[HN Gopher] Salt and salary: Were Roman soldiers paid in salt? (...
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Salt and salary: Were Roman soldiers paid in salt? (2017)
Author : throwaway167
Score : 197 points
Date : 2023-12-29 10:34 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (kiwihellenist.blogspot.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (kiwihellenist.blogspot.com)
| tomaytotomato wrote:
| "Salarium Argentum" - salt money (or money/allowance towards
| salt)
|
| It would be funny to see my payslip with a tex deductable section
| saying "Salt allowance". Imagine if modern day employers paid
| their employees in other things rather than currency that were
| tangibly valuable (would be chaos I am sure).
| ipsum2 wrote:
| You might find a SALT deduction when filing taxes.
| c54 wrote:
| We have things like a fitness stipend, wellness stipend,
| learning stipend... all with cash value earmarked towards a
| specific use.
| earthboundkid wrote:
| Ugh, don't get me started on how HSAs and FSAs are just a
| handout to the financial industry.
| Detrytus wrote:
| My mom worked as an accountant for a big meat-processing
| factory and she was partially paid in their products: meats and
| sausages :)
|
| Also, coal mine workers in my country used to get few tons of
| coal once a year (useful for heating their homes in winter).
|
| Unfortunately, for tax purposes your employer is supposed to
| calculate a cash value of those bonuses, so you don't actually
| pay your tax in sausage.
| toyg wrote:
| Ex-wife worked in a brewery and had a weekly beer allowance.
| She didn't drink, so she'd pick it up once every 4 months and
| give it to her ecstatic flatmates.
| hef19898 wrote:
| Still part of union negotiated salaries for brewery workers
| in Germany. Since almost all breweries also have non-
| alcoholics, that part of the payment is aparebtly more
| often taken in the form sparkling water and the likes.
|
| I can vividly imagine your wife's flatmates joy once a
| quarter so!
| Turing_Machine wrote:
| I think it's also common in candy factories. New employees
| tend to eat a lot, but after the first week or so
| consumption declines considerably.
| nradov wrote:
| In the former USSR, jobs in meat processing and sausage
| making plants were desirable because even though wages
| weren't very high the workers could steal a lot. This was so
| normalized that they didn't even think of it as stealing, it
| was just "carrying out".
| SXX wrote:
| Carry from the factory every nail.
|
| You are the owner here not a guest.
|
| (c) Rough translation of USSR joke.
| nemo44x wrote:
| A lot of people get paid in part with stock options that don't
| even have tangible value necessarily.
| joshspankit wrote:
| > Imagine if modern day employers paid their employees in other
| things rather than currency that were tangibly valuable
|
| As highlighted in other comments, this happens all the time.
| For example there are huge tax benefits to getting paid in
| "non-taxable" ways.
| ant6n wrote:
| Or suddenly there's sales tax on top of the income tax.
| lr4444lr wrote:
| Like stock options? Yeah, even that is contentious.
| throwaway167 wrote:
| Central bank digital currencies where the currency can be spent
| only on certain goods, and can be set to expire.
| doctoboggan wrote:
| Sounds exactly like health insurance.
| the_mitsuhiko wrote:
| Fun fact: there is a beer allowance (Haustrunk) in Austria if
| you a work in a brewery. And that allowance is tax free.
| Qwertious wrote:
| That sort of thing makes more sense than you'd think - if
| people earn money at a brewery, spend money on beer, and
| handle decisions about large amounts of beer on a daily basis
| then it encourages them to perhaps find an excuse to 'spoil'
| beer then take it home.
|
| If everyone gets a ton of free beer anyway, then most people
| won't be tempted to nick some booze.
|
| Making it tax-free makes some sense, because nicking the
| booze is also tax-free.
| 0xDEADFED5 wrote:
| based on the breweries in the USA i've visited, it's very
| common here, too. i somehow doubt it's because all the
| employees would otherwise be beer thieving criminals,
| though.
| GeoAtreides wrote:
| Many countries have meal (food) vouchers besides salary:
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meal_voucher
|
| [2]
| https://www.reddit.com/r/AskEurope/comments/793aud/are_meal_...
| pferde wrote:
| From the article:
|
| "Later on, Scheller and Freund realised that Pliny didn't say
| what Facciolati-Forcellini claimed he did, but they liked the
| idea so they instead supported it"
|
| I wonder, how many historical so-called facts are similarly based
| on a whim of some historiographer or other? We should take
| everything with a grain of salary... I mean, salt. :)
| newsclues wrote:
| Not just history, but any field of study.
|
| Trusting experts is a problem, because experts are human.
| toolz wrote:
| I believe life is most pleasant when you choose to err on the
| side of trusting experts, but there is something quite
| amusing (to me) that programmers have "cargo culting" and if
| you write code and deeply invest in any community you'll meet
| experts all the time that do things just because others do
| them, but then you'll meet someone in another highly trained
| field and just trust what they say is all evidence based.
|
| It's rather curious how many high skill professions seem to
| default to trusting others based on their credentials.
| toyg wrote:
| The problem is that, as soon as you hit moderate
| complexity, validating claims becomes difficult, time-
| consuming, and full of traps. Are you going to
| microscopically analyse every sausage you eat? If not, how
| do you trust that it's safe? Experts.
| toolz wrote:
| I get what you're saying, but I also understand that
| poses it's own problems. Just because trusting the
| experts is the best we can do, does not mean that it
| doesn't sometimes come with significant consequences.
| History is littered with people abusing their expert
| status to maliciously achieve some goal.
|
| The first example that comes to my mind is the Tuskegee
| experiment, where the US public health service and CDC
| allowed 100 of the 400 men in their study to die,
| refusing to provide them with treatment for syphilis and
| preventing them from getting treatment by other means, so
| they could study the men. They also never revealed to
| those men that they had syphilis.
| blowski wrote:
| It's why pluralism is so important, where experts hold
| each other to account. It's worrying when not believing
| some dogma causes you personal problems.
| hef19898 wrote:
| That behaviour is morally beyond bankrupt and racist.
| Doesn't mean the people involved were or were not experts
| in their fields so.
| tim333 wrote:
| I'm happy eating sausages in the UK but less so in say
| Nepal. No experts involved, just a look at the shops.
| hef19898 wrote:
| All things considered, Nepalese meat is propably saver
| than industrial one. After all, the remains seen on the
| sreetside are from the same day, meaning whatever meat
| you buy was still alive in the morning.
| tim333 wrote:
| Having eaten in both places and gotten ill in Nepal I'm
| skeptical. He's a pic of a typical meat shop there. https
| ://c8.alamy.com/zooms/6/445bf76d991f4c27a9b88318955c2e3..
| .
|
| and uk https://www.ballardsbutchers.co.uk/sites/default/f
| iles/style...
|
| note differences in cleanliness, refrigeration and so on.
| hef19898 wrote:
| The issue is not the meat, it's the dust. Properly
| washing it before cooking takes care of that. Vegetables
| are no different in that regard.
| toyg wrote:
| Without stringent laws, drafted with experts, your "rule
| of looks" wouldn't be worth the bits it's written on.
| cf1241290841 wrote:
| That sounds like a belief. Laws are obviously incomplete,
| circumvented and broken all the time. There is no
| substitute for common sense when it comes to not getting
| food poisoning. Some data:
|
| There is the show "Bizarre Foods with Andrew Zimmern" in
| which he ate weird stuff around the globe. He mentioned
| across several interviews that he never got sick on one
| of his trips by mostly just staying away from stuff like
| known bad tap water.
|
| At the same time he had gotten food poisoning 4 times in
| the last decade in the US. Including
|
| >Worst case was in Portland, Maine eating mussels at a
| crappy restaurant that I shouldn't have been eating in in
| the first place. On the road, in the third and fourth
| world I have not gotten sick.
|
| https://web.archive.org/web/20230607121840/https://starca
| sm....
|
| If i recall his rule of thumb is that if the local
| grandmas eat there and they dont use stuff you have to be
| exposed to for a while to tolerate it (rotten food / tap
| water in India) you are good to go.
| toyg wrote:
| _> Laws are obviously incomplete, circumvented and broken
| all the time._
|
| If they were, we'd have rates of food poisoning close to
| Nepal's. But we don't. Obviously laws have to be
| enforced, with checks and all, but they largely work.
|
| Same for tap water: when it's handled following expert-
| based rules, you don't need to stay away from it. Sure,
| some can build resistance by repeated exposure, but not
| everyone; and anyway we don't need to, _if we employ the
| scientific knowledge we built over centuries_. It 's like
| saying that births will happen even without expert
| assistance: sure, but chances that stuff will go horribly
| wrong are dramatically higher.
| cf1241290841 wrote:
| "They largely work" doesnt run counter to my argument. I
| am saying there is no way around common sense to prevent
| food poisoning in an individual. Being able to lower the
| overall risk doesnt change that.
