a 50kg woman doesn't stand a chance vs a 70kg man unless she trained MUCH more, but training for troops is a resource. It's not free, it has a cost. If you need more training for female soldiers to reach the same levels of male ones, then you are using the resource "training" inefficiently. Almost any army that had a possibility on the matter estabilished minimum height and fitness standards. IE you had to be at least 1.65m high to join the Legion. That excluded many potential exceptional warriors? Yes, but training is a scarce resource, and it's inefficient to vaste it on the weaklings to search for the exceptions."
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On the other end, a well put cloud of sling bullets would distrupt the cavalry charge first than the first lance would reach a scutum, like it did at Magnesia.
Romans relied in their infantry to slaughter the enemy one, but they had cavalry too. When it was not possible to win the cavalry clash, it's task was to harras the enemy cavalry enough to not let them mount an organized charge. Obviously, without stirrups, Roman cavalry could not win a clash vs. a medieval one of similar size, but, not being medieval horses usually armoured, and not having the knights ranged weapons (while 1st century auxilia cavalryman usually had javelins, and sometimes a bow), the second task was still possible.
Note that Roman era shock cavalry, the Cataphracts, armoured their horses much more than Crusade era knights. They lived at the peak of the era of organized infantry, and it was taken for granted that the enemy, infantry would have targeted the horses. Medieval knights were used to much softer targets.
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A test made today would have little sense, since in both iron and bronze weapon-making, the skill of the metal worker is paramount (both bronze and iron are subject to work-hardening, and the exact grade of hardening to have a weapon that's strong and not brittle is difficult to acieve), and few people, if any, are today able to forge-cast a sword of iron or bronze the way the people of late second millennium BC did. Also the performances of bronze vary a lot depending on the composition of the alloy (it only needs a little arsenic, that's often found in the same copper minerals, to greatly enhance the strenght of bronze).
Consider that still in classic age, bronze was widely used to make armors (IE almost all the Greek helmets), despite it being quite expensive, so it was still not considered outclassed.
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@druidriley3163 Garlaschelli didn't manage to replicate the shroud. He first made an image very similar to that of the shroud using dry ochre powder, but there's no ochre, or other pigment, in the shroud, and an image made with ochre powder, or any other dry pigment, wouldn't have survived until now.
Then he tried to replicate the process mixing solid acids and salts to the ochre , cooking the linen and then washing it. The final result had all the defects of hundreds of other contact images made ro replicate the shroud. The discoloration was much deeper, there were not the half-tones present in both the shroud and the first replica, and there was no colour at all in non-contact area.
Moreover, in the shroud there is no image where there is the blood, so first blood, then image. In Garlaschelli's second replica, since the cloth had to be washed, the blood can be added only after the image had been formed and the cloth washed.
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@tylerstevenson8085 You stated: "the majority of sea trade was done by shallow hulled coastal ships" like it was of some significance. The majority of people didn't ride horses, so horses didnt' exist?
I feel like you're glossing over the entire point of this comment chain The original comment said that romans lost 100.000 men in a storm in 255 BC, so, since the Med. is calmer than the Atlantic, Roman ships could have not gotten anywere near to America. Now:
1) "Roman times" is not all the same. Third century BC was at the very beginning of the Roman experiences at sea.
2) Vikings surely knew how to navigate the Atlantic, but Mediterranean storms sunk their ships too. It's not like navigating the Med is a joke, and the Atlantic is the real thing.
3) Romans normally sailed through the ocean in Imperial time. Another one, but ocean neverthless.
Then you came and blabbered some nonsense about the sea route from India to Rome not being a Sea route because the city of Rome couldn't be reached directly from India by Sea.
Now you are talking of percentages like you really know something about them. There were Roman commercial outposts in southern India and, while ancient sources talk about how to reach them by sea, none talks about how to reach them by land because, face that, MOST of the commerce with India was made by sea because, AS ALWAYS, commerce by sea was HUGELY more economically efficient.
It seems you are more than a little confused. I never stated the Romans were capable of "accurately and safely" doing anything.
The original comment said that romans lost 100.000 men in a storm in 255 BC, so, since the Med. is calmer than the Atlantic, Roman ships could have not gotten anywere near to America. Now:
1) "Roman times" is not all the same. Third century BC was at the very beginning of the Roman experiences at sea.
2) Vikings surely knew how to navigate the Atlantic, but Mediterranean storms sunk their ships too. It's not like navigating the Med is a joke, and the Atlantic is the real thing.
3) Romans normally sailed through the ocean in Imperial time. Another one, but ocean neverthless.
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The problem was the number.
Mongols conquered many fortified cities, and many fortresses located in strategic points. Because they were important and worth the effort.
