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When Orcs Were Real

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Re: When Orcs Were Real

#201

Post by rebuilder »

emmanueloga_ wrote: post #170
rebuilder wrote: post #10

Why do we have to posit non-human monsters as explanations for these myths? After all, there were (and still are) real monsters out there that would kill, rape, kidnap and torture people - people from other communities. Strange danger was serious business back in the day, why could that not evolve into all kinds of boogeymen?

"people from other communities" ... from other communities? How about just "people".

That's true, but generally you don't see a community systematically slaughter, enslave and torture people they consider part of their community. Prison comes close, but note that usually prisoners are seen as outcasts.

Re: When Orcs Were Real

#202

Post by wolverine876 »

YeGoblynQueenne wrote: post #70

A nice fairytale. And like all fairytales it doesn't need to be falsifiable to be worth telling. >> If early Greek, Roman, Norse, and Chinese mythologies are anything to go by, the legends spun by early humans centre around an heroic human (almost always a man) who is pitted against an ugly, evil cruel monster with superhuman strength… As a PoGO (Person of Greek Origin) my impression of our ancients' myths and legend…

Very insightful; thanks!

Re: When Orcs Were Real

#203

Post by wolverine876 »

wwtrv wrote: post #195
wolverine876 wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We have literally no idea what kind of a morality the vast majority of people who have ever lived subscribed to. Human beings have consistent morality, in many ways, across space and time. As the GP pointed out, look at all the religions and cultural rules against the same things and encouraging the same things, such as not harming others and respecting your parents. There are differences also, but the extreme rela…

I think outright religious bans on murdering, raping or enslaving people outside of your community are fairly recent developments. Even the old testament is fairly ambiguous on this.

I think it's much more complex than that. The Old Testament both insists you must treat strangers well, but also describes slaves and conquering Jericho. 'Thou shalt not kill', etc. however, are blanket statements.

We need more evidence and research; the Bible is long and we can find a statement here or there that supports almost anything. But as I said, while there are variations, much is the same.

I'll even speculate that it's predictable - I doubt I could walk into 99% of human communities in the history of the world and not have a reasonable sense of the morals (social customs might be tricky though!).

Re: When Orcs Were Real

#204

Post by Baeocystin »

You_All_R_Cunts wrote: post #166
whakim wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The fur thing just isn't compelling. Hominims lost their fur prior to developing tools in order to develop sweat glands all over their body, allowing them to expel heat better than their prey (and so hunt by literally chasing an animal until it got hyperthermia). Neanderthals may have been hairier to help in colder climates, but it's pretty remiss of the article to not mention that losing fur was one of the key devel…

Meaning fur was lost before we split from neanderthals, so they would have had to lose their sweat pores and regrown that hair? Seems like a large mutation to take place.

Maybe not as much as you'd think. As an example, the EDAR Gene (https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2013/2/21/sweat-gene-iden...) affects, among other things, hair thickness and sweat gland density. It's isn't a small effect, and yet it's a single gene change in an otherwise highly conserved gene pathway.

Re: When Orcs Were Real

#205

Post by realsimplesynd »

rjsw wrote: post #173
SamBam wrote: post #168

I feel like either I am very confused about something, or the author is: > the population of humans dropped to as few as 50 individuals. Something terrible happened to the human race. > When did this population bottleneck occur? A number of teams have analyzed mutation rates to find out. The mutation rate in our Y chromosomes suggests the bottleneck occurred 37,000 to 49,000 years ago. Is the author really suggesting…

> Is the author really suggesting that the human population was down to 50 individuals 50,000 years ago? The theory [1] has been around for a while. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toba_catastrophe_theory

I've heard it used as an explanation for our species level sense of camaraderie and cooperation. A near extinction event may have been one of the best things to ever happen to us. (I don't entirely agree, but it's an interesting thought)

Re: When Orcs Were Real

#206

Post by midjji »

One really cool thing with global warming is the old stuff frozen in the glaciers and ice slowly being unearthed. There might just be a neanderthal or two, or some of the other early hominids. It would answer a great many questions and provide invaluable material for genetic modification.

