# Weapon/Tool Development/Anthropology...  Formerly Blocking useless?



## lklawson (Feb 26, 2018)

gpseymour said:


> All MA should evolve.


Why?  What if the goal of studying that MA is to maintain a historic art form?  In that case if it "evolved" then it would be changed, different, and no longer the historic art form.

Not every reason for studying a martial art, not every reason for the existence of a martial art, is the same and they shouldn't be thought of or treated the same.

Peace favor your sword,
Kirk


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## Gerry Seymour (Feb 26, 2018)

lklawson said:


> Why?  What if the goal of studying that MA is to maintain a historic art form?  In that case if it "evolved" then it would be changed, different, and no longer the historic art form.
> 
> Not every reason for studying a martial art, not every reason for the existence of a martial art, is the same and they shouldn't be thought of or treated the same.
> 
> ...


I see your point, Kirk. But "should" is a subjective concept. In my opinion (for all that's really worth), even those maintaining a tradition should evolve. Sword styles should strive for better swords (surely we can actually make better swords today than were made 100's of years ago) and better technique - even if they are aiming to maintain a tradition held long ago. By "better sword" I don't mean necessarily a wholesale change of the weapon, but the tweaks over time that leverage what can be improved without discarding the entire concept. If they don't strive to improve (which will lead to evolution, even if only slowly), my argument would be that they are practicing a performance art (though I might still refer to it as a martial art - my usage is not consistent). My attitude is driven by what one can safely assume was the likely motivation of those who practiced the art at whatever point in time is being recreated/maintained: they likely were trying to be as good at it as they could.


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## jobo (Feb 26, 2018)

lklawson said:


> Why?  What if the goal of studying that MA is to maintain a historic art form?  In that case if it "evolved" then it would be changed, different, and no longer the historic art form.
> 
> Not every reason for studying a martial art, not every reason for the existence of a martial art, is the same and they shouldn't be thought of or treated the same.
> 
> ...


yes that works , like learning to load a musket, or how to avoid being shot with arrow or firing poisoned darts with your blow pipe, how to avoid being rammed by a long boat stabbed with a pike or what to do if your attacker turn up with a wooden horse.

there are people who make a living out  of being experts on historic fighting techniques, but beyond historical intresting you may have to wait a long time for the m to be any use what so ever.

i suppose if its carefully explained to new arrivals that what they are signing up for is no more than learning something for the,sole purpose of keeping an out dates art going its ok, much like telling them they are unlikely to make much of a living out of basket weaving or making flint arrow heads


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## lklawson (Feb 26, 2018)

gpseymour said:


> I see your point, Kirk. But "should" is a subjective concept. In my opinion (for all that's really worth), even those maintaining a tradition should evolve. Sword styles should strive for better swords (surely we can actually make better swords today than were made 100's of years ago) and better technique - even if they are aiming to maintain a tradition held long ago. By "better sword" I don't mean necessarily a wholesale change of the weapon, but the tweaks over time that leverage what can be improved without discarding the entire concept. If they don't strive to improve (which will lead to evolution, even if only slowly), my argument would be that they are practicing a performance art (though I might still refer to it as a martial art - my usage is not consistent). My attitude is driven by what one can safely assume was the likely motivation of those who practiced the art at whatever point in time is being recreated/maintained: they likely were trying to be as good at it as they could.


I understand but I don't necessarily agree.

While better quality weapons ("swords" in your example) are probably a good idea, "tweaking" the weapon will often lose key elements of technique and therefore change the nature of the art itself, which does not maintain it as a historic artifact.

For instance, when I teach tomahawk, I often encourage people to practice on grass while wearing historic footwear.  Why?  Because modern shoes often give far better "gripping" ability, particularly on modern surfaces, and changes the way that a person moves while "fighting."  It, literally, changes the footwork, which is a fundamental part of the martial art.  If a fundamental part of the martial art changes then it is no longer the historic artifact.

Or Rapier fencing (which I don't study).  While a better quality Rapier is a good idea, making it too heavy, tip-heavy, or somehow historically inaccurate, changes the speed and balance of the weapon, which changes the effective techniques with it.