|
| You can get food poisoning in the first world by over
| relying on regulation when you should have known better
| and you can avoid getting food poisoning in the third
| world by applying common sense. As long as you can afford
| to which most people there cant. If tainted water is all
| you got, you will get sick.
|
| We are making different types of arguments, being able to
| lower the overall risk doesnt mean common sense / "rule
| of look" is worthless. Nor does it become worthless in an
| unregulated environment.
| cf1241290841 wrote:
| You cant actually trust that its safe to eat, you just
| like the idea and act accordingly. And deal with the
| consequences of the uncaught error cases. Tainted food
| still occurs.
|
| At best you can be confident / trust that a product is
| created in a given process which manages certain risks
| through certain means.
|
| Also, finding faults in said process is a lot easier then
| coming up with it or executing it. Be it making a sausage
| that is unlikely to make you sick or coming to an expert
| judgement with sufficient confidence to act on.
|
| It doesnt require the ability to validate a process to
| find it faulty, you just have to detect an error case
| occurring that isnt dealt with.
| paleotrope wrote:
| "Briefly stated, the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect is as
| follows. You open the newspaper to an article on some
| subject you know well. In Murray's case, physics. In mine,
| show business. You read the article and see the journalist
| has absolutely no understanding of either the facts or the
| issues. Often, the article is so wrong it actually presents
| the story backward--reversing cause and effect. I call
| these the "wet streets cause rain" stories. Paper's full of
| them. In any case, you read with exasperation or amusement
| the multiple errors in a story, and then turn the page to
| national or international affairs, and read as if the rest
| of the newspaper was somehow more accurate about Palestine
| than the baloney you just read. You turn the page, and
| forget what you know." -- Michael Crichton
| yonaguska wrote:
| Usually, the cost of doing something the wrong way as a
| programmer is minimal compared to say- a doctor or a rocket
| scientist. There's not really a governing body on how to do
| things, as in actual engineering- and most of the work we
| do is under the constraint of time. saving time means
| deferring decisions to others. I personally find that
| there's a lot of value in sifting through and examining the
| myriad of opinions on a given subject, and coming to your
| own conclusion, but in the professional world, this a
| luxury for but a few.
| tim333 wrote:
| Experts plus common sense and direct evidence I think
| works. Experts sometimes come out with complete nonsense,
| especially if there's politics involved.
| newsclues wrote:
| Trust but verify.
|
| Asking experts to provide rationale for their decisions
| should be welcomed by experts.
| hef19898 wrote:
| All the people I consider experts I ever encountered,
| where more than happy to explain their rationals. I
| learned a shit ton of things listening to them.
| cf1241290841 wrote:
| I would argue its over relying on complexity management
| solutions, so less a problem of experts but the inability or
| unwillingness to live with degrees of uncertainty and manage
| your confidence/trust accordingly.
|
| The whole expert thing becomes really problematic once people
| start making circular arguments to justify their existence
| and then promptly overrely. So the perceived necessity or
| benefit of having an expert means there has to be somebody
| you can trust. Which you then promptly overdo without
| functioning checks and balances.
|
| Expertise cant stem from demonstrated conviction and cant
| require trust, thats is describing religion and Ponzi
| schemes. You arent doing experts any favor by treating them
| as such, at best they still all have incomplete expertise and
| cant shoulder your reckless levels of trust.
| cies wrote:
| And this is quite an irrelevant fact. How many people
| know/remember that the US faked an attack on it's fleet on
| August 4 to join the Vietnam war?
| hef19898 wrote:
| The Tonkin Incident. Well, Wikipedia has a decent enough
| write up of the whole Vietnam War, including the French one,
| including Tonkin.
|
| The problem is less that those crucial facts are not know,
| but rather that they get ignored in public discourse.
| cies wrote:
| Exactly! Same for the --benign-- roman wages in salt story.
| It will get ignored.
| hef19898 wrote:
| And than all kinds of people will use that bit for all
| kinds of weird theories.
| cies wrote:
| That do not harm a million Iraqi or Viet civs.
|
| Plenty of groups believe/ promote all kinds of "weird
| theories". As long as they are harmless I dont care. The
| moment it involves cutting baby penisses or promoting
| hate I'm voicing myself out against.
| hef19898 wrote:
| The cutting baby penisis remark was totally uncalled for,
| and can be seen offensive.
| lifeisstillgood wrote:
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gulf_of_Tonkin_incident
|
| One real attack August 2, one confused incident where
| actually no attack happened.
|
| It's kind of true but really it's hardly a false flag
| operation
|
| (paraphrasing and being kind to US administration - US Navy
| breached territorial waters, exchanged fire on Aug 2, then on
| Aug 4 they fired upon radar returns and possible signals
| traffic. The second time there was no actual North Vietnamese
| and the Navy expressed doubts but US administration wanted to
| escalate and both incidents became conflated. It's not the
| same as for example pre-planned false flag operations. Is
| there a fine line? Yes. exactly where that is is hard to say.
| cies wrote:
| I'd say knowingly trying to claim an attack that did not
| happen is --not a false flag-- but certainly a govt
| conspiring to deceive "the people".
|
| Not sure what's worse.
|
| And see the result: how many dead Viets? I recently heard a
| US TV anchor say "all civilian deaths since WW2" (they
| meant to say "US civ deaths").
|
| The Iraqi WMDs were a similar hoax to get "involved". I
| never trust a word 3 letter agencies again: professional
| lairs with zero accountability.
| jvanderbot wrote:
| I didn't read the above to mean "Knowingly trying to
| claim at attack that did not happen". I read it as "We
| aren't sure there's someone there, but please just shoot
| anyway we need to be aggressive", and political officials
| portrayed that as "Attack" without proof.
|
| These are congruent accounts with different
| interpretations, and I tend to believe public speakers
| are opportunistic spin doctors, not world-shaping
| conspirators.
|
| As for "never trust a 3 letter agency", that's quite an
| extreme viewpoint. CDC? EPA? FBI? CIA? NSA? All of them
| do good, even if their findings can be spun ( or are even
| directed to be spun ).
| cies wrote:
| > CDC? EPA? FBI? CIA? NSA? All of them do good
|
| What do you think is the good? Maybe the FBI to some
| extend (my point was quite a hyperbole I know). But under
| the line they mostly do bad imho. And they spin their own
| "findings", that's how we got into this conversation.
|
| I the plan was to invade Vietnam/Iraq, and the attack are
| propped up to "allow" then to invade. If you think they
| govt was deceived by it's own speakers, that to my is
| quite a stretch... The plan was to invade, and the story
| was made to match. That is a conspiracy in and of itself.
| jvanderbot wrote:
| If you're writing off CDC and EPA entirely then I think
| there's no common ground here.
| genman wrote:
| And when Communists took power in Vietnam then exactly
| what was expected to happen happened - a large scale
| human tragedy with mass killings and torture and mass
| exodus.
|
| Saddam Hussein was a mass murderer who had murdered
| around 400 000 people - half of them after US refused to
| take him down after the Gulf War. Any excuse to get him
| removed was a good one.
| hef19898 wrote:
| The right time to take down Saddam was after the secind
| gulf war, the first one with US participation. In the
| first gulf war between Iraq and Iran, Iraq was an US
| ally.
|
| And no, removing Saddam with good reason was a really bad
| idea...
|
| To cut it short, in the frame on the war on terror 4.5
| million people died, almost a million directly related to
| the war and 38 million people displaced. If you think all
| that was a just price to pay to get Saddam and Bin-Laden,
| because the Taliban pretty much won, you should re-adjust
| your moral compass.
| genman wrote:
| Why should I readjust my moral compass? Because people
| could not forget their feuds and started to kill? The
| system held together by terror was pushed out of
| equilibrium. They had a change to find a better one but
| they chose not to. If anything then US has done not
| enough by letting sociopaths in Syria and Iran still run
| the show - a huge part of the deaths (I'm not going to
| dispute your claimed numbers) could have been averted and
| not only in Middle East.
| cf1241290841 wrote:
| Interesting
|
| >could have
|
| Do you have a rule of thumb how many deaths you are
| willing to accept and risk on what probabilities for
| which futures? Also, you used the term sociopaths, do you
| consider yourself a psychopath?
| genman wrote:
| It is clear now that Syrian leader was willing to murder
| hundreds of thousands of people, so were Iranian leaders.
| Moving against them early "could have" avoided large part
| of the Middle East casualties.
| cf1241290841 wrote:
| What perspective other then ideology has this not apply
| to your own position? You seemed pretty comfortable in
| your position despite the number of people killed and
| outcome counter to your declared intention.
| genman wrote:
| Your personal attacks are lame.