Because even having the right equipment and know-how, to take even a small fortress needed weeks, or months, and a far larger army. That's why they had been so successful for so long. It was a very expensive warfare for the attackers.
In western Europe there were tens of thousands of fortresses whose garrisons were capable to resist for weeks or months against far larger armies, and dividing the horde in multiple small columns to attack many fortresses at the same time was a bad idea. Already in the first invasion, it had been noticed that Europeans tended to win small scale engagements. The real difference was the Mongol chain of command, capable to effectively cohordinate tens of thousands of men in pitched battles, while European commanders still led from the front, so knew what was happening only close to them.
In the subsequent attempts of invasion, Hungarians and Poles exploited that advantage. They built more fortresses, increased the number of mounted units, and divided the campaign into multiple small engagements instead of seeking big pitched battles.
Then there is the fact that in Europe, praires ends in Hungary (that's why both the Huns and the Hungars came there before the Mongols). Western Europe was more forested, and so much less favourable to steppe riders. Mongols had big problems in Indochina and Korea because of that.
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Infact representation is cancer. Representation is the grave of diversity.
You want to see diversity? See, for example, the first, 1982, lineup of the New Mutants. A white American, a Native American, a Vietnamese, a Scottish, a mixed-race Brazilian. Two males, three females.
Those characters worked because their different backgrounds and look made for interesting stories, both visually and plot-wise (compare it, IE, with the uniformity of the first, 1963, X-Men lineup. Marvel learnt something in those 20 years).
But they were not meant to represent anyone else but themselves.
When your character is meant to represent a group, it ceases to be interesting. It can't have defects, because those would be the defects of the group. The only kind of growth allowed is for him to discover how awesome he already is and how much listening to others was keeping him down. And that's the death of a character.
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@ChristopherCompagnon1AndOnly The good thing of philosophies is that they change. Being stoic, or whatever else they decided to be, didn't prevent to Romans to give rights to citizens and not citizens. Regardless of their genetics or the perfection of their bodies.
After Christ we had to fight for two millennia against people that though they had a special truth, gave to them by God, that wanted for them to have the power to control every single aspect of every single man's life, from birth to death.
And no, JC never said we are all equal. There isn't a single word in the gospel against slavery for example. All the people JC saved had been saved due to their own fait in him "Your faith has saved you". Right?
All but one, the servant (the slave) of the Centurio. JC saves him because the Centurio asked him to. The faith of the slave had not role in it. Nor JC told to the Centurio "now free him".
What the Church told to people for millennia is to suffer meekly the injustices in this world, to have a reward in the afterlife, not that we have to be equal HERE. And EVERY TIME someone tried to say that we had to be equal HERE, he had to fight AGAINST the Church to say it.
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@grimmspectrum1547 Not even close.
365 days, 5 hours, 48 minutes, 46 seconds, is the time Sun takes to return in the same position in the sky. Those almost six adjunctive hours are the reason we add one day every 4 years. Those 11 minutes and 14 seconds less than 6 hours are the reason one leap year is skipped every 100 years, unless the year is divisible for 400.
What's arbitrary, and it's a legacy of the Julian calendar, is the relative duration of the months. There's no reason February has 28 days (it's only that the Romans didn't like it, so they made it short). Calendar could have had 7 months of 30 days and 5 months of 31 days, or 12 moths of 30 days, with 5 intercalar days evenly inserted between the months during the year.
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@imankhandaker6103 Not only I know history far better than you, but you don't seem that great at understanding simple things either.
As I already explained you (and as you repeatedly failed to grasp):
"Like it doesn't matter if he existed or not, as long as Christians believe id had. It doesn't matter when, or if, he was born, as long as who made the calendar believed he was born in 1 AD.
Year one is year one because, for who made the calendar, it was the year of Christ's birth, and that's the only reason.
So, are you still going to pretend that a year count based on Christ's birth date is not religous?"
But please, go on. Try again to impress me by saying that, if he existed, wasn't likely born in 1 AD, like I didn't know that since primary school. Maybe the next time I'll give you a pat on the head and say you are a clever boy (a lie, since you even believed in "year 0", but white lies are allowed for making not particular bright people happy).
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Steel swords were die casted only in Hollywood movies.
With medieval tecniques you couldn't obtain liquified iron or steel. Only with the introduction of blast furnaces, starting around 13th century AD, you could obtain liquid pig iron, that had to be reduced in a finery forge to obtain forgeable steel bars.
Migration era European swords were folded. They were obtained starting from small bars of different hardness (those that culd be obtained in a bloomery), patter welding and folding them several times, to diffuse carbon content and reduce impurities. The process was abandoned when, with the diffusion of the Catalan forges in Europe starting from 8th century, bars of good quality homogeneous steel became available, and so a sword could be forged in a single piece.