Re: When Orcs Were Real

#207

Post by wwtrv »

poisonarena wrote: post #73
shakow wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> and were trained veterans of the reconquest of Spain from the Moors Cortes was 7 y.o. when the Reconquista ended...

Who trained Cortes? The Spanish developed tactics for decades and decades, building knowledge from previous wars and conquests.

Cortes was an opportunistic lawyer/notary he had no military experience before the conquest of Mexico and I’m not sure there is any evidence that he had any military education.

Re: When Orcs Were Real

#208

Post by 13of40 »

gpm wrote: post #100
midjji wrote: post #94

It makes for a good story to be sure, but probably little else. Much like the popular myth of the noble savage influencing academics of the time, contemporary popular disdain for the people and cultures of the past colors many contemporary academics. Another weird thing, So we have found evidence of the feathers of dinosaurs, but not the fur of something from 40k years ago? that seems rather unlikely. In this case, t…

> So we have found evidence of the feathers of dinosaurs, but not the fur of something from 40k years ago? that seems rather unlikely Does it? Dinosaurs existed for hundreds of millions years, that's a lot of time for things to be preserved. Neanderthals for hundreds of thousands of years, that's not nearly as much. Sure, fur/feathers is less likely to be preserved for 65 million years (+ however far into the mesozio…

I think it's interesting how much traction the question of whether Neanderthals had body is getting in this discussion. I haven't read into it too deeply, so I'm not confident to say which side is correct, but the fact that nearly all mammals, and every extant primate species save one have thick body hair, regardless of what climate they live in, means it wouldn't surprise me to find out that Neanderthals also did. It also wouldn't surprise me to find out they walked around with crude animal skin drapings (like Wikipedia claims) or that they had expertly tailored leather suits as described in that linked article. What surprises me is that so many people really, really want it to have been one way or the other. Here's a theory: Their range was so vast, and the time they spent on earth was so long, that some of them were bald and made clothes, and some of them were hairy from head to toe (like some modern people) and walked around naked. Probably some of them were mean and some were nice, and sometimes they traded with Homo Sapiens, and sometimes they dined on them.

For what it's worth, my dad was an anthropologist and he liked to point out that their women probably had beards.

Re: When Orcs Were Real

#209

Post by wwtrv »

poisonarena wrote: post #197
shakow wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And I'm saying that virtually every country on Earth has some military knowledge. You really think that France/the German principalities/England/the Ottoman Empire/the PL Commonwealth/the Kievan Rus'/... just forgot everything after a war, and that Spain, miraculously, was the only country to understand that experience is a thing? And do you believe that the Southern American populations religiously waited for the Wh…

I think you may be putting words in my mouth and getting pretty worked up, because I didn't say what you are implying. I am just stating(for the third time now) that Spain was at the cutting edge in 15th century warfare. Regarding your last paragraph, which is on some other tangent, but since you brought it up, it is known that the Aztecs and Mexica had a very different view on the purpose of warfare.

While it’s true that the conquistadors had immense success in their initial encounters with the natives, the Aztecs would have adapted eventually to counter the Spanish had they not been crippled by the European diseases. This seems to have already been the case in the siege of Tenochtitlan where the Spanish suffers huge casualties despite having similar numbers (together with their allies) to the Aztecs. This was the case with many of the North American tribes and even with the diseases it took the Spanish another 150 years to subjugate all of the Mayan cities.

Re: When Orcs Were Real

#210

Post by jtms »

soapdog wrote: post #24

> Europeans defeated indigenous peoples throughout history, by superior technology and numbers. Oh boi, not this horrible and flawed argument again. People have learned nothing from recent research into the impact of diseases in that history? Popular books like "Guns, Germs, and Steel", and "1491" give you a view into these matters and provide one with references for their sources for research. This idea of "Europe w…

Don't both guns and steel fall firmly under the category of "technology"?
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