09-11-2010, 01:09 PM
Cole,
I apologize for the vehemence of my first response. I can assure you it was bourne of frustration and not animus. I see now that you were unaware how much I had invested through James, weeks of emails and multiple phone calls, in the originally planned study before the event was cancelled and evidently restarted. What went wrong in the tests is exactly what James was supposed to be there to correct.
Based on the results, I can fairly well predict what was done and do something of a post-mortem. A similar test was done a few years back by, if I recall, Stefanos' group. There again, they stood men upright and packed in ranks, then ran a hoplite into them. One result was that the rear rank of the "crowd" was knocked off his feet. This is exactly what we would predict and is the mechanic behind what is called a Newton's Cradle, those hanging balls seen as desk-toys.
In this case, it seems that you stood up a file of varying length of men belly to back as if in a crowd. You are correct that in othismos this is what most of a file would look like, but in your case it was "disembodied" from what would be the rear of the file. To understand what happened we need to look closer at just how the original system would have worked. In a crowd force is generated in large part when people simply lean in one direction. The force derives mainly from their weight resting on the person in front. You can envision this as a line of dominoes, each leaning against the next and adding a bit of weight to whatever the last one rests against. In this they are something like an arch, transferring their mass laterally. In crowds this happens spontaneously and accidentally. Hoplites would coordinate this leaning.
The key to making a file a crowd is the rear rankers, who themselves are not under such crowded conditions, but may in fact be just like the file of 2 or 4 you had opposing the "crowd". If I stand at the back of a crowd and push them tight together and leaning towards you, then to my pushing force all of the weight in the file of "dominoes" gets added. Thus my force is magnified as if I were pushing a battering ram into you. This actually occurred in your tests, but in the middle of the "crowd" file where men were lifted off their feet. I would imagine that force that can lift a man like this is also enough to asphyxiate him over time if sustained, so it is nice to see that less that so few men can generate this. As you can see from the domino analogy, if your front rankers get pushed back on their heels they are actually adding to your foes' force. So what was needed is at least one rank of men, but probably more, in the rear not standing up and more importantly a coordinated wave of force projected forward. This is why they held their own when leaning forward, but when they attempted to push they were in fact pushed back.
Also, it should be clear that at low file number this system breaks down and is in fact worse than other types of pushing. Thus you mixed up crowd pushing, with Square-to-fore pushing. They are very different. In a crowd you are square forward and forced to simply lean forward, but one on one you do not stand up like in a crowd. What you do it get low and blast forward from the legs. Had you done this the women would very likely have gotten hurt and surely not stood their ground. In my own experiments this always beats a side-on stance when done properly- you have to stay low and drive through your opponent. The problem is that you cannot add many ranks together doing this, or rather if you do, they end up like the leaning crowd above. The same is true for side-on pushers, they don't add their efforts in longer files. I would like to have derived a force curve for side-on and forward pushing to see at what rank number this breaks down. This is why I am curious as to what the pose was of the women in the front ranks when pushed from behind. In my experience, under enough pressure, the side-on stance cannot be maintained and you end up squashed into your shield in a forward stance in any case.
I have other questions about spear use, but pictures would be worth many thousands of words.
I apologize for the vehemence of my first response. I can assure you it was bourne of frustration and not animus. I see now that you were unaware how much I had invested through James, weeks of emails and multiple phone calls, in the originally planned study before the event was cancelled and evidently restarted. What went wrong in the tests is exactly what James was supposed to be there to correct.
Based on the results, I can fairly well predict what was done and do something of a post-mortem. A similar test was done a few years back by, if I recall, Stefanos' group. There again, they stood men upright and packed in ranks, then ran a hoplite into them. One result was that the rear rank of the "crowd" was knocked off his feet. This is exactly what we would predict and is the mechanic behind what is called a Newton's Cradle, those hanging balls seen as desk-toys.
In this case, it seems that you stood up a file of varying length of men belly to back as if in a crowd. You are correct that in othismos this is what most of a file would look like, but in your case it was "disembodied" from what would be the rear of the file. To understand what happened we need to look closer at just how the original system would have worked. In a crowd force is generated in large part when people simply lean in one direction. The force derives mainly from their weight resting on the person in front. You can envision this as a line of dominoes, each leaning against the next and adding a bit of weight to whatever the last one rests against. In this they are something like an arch, transferring their mass laterally. In crowds this happens spontaneously and accidentally. Hoplites would coordinate this leaning.
The key to making a file a crowd is the rear rankers, who themselves are not under such crowded conditions, but may in fact be just like the file of 2 or 4 you had opposing the "crowd". If I stand at the back of a crowd and push them tight together and leaning towards you, then to my pushing force all of the weight in the file of "dominoes" gets added. Thus my force is magnified as if I were pushing a battering ram into you. This actually occurred in your tests, but in the middle of the "crowd" file where men were lifted off their feet. I would imagine that force that can lift a man like this is also enough to asphyxiate him over time if sustained, so it is nice to see that less that so few men can generate this. As you can see from the domino analogy, if your front rankers get pushed back on their heels they are actually adding to your foes' force. So what was needed is at least one rank of men, but probably more, in the rear not standing up and more importantly a coordinated wave of force projected forward. This is why they held their own when leaning forward, but when they attempted to push they were in fact pushed back.
Also, it should be clear that at low file number this system breaks down and is in fact worse than other types of pushing. Thus you mixed up crowd pushing, with Square-to-fore pushing. They are very different. In a crowd you are square forward and forced to simply lean forward, but one on one you do not stand up like in a crowd. What you do it get low and blast forward from the legs. Had you done this the women would very likely have gotten hurt and surely not stood their ground. In my own experiments this always beats a side-on stance when done properly- you have to stay low and drive through your opponent. The problem is that you cannot add many ranks together doing this, or rather if you do, they end up like the leaning crowd above. The same is true for side-on pushers, they don't add their efforts in longer files. I would like to have derived a force curve for side-on and forward pushing to see at what rank number this breaks down. This is why I am curious as to what the pose was of the women in the front ranks when pushed from behind. In my experience, under enough pressure, the side-on stance cannot be maintained and you end up squashed into your shield in a forward stance in any case.
I have other questions about spear use, but pictures would be worth many thousands of words.
Paul M. Bardunias
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A Spartan, being asked a question, answered "No." And when the questioner said, "You lie," the Spartan said, "You see, then, that it is stupid of you to ask questions to which you already know the answer!"
MODERATOR: [url:2dqwu8yc]http://www.romanarmytalk.com/rat/viewtopic.php?t=4100[/url]
A Spartan, being asked a question, answered "No." And when the questioner said, "You lie," the Spartan said, "You see, then, that it is stupid of you to ask questions to which you already know the answer!"