Peace favor your sword,
Kirk


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## lklawson (Feb 26, 2018)

jobo said:


> yes that works , like learning to load a musket, or how to avoid being shot with arrow or firing poisoned darts with your blow pipe, how to avoid being rammed by a long boat stabbed with a pike or what to do if your attacker turn up with a wooden horse.
> 
> there are people who make a living out  of being experts on historic fighting techniques, but beyond historical intresting you may have to wait a long time for the m to be any use what so ever.
> 
> i suppose if its carefully explained to new arrivals that what they are signing up for is no more than learning something for the,sole purpose of keeping an out dates art going its ok, much like telling them they are unlikely to make much of a living out of basket weaving or making flint arrow heads


It's fun.  Look at how popular "Frontier" recreationism is.  There are dozens of "Rendezvous" here locally alone, never mind the rest of the nation.  I'm aware of some organizations and clubs in the U.K. for maintaining historic "fighting arts."  One such is a club which maintains historic rifle infantry unit from circa late 16th Century.  I spoke with one of them a few years ago.

While people, including those inside the recreation, joke about the viability of their skills after WWIII nukes, the zombie outbreak, or the rise of magic, the truth is that they (we) do it for any number of reasons such as developing a "link" to our own histories or even just because it is fun.  That said, there is occasionally "real work" for these skills, often more than people outside of the recreation might think.  Two that come immediately to mind are accademia and entertainment.  Very often historians and archeologists look to learn the skills in order to get a better idea of how people lived at the time in question.   Knowing how a person had to fight with a stone headed club while wearing skin footwear, and how it impacts movement, injury, what concessions and accommodations are required for the person carrying and using, and even what affects these skills and equipment has on local and broader economics.  Did a tribe have to trade for chert to knap? (yes, sometimes) Did Scotland have to import their sword blades from somewhere else?  (yes, usually England or France)  I remember reading one archeologist who claimed that he could tell which people were the flint-knappers in a village by what repetitive stress injuries their bones show.  Not only that but the entertainment industry is being pushed by consumers for ever more "realistic" fight scenes.  The fight scenes from Ivanhoe in 1952 or Captain Blood in 1935 are far different from the fight scenes demanded now.  The viewing public thinks they want to see "how they really fought" with those swords and weapons.  (They don't really want to see because it would be a boring fight)  In order to generate more accurate and realistic fight scenes, the entertainment industry turns to experts in the field.  When the big-budget movie The Alamo, released 2004, a friend and teacher of mine got a contact from the movie production staff asking him to consult with them on Bowie Knife technique.

So while most of us do these things just for fun, to gain a connection with our own history and ancestors, or just to practice a martial art that is something different from Asian arts, BJJ, or boxing, there can be opportunities for income sometimes.


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## jobo (Feb 26, 2018)

lklawson said:


> I understand but I don't necessarily agree.
> 
> While better quality weapons ("swords" in your example) are probably a good idea, "tweaking" the weapon will often lose key elements of technique and therefore change the nature of the art itself, which does not maintain it as a historic artifact.
> 
> ...


good god, i didn't think of tomahawks


lklawson said:


> It's fun.  Look at how popular "Frontier" recreationism is.  There are dozens of "Rendezvous" here locally alone, never mind the rest of the nation.  I'm aware of some organizations and clubs in the U.K. for maintaining historic "fighting arts."  One such is a club which maintains historic rifle infantry unit from circa late 16th Century.  I spoke with one of them a few years ago.
> 
> While people, including those inside the recreation, joke about the viability of their skills after WWIII nukes, the zombie outbreak, or the rise of magic, the truth is that they (we) do it for any number of reasons such as developing a "link" to our own histories or even just because it is fun.  That said, there is occasionally "real work" for these skills, often more than people outside of the recreation might think.  Two that come immediately to mind are accademia and entertainment.  Very often historians and archeologists look to learn the skills in order to get a better idea of how people lived at the time in question.   Knowing how a person had to fight with a stone headed club while wearing skin footwear, and how it impacts movement, injury, what concessions and accommodations are required for the person carrying and using, and even what affects these skills and equipment has on local and broader economics.  Did a tribe have to trade for chert to knap? (yes, sometimes) Did Scotland have to import their sword blades from somewhere else?  (yes, usually England or France)  I remember reading one archeologist who claimed that he could tell which people were the flint-knappers in a village by what repetitive stress injuries their bones show.  Not only that but the entertainment industry is being pushed by consumers for ever more "realistic" fight scenes.  The fight scenes from Ivanhoe in 1952 or Captain Blood in 1935 are far different from the fight scenes demanded now.  The viewing public thinks they want to see "how they really fought" with those swords and weapons.  (They don't really want to see because it would be a boring fight)  In order to generate more accurate and realistic fight scenes, the entertainment industry turns to experts in the field.  When the big-budget movie The Alamo, released 2004, a friend and teacher of mine got a contact from the movie production staff asking him to consult with them on Bowie Knife technique.
> 
> So while most of us do these things just for fun, to gain a connection with our own history and ancestors, or just to practice a martial art that is something different from Asian arts, BJJ, or boxing, there can be opportunities for income sometimes.


