War_Hymn
War_Hymn t1_jcp6vk7 wrote
Reply to comment by huramazda in Roman tomb reveals burnt remains left in place, covered by bricks, sealed with lime, encircled by bent and broken nails — rites to restrain the dead from rising by marketrent
I mean, stuff like this lives on in the modern age. My wife's side of the family believes in this sort of voodoo. After one of her uncles got violently robbed, her aunt sacrificed a chicken on the altar to "ward off evil spirits following him". On the more extreme side, my wife's grandfather died young in his 20s because of a construction accident. Her grandmother got ostracized by her in-laws and the entire village because they thought the death was a bad omen and she was cursed.
War_Hymn t1_jcm07wy wrote
Reply to comment by Archmagnance1 in Grad Student Explores Ancient Warfare With Naval Ram Project by kratos2025
>I don't imagine ships, when rammers were common, were completely helpless and would go completely underwater if they got rammed once.
Yeah, but kind of hard to fight and maneuver if your rowing section is submerged in water. And I imagine a 1-2 foot wide hole in a 40-50 tonnes vessel won't take too long to reach that point.
War_Hymn t1_jclysif wrote
Reply to comment by RabidMortal in Grad Student Explores Ancient Warfare With Naval Ram Project by kratos2025
The bronze ram is hollow in the back, it sockets into a thick piece of timber sticking out forward of the hull.
https://i.imgur.com/tsW61ob.jpg
After ramming, they were suppose to back the ship up with oars to allow water to flood into the holed ship, but on some occasions they could get jammed in with the target - which is why most rams were made as short as possible so they won't get stuck as easily.
War_Hymn t1_jclqlam wrote
Reply to comment by goldfinger0303 in Grad Student Explores Ancient Warfare With Naval Ram Project by kratos2025
Where did you hear that? They used grappling hooks to pull and tethered ships. Its not like Age of Sail ships used a corvus device, but boarding was still common.
War_Hymn t1_jclq3ax wrote
Reply to comment by Archmagnance1 in Grad Student Explores Ancient Warfare With Naval Ram Project by kratos2025
>Ships can float with water in them
Wooden boats and ships, yes - if they're empty or lightly ballasted. Most merchant ships of that era will normally have up to 1/4 of their displacement in dense, non-floating stone ballast for stability. Add weight of crew and dense cargo, etc. most wooden hull vessels will sink with a hole below the waterline if nothing was done. Lightly ballasted ships like Greek triremes would be flooded to at least the upper deck.
Ships during the Age of Sail were even worst since you had up to a hundred tonnes of dense metal ordnance and ammunition on something like a double-decker frigate. And because some guns might be mounted on the upper portion of the ship, you need proportionally more ballast to keep the ship stable. Something like the 32-gun French Hermione that displaced 1200 tonnes had about 200 tonnes of iron and granite rock ballast in addition to her ~50-70 tonnes of guns and round-shot ammunition.
War_Hymn t1_jbsag6y wrote
Reply to comment by Substantial-Can9805 in The colors on these ancient pots hint at the power of an empire by egg_static5
Yep, they mixed the crushed snails with urine to make the dye. The urine (or the ammonia in it) acted as a mordant to fix or bind the dye to the fabric, so all that expensive purple dye won't get leached out when you washed it.
Needless to say, you probably won't want to live near a dye works back in those days.
War_Hymn t1_jbi5ob7 wrote
Reply to comment by goobershank in Rising prices created the opportunity for U.K. housebuilders to extract larger profits — reaching £70,000 (at 2016 prices) per dwelling by marketrent
I think you need to recheck the definition of profit.
War_Hymn t1_jbhce4h wrote
Reply to In the summer of 1897, 20 Black U.S. Army infantrymen cycled 1,900 miles on fixed-gear, state-of-the-art bikes from Fort Missoula, Mont., to St. Louis. The Army ordered the grueling expedition to see whether soldiers could form a bicycle corps. by ploploplo
Given the state of the US road network at that time (the interstate highway system wasn't started until the 1920s), I'm amazed they got that far.
War_Hymn t1_jbfqice wrote
Reply to comment by HermanCainsGhost in Humans Started Riding Horses 5,000 Years Ago, New Evidence Suggests by Magister_Xehanort
Doesn't adult height in a demographics usually has to do with nutritional factors?
