ITT: Things that autistically bother you when studying history

It still happens today in some parts of the world, but as a guy in a peaceful country I wonder how people dealt with war in their region. Obviously that was not constant or anything, but how do you continue to live after getting your wife/daughters raped in front of you by the enemy soldiers and getting everything valuable stolen from you.

Surely one could cover much more distance using a horse (walking) than walking himself.

>how many men were needed to fuel them
the population was about 60 million
30 million men
life expectancy past age 10 was ~50 so ~20 million adult men
at least 90% of the population were just farmers so the urban population was about 2 million

in the UK you still see signs of this though, in wales you can go to different villages and get totally different accents, people rarely left their hometowns and were not welcomed in neibouring towns

Romans were crazy autistic with record keeping, logistics and comms. Everything had a procedure too.

They even had a mail order system so you could order goods from the other provinces in exchange for money or goods from their own. A few weeks later and your stuff would turn up. They even had catalogs.

God damn. I live in southern California and the idea that I would never see, lets say, Los Angeles or probably even meet someone from LA, is very alien to me.

>trying to read Japanese pop psych book from the early 20th century
>the author peppers their sentences with German, not to mention the classic characters
I hadn't felt like such a brainlet in a long time.

You send out administrators who are trusted to lead provinces effectively. There's also the fact legionnaires also established Roman colonies after enlistment after the Marian Reforms to help Romanise and maintain obedience in conquered regions.

Confucianism in China also points towards the same practice.

Yeah, the greeks traveled the coast by sea because they couldnt be arsed to deal with their fucked up terrain

You could get from Rome to Britain in 4 days? How?

It's 28 days.

The ability to travel vast distances fast is what's killing authentic culture and civilization. The ease of traveling also made everything boring.

That's because you don't live in a parochial backwater

>The ability to travel vast distances fast is what's killing authentic culture and civilization.
I don't think fast travel did that. I think globalism and the internet are doing that.

>The ease of traveling also made everything boring.
I don't know. I think I like being able to visit the beach or mountains at all.

You don't run horses everywhere, you alternate between running, walking, and resting. You can cover a lot of distance that way, probably about 50 miles on a fresh horse in easy terrain. You don't want to ride the horse too long or too hard not only to spare the animal but also your own body, since riding a horse is not a relaxing activity. Especially if you don't normally spend a lot of time in the saddle. Your thighs are going to be sore for days after a long ride. I honestly don't know how anyone managed to cross the North American continent using nothing but horses, wagons, and canoes. It's fucking insane. Have you seen the Rocky Mountains in person? Imagine crossing that with nothing but horses and flatbed wagons. Nope.

4 weeks. The contours are labeled in days, but really they represent weeks. That's still pretty fast considering it's like what, 800 miles at least?

What the fuck did everyone do in their spare time?

Worked, fucked, ate, slept

It is a modern marvel that we can travel to any corner of the world inside a day. It's another marvel that we can access literally any book in print with the click of a mouse, a million libraries worth available at your fingertips, whenever you want it.

It wasn't until the creation of the train engine that land travel had changed since the domestication of animals

...

Stop being so uncultured then

>a million libraries worth available at your fingertips, whenever you want it
naaah

The problem becomes deciding what to read.

source?

Numbers of people involved

The mongol army involved up to 105.000 men. Out of that 70.000 died at sea during a storm.

The roman army involved 500.000 men.
100.000 died at sea during a storm.

In 1459 Dracula empaled 30.000 people in Sibiu. The largest cities of that time had less than 10.000 residents.

Or similar cases where suddenly like 10% of a nation's population is dead. Just imagine 3 Million dead US-Americans dead because of a fucking storm.

Roads can take you way farther than 30 miles a day. Armies readily traveled 60 miles a day on a good march, and armies are much slower than people. 30 miles is slightly more than a marathon, Greek hemerodrome's regularly traveled such distances multiple times a day. Ancient and Medieval heralds did the same.

Absolutely.
I have started hoarding things I want to read. But, instead of reading them, I keep searching for other things!
My bookmarks must be well into the thousands, and it's come to the point where I know I will never have enough time in my life to assimilate all that knowledge.

>Armies readily traveled 60 miles a day on a good march, and armies are much slower than people
Not doubting but do you have a source for this?
Also I got the 30 miles a day number from hiking forums who called it the optimum walking pace. Also people on average walk 3 mph and given a 10 hour walking day would amount to 30 miles a day.

u mean 30million + dawg

>The largest cities of that time had less than 10.000 residents.