|
| I based my argument based on reduction of human
| suffering.
|
| Now please, buzz off.
| cf1241290841 wrote:
| I am sorry that you took it that way, it wasnt intended
| as such. I responded out of curiosity.
|
| edit: Thank you for your response none the less.
| acqq wrote:
| You probably don't want to know:
|
| https://pulitzercenter.org/stories/how-us-secret-war-
| laos-st...
|
| "From 1964 to 1973, the United States bombed Laos more
| heavily than any country on earth. The reason most
| Americans do not know this is because it was a secret war
| orchestrated by the CIA; it stands as the largest covert
| CIA operation to date."
|
| "One team can find anywhere from three to 16 bombs in a
| day. The UXO Lao's 2015 annual report states that since
| 1996, 1.4 million UXO have been cleared in Laos by a
| combined effort of UXO Lao and other UXO-clearing
| organizations, like MAG International. _At this rate, it
| will take thousands of years before Laos is free of UXO._
| "
|
| "Forty percent of UXO victims are children who pick up
| the bombs, usually thinking they are toys."
|
| The US cluster bombs. Now also in Ukraine:
|
| https://edition.cnn.com/2023/07/20/politics/ukraine-
| cluster-...
| genman wrote:
| Is this some "Kissinger bad" propaganda take?
|
| US didn't bomb Laos, it bombed Vietnamese Communists
| covertly operating in and from Laos against Republic of
| Vietnam and US. The reason that it was a covert war was
| geopolitical - every actor there operated covertly.
|
| In my country we still find ordnance from WW2 or even
| WW1. I even had some close encounters.
|
| It looks like some early training of children can save
| lives. What I can read from
| https://laos.worlded.org/projects/uxo-education-and-
| awarenes... is that the education is mainly addressed
| toward primary school children meaning that the children
| below the age of 6 will not receive any education (from
| the program, perhaps there are other programs). What is
| completely lacking is education of parents.
|
| Now what about cluster bombs in Ukraine?
|
| These have been proven to be highly effective against
| Russian attacks.
|
| If we talk about future safety concerns then Russian
| forces have laid mines over vast areas. The density can
| be as much as 5 mines per square meter and I doubt that
| they will share the mining maps when this eventually ends
| (if they even have systematic maps). Already the area
| affected by the destruction of the Kakhovka Dam by
| Russians has mines randomly scattered all over the area
| because of massive flooding.
|
| Ukraine is keeping track of its cluster munition usage
| and the low percentage of unexploded munitions is a mere
| drop against the mayhem Russia has created.
|
| Keep in mind that Russia has very clearly declared its
| genocidal goals.
| Hikikomori wrote:
| Is this some "US good, Russia bad" propaganda take?
| ilovecurl wrote:
| If you are ever in the Seattle area, you can tour one of the
| destroyers that was involved in that incident, the USS Turner
| Joy, which is docked right next to the ferry terminal in
| Bremerton.
| narag wrote:
| _How many people know /remember that the US faked an attack
| on it's fleet on August 4 to join the Vietnam war?_
|
| BTW, have you heard of the Maine?
| marcosdumay wrote:
| One of my favorite ones is that the entire idea that any
| ancient population ever believed that the Earth is flat seems
| to come from a semi-fictional biography of Columbus from the
| 18th century.
|
| Somehow people just read an interesting book and decided that
| their great-grandparents all believed on that stupid thing.
| bombcar wrote:
| The sad thing is it obscures the real issue people were
| bringing up with Columbus - they said the world was much
| larger than he thought so he would starve and die before
| getting to the indies.
|
| They were right, too, as the size of the planet was pretty
| accurately known. He just lucked out that someone had left a
| continent for him to run into.
| PurpleRamen wrote:
| Didn't he also never reached the continent, just some
| islands, which then were used as a starting point for more
| expeditions?
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| No, he definitely reached Central and South America. But
| even until his death he had insisted he had reached the
| East Indies.
| PurpleRamen wrote:
| Ah, according to Wikipedia, he only reached the continent
| on his third and fourth voyage. On his first two
| expeditions, he was only cruising around the Bahamas,
| Cuba, etc.
| runeofdoom wrote:
| I think I recall that his grants from the Spanish crown
| (and part of his fame) were tied to him having made it to
| the East Indies. So there would have been motivation for
| him to stick with his stories.
| PurpleRamen wrote:
| Define ancient. We do know that cultures from 2000+ years ago
| believed in a flat earth. There is enough proof for this, and
| Ancient Greece and Romans discovered this to be wrong. But
| independent of this, there is also the claim that people in
| medieval Europe believed in a flat earth, again, and this was
| brought up as a reason why Columbus expedition would fail
| when he searched for supporters and ships.
|
| And in fact, such stories are not that uncommon at the 18.
| Century. Thinkers and scientists were fighting against the
| church, and they made up many fake stories to show how stupid
| and dangerous the church is. And AFAIK the church believing
| in a flat earth was one of them.
| whiddershins wrote:
| For example, many people today believe that we only use 10%
| of our brain.
|
| But it wouldn't be fair to say that's what our "culture"
| believes to be true.
| jncfhnb wrote:
| It is true in the sense that we only use about 10%, at
| any given time, for some definitions of percent. People
| just fail to understand that the other 90% is just not
| useful, rather than unused potential.
| spigottoday wrote:
| That is news to me and interesting. Do you have a
| citation or link to share?
| srinivgp wrote:
| "people only use about 2% of the volume of their house at
| any given time"
| GuB-42 wrote:
| I thought bullshit too. After all, why would chemical
| reactions in the brain stop? But after a bit of thinking
| and Googling, I stumbled upon this
|
| https://www.ucl.ac.uk/news/2020/aug/energy-demands-limit-
| our...
|
| Not saying that only X% of our brain is being used, but
| what it essentially says is that our brain is power-
| limited, and therefore, it has to be selective in which
| parts to "turn on". It makes a lot of sense, there are
| few things in life more important than energy and power
| management, and human brains already need lots of both.
| duskwuff wrote:
| We have a word for what happens when people "use 100% of
| their brain".
|
| We call that an _epileptic seizure_. :)
| melagonster wrote:
| scientists distinguished function of different regions in
| our brain, so human doesn't need to use all region is a
| more obvious idea now.
|
| I can't recommend literature, a probably source is in
| medical textbook.
| Ekaros wrote:
| Is it even usable at same time? There is some level of
| plasticity, but in general certain parts activate for
| certain tasks and you can't really make it use more parts
| at one time.
| aeonik wrote:
| Your brain can definitely get bursts of more activity,
| it's not desirable though. They are called seizures.
|
| https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-
| conditions/seizure/sympt...
| marcosdumay wrote:
| > We do know that cultures from 2000+ years ago believed in
| a flat earth.
|
| There are plenty of cultures from 2000+ years ago that
| never bothered thinking about the shape of Earth. I don't
| know of any that did bother and decided it was flat (and
| would really like a pointer), even though I do know of some
| ambiguous texts that people keep interpreting as that, but
| are much better explained as they not caring about the
| shape.
|
| It's quite hard to do astronomy on a larger area than a
| single city and not discover the planet isn't flat. And it
| looks like people have been exchanging astronomic findings
| over some longish distances for longer than they have been
| writing texts that we can read today.
| PurpleRamen wrote:
| > There are plenty of cultures from 2000+ years ago that
| never bothered thinking about the shape of Earth.
|
| For those, we don't have any kind of indicator what they
| believed about earths shape, so why do they matter?
|
| The way you phrased your comment indicated that you kinda
| believe that now one at any point in early history really
| believed in a flat earth, and it's all just a story made
| up later.
| robertlagrant wrote:
| Half this comment section is saying that.
| Zancarius wrote:
| > I don't know of any that did bother and decided it was
| flat (and would really like a pointer)
|
| Semitic cultures very much believed the Earth was more or
| less a disc-like shape that consisted of the known world
| (mostly in their sphere of influence, if you pardon the
| expression). But they also had some other ideas, like
| that of chaotic universal waters above and below the
| Earth, separated by the firmament, and supported by
| pillars (though you can see this idea changing somewhat
| by the time the book of Job was written). This is a theme
| that is repeated in Genesis, Isaiah, Job, and one or more
| of the Psalms.
|
| Not coincidentally, it's fairly well established in the
| scholarly literature that _this_ was the view of ancient
| Near Eastern writers, and it wasn 't until Young Earth
| Creationists decided to apply a degree of scientific
| concordism to the text where we get a more distorted view
| of Hebrew words like _hug_ inferring something other than
| a disc or circular inscription. It 's true that they
| probably didn't care so much about the shape (unlike us),
| but their cosmology is definitely inferred rather
| strongly in the biblical texts (and in some cases from
| their neighbors). John Walton's "Lost World" series on
| Genesis are a good pointer in this direction, but I'd
| also suggest the IVP Bible Background Commentary (Walton
| is a contributor) which certainly touches on this motif
| and draws upon other creation accounts such as those in
| the Ugaritic tablets, Baal Cycle, etc. The late Dr.