That was not possible in Japan, since the tatara was a rather primitive bloomery, so you could obain only little pieces (50-100g) of acceptable quality steel from it, so, if you wanted something that resembled a bar of homogeneous steel, you had to pattern weld and fold it. The folding in itself has no structural effect.
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In middle age THERE WAS NO WAY TO PUT LIQUID IRON INTO A MOLD, BECAUSE THERE WAS NO WAY TO OBTAIN LIQUID IRON. The liquid that came out of a blast furnace was pig iron/cast iron, not pure iron or steel. European swords had never been made of cast iron.
Swords were exclusively forged, that means hot hammered starting from a bar until you obtain the desired shape.
Pattern welding and folding were the only way to obtain a steel sword first than 8th century in Europe, because there was the same problem than in later Japan. Out of a bloomery you can obtain only little pieces of workable steel. If you want to do a steel object of the dimension of a sword, you have to pattern weld those pieces and fold the bar obained to even the carbon and impurity content.
Starting from 8th century in Europe, since bar of good quality homogeneous steel became available, and so a sword could be forged in a single piece, folding was not only no more needed, but even detrimental of the quality of the blade. Folding does not increase the quality of steel. Every time the metal bar is folded, defects in the contact surface between the two folded parts are created. Japanese kept on using the pattern welding tecnique because the tatara, the furnace they used to smelt iron, was a rather primitive bloomery, and so only little pieces of workable steel can be obtained from it.
If you talk to a modern blacksmit to sand-cast iron, he'll look at you like an alien. BRONZE was sand or stone casted, not iron.
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Romans used several times the anti cavalry "square" formation (it was round in their case) using the pila as spears. Regardless how armored their rider is, horses don't crush into dense packs of spears bristling infantry. Long pikes obviously were an advantage but, in medieval history, several times infantry formations, less disciplined than the Romans and without Swiss pikes, resisted to cavalry charges (IE at Legnano). Medieval knights had the advantage that usually they fought vs. very undisciplined militias, whose formations were very easy to disrupt.
Mind too that most depended on the timing also. Had the Romans some hour to build even very simple fortifications, even only the stimuli and campus liliorum (the field traps they developed to cope with cavalry), the cavalry charge would have been complitely neutralized before the first knight reached a scutum.
1st century Roman armor was very good against projectiles, and was on average better than what a late medieval infantrymen could afford.
As for ranged weapons, a 1st century Roman army would have had a ballista for centuria, with a longer range than a 15th century field crossbow, and almost every legionary would have had a sling, that had about the same range than a longbow and was effective vs. horses and lightly armored enemies.
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@druidriley3163 Garlaschelli didn't replicate the shroud. He first made an image very similar to that of the shroud using dry ochre powder, but there's no ochre, or other pigment, in the shroud, and an image made with ochre powder, or any other dry pigment, wouldn't have survived until now.
Then he tried to replicate the process mixing solid acids and salts to the ochre , cooking the linen and then washing it. The final result had all the defects of hundreds of other contact images made ro replicate the shroud. The discoloration was much deeper, there were not the half-tones present in both the shroud and the first replica, and there was no colour at all in non-contact area.
Moreover, in the shroud there is no image where there is the blood, so first blood, then image. In Garlaschelli's second replica, since the cloth had to be washed, the blood can be added only after the image had been formed and the cloth washed.
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BTW, Columbus realised he reached a new continent when he effectively reached a new continent, and not an island, in his third voyage, and called it "Paria" (the actual Gulf of Paria in Venezuela), that's why, with a curiuos inversion, in the Map of Waldseemüller, that allegedly gave the name "America" to the new world, in reality the name "America" was given to south America, while Central America was called "Parias".
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The Roman chain of command was miles ahead everything seen in Europe until the 30 years war. Medieval armies were still led from the front, so that the commander couldn't even see what was happening more than few steps away, let alone react to unexpecetd circumstances. the Roman commander could lead the battle from the start to the end.
Infact tactical knowledge and execution would be a huge advantage for the Romans in this scenario. They knew and recognized the importance of tactic much more than the Medievals did. They knew works about tactic that didn't survived into the Middle age (IE the works of Pyrrhus of Epirus, on which even Hannibal studied), and those were common knowledge, since every Centurion was supposed to be able to read and write (and much of the legionaries did), while, in a Medieval army, the commander being able to read was not a given.
