[HN Gopher] Cold war satellite images reveal unknown Roman forts
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Cold war satellite images reveal unknown Roman forts
Author : BerislavLopac
Score : 233 points
Date : 2023-10-26 12:31 UTC (10 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.theguardian.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.theguardian.com)
| kevmo wrote:
| Would be interesting to read a more technical analysis about the
| software/code used to analyze all these images.
| my12parsecs wrote:
| I thought the declassification of US government documents was 25
| years. Or I guess there's an exemption when it comes to military
| intelligence? I wonder where and when the data was collected.
| consp wrote:
| Maybe it's just analog to digital conversion. Some stuff only
| gets used for research after some digitization project since
| it's not really searchable on a more global scale otherwise.
| Could be completely wrong here of course.
| Arainach wrote:
| What do you mean by "where and when the data was collected"? As
| the article says, the photos are from the 60s and 70s in Iraq
| and Syria.
|
| The source of the photos was the CORONA and HEXAGON satellites:
| https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/antiquity/article/wa...
|
| The journal article cites its sources which you can use to
| understand more:
| https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00934690.2020.1...
|
| The data has been available for quite a while, but available is
| different from usable:
|
| > While challenges involved in spatially correcting these
| unusual panoramic film images has long served as a stumbling
| block to researchers, an online tool called "Sunspot" now
| offers a straightforward process for efficient and accurate
| orthorectification of CORONA, helping to unlock the potential
| of this historical imagery for global-scale archaeological
| prospection. With these new opportunities come significant new
| challenges in how best to search through large imagery datasets
| like that offered by CORONA.
| my12parsecs wrote:
| You're right I should've looked more closely, but I was just
| wondering about what it said towards the end of the article
| about U2 spy photographs and what's becoming declassified.
| jjulius wrote:
| > After 25 years, declassification review is automatic with
| nine narrow exceptions that allow information to remain as
| classified. At 50 years, there are two exceptions, and
| classifications beyond 75 years require special
| permission.[0]
|
| The nine exemptions can be found at the Justice
| Department's website[1].
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Declassification [1] http
| s://www.justice.gov/archives/open/declassification/decla...
| blincoln wrote:
| The journal article is much more interesting than the
| Guardian article, IMO. Thank you for sharing the link.
| acheron wrote:
| Why HN users insist on submitting Guardian articles is
| beyond me.
| pyrale wrote:
| The amount of available documents has skyrocketed in recent
| past, especially for present-day history, and they're not
| always easily usable. For instance, if your interested in the
| Stalin administration, there are millions of orders, notes,
| studies and transmissions stored in boxes somewhere. If you
| were a historian in that time period, studying new documents, a
| lifetime would only let you see a very tiny fraction of
| existing sources.
|
| Remember these movies where a small-firm lawyer is hammered
| with tons of document boxes in a discovery process against a
| big corporation? Well, historians are like that, but they have
| less money and they don't know how many boxes there are. Also
| they have to look for the boxes themselves rather than them
| being delivered at their office.
|
| In older, well-studied fields there are few boxes, they are
| already referenced, and historians have a chance to see
| everything over their career. In more recent, less studied
| fields, there are countless unopened boxes.
| quacked wrote:
| I'm not a big proponent of LLM proliferation, but I was
| thinking that mass review of tons of scanned documents might
| be exactly the sort of thing they're really useful for. Given
| an AI that hasn't been ruthlessly tuned to be as politically
| neutral as possible, you could have a huge database and query
| it in plain English like "were there any documents that made
| overt reference to extremely corrupt behavior?"
| Fiahil wrote:
| To answer a query, your LLM needs to "read" the documents
| first. The context window will not be big enough for this,
| so you have to fine tune the model.
|
| Problem is, you need to cross-check with the reference
| material in case it's subject to hallucinations.
| quacked wrote:
| Oh, I was thinking that the cross-checking is the point.
| You'd use the LLM as a "hazily thinking search function"
| to narrow your examination of old documents, not as a
| replacement for reading the documents.
