History Questions Not Worth Their Own Thread VII

Wheat still required far less work to domesticate. If you compare the ancestor of wheat to the ancestor of corn, it's clear that corn changed significantly in the domestication process.

Presumably, though, at every stage it's something worth eating (at least by the standards of what else is available) - nobody's going to start farming something inedible in the hope that their grandchildren will make the first bread from it.

Ultimately most of history is also conjecture. But conjecture can be quite exceptionally accurate given enough reference points to compare against. For example say you have two manuscripts: A and B both copying a certain document. Manuscript A says eorum (of his/its [pl.]) while Manuscript B says earum (of her [pl.]). With just these two manuscripts we have no way of knowing which is "correct"; what the original said. However say we found Manuscripts CDEFG and manuscripts CDE and F have eorum while only manuscript G also has earum. Given the larger body of evidence it seems far more likely now that the original text had eorum and B and G were either mistakes in copying or an attempt by the copyists of B and G to correct a perceived mistake in their source texts. Now - we have no way of knowing for sure that ACDE and F are correct while B and G are incorrect (in representing an authentic reproduction of the source text). For all we know eorum is an error in A which was incorrectly copied into CDEF, but given the evidence we have at hand, the supposition that eorum is correct is the most likely scenario. Subject to change, granted, but the most likely postulate we have given current evidence.

This isn't to say history, or archaeology, or manuscript analysis are irrefutably correct and representative of the absolute truth. The fact that historiography exists is a testament to that. However there is very very little (if anything at all) which is irrefutably correct in this world. Distance (in time) from the event in question only weakens our ability to approach the truth in that the number of data points likely to have survived for us to read and interpret now is smaller. Just because topic A has a surviving written chronicle while topic B has no recorded primary sources (but an absolute butt-ton of archaeological findings) doesn't mean that topic A is in ipsi more factual, reputable, or accurate.

Interesting explanation - though (if my single-data-point conjecture that you've started a course involving Latin is correct) ipse is ipso in the ablative, not ipsi. As in manuscripts, though, I would give more weight to the reliability (or not) of sources in working out the truth than number alone. I probably wouldn't set much in store by a thousand North Korean films about Kim Il Sung.

Also intrigued by:

Distance (in time) from the event in question only weakens our ability to approach the truth in that the number of data points likely to have survived for us to read and interpret now is smaller.

I think it works the other way too, at least for a while, because people involved in the moment inevitably have only a partial picture - they see great big historical events and processes as only what they can literally see with their own experience. We can see this even today, with a lot of recent history being re-written in the light of new discoveries and declassified documents. A good example is people talking about Operation Yewtree etc and linking it to the workings of politics, suggesting that some people were promoted into senior government positions because the PM had leverage over them. Whether or not it's true (though I'm not sure that interpretations like that can be simply true or false), nobody could have joined the dots in that way at the time, or even five years ago.

I'm not sure 'the truth' with a lot of the interesting questions in history really exists, in the sense that if you could only get all the data together then you would have an 'answer', and you could prove to anyone else that it was the only answer. That may be true for questions that we used to answer in school, like 'when was the Battle of Waterloo?' or 'who was king after Victoria's death?', but I don't think it holds for actually interesting questions - questions like 'why did the First World War begin?' or 'how democratic was Britain in 1913?', or even 'what was it like to be a Roman slave?'. Just as the data is only ever individual perspectives on things, which are often less 'better' and 'worse' and more 'different', I'm not convinced that historical interpretation can ever be (past a certain point) anything other than 'different' and 'more convincing' or 'less convincing'.
 
Not quite. Most of the Palaeolithic passed with no domestication whatsoever. It's only around 10,000 BC we can see the first traces of it. It's not for nothing it was termed the Agricultural Revolution. But it certainly didn't spread at the speed of the French revolution.

Well, yes, but compared to the previous total lack of it beforehand and the seismic changes it wrought upon society as it almost entirely replaced previous methods, it was certainly a revolution. I wasn't suggesting it was a blitzkrieg though.
 
Interesting explanation - though (if my single-data-point conjecture that you've started a course involving Latin is correct) ipse is ipso in the ablative, not ipsi. As in manuscripts, though, I would give more weight to the reliability (or not) of sources in working out the truth than number alone. I probably wouldn't set much in store by a thousand North Korean films about Kim Il Sung.

Also intrigued by:



I think it works the other way too, at least for a while, because people involved in the moment inevitably have only a partial picture - they see great big historical events and processes as only what they can literally see with their own experience. We can see this even today, with a lot of recent history being re-written in the light of new discoveries and declassified documents. A good example is people talking about Operation Yewtree etc and linking it to the workings of politics, suggesting that some people were promoted into senior government positions because the PM had leverage over them. Whether or not it's true (though I'm not sure that interpretations like that can be simply true or false), nobody could have joined the dots in that way at the time, or even five years ago.