Historically, medieval knights have been stopped several times (IE at Legnano) by infantrymen that were fare less disciplined and, on average, worse armed than ancient Romans. Regardless on how well armored their rider is, horses don't crash into tight formations of spear (or pila) bristling infantry. Frontal cavalry charges were usually effective in middle age only because knights usually faced ill-disciplined and ill-trained militia infantry, whose formations were easy to disrupt.
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The problem was the number.
Mongols conquered many fortified cities, and many fortresses located in strategic points. Because they were important and worth the effort.
Because even having the right equipment and know-how, to take even a small fortress needed weeks, or months, and a far larger army. That's why they had been so successful for so long. It was a very expensive warfare for the attackers.
In western Europe there were tens of thousands of fortresses whose garrisons were capable to resist for weeks or months against far larger armies, and dividing the horde in multiple small columns to attack many fortresses at the same time was a bad idea. Already in the first invasion, it had been noticed that Europeans tended to win small scale engagements. The real difference was the Mongol chain of command, capable to effectively cohordinate tens of thousands of men in pitched battles, while European commanders still led from the front, so knew what was happening only close to them.
In the subsequent attempts of invasion, Hungarians and Poles exploited that advantage. They built more fortresses, increased the number of mounted units, and divided the campaign into multiple small engagements instead of seeking big pitched battles.
Then there is the fact that in Europe, praires ends in Hungary (that's why both the Huns and the Hungars came there before the Mongols). Western Europe was more forested, and so much less favourable to steppe riders. Mongols had big problems in Indochina and Korea because of that.
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Is difficult to find datas for Germanic people of Roman times, but Viking males, form skeletons found (usually we find burial of high-class people, so the average height is probably overestimated, since in ancient times they tended to eat better and so be taller than the average peasant) had an average height of 172cm. We already talked about legionaries but, from skeletons, the average male population of Herculaneum (and there are no class differencies there, since they all perished in a natural disaster) was of 169cm, so the Germanic people were probably on average taller than the Romans, but nothing so dramatic.
Several Roman sources said of one or another Gaul or Germanic population, that they were very tall, but often the Romans first seen the warrior elite. People that eat very well since childhood, and so were taller than the average.
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Actually Protestant Church denounced copernicanism (Copernicus was a Catholic canon) much before Catholic church. Melanchton advocated copernicus works to be destroyed by the autorities, but never had the political strenght to obtain that.
Catholic Church took a position on the matter only 60 years after the publication of the theory, and well past Copernicus' death, mostly because it had been invested on the matter by Ptolemaic scientists, that didn't know any more how to respond to Galileo that, being, other than a great scientist, a skilled polemist, ridiculed them.
Galileo had been condemned mostly because the "Dialogue" that he was advised to write presenting a balanced view of the two teories, was far from balanced, and the advocate of Ptolemaic system in the book, starting from the name ("Simplicio", "the simple one") made a fool of himself, and for having said that "Church should teach to the souls to reach the stars, not how the stars work". He was right of course, but the autority is not happy to be told what they could do or not.
Had he been more careful, Galileo could have proposed the same theories, and much more, without problems.
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Columbus NEVER referred to the native Americans as "Indians".
Columbus was backed by many scholars. Among them the most renown cartographer of his time, Toscanelli, whose map placed Japan more or less where in reality is west Mexico. That's why Columbus thought to have reached a group of islands east of Japan, because, in his map there was no physycal place for a continent between those islands and Japan. The problem was not that much the circumference of the Earth, but the extension of Asia, that, at that time, everyone thought it was much more extended that it really is and, at the same time, everyone palced Japan more far from China that it really is (see, for example the orb of Behaim).
That's also why, once reached the continent, in his third voyage, he immediately wrote instead it was a new continent (that he called "Paria"). Because, on his map, at that latitude, there should have been no land mass capable to sustain the rivers he saw.
Had been for him, Native Americans would have been caleld "Parians".
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@FirstnameLastname-py3bc Actually draw lenght is as important in determining the exit speed of the arrow as draw weigh is, because arrows don't pass Instantly from 0 to max speed, they have to accelerate, the longer the draw lenght is, the longer the draw weight is applied to the arrow, the more it accelerates. In Modern era warfare, the draw weight and lenght weight of the longbow were unbeatable. They coupled the maximum draw weight reachable by a human with the maximum draw lenght reachable by a human.
In this context, where was the "cradle of civilization" has no importance at all.
BTW, what's the point in telling, to someone that said that bows were made with what was available, that bows could be made with different materials? It's already implied in saying that they were made with what was available.
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@FirstnameLastname-py3bc The fact that you said someone called you stupid when none did makes you seem stupid, and unable to read too. Forced laugh confirms the opinion also.
Not all woods are created equal. The best wood for archery, yew, is specific of Europe and N. Africa, and from Europe, and made of yew, are the oldest fragments and complete preserved samples of bows. Hazelnut is even more specific, being likely originated in the British Islands.