It happened 255 b.c.
Back than it was less.

Within Wallachia, forgot to add that.

Yes i missed a 0 there indeed.

Literally what happened with Britain

t. brainlet

t. mississipean

globalism is in part due to fast travel.

the thirst for "authenticity" is a delusional one, and will probably lead to more globalization.

Globalization is good and bad but ultimately it's a part of capitalism

>US-Americans
Nice b8 post

it happens in Southern California too. I went to Cal Poly Pomona to study Architecture, but I was born and raised in LA City (San Fernando Valley to be precise). When I met my future classmates, I learned many grew up in the Inland Empire and Orange County. When you look at maps of the Los Angeles Metropolitan Area, OC and IE are counted as part of the LA metro area (Pic related).

The thing is, the metro region is so huge and spread out (not to mention that LA City by itself is humongous), that I was shocked to learn that many of my new friends had rarely (in some cases never) set foot in LA City. So in Architecture, we would have field trips to various architectural destinations in Downtown LA or Pasadena, or whatever random site your studio chose for a project, that for many, it was their first time visiting LA City.

Even now, a few years after graduation, whenever my OC friends come up to LA to hang out, I take them to places that they had never been to. Funnily enough, even for me, who was born and raised in LA, and since I was a kid with my parents, we would make it a weekend thing to drive around the region to sight see the things LA as whole has to offer, I always discover something new to do in LA, especially as someone who works in Architecture and so you are more open to going around.

In SoCal, even within Los Angeles city, I've met people who live all their lives in the San Fernando Valley (actually just yesterday, went on a date with this chick who has ventured out of the valley only a handful of times) and don't go to the basin, and vice-versa, people in the basin who never go to the Valley. OC people, Inland Empire people, SGV people, they are pretty much foreign to actual Angelenos.

The freeways make it seem as though LA is one connected place but weirdly enough, it is not.

>you gotta turn the book sideways too to read the wacky round-eye word sounds

This is some next level autism holy shit

>I went to Cal Poly Pomona to study Architecture
Small world. I'm a senior at Cal Poly Pomona, same college even. Though I'm in urban planning instead of architecture. How long ago did you attend?

>The thing is, the metro region is so huge and spread out (not to mention that LA City by itself is humongous), that I was shocked to learn that many of my new friends had rarely (in some cases never) set foot in LA City.
I was kinda the same way. I am just far out enough that going to LA regularly is unfeasible and Riverside had kinda taken up the roll of the core city of the region(since San Bernardino went belly up). And for the first few school trips to LA I was still amazed by the sheer scope of the city both physically and economically. I still don't know half of whats in there.

>The freeways make it seem as though LA is one connected place but weirdly enough, it is not.
This. They are too clogged to provide any real freedom of travel and the closer you get to LA proper the more confusing and fucked up the freeways get. Good news is that we've pretty much decided that we are done building new freeways since they will just get filled up and clogged leaving us in the same position as before and a billion dollars poorer. I think all of our efforts are going to be going into the inter-city rail lines, and hopefully getting them good enough to move mass amounts of commuters.

funny cause in the Architecture profession, it is a very small world. One thing I learned is too never burn bridges cause it will come back to haunt you eventually. But yeah, I graduated almost 4 years ago.

It's funny too that you mention the public transportation issue in LA. I'm all for new construction of our subways and light rail, but people ask why does it take long to build. Obviously construction, planning, and the design logistics take a huge chunk of time to sort out and apply, but one other factor people don't get is the distance covered in between stations.

I was on this website
>mapfrappe.com/?show=26428
for fun, comparing how big LA is to other cities and suddenly, the comment on how LA's Metro rail is one of the largest in mileage in the country made sense, even though when you see the map of the Metro stations, it looks simple and not complex. Many cities like London or NYC and compact that it's feasible to have complex rail networks and close stations. LA's stations are pretty far apart. For example, it's about 3 miles from the Western/Wilshire terminus of the Purple Line to the new u/c station at La Brea/Wilshire, then about a mile to the one after at Fairfax/Wilshire.

Also, LA has superblocks. A typical LA block is about two or several European city blocks. We have wide streets, and a bit of a walk from corner to corner within a block, so it is very unfriendly to pedestrians. Obviously made with the car in mind yet when you drive to those communities that have a more European sized block, you feel claustrophobic driving in your car. It's an interesting city in that respect.