|
| I don't know what to do about the context window, though.
| eternauta3k wrote:
| I don't understand, can't you feed it one page at a time
| and ask it "is there relevant information here?"
| pyrale wrote:
| People with the knowhow to do this kind of stuff are mostly
| busy trading eyeballs or stock, and college history
| departments are not exactly rolling in it.
|
| Still, there is an effort made to make these collections
| more easily avaialble. For instance, in the case of soviet
| archives, [1] describes the work done and the conditions to
| access. That work is far from exhaustive though, and a
| large part of the stuff still needs to be done the slow
| way, or require special requests in order to be accessed.
|
| [1]: https://www.ucl.ac.uk/ceelbas/state-archive-russian-
| federati...
| dboreham wrote:
| > 25 years
|
| If that was true we'd have all the Kennedy assassination docs.
| aftbit wrote:
| They're probably exempted under:
|
| >25X7 - reveal information that would impair the current
| ability of U.S. government officials to protect the
| President, Vice President, and other protectees for whom
| protection services, in the interest of national security,
| are authorized;
| BiteCode_dev wrote:
| Which you have to trust them about, because nobody can
| verify that.
|
| Basically back to step one: they tell you what they want.
| mcpackieh wrote:
| Maybe it's this one:
|
| > _(6) reveal information, including foreign government
| information, that would cause serious harm to relations
| between the United States and a foreign government, or to
| ongoing diplomatic activities of the United States;_
| ourmandave wrote:
| Like that scene from the JFK movie where Donald
| Sutherland's character is going through a long check list
| of all the things the secret service would have done.
|
| Like, snipers on roof tops, planning the route so there's
| no slow downs, etc.
| scarecrowbob wrote:
| Not that you're incorrect but in addition to withholding
| documentation, sometimes they just destroy it, too.
|
| https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/nsa/DOCUMENT/940228.htm
|
| " In August 1974, the Joint Chiefs of Staff destroyed all the
| minutes and transcripts of their meetings going back to 1947,
| and in 1978 essentially stopped keeping any such records.
| Only 30 pages of notes have survived, much to the dismay of
| military historians and scholars of the Cold War."
|
| So, like, we will never get the discussions around, say, them
| using smallpox against North Korea.
| jandrese wrote:
| The outgoing Nixon administration had to cover their tracks
| for some reason.
| anonu wrote:
| Makes me wonder how much information and insights can be gleaned
| from data that's just out there in the public domain. Can
| generative AI help with data-mining and extracting interesting
| and new things like this?
| anonu wrote:
| The Eastern front of the Roman Empire is full of surprises. One
| fact that always impresses me is that one of the largest
| hippodromes in the Roman Empire is found in modern-day Tyr, in
| the South of Lebanon. The entire region is dotted with Roman
| presence.
| Bayart wrote:
| The area was heavily urbanised before Rome was around, it
| stands to reason that it remained relevant throughout the Roman
| Empire (to the point of _being_ the Roman Empire after the slow
| collapse of the Western administration).
| euroderf wrote:
| Such that Constantinople was more or less the center of
| "Western Civ" for, like, a thousand years.
| maximinus_thrax wrote:
| Do you mean Constantinople was the center of civilization
| such as a thousand years? Or was it identical to a thousand
| years?
| Intralexical wrote:
| Never fear; the Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary can
| help you out:
|
| > like, adverb
|
| > 2. used in very informal speech to show that what you
| are saying may not be exactly right but is nearly so
|
| Pedantry is neither clever nor educational.
| maximinus_thrax wrote:
| > Pedantry is neither clever nor educational.
|
| What about irony?
| nologic01 wrote:
| the barycenter of human civilization has lingered over this
| broader area for millennia. It is sad that in modern times it
| never managed to gain at least some basic stability, if not a
| revival and renewed contributions to the human storybook.
|
| maybe its the curse of the oil. maybe its something else.
| downWidOutaFite wrote:
| [deleted]
| xkcd1963 wrote:
| It was much more a response to islamic expandism than a
| cursed dream.