The oldest composite bows originated in Asiatic grasslands and Egypt, places not exactly known for the supply of woods and, for nomadic tribes the "advantage of the composite bow over the longbow is to pack a respectable draw weight in a compact package, that could be used on horseback". However, historically, that draw weight was not that much because "they were made to be used on horseback, and ease to use on horseback requires lower draw weight than what an infantry bowmen can use".
Again you don't understand the basics of archery. Draw lenght is the lenght a human can draw. If composite bows have more draw lenght than longbos, then they are made wrong and useless.
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@GhostSal
a) it was a small minority.
b) even for them the difference was cultural and not racial. None of them really considered the descendants of southern immigrants in the north as being of a different race than them.
And, for Benjamin Franklin, as already said, "in Europe, the Spaniards, Italians, French, Russians and Swedes, are generally of what we call a swarthy Complexion; as are the Germans also". A single doctor measuring skulls doesn't make a "racial identity" and Lombroso NEVER described southerners as a different race. BTW Lombroso's theories had been disputed even in his time and he had been discredited. The Italian Society of Anthropology and Ethnology refused his articles in its magazine since 1877 (after the theory of the "median occipital fossa" had been disproven by Andrea Verga), and expelled him in 1882.
Like for long time there was tension, animosity and VERY OFTEN even physical altercations between citizens of Manchester and Liverpool. It had nothing to do between them considering themself of different races.
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@GhostSal Why should I "aknowledge" something patently not true? Sorry, what you said to have "experienced" on a comment section is not a demosntration of anything, otherwise we would have had "demonstrations" of goat piss to cure cancer or any other kind of bullshit.
I don't care of you very personally wanting to use definitions or identify with anyone, but are YOU that wanted to talk about "RACIAL IDENTITIES".
"We are not" has to be demonstrated, and you didn't demonstrate it.
Your past discrimination, real or not, was culturally and not racially based. Southern Italians can't be discerned from northern Italians based on the "look". In the US a black man can't join the KKK, it doesn't count for how much time his family lived in N. America, because THAT discrimination IS racially motivated. In Italy, the son of a Neapolitan that migrated to Milan could be among those shouting that "south of Rome is all Africa", because that discrimination WAS NOT racially motivated.
Your very personal preference is only your. If you look like a white man, and that's pratically assured if you are of Italian ancestry, you'll be called like that.
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Many of them had a pretty critical mind.
You can see, IE, that Strabo (1 century BCE), in his Geography, chapter XIII, had a critical view on the city of Ilion (the one on the Hisarlik hill) being Troy. He knew that association had not been made before 6th century BCE (so 5 centuries before him, but several centuries after the facts), and he believed it was a fake.
It's interesting to see that Strabo knew the coastline had changed over the centuries, enlarging the plain in front of the city, and that was part of his reasoning. The plain would have been too small for the movements of troops described in the poem.
Also already Aristotle noticed that the wall that protected the Greek camp and the ships seems to appear and disappear according to the convenience of the poem, and so believed that it was a poetic invention of Homer.
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@jbsparks3922 You quite evidently don't came from ANY academic place, since you don't know how academy works. Your is the statement, your is the burden of the proof (citing wikipedia and pretending a coin can be carbon dated are also quite damning evidences).
The source you provided is:
1) 60 years old.
2) It's not about Roman (or Carthaginian, or ancient) history.
3) It had not been written by a scholar of the matter (had you came from an academic place of any sort, you should have known that not all the researchers are equally credible on any matter, there are specializations).
So, since your source is not a study, or a work on Roman (or Carthaginian) history, and had not been written by a scholar on the matter, what were his sources? If you come from an academic place of any sort, you know he should have listed them.
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Simply they didn't even know there was a volcano there.
The "Vesuvius" we know, the central cone visible at 2:18, didn't exist back then. What existed, and the Romans called "Vesuvius" was the semi-circular ridge of Mt. Somma (also visible in the picture. It was there that, for example found refuge the rebels of Spartacus, and it was its internal, very steep, slope (while the external slope was covered in vineyards) that they descended using vine branches as ropes.
that of 79 AC had precisely been the last of a series of explosions, thousands of years apart, that destroyed the old vulcanic edifice of Mt. Somma.
The Romans didn't, and couldn't, recognize the Vesuvius as a Volcano. Because it had nor the shape, nor the activities they could attribute to a volcano.
The current central cone formed in the subsequent two millennia of effusive eruptions, and infact it was lower than the ridge of Mt. Somma still in 18th century depictions.
