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The horrors of Pompeii

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Re: The horrors of Pompeii

#31

Post by steveBK123 »

WalterBright wrote: post #23
autoexec wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What's kinda sad is how bad most were at building shelters. Seems expected when you consider that most people have never built a shelter, and those that have aren't often doing it on a regular basis using whatever happens to be lying around. Same for fishers and hunters who are highly skilled in the environments they regularly work in. You can only expect them to struggle when placed in new environments with new ad…

The contestant montage often showed them building things. They clearly had decent skills at sawing and other carpentry. They also clearly did not watch previous seasons and learn :-/ The most consistent failure was in way overestimating their ability to do hard physical labor without food. It's clear from watching the show that the path to victory, given woodcraft skills, is doing as little physical exertion as possi…

I wouldn't last a day on that show, but modern man, in our pining for the olden days .. grossly underestimates the % of time & effort humans had to spend on simply acquiring enough calories to survive.

Re: The horrors of Pompeii

#32

Post by bombcar »

reducesuffering wrote: post #29
WalterBright wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They were also severely restricted in what technology they could bring. But they still had fish hooks, survival clothing, advanced bow and arrows, an advanced saw or hatchet, fish line, and fire starter. Only one was able to make fire without a fire starter. After watching Alone, I bought myself a fire starter, to carry when hiking. I remember one father/son team. The son had some sort of fisheries degree, and consid…

> What's kinda sad is how bad most were at building shelters. What's funny is how good that one first season guy was at doing everything, especially shelter, and then after only a couple days to have an indefinite setup, just missed his wife and immediately left. "Everything looks good, just don't have Barbara!"

Sounds like he was carefully going through the hierarchy of needs and hit companionship and bailed.

Re: The horrors of Pompeii

#33

Post by DoreenMichele »

Graffiti is one of the most exciting kinds of evidence preserved for us by the destruction of Pompeii, because it comes not from the literature of the elite, or the inscriptions of the powerful, but from a wider cross-section of society.

The article is mostly about slavery and prostitution, colored by modern views of the world. For much of human history, people were simply trying to survive and life expectancy was usually lower than today. A lot of privileged people had lives we would not really envy.

Articles like this usually make no effort to give that kind of context and implicitly compare their worst to our best or average and make it sound intentionally cruel to a greater degree than was probably the case most of the time.

Re: The horrors of Pompeii

#34

Post by schmichael »

> Petronius was writing comedy, but there is no reason to dispute the incidental details, which can bring the Lupanar to life. His description suggests brothels would be located in more out-of-the-way parts of town and were not necessarily identifiable from the outside; the prostitutes and punters were screened from the outside world by a curtain. It also reveals that people could be enticed or tricked into visiting – presumably chaperones who drummed up trade got a fee.

“No reason to dispute”? Surely the most obvious explanation for a scene about recognizing someone in a brothel and both claiming to have been “tricked” is that at least one of them is lying, and poorly at that?

It seems just as plausible to me that the brothel was very obviously marked and so the idea that anyone could be tricked into going there unaware would be a hilarious joke.

I obviously don’t know either, but I just wish historical articles wouldn’t act so certain about things they offer no proof of!

Re: The horrors of Pompeii

#35

Post by thsksbd »

robbiep wrote: post #21
injb wrote: post #20

>>> About a fifth of the women’s names in the brothel indicate they were free. Can anyone explain this?

(Even?) today there are many people involved in the sex industry voluntarily - I know of a Doctor who has left her specialist job to pursue full time sex work, she says it pays more. It’s not so hard to believe that some women 2,000 years ago would have made a good living in a society where this kind of work was accepted and legal. Presumably a portion could have been previously slaves who earned their freedom; and m…

I need a clarification:

You know a medical doctor who left medicine and is working as a prostitute because it pays more?

What country if you don't mind me asking?

Re: The horrors of Pompeii

#36

Post by di456 »

withinboredom wrote: post #10
WalterBright wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Without economics we'd all starve to death. Edit: I submit "Alone", the TV show where survival experts are dumped out in the wilderness one by one, where they all starve and eventually get pulled out for losing dangerous amounts of weight. And this is despite bringing along survival gear made by an advanced economy.

A lot of people would, yes. Our economics has allowed people who would otherwise die, to live. Medicine, food distribution, research, construction, etc. A large portion would be fine. Maybe unhappy, maybe not, but they'd survive. Most people are completely clueless about how little "Mother" nature gives a shit. The outdoors will kill you very quickly, especially if you're alone. If you have even just a small group of…

Just don't tie yourself together by rope while on mountains. One goes down, everyone goes down.

Deep Survival is a great read. I picked that up from it.

Human infants will die without physical touch. We are social creatures by our DNA.

The worst punishment in older times was banishment. It was usually a death sentence.

Re: The horrors of Pompeii

#37

Post by elwell »

Towaway69 wrote: post #2

Nice read but nothing particular interesting unless one believes we have made progress in the last 2000 years. Hint: we're still just sex crazy monkeys with a liking to power and control over other monkeys.

"Those eighteen who died when the tower in Siloam fell on them—do you think they were more guilty than all the others living in Jerusalem? I tell you, no! But unless you repent, you too will all perish.” - Luke 13:4-5

Re: The horrors of Pompeii

#38

Post by User23 »

DoreenMichele wrote: post #33

Graffiti is one of the most exciting kinds of evidence preserved for us by the destruction of Pompeii, because it comes not from the literature of the elite, or the inscriptions of the powerful, but from a wider cross-section of society. The article is mostly about slavery and prostitution, colored by modern views of the world. For much of human history, people were simply trying to survive and life expectancy was us…

> life expectancy was usually lower than today

Life expectancy at birth was lower than today. However those who survived to adulthood had a life expectancy considerably closer to modern ones than most people think. It turns out the massive infant and childhood mortality rates greatly dragged down the average overall life expectancy.

Re: The horrors of Pompeii

#39

Post by pjmlp »

User23 wrote: post #38
DoreenMichele wrote: post #33

Graffiti is one of the most exciting kinds of evidence preserved for us by the destruction of Pompeii, because it comes not from the literature of the elite, or the inscriptions of the powerful, but from a wider cross-section of society. The article is mostly about slavery and prostitution, colored by modern views of the world. For much of human history, people were simply trying to survive and life expectancy was us…

> life expectancy was usually lower than today Life expectancy at birth was lower than today. However those who survived to adulthood had a life expectancy considerably closer to modern ones than most people think. It turns out the massive infant and childhood mortality rates greatly dragged down the average overall life expectancy.

If we forget how war was a common "sport" and how much court decisions were done.

Re: The horrors of Pompeii

#40

Post by Tronno »

nerdponx wrote: post #8
GolfPopper wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I suspect it's a combination of looking around and going "this can't possibly be stable" combined with a degree of wish-fulfillment.

It has more to do with the idea that the system has evolved and advanced for a while. It's not so much about the system ending soon, as it is about it being deeply entrenched and widely adopted, its long-term negative consequences having had time to manifest, and/or being the late stages of a deliberate long-term agenda.

That might be reading into it too much. I'm pretty sure it's just a joke that capitalism is cancer. As in, "late-stage cancer".
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