101–110 of 232 posts
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All of human history is the same at its core. Suffering, exploration, profiteering. Yet we have progressed, bit by bit. We have a ways to go, but the arc of history is bending towards less suffering.
We have exploited our way into climate change, which entails more suffering.
So, the word "robber" is because they would strip you out of your robe?
The word “rob” comes from a proto-indo-european root meaning to “tear” or “strip”, and has apparently been used in the modern sense of taking things by force for thousands of years, https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Reconstruction:Proto-Indo-Eur... https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Reconstruction:Proto-Germanic...
The word “robe” is the derivative word, originally meaning the spoils of robbery, e.g. a stolen garment. It has only meant a specific kind of long loose garment for hundreds of years.
The English words “rip”, “reave”, “bereave” also come from the same origin.
There's a great book about the progression of clothing, textiles, and fabric being scarce and expensive to commonplace and cheap. It runs through the various technological innovations (think cotton gin, but plenty more), culture, and economics. The Fabric of Civilization by Virginia Postrel. Great quote about Viking sail ships: "Viking Age sail 100 meters square took 154 kilometers (60 miles) of yarn. Working eight h…
You'd have to cut the trees, get them from the forest to the build site, and then make lumber out of them and dry them. Can't imagine it would be that much different.
Also, they didn’t dry the wood. https://regia.org/research/ships/Ships1.htm:
“Timber was used green – in other words, shortly after felling. This is different to more modern practice, where the timber is "seasoned" – left to dry for several years. Green wood is easier to work, and more flexible, which can help with some of the more complex shapes found in Viking boats. Wood can be kept "green" for several years by keeping it immersed in water – a stem (or stern) of a Viking style boat was found on the island of Eig in what, a thousand years ago, had been a lake. As it had never been used – there were no indications of rivet holes – it was probably made up when the boat-builder had got a spare piece of suitable timber, and he was waiting for a similar bit for the stern (or stem) which never arrived.
It is also possible to steam green wood without complex equipment like the steam boxes used today. Simply by heating a plank over a fire, the moisture inside the wood heats up and causes the fibres to loosen. This means that – for a few minutes – it can be twisted into shape with less danger of it splitting and breaking. It is highly likely that this was done during Viking times – we know the technique was used to make "expanded" log boats, for example.”
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Yes, you wouldn't be building a steam engine with the tools of Greek artisans in antiquity, not even the ones who built the Antikythera mechanism. But we do know some things that would seem like crazy hacks to the ancients. For example, I know a simple trick. I can multiply numbers, of arbitrary size. And I can do it in a few seconds using just a stylus and tablet. This would have blown the minds of a learned Roman o…
>Yes, you wouldn't be building a steam engine with the tools of Greek artisans in antiquity, not even the ones who built the Antikythera mechanism. The Greeks had steam engines. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aeolipile It's just that slaves were vastly cheaper. In Britain early steam engines were price competitive with horses only at the coal mine for the first century of their operation.
> So a linen weaver would need to work for (500 / 2×40 to 500 / 2×20) 6 to 12 days to earn the price of the simplest linen tunic So translating to modern wages (in US/Western Europe) somewhere between $500 and $1500 for the simplest tunic, or between $7000 and $21000 for the finest quality. That certainly puts the practice of robbers to take people's clothes into perspective.
Cloth was so valuable that the words for both the robber and the extremely valuable robes they stole and plundered share a common origin:
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Quoted post unavailable.
All of human history is the same at its core. Suffering, exploration, profiteering. Yet we have progressed, bit by bit. We have a ways to go, but the arc of history is bending towards less suffering.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Quoted post unavailable.
I bet weavers fought like hell against textile industrialization. I'm not an historian, but there must have been such a conflict, and given the scale of it I bet it was bloody. Industrialization freed them from this toil, but at the cost of centralizing the means of production. It is a strange thing, progress.
That time is correlated with progress is a very political-liberal idea, to no one’s surprise.
Not the author, don't know him, no connection – but I caught a glimpse somewhere on the blog that he is currently unemployed. As an open-source maintainer, I feel like it is my duty to plug him so he can perhaps get some patrons or donations, the blog is great. https://www.bookandsword.com/support/ He is also not a software engineer or in tech in any meaningful way, so his 'tip to total income' ratio is probably off…
That's a good point. On twitter, I see very often people asking for money for a surgery, an accident, or just in general. I feel like I see this way more often than before, but I don't have any hard data to back this up. Just like you, I don't have any good answer to that.
Something that continually just blows my mind is how new spinning wheels are. The most plausible range of time of arrival of the wheel in European contexts is between the mid-1200s to about 1340, which means that textiles produced previously to that were made with drop spindles: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spindle_(textiles)#Hand_spindl... That includes things like clothing, but it also includes more staggering ide…
I'd imagine creating uniform and robust ball-bearings is not an easy feat.
Now, getting a perfectly round shaft... also tough.
> Robbers in Italy or debt collectors in Egypt often stripped the clothes off their victims’ backs, With regard to debt collection, what is interesting is the Bible requires that cloaks that were taken as collateral had to be returned by sunset so the person could sleep in them. Exodus 22:26 - If you take your neighbor’s cloak as collateral, return it to him by sunset, because his cloak is the only covering he has fo…
Kind of contradicts the purpose of the collateral, doesn't it? Does the lender retrieve it as collateral again the next morning? Do they only make same-day loans?