I'm a football fan, and follow the Premier League, and so when you hear of fans traveling from city to city to away matches, you think they drive huge distances. Take a look on mapfrappe and two of England's largest cities, Liverpool and Manchester are about the same distance apart as the western edge of LA city in Calabasas to the eastern edge in Pasadena.

the fact that you have some 13 MILLION "people" packed into that space might be a part of it. im from vegas and took a 3 day trip to pasadena this past week. a driving on a 13 mile stretch of the 215 here easily takes less than 20 min but that same amount of distance on the 210 takes well over a half hour because your freeways are so fucking congested

What storm did Rome lose 100k soldiers in?

Why the fuck are there so many german loanwords in japanese anyway?

Meiji Japs thought Germans were highest tier in a few fields, with the medical field being one of the big ones. They still use German in hospitals today.

Japs could not be fucked to translate new medicines and techniques into their own language so they just decided to use German instead

Does anyone know if they turned the texts sideways, or did they just fucking learn to read the words that way? It gives me a headache to even try.

when ur mum farted lol

It is faster than i thought. Must be because all of it is in single empire with well built transportation system. I remember Romans having some travel documents if anyone could post anything regarding to that i would be glad.

Well if we couldnt travel vast distances fast we wouldnt know about other authentic cultures. I think it is good sacrifice.

its just read top to bottom from right to left if thats what you're asking

And multitude of festivals. A medieval peasant had more days off than a modern person and that's still nothing compared to an ordinary roman citizen.

During the first punic war IIRC.

>and how many men were needed to fuel them
Pic related was the Mughal Empire in the time of Akbar.
Akbar's main vizier wrote in his diaries that the Mughal Empire had around four million men, thousands of (primitive) rockets and hundreds of war elephants if they ever needed them.

So probably a shit load.

I think the Mughal's/Muslim armies are the exception. They required more 'hordes' tactics (don't kill me for saying this!).

The Sikh Empire only had 120, 000 men at their peak and they had a good sizeable chunk of India/Pakistan/Afghanistan back then

>this chick who has ventured out of the valley only a handful of times
That's fucking crazy, the valley isn't even THAT big

>I think the Mughal's/Muslim armies are the exception. They required more 'hordes' tactics (don't kill me for saying this!).

Well you are retarded, because Muslims were generally outnumbered in most of their conflicts and were never populous in the first place, especially in India were they were Turco-Mongols that invaded from North and didn't have much men. The image of "hordes of muslims" comes from modern depiction of past wars of middle-ages, where 100 valiant knights fight against endless amount of robe wearing sand people.

>the ancient city of Rome had over a million inhabitants
>the number dropped to around 40,000 during the early middle ages

What happened to all the houses where over a million people lived? Was medieval Rome a small town in the middle of a huge ghost city? Where did the all ruins go?

In the Netherlands they happily continued doing this into the early 20th century.

Thanks Huizinga...

The stones were used to build shit elsewhere.
But yes, I think I saw it somewhere mentioned, that indeed they lived among ruins.

Yes. The city had a huge ring of ruins during the middle ages.
The catholic church preserved the churches and other important buildings among the ruins. Normal people sometimes used them to build other stuff. They mostly rotted away.

Non-American here. Are those burroughs or something?

>where 100 valiant knights fight against endless amount of robe wearing sand people.

I think one thing you have to keep in mind is that connection of states and empires is more about *ease* and *reliability* of travel than speed per se. Your average peasant might not travel much but for a politician, bureaucrat, soldier, merchant, etc. if it takes a week or a month or two to get somewhere, so what? So long as your have a good road to walk on/clear shipping routes to sail, places to resupply along the way, etc. it's fine. It's much more important that there's the infrastructure (cultural infrastructure and traditions as well as physical roads) to support travelers, make sure the countryside isn't full of bandits and you're not having to fight your way through a warzone than to make speed per se. Reliability above all else. On top of basic security you start getting institutions like banks with far-flig branches exchanging info and re-tallying their books when they are able and cultural stuff like guest customs and multi-lingualism/lingua francas.

Business and politics can go just fine with a month or year's delay. Politically, you give local communities a bit autonomy and trust that they won't rebel or do anything too stupid because they know yeah, it might take 6 months for the main army to get there to crush you, but they will be there in 6 months.