| mcpackieh wrote:
| European messianic dreams is an interesting way to describe
| three religions that all originated and were exported from
| from this general region, _not_ in Europe.
| nologic01 wrote:
| the causes might be viciously debatable and challenged but
| the lost opportunity (versus a counterfactual universe
| where there is less strife and destruction and more
| coherence and construction) is quite tangible. one can only
| hope that the recent past is not the exact predictor of the
| future.
| mannyv wrote:
| Funny, most people in the West seem unaware of the numerous
| Islamic attacks and messianic dreams of Islam. The ottoman
| empire was also a Muslim empire...again something people
| seem to forget about.
|
| And don't get me started on the Muslim tradition of
| enslaving everyone.
| lm28469 wrote:
| There is some weird kind of selective amnesia in the
| west, we at the same time downplay our achievements and
| put the focus on our perceived errors. While everybody
| else is doing the exact opposite, so not only we teach
| our kids to hate themselves we give good reasons for
| others to do so as well.
|
| It's as if the only empires that existed were Europeean
| and the only slaves that existed were from the atlantic
| trade
|
| Ironic given how basically every civilisation did similar
| things, Europeans were just better at it for a small time
| but before them Arabs had a good go at it too, not even
| mentioning the Chinese empire. The whole world and its
| history is a shit show, just because you're at the tip of
| one of the remaining branch doesn't mean you have to hate
| your country and everything it did.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Early_Muslim_conquests
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Umayyad_Caliphate
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Almohad_Caliphate
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery_in_Africa
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery_in_Asia#:~:text=Sla
| ver....
| throwbadubadu wrote:
| > There is some weird kind of selective amnesia in the
| west, we at the same time downplay our achievements and
| put the focus on our perceived errors.
|
| There are those and those, and each side says something
| like this about the other, the real minority is
| realistically seeing the whole picture.
|
| Also self-reflection isn't a bad thing, we can only
| change ourselves and then influence others (hopefully
| without force :)).
| lm28469 wrote:
| > Also self-reflection isn't a bad thing
|
| Of course, but you can't call yourself a victim 24/7
| while at the same time not acknowledging other
| countries/religions/whatever faults.
|
| It's rarely black nor white, and the shade of grey varies
| depending on which side and which period you're born into
| bboygravity wrote:
| Arabs had a good go at it? As in past tense?
|
| Last I checked slavery is still very common in many arab
| nations as we speak?
| empath-nirvana wrote:
| Do you mean the greek and roman tradition of enslaving
| everyone, and the American and English tradition of
| enslaving everyone?
| labster wrote:
| What about the pan-African and Mesoamerican traditions of
| enslaving everyone? Slavery was pretty much everywhere in
| the world. Then Christians invented the idea of not
| enslaving fellow Christians, then Muslims did the same
| (which really helped the spread of both religions!).
|
| Mathematically speaking, you reading this are the
| descendant of enslaved peoples. They could be so far back
| that it doesn't affect your economic status, like being a
| Mamluk in Egypt, or a Carthaginian in Rome, or a Hebrew
| in Egypt. But all of humanity was touched by this non-
| peculiar institution.
| Karrot_Kream wrote:
| The Arab slave trade was huge and racist in its own way
| (where poorer, usually darker skinned peoples were
| enslaved and traded by wealthier, lighter skinned
| peoples.) Western European colonial ambitions definitely
| wounded the area significantly but the Islamicate world
| was still practicing slavery after Western Europe had
| largely banned it and stopped practicing it. It's recent
| enough in Islamicate history that traditionalist groups
| lay claim to slavery as a custom even now in the region.
| aksss wrote:
| Then don't say it. Simplistic and one-sided commentary on
| history are best left out of a conversation.
| downWidOutaFite wrote:
| Eh, maybe you're right. The thread is starting to
| devolve. I'll delete it .
| anonu wrote:
| You only managed to delete your comment - not the thread.
