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Dead soldiers' teeth reveal diseases that doomed Napoleon's army

washingtonpost.com

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Re: Dead soldiers' teeth reveal diseases that doomed Napoleon's army

#71

Post by lithocarpus »

georgeburdell wrote: post #67
travisjungroth wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Harder diets were more common in ancient humans, and straighten teeth in childhood. I don’t know what the diet was like in 1800.

Do you have any proof? A doctor once mentioned this to me, but then I talked to an orthodontist and he called it BS

Not proof, but logic: Without machinery to do the work of processing food, it has to done by hand or not at all, which leads to a lot more jaw work. Especially if you're eating a lot of animals where you'll be eating off of bones. But even with plants too.

Re: Dead soldiers' teeth reveal diseases that doomed Napoleon's army

#72

Post by potato3732842 »

smogcutter wrote: post #68
username332211 wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a lot less interesting once you look trough the names of senior Russian officers - de Tolly, Bagration, von Benningsen, Wittgenstein, Osterman-Tolstoy. One begins to suspect that the reason Kutuzov replaced Barkley was for a sort of reverse-DEI reasons.

To add - there’s also an Austrian general named O’Reilly, and a famously subpar Macdonald for the French. The French at the time were busy inventing nationalism. Someone suitably aristocratic could find a place as an officer basically anywhere.

> Austrian general named O’Reilly,

No contribution to military logistics or motor pool related just in case anyone else is tempted to read up on him to find out.

Re: Dead soldiers' teeth reveal diseases that doomed Napoleon's army

#73

Post by lostlogin »

cryptonector wrote: post #61
hunterpayne wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The Nazis made the same choice in WWII and even though they were able to control the Baltics and had Finland as an ally never seriously threatened to take the city. There was an 18 month siege of SP during WWII. SP starved and people there resorted to cannibalism to survive. I don't remember if it was ever taken but the Germans definitely tried to. And the situation there was ghoulish, so even if they didn't, they…

SP was never taken by the axis.

Never taken, but it was a city in the Axis alliance while Russian and Germany carved up Poland.

Re: Dead soldiers' teeth reveal diseases that doomed Napoleon's army

#74

Post by cryptonector »

lostlogin wrote: post #73
cryptonector wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

SP was never taken by the axis.

Never taken, but it was a city in the Axis alliance while Russian and Germany carved up Poland.

I know no one who considers the USSR to have been an Axis power between the start of the war and Operation Barbarossa.

Re: Dead soldiers' teeth reveal diseases that doomed Napoleon's army

#75

Post by [deleted] »

lithocarpus wrote: post #71
georgeburdell wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you have any proof? A doctor once mentioned this to me, but then I talked to an orthodontist and he called it BS

Not proof, but logic: Without machinery to do the work of processing food, it has to done by hand or not at all, which leads to a lot more jaw work. Especially if you're eating a lot of animals where you'll be eating off of bones. But even with plants too.

[deleted]

Re: Dead soldiers' teeth reveal diseases that doomed Napoleon's army

#76

Post by mkl »

ciupicri wrote: post #70
cpleppert wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A bunch of reasons. 1. Napoleon's goal was to pursue and defeat the Russian army in the field, not necessarily capture cities. Going north would have meant releasing the pressure on the main russian field armies and let them engage his main force at their discretion while exposing his flank. 2. St. Petersburg remained the political and economic capital of Russia; St. Petersburg never displaced Moscow in real world im…

Wasn't Moscow the capital of Russia during WW II?

Yes. It became capital again in 1918 (Saint Petersburg had become capital in 1712).

Re: Dead soldiers' teeth reveal diseases that doomed Napoleon's army

#77

Post by mkl »

littlestymaar wrote: post #55
codedokode wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As I remember, after French revolution, there were coalitions of foreign monarchies with the goal of punishing France [1]. Also what surprises me, after years of several revolutions and chaos in France, how could Napoleon gather such a large army. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_of_the_First_Coalition

> Also what surprises me, after years of several revolutions and chaos in France, how could Napoleon gather such a large army. Conscription + France was basically the China of Europe at that point: it was almost as populated as the rest of Europe combined. France then had a very, very, early demographic transition which dramatically limited its population. Had France followed the demographic path of England or German…

> France was basically the China of Europe at that point: it was almost as populated as the rest of Europe combined.

That doesn't seem to be correct. From Wikipedia: "During the Middle Ages, more than one-quarter of Europe's total population was French;[8] by the seventeenth century, this had decreased slightly to one-fifth. By the beginning of the nineteenth century, other European countries, such as Germany and Russia, had caught up with France and overtaken it in number of people." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_France

Re: Dead soldiers' teeth reveal diseases that doomed Napoleon's army

#78

Post by lostlogin »

cryptonector wrote: post #74
lostlogin wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Never taken, but it was a city in the Axis alliance while Russian and Germany carved up Poland.

I know no one who considers the USSR to have been an Axis power between the start of the war and Operation Barbarossa.

You're correct and I'm wrong. Germany started negotiating Russia joining but this seems to have been disingenuous from Germany and part of the lead in to the attack on Russia.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German–Soviet_Axis_talks

Re: Dead soldiers' teeth reveal diseases that doomed Napoleon's army

#79

Post by cryptonector »

lostlogin wrote: post #78
cryptonector wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know no one who considers the USSR to have been an Axis power between the start of the war and Operation Barbarossa.

You're correct and I'm wrong. Germany started negotiating Russia joining but this seems to have been disingenuous from Germany and part of the lead in to the attack on Russia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German–Soviet_Axis_talks

It's more complicated than that. Go have a listen of the Mannerheim tape with Hitler. Hitler basically confesses to Mannerheim that Stalin was blackmailing Hitler with oil and that this was the casus belli for Hitler, but then Hitler had no idea of Stalin's tank manufacturing prowess and he says that if he had known he wouldn't have invaded Russia. Super interesting. You get the impression that though Hitler hated Russia and Russians, it was events that led to Barbarossa rather than Hitler's long-term plan -- things got away from his control real quick.

Re: Dead soldiers' teeth reveal diseases that doomed Napoleon's army

#80

Post by user____name »

georgeburdell wrote: post #67
travisjungroth wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Harder diets were more common in ancient humans, and straighten teeth in childhood. I don’t know what the diet was like in 1800.

Do you have any proof? A doctor once mentioned this to me, but then I talked to an orthodontist and he called it BS

I think the theory is that modern jaws are too narrow to contain all the teeth, causing them to overlap and grow in "unintended" directions. The reason for the narrowness is lack of exercise in childhood due to the soft nature of prepared foods. I'm also a bit sceptical.
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