See R. Cioni, R. Santacroce e A. Sbrana, "Pyroclastic deposits as a guide for reconstructing the multi-stage evolution of the Somma-Vesuvius Caldera".
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@chisome8465 Hannibal was not a Berber. He was a Phoenician, so a Semite. We have the coinage of his father, of his brother, and even some coin attributed to him, they didn't have black traits. Hanno Barca, Hannibal's own brother, outright refused Muttines to act as his co-commander in Sicily, because Muttines was "half African".
The native people there were not black, they were Berbers, and the Berbers didn't depict themselves as black. See the Numidian coinage. That "they were black before the Arabs" is bullshit. The Arabs conquered those lands, they didn't wipe out the inhabitants. The Arabs were few people.
Ethiopians and Nigerians are not North Africans, and the ancient historians and naturalists CLEARLY distinguished between N. Africans and Ethiopians.
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@chisome8465 "lol" should be an argument?
It's kinda difficult to extract some sense from your blabbering.Y ou should really try to write in English.
What I wrote (that's not what you understood) is quite simple.
Hannibal was not a Berber. He was a Phoenician, so a Semite. Phoenicians were from middle east. Did you understand that?
We know the aspect of his father, of his brother, and even, probably, his own, from the coins that they minted when they ruled over Spain. None of them had black traits. Did you understand that?
Hannibal's own brother, Hanno, when Hannibal sent him another commander, Muttines, to act as his co-commander in Sicily, outright refused, because Muttines was "half African", so, for Hanno, inferior to him, that was a pureblood Phoenician. Did you understand that?
The natives of N. Africa at the time of Hannibal, were not black, they were Berbers, They depicted themselves as not being black, and had been described by Greek scholars of the time as not being black. Did you understand that?
"Before anyone came" there was none. If you are referring to the first hominids that came there, we don't know the color of their skin. Did you understand that?
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@chisome8465 You are really sporting credentials on a Youtube comment section? LOL!
First than accusing someone of "lying" you should at least understand what he's saying, a thing you are evidently unable to do.
You can check the Libu chief depicted on the throne of Ramesses III, light skinned tatooed and with an hooked nose. Egyptians actually depicted Libyans as having a fairer skin than themselves, and that makes sense, since the "Egyptian" type was a medium between the inhabitants of upper (closer to Nubia) and lower (Mediterranean) Egypt, while the Libyans were all Mediterranean.
The Egyptians depicted themselves as VERY different form the Nubian neighbors, that had dark skin and typical black traits, while the other Mediterranean civilizations were depicted as Egyptians with a different hat (and maybe beard, and a hooked nose).
You don't have to use " the word you westerners use to group us". None but you is doing that. As already said:
"So why not use a North African actor to play the part of a North African general? There is scarcity of them?
How much do you bet that the part of Massinissa will NOT be played by a Berber, but it will be played by someone of black African descent too?
Why this need to cancel the other African cultures?"
West africa, Nigeria, Etiopia and so on ARE NOT NORTH AFRICA. Sicily, heck, even Berlin, is closer to Chartage than Nigeria.
N. Africa being Black before the Arab invasion is 100% bullshit.
You stated "I’m talking about before anyone came!", not "before the Greeks came". It' not my fault if you are unable to write. Again, you don't know what the color of the skin of the neolithic inhabitants of N. Africa was, or how much straight was their nose.
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Sorry to intervene, but the "Vesuvius" we know, the central cone visible at 2:18, didn't exist back then. What existed, and the Romans called "Vesuvius" was the semi-circular ridge of Mt. Somma. It was there that, for example found refuge the rebels of Spartacus, and it was its internal, very steep, slope (while the external slope was covered in vineyards) that they descended using vine branches as ropes.
that of 79 AC had precisely been the last of a series of explosions, thousands of years apart, that destroyed the old vulcanic edifice of Mt. Somma.
The Romans didn't, and couldn't, recognize the Vesuvius as a Volcano. Because it had nor the shape, nor the activities they could attribute to a volcano.
The current central cone formed in the subsequent two millennia of effusive eruptions, and infact it was lower than the ridge of Mt. Somma still in 18th century depictions.
See R. Cioni, R. Santacroce e A. Sbrana, "Pyroclastic deposits as a guide for reconstructing the multi-stage evolution of the Somma-Vesuvius Caldera".
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Ptolemy I was a pure Macedon, and all of Cleopatra VII ancestors, maternal and paternal, up to Ptolemy I, were Macedons, mostly of the same, inbred, family. That's how much they were "happy" to mix with the Egyptians. They were so happy that, in 250 years of rule over Egypt, Cleopatra VII had been the first of the family that bothered to learn Egyptian language, and NONE of them had an Egyptian name.