I'm not sure 'the truth' with a lot of the interesting questions in history really exists, in the sense that if you could only get all the data together then you would have an 'answer', and you could prove to anyone else that it was the only answer. That may be true for questions that we used to answer in school, like 'when was the Battle of Waterloo?' or 'who was king after Victoria's death?', but I don't think it holds for actually interesting questions - questions like 'why did the First World War begin?' or 'how democratic was Britain in 1913?', or even 'what was it like to be a Roman slave?'. Just as the data is only ever individual perspectives on things, which are often less 'better' and 'worse' and more 'different', I'm not convinced that historical interpretation can ever be (past a certain point) anything other than 'different' and 'more convincing' or 'less convincing'.

Yep yep and yep (stupid UNUS NAUTA adjectives).

The grander point I was trying to emphasize is that ultimately the "Truth" in history, however you choose to define it is fundamentally impossible. Even if you were to develop some way to re-live the experience firsthand your interpretation would be colored by your own lens, experiences and biases. A history of the 2003 Invasion of Iraq, written by an American General is just as likely to be filled with opinion, conjecture, and bias (intentional or otherwise) as Caesar's De Bello Gallico as some account of a Sumerian battle inscribed on tablets recovered from an archaeological dig. The notion that modern writing and reporting is somehow less biased, more even, and more factual than older writing (lol Herodotus says there were a million Persians at Thermopylae) is of course a gross teleology.

So I guess the more relevant question is not "All of history is conjecture," but rather "given that history is largely or perhaps even entirely conjecture, what is the goal of history; what are we trying to achieve in our conjecture?"
 
So I guess the more relevant question is not "All of history is conjecture," but rather "given that history is largely or perhaps even entirely conjecture, what is the goal of history; what are we trying to achieve in our conjecture?"
Well, if we're going to have a discussion on Philosophy of History, I'd like to point out I'm not a fan of framing the question of one as 'we can't get rid of the subjective elements, so how should we deal with them?'

Subjective elements are the acme of historical studies. Even if it were possible to strip down and study the past in purely objective terms, that would not be desirable. You would at best be doing Chronology, or Anthropology.

Many of the most interesting questions Flying Pig raised, even with absolute observation, could never be known to us.

"What was it like to be a Roman Slave." This sounds very Thomas Nagel to me. And very Thomas Nagel, I don't think THE TRUTH can encompass that perpetual unknowable. But I think that perpetual unknowable is what we, as historians, actually study.

What else does a 1950s Japanese labor organizer, a 16th century Gallowglass, an Ancient Sumerian, a cosmonaut, Mike Tyson and a kadogo have in common?
 
I seem to reference The Relativity of 'Wrong' a lot on here, but I think it's worth throwing it into the ring again. Although he's talking about scientific theories which can, in theory, be perfect, the general principle of steadily becoming less and less wrong probably applies to our subjective questions. We might never be able to get to the same level as the physicists, but we can get closer than we are now. That seems to me a way to avoid a situation where anyone's opinion goes and nobody can be proven wrong.
 
While I think that's very good, and very accurate about a lot of the historians craft, it's not entirely what I mean. I mean that the bulk of a Historians craft is by it's nature, argumentative conjecture. This is why History is placed properly in the humanities, rather than a social science.

To return to "What is it like to be a Roman Slave", that is a question not even Roman Slaves can answer precisely. And unlike Aasimov's model, accuracy is not necessarily a matter of closeness to a particular point.

It shall naturally entail implicit opinions about the world, life, death, what is most important to our existence, etc. These cannot be separated from the question. And they should not because at that point you are answering something more like "if I were to observe a Roman Slave, what would I see?"
 
While I think that's very good, and very accurate about a lot of the historians craft, it's not entirely what I mean. I mean that the bulk of a Historians craft is by it's nature, argumentative conjecture. This is why History is placed properly in the humanities, rather than a social science.

Actually, the bulk of a historian's work is research. Which makes it more of a social science than a humanity. The argumentative conjecture comes only after the research is done, otherwise you wouldn't be a historian in the first place.
 
While I think that's very good, and very accurate about a lot of the historians craft, it's not entirely what I mean. I mean that the bulk of a Historians craft is by it's nature, argumentative conjecture. This is why History is placed properly in the humanities, rather than a social science.

To return to "What is it like to be a Roman Slave", that is a question not even Roman Slaves can answer precisely. And unlike Aasimov's model, accuracy is not necessarily a matter of closeness to a particular point.

