171–180 of 194 posts
Odd that it says 3000 years ago. The start of the Wikipedia entry on bronze swords says they appeared in 17BC which is of course only 2000 years ago.
This is mindblowing. Here we are, 3000 years in the future. But how many of us could make such a “primitive” thing?
With the right youtube videos and enough practice, I'll bet most mechanically inclined people could work it out.
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What were swords used for if not for battle?
People often compare sword with handguns. Handguns nowadays are deadly weapons, but they are not used in war, where people use assault rifles instead, or other heavier weapons. Swords were sidearms. Warriors carried them around every day, they could be used for self defense (in those times there was not police or law enforcement). Or they could be used for intimidating opponents, and if needed, for chopping someone's…
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Knowing fully what happened to Rome, if it’s even possible, would have been limited to the educated class. Stories would still have come out of the peasant class, whose folk memory of Rome couldn’t match what the clergy had. Eventually we did remake the Pax Romana, but it took two utterly ruinous wars, humanism, and a working knowledge of free trade to recreate the system that Rome had managed to create almost by acc…
What has been created with modern global capitalism is extremely different from the Roman form of commerce and administration. Not just in technology but in complete ideological foundations. Not only was slavery fundamental to its whole foundation, its accepted and normal practices for doing business would today, in the west, be considered forms of absolute extreme corruption, and their justice system would absolutel…
Reproducing the previous society is the mistake, because it wasn’t just the society. It was the free trade and lack of Mediterranean piracy that brought prosperity. The relatively increased civil rights that brought stability, and Senate that brought legitimacy. They had a model that produced the best economy and civil rights for their era, but looking backwards to past glories can’t replicate that.
Asking for a friend.
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My knowledge of bronze vs iron comes purely from playing dwarf fortress. Are they fairly comparable in the damage they can cause?
Any real difference in damage would be weight based, as swords were more used for beating than cutting. It's likely that one metal could hold a better edge, and one (perhaps the same) would be more resilient to breaking. It's not quite like the D&D "this metal is higher ranking and does more damage".
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Polish nobility, stretching well into today’s Ukraine, was inventing ways in which they were continuation of imaginary outskirts of said empire.
Russian Orthodox nationalists have this fantasy still. Including Putin. https://brill.com/view/journals/joah/4/1-2/article-p28_4.xml
Putin simply sees himself as the new Tzar, and by extension master of the lands of the Third Rome, i.e. the Baltics, Ukraine, et al.
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Cool, what's your oldest sword and where does it come from? Do you display them or just collect them? I have a friend in Australia with a fairly significant knife (not sword) collection which will be for sale shortly (aged owner), let me know if interested.
I too have knives in my collection, and would be interested but generally shipping things from Australia is hecka expensive too. Generally, I add things, with interesting stories to my collection. My oldest sword is privileged information but my favorite is the first one I got. In 1990 I was visiting Edinburgh on business for Sun, and I wanted a Claymore in celebration of my Scottish ancestry. At the Haymarket, I met…