| Michael Heiser has a great lecture series you can find on
| YT talking about biblical cosmology that might help if
| you're into that format.
|
| The link with Columbus was indeed perpetrating a myth.
| You get this as recently as Ray Comfort's "Evidence
| Bible" which is filled with complete buffoonery in that
| it attempts to explain Columbus' motives based on his
| mention of Isaiah; YECs like Comfort link this to Isaiah
| 40:22 (again, with an incorrect reading of _hug_ ).
| Columbus was motivated by his eschatology and the only
| reason he ever cited Isaiah was because of its dual
| function as prophetic-apocalyptic literature.
| marcosdumay wrote:
| Thanks. Those people seem really interesting.
|
| They were right on the way when the idea of popular
| astronomy (instead of only god-appointed people doing it)
| reached Europe, and yet they seem oblivious from it.
|
| It's a really good reminder that even on the era of large
| empires, culture was still very fractally distributed.
| Zancarius wrote:
| > It's a really good reminder that even on the era of
| large empires, culture was still very fractally
| distributed.
|
| This is a really good point. The ANE had its own idea of
| cosmology, Europe its, Asia its, etc. Even then, much of
| the biblical text contains polemics _against_ Babylonian
| ideas (recall that cosmology, deity, and "function" are
| all tied together in their worldview).
| alex_young wrote:
| I wonder how this squares with the Babylonian concept of
| a round earth. It seems odd that so much was uh,
| "inspired" by their texts but the shape of the earth was
| exempted.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Babylonian_astronomy#:~:t
| ext....
| Zancarius wrote:
| We have some idea of the evolution of the Babylonian view
| of the Earth and its approximate dimensions/shape:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Babylonian_Map_of_the_World
|
| This idea probably wasn't unique to the Babylonians, but
| this approximation of a disc-shaped Earth was fairly
| commonplace up to and including the Exhilic Period
| (biblical texts likely being influenced, at least in
| part, by the Babylonian views though much of the text is
| certainly constructed of polemic narratives).
| D-Coder wrote:
| If one is being literal:
|
| > Isaiah 11:12: He will raise a signal for the nations
| and will assemble the banished of Israel, and gather the
| dispersed of Judah from the four corners of the earth.
|
| Which clearly indicates some kind of quadrilateral, or
| perhaps a tetrahedron.
| Zancarius wrote:
| LOL! You know, I think I'm going to use this the next
| time someone disputes biblical cosmology.
| lehi wrote:
| Chinese astronomical records were extensive, accurate,
| and continual for more than 3000 years. They believed the
| Earth was flat and square until the 17th century.
| genman wrote:
| If you read a story about the edge of the world then you
| have an example of an "flat earth" believer.
|
| Regardless of shape, I think the most fundamental shift
| occurred with the idea that the Earth is not a center of
| the universe.
| hef19898 wrote:
| Earth at the center of the universe was one, the sun
| turning around earth another. The latter so was known to
| be most likely true for a long time by everyone who
| worked on astronomy.
| WalterBright wrote:
| When I was little, I just assumed that the sun revolved
| around the Earth. I recall not believing it when I was
| told the converse.
| genman wrote:
| How were you eventually convinced that it is not true?
| WalterBright wrote:
| Adults explaining it to me.
| poizan42 wrote:
| In Old Norse mythology, the Midgard Serpent (Jormungandr)
| encircles the earth, so it would seem they believed the
| earth to be a disc.
| hnfong wrote:
| > I don't know of any that did bother and decided it was
| flat (and would really like a pointer)
|
| Tian Yuan Di Fang (literally: sky round, land square)
| was a serious core idea in ancient Chinese cosmology that
| was most popular 2000 years ago around the Han Dynasty
| period.
|
| As for some serious pointers as you requested, here:
| https://ctext.org/lunheng/shuo-ri/zh
|
| There's a couple paragraphs arguing that the sky isn't
| round (dome-like) but "flat" and parallel to the land
| because people have travelled and have never seen the sky
| merge with the land. (see the paras starting "Shi Zhe ,
| Tian Bu Zai Di Zhong ,Ri Yi Bu Sui Tian Yin ,Tian Ping
| Zheng ,Yu Di Wu Yi . ")
|
| You might say the ancient Chinese didn't care _enough_ so
| they ended up with wrong conclusions (or parroted
| whatever was told to them by even more ancient sources
| that just made up its cosmology), but at any rate the
| Chinese definitely did believe in flat earth 2000 years
| ago, and we have very reliable records for that one.
| russdill wrote:
| People thought Columbus's voyage would fail precisely
| because they believed the Earth to be a sphere and thus the
| distance from Europe to India was too far to traverse.
| Columbus tried to convince everyone it would succeed by
| claiming the Earth was instead pear shaped.
|
| https://sacred-texts.com/earth/boe/boe26.htm
| SilasX wrote:
| Also, when someone says, "they knew the earth was round in
| the Middle Ages", they mean "educated people knew". Guess
| what fraction were educated? Not many. So ... averaged over
| the population, it's not entirely correct.
|
| It would be like saying, "It's a myth that in the 21st
| century, they were bunch of rubes who were unaware that
| every single object is exerting a gravitational force on
| them." Well, um, it's a myth that _physics-educated_ people
| were unaware of this, sure. But most people have no reason
| to learn about this or be aware of it; it 's not relevant
| to everyday life.
| throw0101b wrote:
| > _One of my favorite ones is that the entire idea that any
| ancient population ever believed that the Earth is flat seems
| to come from a semi-fictional biography of Columbus from the
| 18th century._
|
| See also the religion-science conflict thesis, which was
| popularized by Draper and White:
|
| * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conflict_thesis
|
| > _My guests today are David Hutchings and James C.
| Ungureanu, co-authors of_ Of Popes and Unicorns: Science,
| Christianity and How the Conflict Thesis Fooled the World.
| _David is a physicist, science teacher and writer and James
| is a historian of science and religion. In this interview we
| discuss their book and the origin and impact of the Conflict
| Thesis - the pervasive but erroneous idea that religion and
| science have always been in conflict down the ages._
|
| * https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PkfA4v8cwYM
| acqq wrote:
| Oh, there's now a bunch of accounts claiming that Galileo
| was "just" mean to pope and therefore "guilty", but this is
| an actual pro-religion propaganda. The real sentence is
| preserved up to this day and is completely clear:
|
| https://hti.osu.edu/sites/default/files/documents_in_the_ca
| s...
|
| "heresy" ... "that the earth does move, and is not the
| center of the world" ... "contrary to Holy Scripture"
|
| More detailed:
|
| "We pronounce, judge, and declare, that you, the said
| Galileo . . . have rendered yourself vehemently suspected
| by this Holy Office of heresy, that is, of having believed
| and held the doctrine (which is false and contrary to the
| Holy and Divine Scriptures) that the sun is the center of
| the world, and that it does not move from east to west, and
| that the earth does move, and is not the center of the
| world; also, that an opinion can be held and supported as
| probable, after it has been declared and finally decreed
| contrary to the Holy Scripture".
|
| Additionally, Galileo's and Copernicus' books were finally
| removed from the index of the banned books only in 1835,
| they were on the banned list for more than 200 years, since
| the 1616 Inquisition's judgment.
|
| Context: Galileo was _the first person to see with his own
| eyes with his first of the kind self-made telescope_ the
| moons that are today known as Galilean moons and recognized
| them as _the satellites of Jupiter in March 1610_. Which
| convinced him that the understanding of the church was
| wrong. The church sentenced him in 1633 to house arrest
| where he remained until his death in 1642.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galilean_moons
| throw0101b wrote:
| > _Context: Galileo was_ the first person to see with his
| own eyes with his first of the kind self-made telescope
| _the moons that are today known as Galilean moons and
| recognized them as_ the satellites of Jupiter in March
| 1610.
|
| Which was not evidence for heliocentrism.
|
| In the early 1600s there were seven models floating
| around: Heraclidean (geo-heliocentric), Ptolemaic,
| Copernican (heliocentric, pure circles with lots of
| epicycles), Gilbertian, Tychonic, Ursine, Keplerian.
|
| Newton, in his _Principia_ (1687), did not use calculus
| to present his Universal Graviation: rather it was
| carefully structured in Aristotelian form, with axioms
| and deductive logic. Kepler 's laws can be deduced from
| principles. Still no coriollis or parallax.