| Future readers are left with no context.
| lm28469 wrote:
| The region has been at war at least since we learned how to
| write... well before modern religions even existed
| jbandela1 wrote:
| > It is sad that in modern times it never managed to gain at
| least some basic stability,
|
| It is not just about modern times:
|
| It was fought over by:
|
| * Akkadians
|
| * Hittites
|
| * Egyptians
|
| * Assyrians
|
| * Babylonians
|
| * Achmenid Persians
|
| * Greeks
|
| * Macedonians
|
| * Seleucids
|
| * Ptolemies
|
| * Romans
|
| * Parthians
|
| * Sassanian Persians
|
| * Byzantines
|
| * Arabs
|
| * Seljuk Turks
|
| * Crusaders
|
| * Mongols
|
| * Ottoman Turks
|
| * Safavid Persians
|
| * French
|
| * British
|
| * Americans
|
| (And I am sure I am leaving out many others)
|
| For a long time, this part of the word has been the
| battleground between Empires. It stands at the crossroads of
| Europe, Asia, and Africa.
|
| The instability is not just a modern phenomenon
| empath-nirvana wrote:
| Well, you're looking at 4000 year time scale. There were
| large periods of time throughout where there was stability
| over wide parts of it over the scale of decades or even
| centuries.
| anonu wrote:
| > maybe its the curse of the oil.
|
| There is no oil in the Eastern Mediterranean. Only in the
| past decade has offshore drilling started to explore natural
| gas.
| Karrot_Kream wrote:
| In recent history it's largely due to the Sykes-Picot
| agreement. The Ottoman Empire fell at a time when nationalism
| was arising and empires were going out of favor. In that
| power vacuum, inaccurate lines were drawn in the sand by
| colonial powers with little stake in life in the region.
| Since then every nation carved out of the area has been
| fighting over anything and everything because historically
| the area was ruled by large empires rather than the nation-
| states that were arbitrarily drawn there now. The history of
| the area is so old and intertwined that every country there
| has a claim of something on the other side of their borders
| within spitting distance. Western Europe had similar issues
| when the Western Roman Empire collapsed.
| dopidopHN wrote:
| Tyr was a old and rich city when the Roman were still a random
| Latin tribes in Italy.
|
| Carthage was founded by Tyr. The Phoenician are the one who
| bring the alphabet in Mediterranean as well.
|
| During Roman time, Tyr has lost his power. But I guess it was
| still a important place culturally ? Like ... Rome now?
| WhereIsTheTruth wrote:
| > In addition, many of the likely Roman forts we have documented
| in this study have already been destroyed by recent urban or
| agricultural development, and countless others are under extreme
| threat
|
| How many of them are now destroyed due to US bombing?
| WhereIsTheTruth wrote:
| I wanted to point out how this article chose to ignore that
| fact
|
| But people have very small and selective memory it seems, war
| torn countries, bombing + destruction/looting by local
| terrorist groups
|
| https://www.wmf.org/blog/impact-war-syrias-archaeological-si...
|
| https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/race-save-syrias-arch...
|
| https://www.ucf.edu/news/war-rages-archaeologist-uses-satell...
| empath-nirvana wrote:
| In general, ruins in the middle of the desert don't tend to be
| bombing targets. The vast majority of them will have been
| destroyed by construction or farms.
| nologic01 wrote:
| If you (like me) wondered why go back decades to what is
| pressumably lower quality imagery than what is available today,
| here is the spoiler:
|
| > They (cold war era) "preserve a high-resolution, stereo
| perspective on a landscape that has been severely impacted by
| modern-day land-use change"
| morkalork wrote:
| How did they get the stereo perspective, did they use a delay
| between photos from the same satellite so there was enough time
| for it to travel?
| sigmar wrote:
| >The first CORONA satellites had a single camera, but a two-
| camera system was quickly implemented.[40] The front camera
| was tilted 15deg aft, and the rear camera tilted 15deg
| forward, so that a stereoscopic image could be obtained
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CORONA_(satellite)#Cameras
| _whiteCaps_ wrote:
| And then you can view them with something like this:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stereoscope
| ska wrote:
| There are different ways to do it, that's one of them.
