642 replies to this topic

[Kortoso]

Not at 2500 years it wouldn't be. That's early Iron Age. Not Late Bronze. There's a difference of about 700 years. Odysseus would have lived (and died) in the 1200's BC.

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Yeah, I know, but it's tempting to try to make a connection.

[Swiftsteel]

I've always figured 'Atlantis' was quite simply the new world - North America.

More specifically one of the Mesoamerican pre-Columbian civilizations.

It stands to reason to me that the Americas have never been as great a 'secret' through antiquity as people like to think. Folks got around! Columbus allegedly used Norse maps. The Norse allegedly had their interest in the West piqued by Irish monks who preceded them there. Those Irish monks may well have been following an even earlier Greek or Roman source. Again: people got around! They just didn't do it with the ease and frequency that later technology in shipbuilding provided. I can imagine that probably more than a few Greek, Roman, and Phonecian sailors made their way over and brought back tales of what they saw...but that more often than not whole fleets would likely never survive the crossing and thus the tales grew in the telling of lost oceanic civilizations, cities that must have been swallowed up by the sea since they were so hard to find on a regular basis, etc, etc...

Most myth and legend is borne of fact, and I find if you look at the stories logically and read between the lines, therein often lays the truth.

[Crom]

Archeology has shown that the Phoenicians made it at least as far as the Azores. They also circumnavigated Africa well before the great Renaissance explorers.

[PaulMc]

Archeology has shown that the Phoenicians made it at least as far as the Azores. They also circumnavigated Africa well before the great Renaissance explorers.

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I recently caught something on cable t.v. where they were speculating that the human remains/traits of Southeastern U.S. natives were actually quite different from the Northwest natives. The speculation was that not everyone came over the Bering Strait land bridge. There would have been such a cap of ice reaching down toward the equator that rather than needing to head out on the ocean, small boats could hug the ice coastline all the way from Europe over to North America. The only question would be food and they could have caught fish, or more likely hunted seals, along the way.

[Crom]

Archeology has shown that the Phoenicians made it at least as far as the Azores. They also circumnavigated Africa well before the great Renaissance explorers.

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I recently caught something on cable t.v. where they were speculating that the human remains/traits of Southeastern U.S. natives were actually quite different from the Northwest natives. The speculation was that not everyone came over the Bering Strait land bridge. There would have been such a cap of ice reaching down toward the equator that rather than needing to head out on the ocean, small boats could hug the ice coastline all the way from Europe over to North America. The only question would be food and they could have caught fish, or more likely hunted seals, along the way.

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Yeah, I saw something like that too, Paul. It was presented as a docudrama, taking place around the last ice-age. The father drowned and the kids survived until they reached NA where they met a handful of their own people who made the same journey years before. It was quite good.

[PainBrush]

I recently caught something on cable t.v. where they were speculating that the human remains/traits of Southeastern U.S. natives were actually quite different from the Northwest natives.  The speculation was that not everyone came over the Bering Strait land bridge. 

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Absomundo ! - The western tribes all the way down to South America were/are still smaller of stature & more Asian than the taller & huskier Eastern tribes who had visitors from Europe . It's only a mystery to the white-men the origins of the 'original' folks here , there's more stories & legends in native lore than you could put in an encyclopedia about strangers & visitors from across the seas & the mountains , everything from 'giants' to 'men-of-gold' ( blonde hair ? ) to the 'bear-men' ( old-blood natives never have had beards or 'staches ) .

[Pictish Scout]

Archeology has shown that the Phoenicians made it at least as far as the Azores. They also circumnavigated Africa well before the great Renaissance explorers.

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I'm not sure Phoenicians went to the Azores Islands, or circunmnavigated Africa. There's a possibility that Phoenicians have reached Senegal but couldn't go much South. There was a problem with the Winds that would made the returning North impossible. There's no Arqueologic evidence at all that they circumnavigate Africa or went to Azores. Portuguese did though in the XV century because they had the technology and they navigated out of necessity in the African waters. The area of Phoencian interest was the Mediterranean Sea, and maybe they knew about te Atlantic coast of North-Western Africa and Europe.


About Atlantis... reed Plato the real man. There's some legends about a lost continent in the New World too. Atlantis is a facet of a Deluge Myth, and many cultures had a legend about a great flood.


"The western tribes all the way down to South America were/are still smaller of stature & more Asian than the taller & huskier Eastern tribes who had visitors from Europe ."

If the eastern tribes are taller and huskier and less Asian then the South American ones beacuse they had visitors from Europe ( prior to XVI century) I think it was needed a vary large number of europeans to leave their "gen mark" on these tribes. And where is the evidence?
From Argentina to Alaska the native population can vary a lot because the way they live, the food, the climate,etc. We have to remember that the Amerindians didn't go to America from Asia all at the same time and they didn't belong all to the same people. Even today there are many "races" in east Asia.