|
| The first inkling of the Earth's _motion_ comes in 1728
| when James Bradley detects stellar _aberration_ in
| g-Draconis. In 1791 Giovanni Guglielmini finds a 4 mm
| Coriolis deflection over a 29 m drop, thus providing
| empirical evidence of _rotation_. In 1806 Giuseppi
| Calandrelli publishes "Ozzervatione e riflessione sulla
| paralasse annua dall'alfa della Lira," reporting
| _parallax_ in a-Lyrae. So parallax, the chief evidence
| for the Earth 's motion came 250+ years after Galileo.
|
| Stellar parallax was considered since at least Aristotle,
| as he mentions in his _On the Heavens_ (II.14), and since
| it is not observed then it is reasonable to conclude that
| there is no motion (it took several thousand years to
| develop instruments to actually measure it).
|
| Galileo's chief problems were (a) he was an egotistical
| jackass, and (b) he had no evidence for what he was
| claiming to be true. He was allowed to put forward the
| Copernican model "suppositionally", i.e., as an
| hypothesis, and "not absolutely". The latter of which,
| (b), Galileo admitted in his first deposition (12 April
| 1633): it was concluded that his book put forward the
| idea 'absolutely', which is where his conviction comes
| from.
|
| By the late 1600s most folks had switched over to the
| Keplerian model: not necessarily because they thought it
| was what was actually happening in reality, but probably
| because it made the math easier.
|
| For a good timeline of events, see (recently late)
| Michael F. Flynn's "The Great Ptolemaic Smackdown":
|
| * https://tofspot.blogspot.com/2013/10/the-great-
| ptolemaic-sma...
|
| Daniel Whitten's "Matters of Faith and Morals _Ex
| Suppositione_ " is also an interesting read.
| acqq wrote:
| So yes, that's exactly an example of the "guilty Galileo
| and the good church" false narrative.
|
| Many useless claims which don't disprove that his
| sentence was literally because of:
|
| _" heresy" ... "that the earth does move, and is not the
| center of the world" ... "contrary to Holy Scripture"_
|
| And the church forbade his book as "heresy" for 200
| years.
|
| He was right. The church was wrong, directly referring to
| the _effing_ _" Holy Scripture"_ to support its claim and
| played fighting _" heresy"_, keeping being wrong for 200
| years afterwards. It's _so_ clear.
| throw0101b wrote:
| > _He was right._
|
| Monkeys throwing darts can also (just happen to) be
| "right" when picking stocks that do well in the market.
| Galileo had as much evidence in believing Copernicus was
| right as the monkeys.
|
| If he had simply stuck to simply arguing both sides of an
| hypothesis in his _Dialogue_ , which he was asked to do
| by the pope in the first place, it would have saved
| everyone a lot of trouble. Heck, Kepler's stuff was
| already around for decades, and Galileo completely
| ignored it (along with Tycho):
|
| * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dialogue_Concerning_the_T
| wo_Ch...
|
| If you want to argue 'for science' then Galileo is not a
| good example: the only thing he _just happen_ to be right
| about was that the sun was the centre of things, whereas
| everything else in the Copernican system (including
| epicycles) was just as messy as in Ptolemy. There was no
| _practical_ reason to switch systems, and no _evidence_
| to think it was correct.
|
| At the end of the day the person who _actually_ got
| things right was Kepler, and he kept plugging away at the
| problem because of this belief that the physical world
| reflected the spiritual realm (KGW XIII, letter 23, 35;
| 1595)
|
| > _In this way, then, the Sun, itself at rest in the
| middle and yet the fount of motion, carries the image of
| God the Father and creator. For what creation is to God,
| motion is to the Sun. Moreover, it moves [the planets] in
| a fixed place, as the Father creates in the Son. Unless
| the fixed stars offered a place, thanks to their
| motionlessness, no movement could exist. I defended this
| axiom while still in Tubingen. The Sun distributes motive
| virtue through the medium space, in which the planets are
| found: just as the Father creates by spirit or by the
| virtue of His spirit. And from the necessity of these
| presuppositions, it follows that motion is in proportion
| with distance._
|
| See Kozhamthadam's "The Religious Foundations of Kepler's
| Science" and "Theological Foundations of Kepler's
| Astronomy" by Barker and Goldstein.
|
| Going further, one needs to believe in certain
| metaphysical assumptions before you can even start doing
| what we know call science:
|
| * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naturalism_(philosophy)#P
| rovid...
|
| There were plenty ideas floating around at the time, but
| ideas are cheap. Galileo certainly made important
| improvements to telescope technology, but his efforts in
| moving forward new models (specifically Copernican) were
| a dead end, and he made no practical difference to
| things: Kepler was already defending Copernicus in his
| _Mysterium Cosmographicum_ (1e 1596), and put forward his
| laws in _Astronomia nova_ (1609), a copy of which he sent
| to Galileo, which Galileo promptly ignored even two
| decades later when he published his _Dialogue_ (1632).
| acqq wrote:
| You still can't deny: the church was wrong, directly
| referring to the effing "Holy Scripture" to support its
| claim.
|
| The Earth was never the center around which the Sun
| rotated. Not in 1AD, not in 1600AD, not now.
|
| If the church claimed that the "Holy Scripture" says that
| the Earth is in the center, the church was still wrong,
| and moreover, the "Holy Scripture" was wrong.
|
| The church can't be right to claim "heresy" to somebody
| who was right then and is still right now.
| defrost wrote:
| It was never a grand Science Vs Church issue, not at the
| time at least, that came perhaps later with legend.
|
| It wan't even the case that the Pope (in person) was mad
| with Galileo for being used as a Simplicio caricature and
| figure of fun in his work.
|
| All the data used came from church funded observatories
| and church backed astronomers, all the main ideas from
| both sides of the debate came from church funded
| theorists.
|
| The crux of the dispute and the trial was pretty much
| that Galileo was a dedicated edgelord who had decades of
| pissing people off and making enemies on his ledger.
|
| Think less about religion Vs science and more about
| maverick asshole vs. faction within giant bureaucracy.
|
| Once Galileo had "insulted the Pope" the knives came out
| and his enemies struck, it was a pure show trial fueled
| by personal vindictiveness that came from being the
| target of savage biting insults.
| acqq wrote:
| Still:
|
| - the church officially wrote that the Earth is the
| center
|
| - that the Holy Scripture says so and
|
| - whoever says differently is heretic
|
| and the Earth was _never_ the center.
| defrost wrote:
| None of which had much to do with the persecution of
| Galileo.
|
| The Catholic Church has changed its stance on many things
| through time, see [history].
|
| In this instance the Church itself had officially
| requested a presentation be made to demonstrate various
| arguments for and against different viewpoints .. one of
| which was that the heavens didn't rotate about the earth.
|
| It wasn't a surprise that such a well known hypothetical
| should appear in a book commissioned to outline such
| hypotheticals.
| throw0101b wrote:
| > _You still can 't deny: the church was wrong, directly
| referring to the effing "Holy Scripture" to support its
| claim._
|
| It was _the pope_ that asked Galileo to write a book in
| the first place. The Church was so against the idea
| that... its leader asked a prominent natural philosopher
| to write about. The book had two imprimatur approvals.
|
| > _The Earth was never the center around which the Sun
| rotated. Not in 1AD, not in 1600AD, not now._
|
| And there was no _evidence_ to support this assertion
| until 1728 and Bradley with g-Draconis, and with the
| first parallax report in 1806 and Calandrelli (a priest)
| with a-Lyrae /Vega (the actual value he calculated was
| wrong). It was not a new idea when Copernicus published
| his book in 1543, nor when Kepler defended it in 1596,
| nor when Galileo published his _Dialgoue_ in 1623:
| Aristotle most famously considered it in ~300 BC and
| rejected it for _lack of evidence_. Anaxagoras (400s BC)
| and Aristarchus of Samos put forward heliocentrism.
| marcosdumay wrote:
| Oh, the Galileo thing.
|
| Politics is a complex thing where people don't mean what
| they say, and their meaning change depending on who are
| listening, how, why and when.
|
| Heliocentrism was discovered by a joint-enterprise of two
| enemy churches, and only became heresy post-facto when
| some very good evidence arrived. But by then it seemed to
| really become heresy, and was punished by itself. Almost
| certainly the Galileo's posture was important for that,
| but the society's context was way more important.
|
| Anyway, you won't get any good conclusion if you insist
| on analyzing the politicians arguments on logic or expect
| coherence.
| emmelaich wrote:
| And yet ... Pope Urban VIII was a patron of Galileo and
| encouraged him to write his treatise.
|
| Those who judged Galileo were part of the Roman
| Inquisition.
|
| Pope Urban's hands were tied when Galileo was seen to
| mock the pope and church through the figure and dialogue
| of Simplicio.
|
| This is _of course_ does not make the adjudication OK but
| you 're going too far in the opposite direction.