It shall naturally entail implicit opinions about the world, life, death, what is most important to our existence, etc. These cannot be separated from the question. And they should not because at that point you are answering something more like "if I were to observe a Roman Slave, what would I see?"

I think that last paragraph is quite insightful - how, though, would you go about telling a 'good' historian or historical argument from a 'bad' one?
 
myself said:
maybe because they didn't find anything but expect a handy contribution to whatever noble cause being espoused at the time ? 300 tons of gold and diamonds will not be left unattented , Germans would have arrived by the thousands in the '90s to dig it out .

on

Whatever happened to the the Nazi Armored Train supposedly found in Poland?


ı have found a more detailed article of sorts , to which ı add the pointless r16 thing ...

Lost Nazi hoard located?

There has long been a legend of a Nazi ‘ghost’ train packed with treasure hidden from the advancing Red Army in a sealed tunnel. The train had allegedly been loaded up in the eastern German city of Breslau, now called Wrocław and part of Poland. The tunnel was said to be near Ksiaz Castle (previously Schloss Fürstenstein) in the mountains of Lower Silesia – the German headquarters during the war.

In early August, two men, a German and a Pole, filed a legal claim with local authorities in Poland’s southwestern district of Wałbrzych, asserting they had located the train, the details of which they would disclose after receiving acknowledgment, in writing, of their right to a finder’s fee of 10 per cent of the hoard’s value (in accordance with Polish law). They reportedly found the train 210ft (64m) below ground, using ground-penetrating radar. It was said to be armoured, 495ft (150m) long, with gun platforms – and to contain 300 tons of gold, other “precious metals”, and possibly masterpieces stolen from Polish noble families and museums. Some even suggested it contains the famous Amber Room looted from Catherine the Great’s palace in 1941. Of course , no ...But there's no greater joy in Warsaw then riling Putin ? There again, it might be empty, or even dangerous; it might be mined, or contain poison gas.

One possible location is Walim, some 12 miles (19km) west of Wałbrzych, because the hills there are home to the tunnels of Project Reise (‘Giant’), begun in 1941. Project Reise involved digging miles of tunnels in a series of complexes across the Wałbrzych region. Thousands of slave labourers died hewing the rock for reasons that remain obscure. Some say the tunnels were for a secret command centre, others claim they were for weapon factories, or even hid research on a Nazi atom bomb.Three of the seven main Reise sites are now open to the public,but much of the complex remains unexplored.


Following the initial publicity of the legal claim, ‘the Silesian Research Group’ announced that its members had located the train over two years ago, using ground-penetrating radar, and that their maps and data had been pilfered, presumably by the men who had filed the claim. 10% of 300 tons makes a nice little hoard , and one should put in all the effort -as if there's gold there . One unnamed group member said: “We know that in May 1945 gold and other valuables from the city of Wrocław were being transported to Wałbrzych when they disappeared between the towns of Lubiechow and wiebodzice. During the war, there used to be an SS barracks here which was heavily guarded. And just behind the railway bridge was the entrance to the tunnel” – which was 2.37km (2,592 yards) from Ksiaz Castle, according to the group. Finding it, however, would take excavation, for which permission would be required. And they would find it already but authorities didn't permit it and allowed the theft to corner the profits , or something .

Naturally, there are fears that this latest gold rush will turn out to be the triumph of hope over reality. Andrzej Gaik, who gives guided tours through the old Castle of the Princes of Wałbrzych, went on a fruitless treasure hunt for the ‘Golden train’ some years ago, and now thinks it doesn’t exist. However, on 26 August, Wałbrzych’s deputy mayor said that a “historically significant military train” had indeed been found. Two days later, Piotr Zuchowski, Poland’s deputy culture minister, said the authorities had seen radar images of the train, the location of which had been divulged to the “two treasure hunters” on his deathbed by one of the men who hid it, who provided a sketch map and said the train was booby-trapped. Have you ever seen the Jackie Chan movie where he ends up finding the Nazi hoard in a Nazi wind tunnel under the Sahara ? Booby traps are the sine qua non of treasure hunting ! The minister said the images appeared to show the train was equipped with gun turrets. In 1945 , practically any train needed gun turrets . Another two days later, Magdalena Woch, director of culture at Ksiaz Castle, said: “There is a story that in 1945 there were three trains which came into the town and have never been found. The gold may not be in the train that has been found but in one of these bettersecured military trains.” Oh, the authorities agree it's a stupid idea to ask for 300 tons of gold from Merkel , in the name of friendship and alliance against the Communist menace .