[Crom]

Archeology has shown that the Phoenicians made it at least as far as the Azores. They also circumnavigated Africa well before the great Renaissance explorers.

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I'm not sure Phoenicians went to the Azores Islands, or circunmnavigated Africa. There's a possibility that Phoenicians have reached Senegal but couldn't go much South. There was a problem with the Winds that would made the returning North impossible. There's no Arqueologic evidence at all that they circumnavigate Africa or went to Azores.

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As late as October 2004 an article in National Geographic touches on Phoenician exploits in the Atlantic and Africa. I've read evidence supporting, but little to the contrary.

[Kortoso]

Sounds like a healthy skepticism to me.

[Fierro]

Caught a great piece on the Mughal Empire on History Channel. Heavy on weapons technology: the compound bow 9and its use from horseback, the Mughal sword; the armored elephant and the matchlock. I knew very little about all of this and it was fascinating.

Anybody here up on the Mughal Empire c. 1500-1650?

[Xaltotun]

I studied a bit of Mughal period art of India in college, but it probably would be of no relevance to Conan. Very lovely, detail-heavy, delicate style.

[Croms Bones]

Caught a great piece on the Mughal Empire on History Channel. Heavy on weapons technology: the compound bow 9and its use from horseback, the Mughal sword; the armored elephant and the matchlock. I knew very little about all of this and it was fascinating.

Anybody here up on the Mughal Empire c. 1500-1650?

I haven't seen this one.. was it on just recently? My TIVO cannot find any listings for it.

One I did catch was the "Barbarians" series.. which was quite good:
http://store.aetv.co....jhtml?id=71108

[AmokSy-Yin]

Caught a great piece on the Mughal Empire on History Channel. Heavy on weapons technology: the compound bow 9and its use from horseback, the Mughal sword; the armored elephant and the matchlock. I knew very little about all of this and it was fascinating.

Anybody here up on the Mughal Empire c. 1500-1650?

I haven't seen this one.. was it on just recently? My TIVO cannot find any listings for it.

One I did catch was the "Barbarians" series.. which was quite good:
http://store.aetv.co....jhtml?id=71108

It was on the History Channel, Friday, 12 May 8-10.

[deuce]

Caught a great piece on the Mughal Empire on History Channel. Heavy on weapons technology: the compound bow 9and its use from horseback, the Mughal sword; the armored elephant and the matchlock. I knew very little about all of this and it was fascinating.

Anybody here up on the Mughal Empire c. 1500-1650?

If you can find one, Harold Lamb's biography of Babur the Tiger is excellent. REH loved Lamb's work (it shows) and nobody did a historical biography better. If you're diggin' the weapons and such, E. Jaiwant Paul's "Arms and Armour - Traditional Weapons of India" is a beautifully photographed and written book that Bud Plant's selling for like, $12.

[Fierro]

If you can find one, Harold Lamb's biography of Babur the Tiger is excellent. REH loved Lamb's work (it shows) and nobody did a historical biography better. If you're diggin' the weapons and such, E. Jaiwant Paul's "Arms and Armour - Traditional Weapons of India" is a beautifully photographed and written book that Bud Plant's selling for like, $12.
[/quote]

Thanks, Deuce. i must have missed this earlier... buried in work. I like Harold Lamb a lot. Ordering the Peshawar lancers....

[Ironhand]

Washington University in St. Louis News & Information > WUSTL in the News >

WUSTL in the News Spotlight

(Excerpted from BBCNews.com (UK), Wednesday, Oct. 11, 2006)

Drill hole begins Homeric quest

A UK-led team is challenging cherished ideas on Greek mythology by proposing an alternative site for Ithaca.

The island was said to be the home of Odysseus, whose 10-year journey back from the Trojan War is chronicled in Homer's epic poem the Odyssey.

Most people think the modern-day Ionian island of Ithaki is the location.

But geologists are this week sinking a borehole on nearby Kefalonia in an attempt to test whether its western peninsula of Paliki is the real site.

The scientists hope to find evidence that the peninsula once stood proud, separated from Kefalonia by a narrow, navigable marine channel. It is only in the last 2,500-3,000 years - and after Homer's time - that the channel has been filled in, the team contends...

If the existence of a Bronze Age channel on Kefalonia is proven, it is quite likely to set off anew heated arguments about specifics and meaning in the Odyssey.

And some will continue to contest Ithaca's location. Sarantis Symeonoglou is professor of art history and archaeology at Washington University in St Louis, US. He has spent years trying to tie locations on Ithaki to details in the poem.

"I have been digging [there] longer than anyone, since 1984. I already have solid evidence that the site of the city of Odysseus is where Homer says, on the saddle of Aetos, at modern (and ancient) Ithaca. The palace is in a terrible ruined condition, but identifiable! I found a corner of it," he told BBC News in an e-mail.

Appeared in:

Click headline below to view news story as originally posted on an external Web site.