| renewiltord wrote:
| Haha yeah, the whole "Galileo was mean" is just insight
| porn nonsense. Evidence-free claim.
| defrost wrote:
| There's the evidence of the character Simplicio, who
| employed stock arguments in support of geocentricity, and
| was depicted in the book as being an intellectually inept
| fool.
|
| The arguments made "by an idiot" were clear swipes at
| both Lodovico delle Colombe and Cesare Cremonini.
|
| And other passages in other works of Galileo, but that
| alone is sufficiento sink "Evidence-free claim".
|
| This has been batted back and forth since (at least) _The
| Sleepwalkers_ (1959) by Arthur Koestler so you can argue
| against the assertaion but it 's foolish to pretend there
| isn't reams of references on this going back decades.
| renewiltord wrote:
| That's not evidence. That's the claim. If you claim that
| he was put to death for making fun of someone, you can't
| prove that by claiming that he made fun of someone. It's
| total conspiracy theory stuff.
|
| All those references are in the class of this salt stuff
| in the OP. They're whole fiction.
| throw0101b wrote:
| > _Haha yeah, the whole "Galileo was mean" is just
| insight porn nonsense. Evidence-free claim._
|
| The _Our Fake History_ podcast had a two-part series on
| this:
|
| * https://www.podcastone.com/episode/Episode-163--What-
| Was-The...
|
| * https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/episode-163-what-
| was-t...
|
| * https://www.podcastone.com/episode/Episode-164--What-
| Was-The...
|
| * https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/episode-164-what-
| was-t...
| refurb wrote:
| > Somehow people just read an interesting book and decided
| that their great-grandparents all believed on that stupid
| thing.
|
| Just go on social media today to see the same thing in
| action.
| gretch wrote:
| I personally am very skeptical of the other salt theory -
| salting the earth as a means of disrupting enemy soil.
|
| I started to think about it in depth when thinking about weed
| control in my own backyard - should I salt my own soil?
|
| The I realized how quickly it would wash away in the next rain.
| And for ancient times, the sheer volume of salt one would need
| in order to disrupt a significant amount of land.
|
| I dunno maybe it happened, but it seems like a very very dumb
| way to go about it. Then again, humans repeatedly prove the
| magnitude of our stupidity.
| dexwiz wrote:
| Yeah it would take a ludicrous amount to kill a field. Might
| as well put down gold foil weed barrier.
| edaemon wrote:
| This same site has an article on that very myth:
| http://kiwihellenist.blogspot.com/2016/12/salting-
| earth.html...
|
| To summarize, salting an area was a real thing, but the
| evidence suggests that it was done to make the land more
| fertile and not less. The idea was to replace your enemy's
| city with weeds and greenery, as if it had never existed.
| giraffe_lady wrote:
| Interestingly, accidentally making the soil too salty to
| support agriculture is one of the consequences of improperly
| managed irrigation over longish time scales, like decades to
| centuries. It's well understood now but I don't believe that
| it was to ancient peoples.
|
| I don't know how this could be weaponized or if anyone ever
| made a serious attempt at it. But it's experienced as massive
| regional catastrophe when it does, and the cause is clear
| even if not understood. There are places in arizona and
| california where salt crystals visibly form on the surface of
| what used to be farmland: it's plausible this would have been
| seen in the irrigation agriculture societies of mesopotamia
| and the ancient eastern mediterranean. Certainly easy to make
| the jump to fantasizing/praying about it happening to your
| enemies, once you've seen or heard of it.
| buzzin__ wrote:
| Pliny the Elder and his son Pliny the Younger are also involved
| in debunking another historical fakery. This one is about Jesus
| actually existing and not being made up 100 years later and
| 1000 kms away, in a different country and in a different
| language.
|
| As much as you can prove a negative, this guys do it by never
| mentioning him, despite being at the right place and time, and
| writing about other religions and prophets.
|
| Even the wikipedia entry on this subject starts with a huge
| logical phalacy.
| gamblor956 wrote:
| The Elder Pliny would have been a small child when Jesus
| died. Not many 10 year olds in the historical record
| discussing religion.
| jdjdjdkdksmdnd wrote:
| i think the topic of salt is misunderstood. ancient people didnt
| eat as much and they worked more and harder and also didnt have
| access to air conditioning. sweating more would deplete
| electrolytes and entering into dietary ketosis frequently would
| lead to a major decline of electrolytes. i think ancient people
| needed salt because they would get sick without it. but eveyone
| says its because they liked the taste
| qwytw wrote:
| > ketosis frequently
|
| Considering their diets, which were very high in carbohydrates
| (not sugars though) compared to modern diets that seems highly
| unlikely. Can you actually ever enter "ketosis" if you're
| mainly eating bread and other grain products?
|
| > i think ancient people needed salt because they would get
| sick without it. but eveyone says its because they liked the
| taste
|
| They needed salt because there weren't that many other ways to
| preserve food. I doubt this has much to do with taste. Also
| modern people need salt too..
|
| > ancient people didnt eat as much
|
| That's debatable. According to our records medieval people did
| sometimes eat quite a lot. I guess the problem is that it
| varied a lot. You either had too much or to little food all of
| the time.
| jdjdjdkdksmdnd wrote:
| ancient rome and medieval europe are really different. you
| can enter ketosis every day on a diet of carbohydrates by
| eating one or two times a day, eating less or engaging in
| exercise would make that ketosis deeper and longer. all of
| this could have applied to most people until relatively
| recently.
| Wytwwww wrote:
| > ancient rome and medieval europe are really different
|
| Why? Of course Northern European had different diets (e.g.
| lard instead of olive oil etc.) but on the Mediterranean
| cost diets weren't that similar.
|
| > you can enter ketosis every day on a diet of
| carbohydrates by eating one or two times a day
|
| So being on the brink of starvation all the time? Does not
| seem sustainable.
|
| > all of this could have applied to most people until
| relatively recently
|
| Highly unlikely. What makes you think that was the case?
| jdjdjdkdksmdnd wrote:
| no dude, its called intermittent fasting. it used to just
| the way people ate.
| qwebfdzsh wrote:
| You know that how exactly?
| jdjdjdkdksmdnd wrote:
| because they were much less fat than us, had almost none
| of the diseases we have that are all really metabolic
| dysfunction/diabetes at their root, and the general price
| and availability of food has only been getting better...
| qwebfdzsh wrote:
| What does that have to do with ketosis? You can eat a lot
| of carbs and not be fat...
|
| > had almost none of the diseases we have that are all
| really metabolic dysfunction/diabetes at their root
|
| True. Unless you were rich. Even heard of gout? But yeah
| probably somewhat accurate for the whole population. But
| again, not much to do with ketosis.
|
| I mean is there any evidence even today that someone
| whose diet is primarily (~80%) grain and other plant
| products with a lot of carbohydrates can enter ketosis
| even when practicing "intermittent fasting" while
| consuming ~2000-3000 calories per day (e.g. the estimate
| for standard Roman soldier daily rations is 3,000-4,000)?
| Seems impossible...
| mastazi wrote:
| I always thought it was important mostly for food preservation.
| Wytwwww wrote:
| Yes it was. That hypothesis about ketosis is very wacky and
| not backed by any evidence. Premodern diets were very high in
| carbohydrates compared to modern ones....
| jdjdjdkdksmdnd wrote:
| dude are you kidding me. most premodern diets were mostly
| meat. then neolithic
| SethMurphy wrote:
| premodern: broadly defined as between the late medieval
| period and the mid-nineteenth century.
| HarHarVeryFunny wrote:
| There was also a very practical use/need for salt as a food
| preservative, specifically for storing meat over the winter.
| Certainly this was the case in the middle ages in Britain, but
| maybe not in the more southernly parts of the roman empire with
| warmer climates where food production may have been more year-
| round.
| HarHarVeryFunny wrote:
| > ancient people didnt eat as much
|
| Not sure what you mean by that - at a time when people were
| largely self-sufficient and working the land, they obviously
| consumed enough calories for the work they were doing. The food
| may not have been great (a lot of bread!), but there would
| generally have been enough of it unless having to tough out the
| winter after a poor harvest.
| aurizon wrote:
| Rome had a growing problem - the lack of fiat currency as the
| reserves of silver and gold were exhausted. They had to find
| alternates. They tried debasement(adding lead/zinc/copper( but
| that created the early quick tests. Same now. We have so little
| gold that going to a gold backed method in circulation = gold
| would wise to $20,000 more or less per ounce at which point sea
| water extraction is economic. (currently it costs more to pump 1
| ton of water over a 2 foot hill that the value of the gold
| therein)
| qwebfdzsh wrote:
| > They had to find alternates.
|
| Except they didn't use salt for that. That's a myth. Did you
| read the article?