As we go to press, the Polish government has promised the deployment of specialist reconnaissance troops, but actual digging is unlikely to begin until next spring, following a detailed ground survey. What troops ? Unless they are aware of what went on ?

"Project Reise (‘Giant’), begun in 1941. Project Reise involved digging miles of tunnels in a series of complexes across the Wałbrzych region. Thousands of slave labourers died hewing the rock for reasons that remain obscure. Some say the tunnels were for a secret command centre, others claim they were for weapon factories, or even hid research on a Nazi atom bomb." Or like they were digging deep to find trolls , like the one that almost got Frodo in Moria ? "Specialist" press always tells us the Nazis were so Indiana Jones to find all the good stuff , sending teams to Brazil to find all those good Germans who settled in the Amazons in1588 or something . Or Shangri La . Or the spear that killed Jesus . Or the Holy Grail . And am dead serious , too . Tolkien could be nasty ugly , especially with his "finds" . In any case , the team apparently go down to Ithlien , which everybody claims to be Italy and it wasn't like exactly so when there was a war going on in 1940 and the sequel to Hobbit was a massive endevour and Tolkien did homour Ike and the lot with adding this National Redoubt thing into the LotR where the dwarves made their last stand , without Gimli ... A nice way to challenge the notion that the Dwarves are the Jews , never liked much by their neighbours , but in the 1950s there were tons of bitter memories about the last stands Wehrmacht regularly provided .
 
I can't say for certain, because I'm mostly familiar with Greco-Roman society. (But even in Rome conditions for the lower strata were far from pleasant.) I don't really know about hygiene conditions in China or India.
Can you tell me more about this? Or can you point me towards a direction where to look for more information? I am doing a fiction project and part of the project is that I want to learn how people truly lived in ancient times.
 
The poor in ancient Rome would be living in tenement blocks (i.e. flats) with usually no indoor plumbing or even a kitchen. For a graphical depiction you might watch https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1UvG0LDeYBA (and possibly episode 2 on Street Life, which wasn't very safe, especially at night). There was also no fire brigades or police service for most of Rome's ancient history. Bathing had to be done in public baths, unless you could afford a house with a private bath. The famous annona wasn't intended for the poor, but rather for the rather less well off citizens; if you weren't officially a citizen of Rome, you weren't entitled to it.

A quicksearch on living conditions in ancient Rome produced the following results: https://www.google.nl/search?client...ancient+rome&sourceid=opera&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8
 
You were a citizen purely by virtue of being born free in Rome or most of Italy (which expanded over time to include all of Italy, then all of the Empire) - the point, I think, was to exclude slaves, because it was their masters' job to take care of them. Also, to state the bleeding obvious, most people in the Roman empire didn't live in Rome. Sadly, we often know very little about them.

Mary Beard's books (especially Pompeii) are good for trying to recapture a bit of life for ordinary people - I recently read one called Invisible Romans which had a wider scope of time and space, but can't remember the author.
 
Just saw something on the local news about a big Roman military camp found close to Hannover. Haven't found anything in English news (only looked at the Guardian...). Any thoughts about this news? Hannover feels quite northerly for a Roman camp.
 
Just saw something on the local news about a big Roman military camp found close to Hannover. Haven't found anything in English news (only looked at the Guardian...). Any thoughts about this news? Hannover feels quite northerly for a Roman camp.

A big military camp when?
 
Just saw something on the local news about a big Roman military camp found close to Hannover. Haven't found anything in English news (only looked at the Guardian...). Any thoughts about this news? Hannover feels quite northerly for a Roman camp.

Depends on the dating. As you probably know, Augustus intended to extend the Roman border to the Elbe.

On the other hand, a legion camp was also recently uncovered in central/east Germany (Thüringen), which is well to the north of the erstwhile limes.
 
I think we're coming to understand that borders were messy things before we had treaties and maps to mark them out - the line at which Roman law stopped being applied might have been different from the line at which Roman soldiers stopped being seen, which might itself have been different from the line which Roman soldiers would defend if somebody invaded. There are Roman camps in Scotland, but I don't think these represent a serious attempt to bring Scotland into the empire.
 
I think it's also important to note that just because Roman advance into German territory was halted by the battle of Teutoburg Forest doesn't mean Roman involvement with the German ended there. Rome often had working relationships with Germanic tribes and some of these tribes offered military service to Rome for a place to live. It might those camps in Germany are there to help an ally of Rome.
 
Indeed - I suspect that you could have walked a long way out of the last 'Roman' town before you were somewhere that wouldn't take you to the governor of Germania if he was looking for you, and further still to find somewhere that Roman money and titles didn't carry some respect. The same was likely true in the other direction. Real borders don't map nicely onto our strategy-game ideas of the world.
 
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