A final think to keep in mind is that even today, most movement of goods is by ship and rail, so we're still talking weeks long trips. With electeonics, communication has vastly outstripped transportation. In countries with modern air and road infrastructure, yeah, you can get almost anywhere within a day, but even today there are a lot of places where it's a 2 day walk down a motor-impassible road after you catch the weekly bushplane after catching the monthly tramp freighter doing a 3 month circle route. Shit still holds together because, as said, it's more about the fact that workable connections exist than their speed per se.

>read and study the brazilian second reign
>understand the hole republican plot and political atmosphere of those years
>write a text of 10 pages full
>professor tells me that most of the things I said in the text cannot be proved
>search the National Library
>read and get enough archives to prove my point
>he tries to tell me that none of those facts described in the archives happened and that history is how the academia wrote and not like what I found
>tfw

idk what a borough is in the context of british civil administration, but each one of those is a city.

*some much smaller than others obviously, and they have their own local government

>especially in India were they were Turco-Mongols that invaded from North and didn't have much men.
That's a myth. They had a decent amount of men but edged ahead in the first constructions of rockets.

did you even read that guy's post?

Yeah me too. I never understand how politics worked back then.

If it was like how people describe it: "every neighboring village speaks it's own English and people rarely leave his village"

Then how did a kingdom with a size of England work? And what does it mean that 300 villages, each had its own English, all submit to one English king, under one Christian god ?

I don't even understand how in modern age 300 villages work now. I don't even understand the politics today. Surely I know there are voting and chairmen and something. But what's the difference between trading goods with next town and trading goods with another country
It bothers me to know that I will never get to the bottom of this

If the word is short and familiar you can rotate it in your head. If it's a long quote you rotate the book. It's not that hard. Nothing autistic about it

Though eventually they (the East Asian countries) will print everything horizontally to accommodate these quotes and equations.

feel like there is some truth to both narratives.

You wot m8?

Roalty, merchants and the upper classes traveled a great deal and migrations also took place.

People sourcing material from the 1800's which is invalid in today's discussion.

I feel you

This triggers me. How hard is it to make my life easier?

Use a boat, nigga.

Also, cities were situated along rivers or coast, at such distances so that if you leave at sunrise, you will be in next town by sunset.
If there is a too big distance between two towns, a small settlement would appear between them as a checkpoint. Its just good business.

>implying reality is real

That's because you live in a spoiled, over saturated society where people even get bored and annoyed when a website is starting 5 seconds too late.

But back then there was not much to do, so traveling long distances was necessary and acceptable. It was viewed as an adventure and nobody really cared how long it would take. People had a more realistic understanding in just how gigantic our world is.

>How autistic did the romans/chinese/mongols have to be to leave their homes for years possibly decades just for one military campaign and manage those logistics?
You answered your own question idiot.

Going to other countries was like visiting other planets. A huge adventures which only a privileged few can do. Rape and plunder were huge motivations too.

>wheels exist before the bronze age
>bicycles don't exist until the 19th century

That's my personal historical autism.

>the first bike didn't have evenly sized wheels
It's so stupid

people back then weren't fat shits and actually walked and ran from time to time

Don't forget Chinese civil wars with 20 million total casualties.

Doctors washing their hands before procedures was invented in the 20th century.

>
>and it's come to the point where I know I will never have enough time in my life to assimilate all that knowledge.
existentialfrog.png

>Have you seen the Rocky Mountains in person? Imagine crossing that with nothing but horses and flatbed wagons. Nope.
Why do you think Colorado was settled so heavily, they saw the Rockies and said fuck that noise.

30 miles is a lot, even today most people don't need to travel more than that in a day. You could also circle the earth in under 3 years, provided you could continue walking that much every day indefinitely, which should be easy, idk where your 30 miles a day figure comes from but I can walk pretty much indefinitely if the weather is chilly or mild and make 5 m/hr, which is just 6 hours of walking to make 30 (and provided you had land to walk on). When I was a teenager I used to go 15 to 20 miles every day just to kill a few hours. Average human walking speed is apparently 3.1 m/hr, which would still be 37 miles over twelve hours, which still leaves time for a generous 8 hours of sleep and 4 hours of gathering food (something you could likely to on the trail) and eating.

If you actually start reading them and you learn speed reading (which is not the same as skimming) you can easily read one or two books a day ezpz. You'll never read everything, but you'll probably chew through your backlog in a couple of years.

meant mi/hr not meters per hour (obviously)