Hellenistic rulers were legitimate by being successors of Alexander. It was fundamental for them to be Greek, and better Macedons.
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Economy.
In Roman empire there were massively efficient communication lines, so there was a level of trade unrivaled until the industrial revolution. That way, different regions of the Empire could specialize for the production they were more apt for (Egypt and N.africa for grain, Gallia for wine, Spain and Greece for oil...) so having higher output for unit of land and of labour employed. For the same reason, there were big manifactures, to produce more efficiently industrial goods (weapons, ships, carriages, pottery...). That way the Empire could sustain a far higher number of people not employed in direct agricultural works and manifacture in respect to the Middle Age, where communication lines were uncertain, and so every neighboorood had to produce everything to sustain itself (a little of grain, a little of meat, a little of beans, agricultural tools....).
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In the case of Alexander, it was more of a technological and tactical gap. The Oplite phalanx hat been the first heavy infantry in history, and the Persian wars demonstrated the huge advantage heavy infantry had over light infantry in pitched battles. Since the heavy infantry was relatively "new", light infantry armies had not yet developed tactics to counter it, but Greek city-states were small, and could deploy small armies that could be easily surrounded if used for an expansionistic war, so they didn't use that advantage to build an empire.
Alexander's father perfectioned the phalanx. Alexander found the way to coordinate it with cavalry to avoid the risk of being encircled. They were kings of a rich state that could pay its soldiers (so Alexander could use them as he wants, he hadn't to convince the citizens of a democracy) so, at that point, Alexander, that was a gifted tactician too, was unstoppable. It was like the development of the "blitzkrieg" tactic. For some year, who had it, had a huge advantage over the others.
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@druidriley3163 Garlaschelli didn't manage to replicate the shroud. He first made an image very similar to that of the shroud using dry ochre powder, but there's no ochre, or other pigment, in the shroud, and an image made with ochre powder, or any other dry pigment, wouldn't have survived until now.
Then he tried to replicate the process mixing solid acids and salts to the ochre , cooking the linen and then washing it. The final result had all the defects of hundreds of other contact images made ro replicate the shroud. The discoloration was much deeper, there were not the half-tones present in both the shroud and the first replica, and there was no colour at all in non-contact area.
Moreover, in the shroud there is no image where there is the blood, so first blood, then image. In Garlaschelli's second replica, since the cloth had to be washed, the blood can be added only after the image had been formed and the cloth washed.
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@Heeroneko I long understood your point. It doesn't really take much. Fact is that's YOUR point. You're not talking for anyone else than yourself.
As already said (maybe the explanation was too complicate for you, I'm sorry for not having been able to adapt to your level), critics acritically exalt characters made for what you call "bad representation", because they "spread the right message", regardless of the quality of the work, and who dare to object is labeled as a homophobe, misogynist, and worse. And, among those who label, other than the aforementioned critics, THERE ARE THE MEMBERS OF THE MINORITIES. Not the members that really read the comics, yeah, who KNOWS the media, KNOWS that those characters are terrible, but you don't need to really read comics to be vocal on twitter about "how they should be made".
Is that explanation simple enough for your limited brain to grasp it?
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Columbus was backed by many scholars. Among them the most renown cartographer of his time, Toscanelli, whose map placed Japan more or less where in reality is west Mexico. That's why Columbus thought to have reached a group of islands east of Japan, because, in his map there was no physycal place for a continent between those islands and Japan. The problem was not that much the circumference of the Earth, but the extension of Asia, that, at that time, everyone thought it was much more extended that it really is and, at the same time, everyone palced Japan more far from China that it really is (see, for example the orb of Behaim).
That's also why, once reached the continent, in his third voyage, he immediately wrote instead it was a new continent (that he called "Paria"). Because, on his map, at that latitude, there should have been no land mass capable to sustain the rivers he saw.
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That was actually the case. Most of the things we know about the Romans had been rediscovered after Crusades' age and, even when they had been rediscovered, their knowledge was very rescricted.
Infact tactical knowledge and execution would be a huge advantage for the Romans in this scenario. They knew and recognized the importance of tactic much more than the Medievals did. They knew works about tactic that didn't survived into the Middle age (IE the works of Pyrrhus of Epirus, on which even Hannibal studied), and those were common knowledge, since every legionary was supposed to be able to read and write, while, in a Medieval army, the commander being able to read was not a given.
Moroever, the Roman chain of command was miles ahead everything seen in Europe untile the 30 years war. Medieval armies were still led from the front, so that the commander couldn't even see what was happening more than few steps away, let alone react to unexpecetd circumstances.
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None said they were unbeatable, however the Romans repeatedly beaten the Germans in any kind of environment. Teutoburg had been an episode, not the norm, and it's not like Medieval armies usually fought in forests.