War_Hymn t1_jbfoxqy wrote
Reply to comment by tanathosX in Humans Started Riding Horses 5,000 Years Ago, New Evidence Suggests by Magister_Xehanort
Average male height in New Kingdom Egypt was 5 feet 3 inches.
War_Hymn t1_jbfntph wrote
Reply to comment by Doctor_Impossible_ in Humans Started Riding Horses 5,000 Years Ago, New Evidence Suggests by Magister_Xehanort
If you have a decent saddle. But most early horsemen (including the Macedonian companion cavalrymen that rode with Alexander the Great) had nothing more than a thick blanket or hide to cushion the back of the horse. This sort of riding took a lot more skill.
War_Hymn t1_jauq6d4 wrote
Reply to comment by Jazzlike-Equipment45 in Medieval babycare: from breastfeeding to developmental toys by Hiversitize
Could be, I'm not much of an expert on Confucianism.
War_Hymn t1_jatydnc wrote
Reply to comment by Jazzlike-Equipment45 in Medieval babycare: from breastfeeding to developmental toys by Hiversitize
>The concept that people ignored their children is asanine and ignorant.
It seems to be a culture thing in certain parts of the world. My East Asian in-laws insist that children should be given as little attention as possible so that they wouldn't grow up "dependent" and weak. Came to a point where I got reprimanded for carrying my infant daughter around when I went to visit them.
War_Hymn t1_j9sl1i1 wrote
Reply to comment by PPQue6 in Charges against man beaten at Camden County jail dropped by fickystingas
You have to understand, things work quite differently in third-world countries like the United States, especially if you are a minority.
War_Hymn t1_j96zg0g wrote
Reply to comment by superbcheese in Eli5 How does nuclear fuel get spent so fast? by Vegetable_Noise_1124
White Dwarf & Red Giant Construction Ltd: "Meh, just slap a few more neutrons into the structure. It should hold."
War_Hymn t1_j96qqcd wrote
You're comparing natural decay with induced fission.
In ambient conditions, radioactive elements with unstable atomic structure are basically falling apart slowly. In turn, they only released a small amount of energy as they do so.
With fission, you speed up the process by shooting a bunch neutrons at the radioactive atoms so they fall apart much, much faster. So much faster that neutrons in the radioactive atoms explode out, hit other atoms and cause them to break apart too. If the effect is strong enough, you get a chain reaction that produces a lot of energy (but also causes all your radioactive fuel to "fall apart" faster).
Natural decay is a rickety building falling apart slowly over years or decades into rubble. Fission is when you topple that rickety building so that it hits the rickety building beside it, which then also tips over and hits another building, and another, etc. domino effect.
War_Hymn t1_j8tkk77 wrote
Reply to comment by Gloomy-Emphasis in An ancient human foraging instinct, fueled by fructose production in the brain, may hold clues to the development and possible treatment of Alzheimer’s disease (AD). by CUAnschutzMed
I think it's a seasonal response telling you to fatten yourself before winter comes (or dry season if you're in the tropics). Most fruits mature around late summer/early autumn (or close to the end of the wet season in the tropics). So that's when you're going to be hit with a fructose rush, which tells your brain, "hey, tough times ahead, better go out and find food while you can!".
War_Hymn t1_j8tjz4r wrote
Reply to An ancient human foraging instinct, fueled by fructose production in the brain, may hold clues to the development and possible treatment of Alzheimer’s disease (AD). by CUAnschutzMed
Wonder if this is a seasonal biological response? Most fruits (which contain high fructose content) are ripe and edible in late summer/early autumn in temperate climates or near end of the wet season in tropics. Could be the brain telling itself to gorge on as much food as possible in preparation for harsher and food scarce conditions.
War_Hymn t1_j8izb6l wrote
Reply to comment by Kris_n in In 1942, the U.S. forcibly evacuated 881 Unangax̂ (Aleut / Native Alaskans) from the Island of Atka, near Russia. Many watched as their homes and Churches were burned to keep the Japanese from getting them. In spite this, they remained patriotic and many enlisted in the U.S. Military. by triviafrenzy
Given how overextended they were already trying to hold their East Indian/South Pacific posessions, I doubt it would had been wise.