there is no better reason for doing anything, other than its fun, and if learning how to kill with a mammoth thigh bone is what's fun for you, rock on, all good.

but the issue under discussion, isn't if museum pieces should exists, its that outdated arts are being instructed as relevant to a modern setting, rather than just, this is what they use to do before they had the first idea about body mechanics, its FUN, but mostly useless, unless you find yourself in possession of both a tomahawk and authentic stone age. Footwear at the right moment


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## Danny T (Feb 26, 2018)

jobo said:


> good god, i didn't think of tomahawks


Actually...Tomahawks are still being use.


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## Gerry Seymour (Feb 26, 2018)

lklawson said:


> I understand but I don't necessarily agree.
> 
> While better quality weapons ("swords" in your example) are probably a good idea, "tweaking" the weapon will often lose key elements of technique and therefore change the nature of the art itself, which does not maintain it as a historic artifact.
> 
> ...


As I said, my view is admittedly subjective. I'd argue (though not vehemently, because I don't think it's important to sway anyone to my view) that the footwork you refer to was a compensation for the footwear's limitation. Had the tomahawk remained in common use, the technique would have evolved as better footwear made different footwork beneficial. And the proponents likely wouldn't have seen the gradual progression of footwear as a significant problem. It's a bit like golf, in that way (in my mind). As materials and craft evolved, it has changed the game markedly, but it's still clearly golf. I like the romance of wood clubs (even hickory shafts), and would probably own and play an historically accurate (to perhaps the early 1900's) set if I could afford it. But that's holding the sport back to an artificial point in time for romantic reasons.

I can see merit in maintaining the historical form, and I don't use "performance art" as a derogatory term in this case. I just don't have a better term to use that includes the word "art".


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## Gerry Seymour (Feb 26, 2018)

lklawson said:


> It's fun.


This. And I'm not sure much else matters, frankly.


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## jobo (Feb 26, 2018)

Danny T said:


> Actually...Tomahawks are still being use.


I'm sure, but not as intended, riding bare back has gone out of fashion for much the same reason


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## lklawson (Feb 26, 2018)

gpseymour said:


> I'd argue (though not vehemently, because I don't think it's important to sway anyone to my view) that the footwork you refer to was a compensation for the footwear's limitation.


Of course.  Nevertheless, that is part of why the moved the way they did.  If you want to understand how a martial art existed at the time, an important part of that was the clothing and footwear.  



> Had the tomahawk remained in common use, the technique would have evolved as better footwear made different footwork beneficial. And the proponents likely wouldn't have seen the gradual progression of footwear as a significant problem. It's a bit like golf, in that way (in my mind). As materials and craft evolved, it has changed the game markedly, but it's still clearly golf. I like the romance of wood clubs (even hickory shafts), and would probably own and play an historically accurate (to perhaps the early 1900's) set if I could afford it. But that's holding the sport back to an artificial point in time for romantic reasons.


To be honest, it is.  Most recognizably, there was the Vietnam era tomahawk, but even today, some U.S. warfighters carry and use a tomahawk.  It's not common, but it does happen.