|
| > the lack of fiat currency as the reserves of silver and gold
| were exhausted.
|
| True, they had the same problem in the middle ages. Since we
| know massively more about the middle ages than Ancient Rome
| AFAIK they partially solved it through a mix of barter and
| credit (accounting was done using currency bit might have never
| changed hands in reality). As long as most trade is local that
| must be a pretty effective system.
| aurizon wrote:
| supplies, like salt, grain, etc were used because often there
| was not enough silver on hand = get salt etc - better than
| nothing and you can sell as you travel
| qwebfdzsh wrote:
| Salt was very bulky (less so than grain of course) but I
| don't think it made a very good medium of exchange.
| Shipping goods on land especially was extremely expensive.
|
| .e.g according to Diocletian's price edict (so the prices
| themselves are probably not accurate due to inflation by
| ratios might be) a laborer could afford to buy ~7kg of salt
| for his daily wage.
|
| Salt was supposedly very cheap, actually the same price as
| grain by volume. So it really wouldn't have made much sense
| to drag bags of salts with you just to sell it for pennies
| (salted meats or fish etc. probably would've have been a
| much better option).
| Nik09 wrote:
| Should start a gold standard salary, a possible substitute to
| Roman era
| empath-nirvana wrote:
| There are lots of slang words for wages today that have to do
| with food: "cheddar", "cabbage", "dough", "bread" "bacon" --
| maybe future etymologists will assume that we were paid in bread
| and cheese.
| throwaway1492 wrote:
| I never understood the "salt scarcity in antiquity" idea. As in
| they could just use a splash brine water from the sea if you
| physiologically need salt. And transport sea water inland as
| needed.
| ponector wrote:
| Main purpose for salt was good preservation. That's why it
| was extremely valuable.
| jvanderbot wrote:
| Above comment said it was not scarce, not that it wasn't
| valuable.
| ponector wrote:
| If it is not scarce - the value is low.
| whoknowsidont wrote:
| Breathable air is pretty valuable, at least for me. And
| it's definitely not that scarce on this planet.
| Turing_Machine wrote:
| Yep. Some combination of drying, salting, and smoking was
| pretty much it.
|
| No refrigeration. No freezing. No canning.
|
| They used a _lot_ of salt.
| dimitrios1 wrote:
| Don't forget about fermenting and pickling.
|
| They also had cellars and natural refrigerators.
| Ekaros wrote:
| I think in that statement the "extremely" carries way too
| much weight.
|
| As it would imply price to be very high. Which then would
| mean that regular people would not have access. But they
| also widely used salt. So it could not have been extremely
| valuable as we understand. Or maybe gasoline is extremely
| valuable commodity now...
| ponector wrote:
| Yes, you can compare it with today's oil trade.
|
| Salt production and trade have been restricted, usually
| state-owned monopoly. Cities with salt mines like
| Salzburg became extremely rich, like oil countries today.
|
| Is gasoline valuable? Yes. Is affordable? Yes, but not
| for everyone. Same with salt back than.
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| > Is affordable? Yes, but not for everyone. Same with
| salt back than.
|
| That isn't possible; someone who can't afford salt dies.
| It's like claiming that water "isn't affordable for
| everyone". It is, and it must be, because people who
| can't afford it also can't exist.
| lolinder wrote:
| According to the article, a Roman soldier could buy about
| 15 (modern) pounds of salt with a single day's wages.
|
| Comparisons are very hard, but to put that in a bit of
| perspective: at an average salary of $60k/yr, a typical
| American today makes $165/day. So the cost in time for a
| Roman to buy salt would be roughly equivalent to if the
| price for salt today were $11/lb.
|
| That's more expensive than it is today (I just bought salt
| for ~$2.50/lb), but it's a far cry from extremely valuable.
| Retric wrote:
| $60k/yr is a poor comparison because even modern Solders
| get paid less than average at a base but get room and
| board + many benefits.
|
| An Army private starts at, $1,833/mo that's 21k/year.
| Even corporal is only getting $2,393/mo to start and cap
| at $2,906/mo w/ 10 years. https://www.military-
| ranks.org/army-pay
|
| So a modern soldier starts at ~24lb/day of your 2.50$/lb
| salt, but also has much cheaper alternatives.
| lolinder wrote:
| Like I said, comparisons are hard. The point is that it
| wasn't a luxury good or an exceptionally valuable
| commodity, it was affordable.
| andrewflnr wrote:
| Transporting water from a well is already a pain in the neck.
| You think they're going to transport bulk seawater deep
| inland just to make their food soggy?
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| No, but it's very easy to make the seawater into salt and
| then transport the salt.
| andrewflnr wrote:
| No kidding, that's why that one actually happens.
| askvictor wrote:
| Define easy
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| You need to move seawater into an area where it won't
| empty back into the sea. This requires a jar.
|
| And you need to carry the salt. That's it. Salt can't rot
| and it's needed everywhere; this is just about the
| easiest piece of commerce you can do.
| Spooky23 wrote:
| Very simple. Now scale it to feed an army with 2000 year
| old technology.
| andrewflnr wrote:
| Ok, but remember, in this benighted subthread, we're
| comparing with a proposal to move seawater instead, in
| equivalent amounts.
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| I can't tell what you think you're saying. Not only was
| this done routinely, it was much easier than the more
| obvious problem of providing the army with grain.
| Xylakant wrote:
| Turning seawater into salt by evaporating it works in
| areas where evaporation is substantially higher than
| precipitation, so mostly in dry, warm areas. It won't
| work very well in Northern Europe for example. Salt needs
| to be kept moderately dry when transporting it, while it
| can't rot, it's still not trivial to transport.
|
| And salt was not only flavoring, but one of the few means
| of preserving food. Access to salt was not a mere
| culinary issue, it was a matter of survival. This means
| that there was substantial trade, and substantial value
| in salt production and trade.
| kuhewa wrote:
| Seawater is alive, from the sulfate reducing microbes
| you'll have rotten eggs flavoured brine before the trip is
| over
| Ekaros wrote:
| It really wasn't any more scarce than let's say wheat. And
| price seems to have been around same level with wheat take or
| leave some depending on distance from production.
|
| What really made it special was that it was commodity with
| possibly limited production locations, that kept extremely
| well and was in steady demand. So it is one thing that
| everyone uses and is relatively easy to tax. And the price
| likely was much more stable compared to food and other goods.
|
| The large scale demand also lead to it being desirable as
| military target, once you control the production you are
| good.
| Spooky23 wrote:
| Huh? Who's gonna pour seawater on their food or to preserve
| meats?
|
| The reality was just that making salt is an unpleasant, labor
| intensive task. In the Roman era, this involved slaves and
| thus capital.
| crabbone wrote:
| Ukrainian tradition and folklore prominently features these
| guys: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chumak . While the Wiki
| page mentions that in Ukrainian The Milky Way is called The
| Way of Chumaks it doesn't explain why -- but if you know the
| folklore, you'd immediately see that the idea is that it's
| the salt spillovers from their carts.
|
| Salt was one of the most important goods that were traded
| over long distances. And no, technologically it wasn't
| advantageous to transport seawater or try to convert seawater
| into salt. Ukrainian city of Soledar that was prominently
| featured in the news last year literally means "gifting salt"
| -- and it has huge historical salt mines under it.
|
| So, not only in antiquity, all the way through to the 19th
| century salt was one of the key goods traded over long
| distances. It wasn't as scarce as diamonds, but due to high
| demand it was still a worthwhile thing to trade.
| rex_lupi wrote:
| Also "Peanuts"
| Hayvok wrote:
| No doubt the phrase "bring home the bacon" will outlive our
| civilization and future historians will confidently assert to
| one another that we were all paid in rashers of bacon.
| geodel wrote:
| I wonder was that because bacon slices looked like currency
| notes? Or maybe crisp currency gave good feeling like the
| crisp bacon?
| breischl wrote:
| Tangentially, this makes me think about how much recently-
| introduced slang is for basically-random reasons like "it
| happened fit well into the rhyme and meter of a popular
| song" or "somebody attractive/famous said it" or "it sounds
| cool and kids' parents hate it".
|
| Maybe there's a good reason for the bacon thing, or maybe
| some guy just tended to buy bacon on payday. /shrug
| jzb wrote:
| Not limited to recent slang, really - consider all the
| early 1900s slang that's now part of the language. "Bee's
| knees," "beat it," "cat's meow," and lots of others.
| Somebody tested out those phrases and they stuck.
|
| "It sounds cool and kids' parents hate it" goes back to
| at least the 50s. It's an arms race of kids/teens trying
| to invent their own slang that their parents won't
| understand and then that language being picked up in
| popular culture and becoming more widely used and then
| kids try to come up with new terms.
|
| (We had a lot of fun with "yeet," "hype," "been knew,"
| and a few others with my kids a few years ago.)
| drewzero1 wrote:
| Cockney rhyming slang also comes to mind. I have to
| believe "it sounds cool and kids' parents hate it" goes
| back even farther than that though, probably ever since
| there have been kids and parents!
| rhplus wrote:
| This article places the origin of "bring home the bacon" to
| an African American boxer's mother in 1906. He mentions
| gravy in the response, so I suspect they're talking about
| bacon as in meat from the back half of a pig, like a bone-
| in pork leg rather than the sliced pork belly we envision
| today. The (figurative) bacon he was encouraged to bring
| home would be a big piece of meat like a roasted ham.
|
| https://jonathanbecher.com/2020/06/14/bring-home-the-bacon/
| jackfoxy wrote:
| The second paragraph of the article starts out
|
| _Most on-line sources claim the phrase originated in
| 1104 in a small town in Essex, England._
|
| In the third paragraph the author states he prefers the
| boxer story.
|
| Personally, I think the usage of that idiom is older than
| 117 years.