|
| A lot of the techniques were first used with airplanes, then
| later with satellites. Lots of overlap because planes allowed
| for easier localization and better resolution, especially
| earlier on in remote sensing.
| lapetitejort wrote:
| Not only that, but
|
| > In addition, many of the likely Roman forts we have
| documented in this study have already been destroyed by recent
| urban or agricultural development, and countless others are
| under extreme threat.
| kristopolous wrote:
| How does this happen? Do you just see a bunch of ruins on your
| land and think "well if it was important people would know
| about it! Let's toss all this stuff in dumpster!"?
|
| I can't imagine how many things went down like that. Large
| Dinosaur repositories and people trying to plant some
| vegetables were like "geez another bunch of bones. Alright,
| into the fire"
| kortilla wrote:
| Yes. Altruism does not scale. It is very likely they thought,
| "oh, this is some old looking shit but doesn't look that
| important. Better clean it up quickly before the
| preservationists come in and bankrupt this project."
| calvinmorrison wrote:
| Certain groups of islamofascists intentionally destroyed
| known artifacts, ruins and even excavated and preseved sites
| like Palmyra during earlier stages of the Syrian Civil War.
|
| Also in areas that are in war time conflicts, or in poverty,
| preserving may not be a top priority.
|
| For example Gaza is the site of many historic cities dating
| thousands of years old.
| newsclues wrote:
| Lots of people are highly motivated by the need to eat and
| don't have the luxury of caring about history.
| Swizec wrote:
| In most of Europe (and probably elsewhere), you can't throw a
| rock without hitting some sort of historically significant
| thing.
|
| We used to smoke weed on the local Roman wall. It was also a
| popular destination for rock climbers to practice. The wall
| has been there for 2000 years. It's fine.
| olddustytrail wrote:
| It's a bunch of stones. How would anyone know whether it was
| 200 years old or 2000? You can't ask archeologists in for
| every old cowshed built by your great grandfather!
| mapmeld wrote:
| Somewhat; Tim Traveler recently visited a 5,000-year-old
| dolmen in France, and it's preserved, but treated like any
| other small roadside attraction
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1S6wP8ox1R4
| seszett wrote:
| I can't really watch the video but a dolmen in France _is_
| just a small roadside attraction, there are so many and
| they are usually on private property, you can 't build a
| museum and visitors center around every single dolmen.
| nologic01 wrote:
| When living _within_ any era, it is really hard to appreciate
| how much of the stuff we value (and what we don 't) is just a
| cultural convention specific to that era (and with a high
| degree of arbitrariness).
|
| People historically would routinely recycle anything of value
| and reusability. What has survived from previous times is
| more or less by accident (too bulky, too hidden etc.)
|
| The idea of trying to preserve historical artifacts seems to
| be entirely modern, but even that concept has evolved alot.
| In the 19th century people did not think twice about
| mutilating and removing pieces to remote museums or
| "restoring" sites purely speculatively.
| eszed wrote:
| Your point is well-taken, but there is:
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ennigaldi-Nanna%27s_museum
|
| It's one of my favorite archeological finds ever.
|
| I suspect that there have been people in every age who
| valued, preserved, and studied material remains of the
| past. At a broad social and cultural level, however, you
| are correct.
| codedokode wrote:
| This still happens today. For example, city walls of Moscow
| were started to be dismantled in 19th century and whatever
| left was destroyed by the communists after revolution. To
| widen the roads in the center of the city the communists
| demolished 18th and 19th century historical buildings
| (luckily some other buildings were just moved away using
| rails).
|
| Also new construction sometimes happens in the center and you
| cannot build something new without destroying a part of
| history first.
| fsckboy wrote:
| a great example is the Rosetta Stone, a 2000 year old tablet
| that contained 3 translations of a proclamation by the King
| (Ptolemy V). It was discovered in Egypt by Napoleon's army
| and for the first time in the modern day allowed ancient
| Egyptian writing to be deciphered and read.