? Drill hole begins Homeric quest

BBCNews.com (UK), Wednesday, Oct. 11, 2006
Byline: Jonathan Amos, Science reporter, BBC News

[PainBrush]

archaeology , ancient cultures , history -'real' & 'imagined' all seem to be pretty popular topics on these boards - here's a pretty interesting news story . I had not heard about them digging this up & starting restoration til just this morning ............

Ancient Brothel Restored in Pompeii
By MARTA FALCONI, AP

POMPEII, Italy (Oct. 27) - It was the jewel of Pompeii's libertines: a brothel decorated with frescoes of erotic figures believed to be the most popular in the ancient Roman city

The Lupanare -- which derives its name from the Latin word "lupa," or "prostitute" -- was presented to the public again Thursday following a yearlong, $253,000 restoration to clean up its frescoes and fix the structure.

Pompeii was destroyed in A.D. 79 by a cataclysmic eruption of Mount Vesuvius that killed thousands of people -- and buried the city in 20 feet of volcanic ash, preserving Pompeii for 1,600 years and providing precious information on what life was like in the ancient world.

Among the buildings was the two-story brothel with 10 rooms -- five on each floor -- and a latrine. Each room on the ground floor bears a fresco of a different sex scene painted over its door -- possibly suggesting the prostitute's specialty.

The upper floor was for higher-ranking clients. The stone beds were covered with mattresses and each room has names engraved in its walls -- possibly those of the prostitutes and their clients.

The brothel -- once centrally located near the city's forum and the market -- is open to the public as part of the regular tour of the ruins of Pompeii, east of Naples.

"The legend that Pompeii was a lascivious city is true -- and not true," said Pietro Giovanni Guzzo, the site's top archaeological official. "There was ample opportunity for sexual relations, but the prostitute in the technical sense was confined to one place."

The building was unearthed in 1862 and has undergone several restorations since, most recently in 1949, officials in Pompeii said. The latest restoration focused on fixing leaks in the building and restoring the frescoes, which had turned yellow and had faded in parts.

Libertine habits flourished in Pompeii, and considerable evidence testifies that the city's wealthy merchants and visiting sailors had a taste for eroticism.

The prostitutes were slaves and were usually of Greek or other foreign origin, and they commanded prices up to eight times the cost of a portion of wine, with revenues going to their owner or the manager of the brothel, officials said.

10-27-06 03:59 EDT
- here's a link to the news page I found that on . - & 'no' - I wasn't looking up ancient *****-houses - it was on my browsers daily news when I signed on this morning & I thought most here would like to check it out , there's a small handful of pictures ( of the ruins , not the prostitutes )
ANCIENT BROTHEL

I get pretty impressed with the knowledge of our brainiac members here on just about any & all topics - so let's hear some of that historical knowledge on the topic of one of the oldest ( even if not the 'noblest' ) of professions , be warned tho - I might ask why any experts on the subject 'are so' !!

" LOVIN' - never had to steal it , never had to pay for it !! " - I think I may trade-mark that line.......

Edited by PAINBRUSH, 27 October 2006 - 12:50 PM.

[Kortoso]

"Restored"? You mean, back in business? Yee-ha!

[Carlos]

Just cause you didn't put any cash on the nightstand doesn't mean you ain't paid for it. Got a buddy who had relations with a woman one time and a year later the state of NC served him with notice to pay child support after the test came back that it was his offspring. His daughter will be eighteen this year and on her birthday he's going to get a $400/month raise. His daughter is however coming to live with him while she's in college. I've never met her but I've been told that she's done a fine job raising her 2 other siblings, all have different fathers. Mom's supposedly still the party girl that she was at 19.

Some women are professional escorts, others are amatuers. You might take a woman's body but you'll rarely ever take her heart. They may give it to you .

The Judeo-Christian sexual mores were created when men rarely lived till 30 and women often died in child birth. If you were a man and you died if you had a brother (or nearest male relative), he was supposed to marry your widow. If your wife died and left you with children, her oldest unwed sister/nearest female relative was supposed to marry you to keep the family units together because most of these marriages were arranged to solidify tribal ties and land holdings. Sex was for procreation not fun. When your a small tribe surrounded by enemies, every able bodied male is considered a tribal asset. Every fertile female was in military terms a force multiplier or logistical asset.

The very idea that you could have enough people that a son or daughter could marry someone who wasn't going to bring substantial assets or political ties would have been considered heretical to proscribed traditions. Sex for pleasure's sake was considered a sin against God's will that you go forth and be fruitful.

Brothels/Prostitution happened when cities sprang up and portable wealth was created. Tribeswomen who didn't follow the social norms were sold to brothels rather than be allowed to upset the society. Some women even ran away to the brothels to avoid an unwanted marriage with someone they considered undesireable. It's said that prostitution created the idea of portable wealth.

[Ironhand]

"Cleaning up the frescos"? You mean painting bikinis on the nudes?