> I can see merit in maintaining the historical form, and I don't use "performance art" as a derogatory term in this case. I just don't have a better term to use that includes the word "art".


I kinda like the term "historical artifact."  

Peace favor your sword,
Kirk


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## lklawson (Feb 26, 2018)

jobo said:


> I'm sure, but not as intended, riding bare back has gone out of fashion for much the same reason


As intended?  The first "tomahawks" were either stone maces with lozenge type heads or were stone axes, carried and used by pre-colonial invaginates who did not have horses.  The pre-colonial traders used trade axes (just the ax heads) which were mounted to local wood handles, and thus is has been since.  The basic design remains the same, and a hand-ax has been a combination tool/combat-tool since the idea was invented by Og wearing his untanned anteater skins.

It's a short ax.  Hold it in one hand and chop the other guy's body.


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## Gerry Seymour (Feb 26, 2018)

lklawson said:


> I kinda like the term "historical artifact."


I don't know, Kirk. I get the feeling kids are gonna start using that term for me, someday...


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## lklawson (Feb 26, 2018)

gpseymour said:


> I don't know, Kirk. I get the feeling kids are gonna start using that term for me, someday...


You should be so lucky.  I get "fossil."  

Peace favor your sword,
Kirk


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## jobo (Feb 26, 2018)

lklawson said:


> As intended?  The first "tomahawks" were either stone maces with lozenge type heads or were stone axes, carried and used by pre-colonial invaginates who did not have horses.  The pre-colonial traders used trade axes (just the ax heads) which were mounted to local wood handles, and thus is has been since.  The basic design remains the same, and a hand-ax has been a combination tool/combat-tool since the idea was invented by Og wearing his untanned anteater skins.
> 
> It's a short ax.  Hold it in one hand and chop the other guy's body.


well exactly, my point, they are not generaly used to chop people, so not as intended, i doubt they are much used for any sort of chopping nowdays 

the colonial years were mostly about stone age tribes running up against better technology and loosing heavily. Only a lunatic would tie a bit of stone to a handle when they could choose a,steel axe with a nice snug hole for the handle.


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## lklawson (Feb 26, 2018)

jobo said:


> well exactly, my point, they are not generaly used to chop people, so not as intended, i doubt they are much used for any sort of chopping nowdays


Sorry, but your history is off.  The tomahawk/hand-ax has been part of kit for warfighters since they were invented.  They were used against the British by the Colonials in the U.S. War for Independence.  They were used in WWI as trench weapons.  They were used in the Korean conflict.  They are even still used sometimes by U.S. warfighters in the M.E.

While a hand-ax may be a very niche weapon, it always has been and yet remains a viable one and it is still being used "as intended."


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## jobo (Feb 26, 2018)

lklawson said:


> Sorry, but your history is off.  The tomahawk/hand-ax has been part of kit for warfighters since they were invented.  They were used against the British by the Colonials in the U.S. War for Independence.  They were used in WWI as trench weapons.  They were used in the Korean conflict.  They are even still used sometimes by U.S. warfighters in the M.E.
> 
> While a hand-ax may be a very niche weapon, it always has been and yet remains a viable one and it is still being used "as intended."


no no no no
use of a " hand axe", made by casting iron/ steel is not the same,as saying tomahawks, bits of stone held to a bit of branch by twine or vines or what ever

you make my point, that the stone axe, last used in Europe just before the romans invaded, was replaced by a much improved version.


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## jks9199 (Feb 26, 2018)

jobo said:


> no no no no
> use of a " hand axe", made by casting iron/ steel is not the same,as saying tomahawks, bits of stone held to a bit of branch by twine or vines or what ever
> 
> you make my point, that the stone axe, last used in Europe just before the romans invaded, was replaced by a much improved version.


Kind of a limited interpretation of tomahawk, there...  Tomahawk is a particular style of hand ax, recognizably different from a hatchet, for example.  Typically, tomahawks have straighter handles, and often, less of a hammer side, though some tomahawks designed more for fighting may have a spike or other "added" incentives on the back side.  Many more traditional tomahawks are made by wrapping a softer iron or steel around the shaft, then forge welding a harder/better steel for the actual sharpened blade.