|
| my favorite part of the story is, when the Rosetta Stone was
| discovered, it had been considered rubble and was being used
| as one of the bricks in some more recent construction.
| eichin wrote:
| One of the big sources of new runestone discoveries in Sweden
| is "load bearing part of someone's basement" (and that
| similarly some amount of the Acropolis turns up as having
| been used as construction material.)
| lazide wrote:
| Construction involving digging is nearly impossible in most
| European cities because it's impossible to dig without
| hitting ruins. Rural areas aren't that much better. And it
| all has SOME historic value.
|
| [https://www.reuters.com/article/us-italy-politics-
| metro/rome...]
|
| For the most part, now it's 'take pictures, grab anything
| that looks particularly interesting, and bulldoze on'.
|
| At some point, especially if you're a random not-super-
| wealthy farmer in the middle of nowhere, you have to go 'fuck
| it, whatever' or you're going to not get anything done.
| Ensorceled wrote:
| I remember going to a museum and seeing a 150 year old tool
| (a cant hook) that was in worse shape than the identical
| version my father had in his garage and was still using as a
| tool.
|
| Time scales are much larger of course, but at some point
| these are just "old things" to the people involved.
| fritzo wrote:
| I find stereo pair aerial imagery hugely helpful in
| understanding terrain. While Google Earth is great to get a
| gross overview, our eyes are much better at inferring sub-meter
| detail from pairs of stereo photos, e.g. from a single airplane
| taken a few seconds apart.
|
| What are some good sources of public aerial stereo imagery? The
| only source I've found is NOAA https://www.noaa.gov/topic-
| tags/aerial-imagery
| znpy wrote:
| The quality of those images (from 50-60 years ago) really makes
| me wonder what level of quality/detail can satellite imagery
| reach (particularly us government spy satellites).
| mannyv wrote:
| In the 90s it was said they could read a license plate. It's
| probably better by now.
| jtwaleson wrote:
| From satellites? I find that hard to believe, I always
| thought that the atmospheric distortion significantly limits
| the resolution of the images.
| selectodude wrote:
| That picture that Donald Trump tweeted out of the failed
| Iranian rocket launch seemed sharp enough to make out
| license plates.
|
| https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1167493371973255
| 1...
| jtwaleson wrote:
| That structure seems really large. But it's really sharp
| and I'd say within an order of magnitude of reading
| license plates. Doesn't seem like a stretch to think they
| can go to higher resolutions.
| justrealist wrote:
| This seems like maybe 10cm resolution. Close but not
| there.
| mannyv wrote:
| That's why it was classified. Belief is irrelevant.
|
| You can lookup keyhole imagery from the old days. Keyhole
| was the original codename for them.
| jtwaleson wrote:
| Do you have a link? I'm curious.
| m4rtink wrote:
| Astronomical telescopes use active mirrors for atmosphere
| compensations - maybe a satellite could do the same to get
| a clearer image, just pointing the other direction ?
| acdha wrote:
| It does, but it's the kind of problem you can throw
| computation at, along with adaptive optics. If you remember
| that photo Trump released, that was from a KH-11, which
| launched in the 70s (Hubble reused some of the design to
| save money) and they it generating data in the gigabit
| range back then so I'd imagine they have a high enough
| frame rate that you could get many frames to interpolate
| even for a moving subject.
|
| They pour a LOT of money into that kind of capability so
| I'd be hesitant to say it's impossible 50 years later.
| IshKebab wrote:
| No need to wonder. Trump tweeted a photo.
|
| https://www.npr.org/2022/11/18/1137474748/trump-tweeted-an-i...
| araes wrote:
| I had a difficult time placing these sites (even with the Tigris-
| Euphrates) in a larger world context (like, "how large is this
| area?", and "relative to all Roman area").