War_Hymn OP t1_j8at2ev wrote
Reply to comment by MiloGoesToTheFatFarm in TIL that termites - like mammalian ruminants - produce a lot of methane through their digestion process, but bacteria living in their nests filter and absorb a lot of it. by War_Hymn
Biofilters with methanotrophs are being explored, but I think the biggest hurdle is capturing the methane in the first place.
War_Hymn OP t1_j8alfou wrote
Reply to comment by dasbootdasfoot in TIL that termites - like mammalian ruminants - produce a lot of methane through their digestion process, but bacteria living in their nests filter and absorb a lot of it. by War_Hymn
farts* in this case.
War_Hymn t1_j7dv7oq wrote
Reply to comment by Goetterwind in Why didn't Japan excise Chinese characters from the Japanese language, when Japan hated China so much? by 3cana
> they are not exactly the same nowadays
I don't know about that, when I need to translate Japanese kanji, I just use a traditional Chinese dictionary.
War_Hymn t1_j646hrz wrote
Reply to comment by Ok-Goose-6320 in What's the earliest case of iron-smelting with hard evidence? by Ok-Goose-6320
I don't see how having bronze tools or weapons would had protect them from germs that they had little immunity to. Before the Spanish even stepped foot in the Incan Empire, smallpox and other Old World diseases had already spread via regional trade network and killed millions of their subjects (including the Incan emperor himself). The reduction in population and the political turmoil it caused was enough to weaken this powerful state to a point where a couple hundred Spanish conquistadors was able to conquer it.
Even if they managed to kill every European they laid eyes on, these diseases would had eventually depleted their population and weaken their political/economic systems enough that the next wave of Europeans would eventually succeed in taking over.
>Presumably because their fires weren't hot enough to reliably cast high quality bronze.
Except they were casting copper or arsenic bronze (they never figured out tin-bronze) before the Europeans arrived. They just didn't have a lot of copper deposits, so stone tools were more economical and widespread.
War_Hymn t1_j64273l wrote
Reply to comment by woahwoahwoahthere in What's the earliest case of iron-smelting with hard evidence? by Ok-Goose-6320
Earlier or not, I think there's good evidence that West Africans came up with iron smelting on their own.
Iron artifacts in WF appear earlier than in North or East Africa, which means they had figured out ironworking before the technology diffused to their neighbors from the Near East. Researchers have also noted that their processes and furnace design are quite different.
West African smiths also seemed unaware of the process of quench hardening until much later, despite having "steel" (iron with high enough carbon content to harden through quenching). Even up to the 19th century, many tribal smiths in West Africa were observed hardening the edges of iron/steel blades and tools by work hardening instead of quenching. In contrast, quenching and tempering techniques were widely used in the East Mediterranean by at least 800 BCE, and knowledge of the process seemed to have spread alongside general iron smelting when it diffused to other regions of Europe/Asia. Hence, the lack of quench hardening among the West African iron-working tradition is good evidence that iron smelting technology may not have diffused to them (at least not from the Near East), but independently developed.
War_Hymn t1_jdpqwvz wrote
Reply to Various statements by Zhu Yuanzhang the Emperor Hongwu, founder of the Ming Dynasty, about the Yuan Dynasty. by zhuquanzhong
Guy's origin story was wild. Started rock bottom, born in a poor family out of eight kids. Famine kills his whole family but him and another brother. Didn't know what to do with his life, so he joins a monastery and becomes a monk. Got bored of being a temple monk, so left and started wandering the countryside as a beggar vangabond. Goes back to the monastery, learns how to read and write. Yuan army comes out of nowhere and burns down the monastery. Decides to become a bandit. Gets good enough as a bandit that he starts his own bandit gang. Local rebel faction notices him and his gang successfully robbing Yuan government officials and convoys, asks him to join them. He agrees, eventually levels up to rebel general, then takes over as boss of the rebel faction. Scores victories against both Yuan army and rival rebel factions. Captures the Yuan winter capital and crowns himself Emperor of China at the age of 40 (in comparison, the youngest US president, John F. Kennedy was 44 when he took office).