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| Phrasing can matter. Here's a lyric from the song "Kilkelly":
|
| _Because of the dampness, there 's no turf to speak of
|
| and now we have nothing to burn._
|
| This sounds a bit less serious to modern American ears than
| it should. We think of winter as being annoying, not
| _dangerous_.
|
| In China, where a common word for wages is Xin Zi -- "fuel
| and resources" -- people are more likely to intuit that going
| without fuel is best not attempted, even though they've never
| experienced it either. It makes for an odd example of poetry
| coming across better in translation than it does in the
| original language.
| SapporoChris wrote:
| https://xkcd.com/1054/
| KeplerBoy wrote:
| weren't people actually paid in bread and cheese?
| renewiltord wrote:
| Indeed, some historians say this is why people call money
| green: mold sometimes grows on the bread and cheese and mold
| is green.
|
| Of course, that's a fringe theory. The most mainstream one is
| that the copper coins people used for pennies would develop a
| patina of verdigris and would look, like the Statue of
| Liberty, green.
| deusum wrote:
| We're still finding roman coins in the UK, that should be enough
| physical evidence against the idea. But, I imagine salt would be
| useful for bartering with some of the "barbari" the soldiers
| encountered.
| Ekaros wrote:
| On other hand UK being island next to Ocean, a local salt
| production must have happened for long time. As such I'm not
| entirely sure the locals would have needed to source it from
| Romans. Then again if Romans took over the production it
| changes things.
| joenathanone wrote:
| From my research 'Salt' meant fool, 'salt of the earth' is like a
| 'bless your heart sort' of matter. The implications for Salary
| would mean that the soldiers were being fooled by accepting what
| they were given as payment. They also say the Lord works in
| mysterious ways.
| kouru225 wrote:
| I think the author goes a little too far here in equating the
| monetary value of salt with how valuable salt was. Salt had
| serious religious and mythological value. In nearly every single
| culture salt is said to ward off demons. Salt was used in
| courting rituals where new couples would process their love by
| licking the same salt rock. In some cultures, salt was part of
| the burial process. There isn't a single salt production site in
| the world that isn't named something like "salt place" or "place
| where the salt comes from." Sure, the fact that salt was involved
| in all these traditions and rituals probably indicates that salt
| was generally available to most people, but clearly it was still
| very important to them.
|
| If you're wondering why salt was so mythologically important,
| just go over to your counter, put some salt in your hand, lick
| it, and try to imagine how you'd describe the taste to someone
| who's never tasted it before. You can't. Salt is its own thing
| and there's nothing else like it.
| zeroonetwothree wrote:
| That's true of every flavor.
| tsimionescu wrote:
| Not sure that it really matters one way or the other, but all
| other taste buds are triggered by a whole class of
| substances, not just one or two. Any sugar is sweet (sucrose,
| fructose, even lactose), as are a bunch of other compounds
| (aspartame and the other artifical sweeteners). Any acid is
| sour. Savoriness/umami is caused by any compound containing
| glutamate. Bitterness is harder to pin down, but there are
| many compounds which trigger the taste.
|
| However, saltiness is not actually limited to NaCl. The part
| that triggers the taste is the Na ion, and other similar ions
| actually trigger the same taste - KCl is the most common, but
| compounds from Li, Rb, Cs, Ca can all trigger salty tastes.
| vlz wrote:
| Possibly, but just because there is a lot of scattered evidence
| for salt being used in religious/ritualistic ways over the
| ages, doesn't mean it was important everywhere for that reason
| and at every time.
|
| I like the article for sticking to the textual evidence we have
| and concluding "we don't know" instead of speculating.
|
| However if you have anything concrete on the religious meaning
| of salt in Ancient Rome that would be interesting.
| kragen wrote:
| i still use salt to ward off demons. specifically, food
| bacteria and heatstroke caused by dehydration. this was
| critical to survival before mass ice shipping, refrigeration,
| and air conditioning
| johnyzee wrote:
| Salt was also valuable in economic terms, more so than the
| article seems to imply. There are entire regions in northern
| Europe that have been deforested due to salt production. It was
| an important and valuable industrial product.
| nonrandomstring wrote:
| Salt tablets were issued to anyone marching long distances in hot
| conditions, as recently as Vietnam and Korea. Modern rations have
| "isotonic" packs.
|
| As for wages of ancient soldiers, the Greeks (dunno about Romans)
| took spoils, including women and slaves.
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| Salt is necessary for anyone who's producing a lot of sweat.
| The alternative is that you run out of salt and die.
|
| This is also why Gatorade is salted.
| massifist wrote:
| While I do appreciate historical accuracy, I find this news very
| disconcerting!
|
| And here I was hoarding all this salt, hoping for our return to
| the salt standard. :-(
|
| Well ya can't win em all! And at least I'm not on a low sodium
| diet.
| xiconfjs wrote:
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge%27s_law_of_headli...
|
| "Any headline that ends in a question mark can be answered by the
| word no."
| HarHarVeryFunny wrote:
| Yet again confirming the pattern that when the title of an
| article is a question, the answer is "no".
| Huppie wrote:
| Betteridge's law of headlines strikes again.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge's_law_of_headlines
| alentred wrote:
| My unscientific take on this issue:
|
| 1. According to the "Pay in the Roman army", Wikipedia [0]: in
| 235AD, a legionary was paid about 1350 denarii per year.
|
| 2. I cannot find the price of salt in Wikipedia, but according to
| the "Roman goods prices" [1]: in 301AD, price of salt was capped
| to 100 denarii for about 17 liters of salt. It was capped because
| of inflation, so it is reasonable to assume it was not higher in
| 235AD.
|
| This means that in salt, a legionary would have to be paid with
| around 230 liters of salt per year. If paid weekly, it's about
| 4.5 liters of salt per week.
|
| If the numbers are correct, this is indeed completely
| unrealistic. No one needs 4 liters of salt per week, a legionary
| wouldn't carry 8kg of salt on top of his equipment, and where
| would all that salt come from? This raises many more questions
| for centurions, who had roughly 30 times bigger salaries.
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pay_(Roman_army) [1]
| https://imperiumromanum.pl/en/roman-economy/roman-goods-pric...
| gregw134 wrote:
| The centurions were only paid double what soldiers were during
| the Republic era. Interesting their pay jumped to up to 30x
| during the empire.
| tuatoru wrote:
| > No one needs 4 liters of salt per week
|
| Back in the day people used a lot more salt than we do.[0]
|
| Before refrigeration, salting (brining) was the primary method
| of preserving meat and fish in damp climates. Salt was used to
| treat olives for consumption. Butter and cheese were stored in
| barrels surrounded by layers of salt to prevent spoilage. Soft
| cheeses like feta were often brined as well. Salt was used to
| cure hides for leathermaking. Salt was used in cloth dyeing.
| There are probably other uses that haven't sprung to mind
| immediately.
|
| Note that these things are home production if the soldier has a
| farm, and a soldier's family would have been six people or so.
|
| Maybe they could make do with less than 200 liters a year. If
| they were economical with it.
|
| > where would all that salt come from?
|
| Salt mines. The Austrian city Salzburg is called that because
| of the salt mines there. Hallstatt had salt mines from
| prehistoric times, and in the modern day several dead
| prehistoric miners have been recovered from the mines. they
| were preserved by the salt.
|
| The phrase "back to the salt mines", meaning returning to an
| arduous job, exists because salt mining was hard and dangerous.
| It was usually done by slaves or condemned criminals. If there
| were an easier way to get the salt that was needed, people
| would have used it.
|
| 0. Actually this probably isn't true. It's just that all the
| salt used in making the the products and services we consume is
| hidden from us in far-away factories. Ed Conway's book
| _Material World_ has a couple of chapters on salt.
|
| 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hallstatt
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