|
| So, I made a graphic that may be mildly helpful. [1]
|
| Based on a quick check, these best I could find was the fort at
| Circesium (known as the "farthest fortress" (phrourion eskhaton)
| of the Romans), which apparently existed by 256 AD. [2] However,
| the Roman Empire was basically over by 256 AD, and was in the
| process of splitting into West-East (Crisis of the Third
| Century[3]) and had likely already formed the breakaway Palmyrene
| Empire [4] ruled over by Zenobia.
|
| All locations have therefore been placed on a map of the
| Palmyrene Empire (circa 271 AD) relative to Palmyra, Jerusalem,
| Petra, Cyprus, and similar well known locations. Map was made
| using the last Figure image from [5], the Palmyrene Empire Map
| from [6] and a Distort to 3-pt Edessa, Nisibis, and Zenobia.
|
| [1] https://i.imgur.com/dMZiloA.png (map I made)
|
| [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circesium
|
| [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crisis_of_the_Third_Century
|
| [4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palmyrene_Empire
|
| [5]
| https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/antiquity/article/wa...
|
| [6]
| https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f8/Empire_o...
| epups wrote:
| Thank you for these resources! The map in particular is very
| illustrative, I was having a hard time forming a mental image
| of the area in question without one.
| mmanfrin wrote:
| > However, the Roman Empire was basically over by 256 AD
|
| Instability during the crisis of the third century was not the
| end of the Empire in the slightest; especially considering that
| the Palmyrene Empire lasted hardly more than a single decade
| before it was reconquered by the Romans who held on to it for
| centuries longer.
| araes wrote:
| The comment is in reference to the generally held height of
| Ancient Rome being ~100 AD. Afterward, largely 2nd order
| downward. This Wikipedia gif illustrates. [1]
|
| The crisis article and late antiquity articles note:
|
| > The crisis resulted in such profound changes in the
| empire's institutions, society, economic life, and religion
| that it is increasingly seen by most historians as defining
| the transition between the historical periods of classical
| antiquity and late antiquity.
|
| > Diocletian (Emp: 284 AD), who began the custom of splitting
| the Empire into Eastern and Western portions ruled by
| multiple emperors simultaneously.
|
| The Roman Empire was effectively broken, and mostly just
| oscillated until the final West-East break. It was already
| "customarily" split in two by 284 AD.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_Empire#/media/File:Ro
| mem...
| crop_rotation wrote:
| This is just incorrect and the empire had multiple multi
| dedade solo emperors post Diocletien, including Constantine
| and Theodosius.
|
| > The comment is in reference to the generally held height
| of Ancient Rome being ~100 AD
|
| The height of an empire has no bearing on it's existence.
| Otherwise one could shorten each empire's existence to it's
| golden decade.
| mmanfrin wrote:
| Of the many end dates people debate as the end of the
| empire, 284CE is not one of them.
| actuallynotsofa wrote:
| I read somewhere that the Roman Empire has not ended. It just
| morphed into the Catholic Church and has had various
| emanations(Austro-Hungarian empire) since then. One of the
| reason Christianity was chosen as the main religion was that
| it emphasized "turning the cheek" and followers already
| believed in one power, so it was thought that it would be
| easier to rule the masses this way.
|
| Gibon I think is where I got it from.
| hammock wrote:
| > [1] https://i.imgur.com/dMZiloA.png (map I made)
|
| What are the red dots?
| araes wrote:
| The red dots are the locations of either:
|
| [square] CORONA Survey forts
|
| (circle) Intensive Survey forts
|
| Both sets of data were taken by image filtering the lower
| half of [1] for grey-black colors [(forts)], deleting all
| remaining imagery, transposing the image onto [2] using
| Photoshop, and then using Edit->Transform->[Scale,Distort] to
| image fit to a 3-point fit of Edessa, Nisibis, and Zenobia.
|
| [1] https://static.cambridge.org/binary/version/id/urn:cambri
| dge...
|
| [2] https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f8/Empir
| e_o...
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(page generated 2023-10-26 23:00 UTC)