06-27-2014, 06:08 PM
Well adaptation is not devolution...it's simply adapting. Yeah our nutritional profiles are massively different and that alone has massive implications for how different we are from them as a society.
Like I said the best route to grasping these differences is, well, firstly realising that there are large areas we're just not going to know about in enough detail. Beyond that, taking a step back and looking at things like social organisation, laws, religion and what not. If I've learnt anything from years of dealing with the Romans it is how strikingly different they are on so many levels from us and even from their contemporaries. Unfortunately a lot of this stuff gets lost in translation and general historical accounts but what can you do?
Now as for turning that stuff to the military I've honestly no idea. I don't know much about the ancient military stuff but the point is when making comparisons to moderns (the point of this thread) if you have to serious grounds for doing so. It's one thing to use ethnographic materials from other pre-industrial societies (which is valid but has caveats) and its another thing to draw false equivalences. You can't a priori postulate a similarity when making an interpretation but must first demonstrate how such a comparison is valid before extrapolating anything.
Like I said the best route to grasping these differences is, well, firstly realising that there are large areas we're just not going to know about in enough detail. Beyond that, taking a step back and looking at things like social organisation, laws, religion and what not. If I've learnt anything from years of dealing with the Romans it is how strikingly different they are on so many levels from us and even from their contemporaries. Unfortunately a lot of this stuff gets lost in translation and general historical accounts but what can you do?
Now as for turning that stuff to the military I've honestly no idea. I don't know much about the ancient military stuff but the point is when making comparisons to moderns (the point of this thread) if you have to serious grounds for doing so. It's one thing to use ethnographic materials from other pre-industrial societies (which is valid but has caveats) and its another thing to draw false equivalences. You can't a priori postulate a similarity when making an interpretation but must first demonstrate how such a comparison is valid before extrapolating anything.
Jass