The commanders of medieval armies, even late medieval armies, usually fought in first line. That was the case of the commanders of the first Crusade, and that was the case still at Agincourt, more than three centuries later. It's no wonder that they moved in "small tactical units", because a small tactical unit is the only thing you can lead in such conditions. It's when you need to coordinate those small tactical units in a battle that there come the problems. It had been seen even during the Mongols invasion of East Europe. European Kinghts tended to win small scale engagement, but to loose pitched battles, where the Mongols could rely on their more organised command structure. Large armies were a rarity in Medieval warfare, so the command structure had not evolved to coordinate them.
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Ancient Egyptians didn't depict themself as black, with the specific exception of the 25th dinasty, that were Kushites (and is telling that them, being black, WANTED to be depicted differently than the previous rulers). Egyptians depicted themself very differently than Kushites, that were depicted, other than with very dark skin, with evident subsaharian African traits, while northern invaders were depicted like Egyptians, only with different hats or beards.
In ancient depictions, male Egyptians are coloured red and female Egyptians are coloured yellow. since they were not of different races, it was a stylistic interpretation.
Kushites instead are coloured black or very dark brown.
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In all likelyhood the Iliad is based on a real war, but Troy being the city on the Hisarlik hill is debatable. We know it was considered that in Hellenistic and Roman period (on the Hisarlik hill there was the Hellenistic/Roman city of Ilion), but we also know that it was a tourist attraction. In Hellenistic period, in "Troy", there were, IE, the tombs of heroes that didn't even die there.
There's no guarantee that the entire city wasn't a tourist trap. And infact Strabo (1ts century BCE) thought it was a fake.
The city on Hisarlik hill had been abandoned at the start of the Iron Age, before being rebuilt at the time of Alexander. It's entirely possible that, at the end of the "Greek dark age", when the poems on the Trojan war had become famous, people started to search for the city sung there in the region of the Troad, but the memory of the real location had been lost. Then the people that lived around Hissarlik hill reasoned "look at the fine ruins we have here. The shore, the rivers, all seems pretty similar to the poem. And all these people are searching for Troy. Let's THIS be Troy." and proceeded to make Santa Claus' village. Then Santa Claus' village influenced the later narrations of the poem, so the location and the poem became even more alike.
Infact the location is pretty similar, yes, but none of the Hisarlik's city strata really line up with the events of the poem. We have to mix up two separate levels to have a big city in the Mycenean period (but destroyed by an heartquake, not a war), and a city destroyed by a war (but too late for the Myceneans to have done that).
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No, sorry.
At Nicaea the divinity of Christ had never been "put to vote". It had not even been discussed.
The vast majority of Christians were trinitarians before Nicaea. Already in the didachè baptism was in name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, and John 1 (end of 1st century, early 2nd century at the latest) already clearly states the divinity of Christ. Constantine was only interested in ending the turmoils among Christians in his empire, and obviously, at Nicaea, the belief of the vast majority won.
The main theme, at Nicaea, was to compose the differences between the main group of christians, that believed the Son to be of the same substance of the Father, and the Arians, that believed the Son to be of similar substance of that of the Father, but divine indeed.
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Columbus was backed by many scholars. Among them the most renown cartographer of his time, Toscanelli, whose map placed Japan more or less where in reality is west Mexico. That's why Columbus thought to have reached a group of islands east of Japan, because, in his map there was no physycal place for a continent between those islands and Japan. The problem was infact not that much the circumference of the Earth, but the extension of Asia, that, at that time, everyone thought it was much more extended that it really is and, at the same time, everyone palced Japan more far from China that it really is (see, for example the orb of Behaim).
That's also why, once reached the continent, in his third voyage, he immediately wrote instead it was a new continent (that he called "Paria"). Because, on his map, at that latitude, there should have been no land mass capable to sustain the rivers he saw.
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Frenology to determine race is a scam even now, figures at the turn of 20th century.
About the "shred of evidence that says the people were Semitic before the invasions", can we count, for example, THEIR LANGUAGE AND OWN NAMES? "Hannibal" means "Baal is Gracious" (Baal was a Phoenician god) his brother Hasdrubal means "Help of Baal". His father Hamilcar means "brother of Melqart” (Phoenician god of the city of Tyre, in nowadays Lebanon) "Barca" means "lightning", Hamilcar, father of Hannibal, earned this nickname for his swift victories in battle.
So, to you, those were black people cosplaying for Phoenicians for all of their lives?
They were so able in disguising them as Phoenicians, that the Romans called them "Phoenicians", and the wars with them the "Phoenician wars". Infact "Poenus" means "Phoenician" in Latin.
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