Or perhaps we need to limit knives to those chipped from a piece of stone, and not include knives made of various metals?

But... I kind of think maybe the discussion of blades and tomahawks is drifting from the original topic of whether or not blocks are useful...


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## oftheherd1 (Feb 26, 2018)

jobo said:


> well exactly, my point, they are not generaly used to chop people, so not as intended, i doubt they are much used for any sort of chopping nowdays
> 
> the colonial years were mostly about stone age tribes running up against better technology and loosing heavily. Only a lunatic would tie a bit of stone to a handle when they could choose a,steel axe with a nice snug hole for the handle.



I have read many survivalists commentaries that if they could have their choice of only one non-firearm hand weapon in the wild, it would be the hand axe.


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## drop bear (Feb 26, 2018)

hoshin1600 said:


> im just gonna throw this little nugget of opinion out there,   most of todays martial arts were not created with the purpose of being effective in combat.  they are a hobbist activity in combative mimicry.  however we are for the most part very removed from the actual hand to hand combat that was common in the ancient past, that today we look to these martial arts in an attempt to learn how to fight. we often wonder why certain arts or segments of arts are less then effective because we think martial arts were used by the older generations to wage war and fight battles.
> if martial arts were not intended as a true combat art, then the "progression" of the art is counter productive.



If we look historically at medicine. And doctors who had a system developed during war. Some of it was on point. Some of it was way off.

Systems get better.


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## jobo (Feb 26, 2018)

jks9199 said:


> Kind of a limited interpretation of tomahawk, there...  Tomahawk is a particular style of hand ax, recognizably different from a hatchet, for example.  Typically, tomahawks have straighter handles, and often, less of a hammer side, though some tomahawks designed more for fighting may have a spike or other "added" incentives on the back side.  Many more traditional tomahawks are made by wrapping a softer iron or steel around the shaft, then forge welding a harder/better steel for the actual sharpened blade.
> 
> Or perhaps we need to limit knives to those chipped from a piece of stone, and not include knives made of various metals?
> 
> But... I kind of think maybe the discussion of blades and tomahawks is drifting from the original topic of whether or not blocks are useful...


no he has identified tomahawks as being stone headed axes, 

he is the one insisting on authenticity of ancient weapons, he can't start mixing and matching


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## jobo (Feb 26, 2018)

oftheherd1 said:


> I have read many survivalists commentaries that if they could have their choice of only one non-firearm hand weapon in the wild, it would be the hand axe.


yes i can see that a hand,axe has all sorts of benefits, any saying that they would prefer a stone headed tomahawk to a hand,axe


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## Danny T (Feb 26, 2018)

jobo said:


> I'm sure, but not as intended,


Oh...how so?
There are modified hawks for specific purposes like door entries or automobile entries but many are still used for combat and as such are trained as a combat tool.


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## jobo (Feb 26, 2018)

Danny T said:


> Oh...how so?
> There are modified hawks for specific purposes like door entries or automobile entries but many are still used for combat and as such are trained as a combat tool.


I'm looking for a single instance of a tomahawk being use to chop someone up, anytime since say the 1800s, 
nb please not e if it's hasn't got a stone head its NOT a tomahawk, its a modern axe


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## Gerry Seymour (Feb 26, 2018)

jobo said:


> yes i can see that a hand,axe has all sorts of benefits, any saying that they would prefer a stone headed tomahawk to a hand,axe


I haven't heard anyone say a tomahawk had to be stone-headed.


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## lklawson (Feb 26, 2018)

jobo said:


> no he has identified tomahawks as being stone headed axes,
> 
> he is the one insisting on authenticity of ancient weapons, he can't start mixing and matching


...for the period in question.

You seem to be deliberately ignoring this aspect in this thread starting from the very first.


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## lklawson (Feb 26, 2018)

jobo said:


> yes i can see that a hand,axe has all sorts of benefits, any saying that they would prefer a stone headed tomahawk to a hand,axe


It will shock no one who has been reading this thread to know that no one except you has claimed this.


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## drop bear (Feb 26, 2018)

lklawson said:


> Sorry, but your history is off.  The tomahawk/hand-ax has been part of kit for warfighters since they were invented.  They were used against the British by the Colonials in the U.S. War for Independence.  They were used in WWI as trench weapons.  They were used in the Korean conflict.  They are even still used sometimes by U.S. warfighters in the M.E.
> 
> While a hand-ax may be a very niche weapon, it always has been and yet remains a viable one and it is still being used "as intended."




Exept apparently not.


*For instance, when I teach tomahawk, I often encourage people to practice on grass while wearing historic footwear. Why? Because modern shoes often give far better "gripping" ability, particularly on modern surfaces, and changes the way that a person moves while "fighting." It, literally, changes the footwork, which is a fundamental part of the martial art. If a fundamental part of the martial art changes then it is no longer the historic artifact.

Or Rapier fencing (which I don't study). While a better quality Rapier is a good idea, making it too heavy, tip-heavy, or somehow historically inaccurate, changes the speed and balance of the weapon, which changes the effective techniques with it.*


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## lklawson (Feb 26, 2018)

drop bear said:


> Exept apparently not.
> 
> 
> *For instance, when I teach tomahawk, I often encourage people to practice on grass while wearing historic footwear. Why? Because modern shoes often give far better "gripping" ability, particularly on modern surfaces, and changes the way that a person moves while "fighting." It, literally, changes the footwork, which is a fundamental part of the martial art. If a fundamental part of the martial art changes then it is no longer the historic artifact.
> ...


<sigh>  Well, your lazy (or trolling?) ways continue.  I've stated any number of time her on MT that I focus on mid-to-late 19th C. Western martial arts, straying occasionally into very early 20th C. 

I'm not sure what you have convinced yourself that you've "proven," but the fact is that studying 19th Century martial pursuits while wearing 19th Century footwear, particularly for tomahawk, is pretty standard.


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## jobo (Feb 26, 2018)

gpseymour said:


> I haven't heard anyone say a tomahawk had to be stone-headed.


well they have in this thread, but anyway, its fairly logical that , that is a defining feature ,

i think its a US perspective, we Europeans have had fighting axes since the year dot, non of them being called a tomahawk, which is a name perculular to, a certain design of axe  used by the native Americans, if you are going to call all fighting axes tomhawks, then you can call submachine guns ,muskets as they do much the same job, just better,


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## lklawson (Feb 26, 2018)

jobo said:


> well they have in this thread, but anyway, its fairly logical that , that is a defining feature ,
> 
> i think its a US perspective, we Europeans have had fighting axes since the year dot, non of them being called a tomahawk, which is a name perculular to, a certain design of axe  used by the native Americans,


Not exactly, no.  The name comes from a variation/corruption of the name from indigenous languages and was pretty much immediately applied to Trade Axes supplied by European traders.  That said, as has already been pointed out, tomahawks are generally differentiated very loosely from what is sometimes called a hatchet, though, historically speaking, in the U.S. there is a great deal of overlap in the terms.  Most often, but not exclusively, a straight handle is an important feature.  Tomahawk heads vary widely in shape, size, and design. Look at what historians credit as the "hatchet" that was typically carried by Rogers Rangers and referenced in his 28 Rules of Ranging.



> if you are going to call all fighting axes tomhawks, then you can call submachine guns ,muskets as they do much the same job, just better,


Nope.  You misunderstand.  I don't know if that is intentional or otherwise, but basically it's an American hand-ax.

It's simply not as black-and-white as you seem to want to claim.


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## jobo (Feb 26, 2018)

lklawson said:


> Not exactly, no.  The name comes from a variation/corruption of the name from indigenous languages and was pretty much immediately applied to Trade Axes supplied by European traders.  That said, as has already been pointed out, tomahawks are generally differentiated very loosely from what is sometimes called a hatchet, though, historically speaking, in the U.S. there is a great deal of overlap in the terms.  Most often, but not exclusively, a straight handle is an important feature.  Tomahawk heads vary widely in shape, size, and design.
> 
> Nope.  You misunderstand.  I don't know if that is intentional or otherwise, but basically it's an American hand-ax.
> 
> It's simply not as black-and-white as you seem to want to claim.


you appear to be engaging in cultural theft, as someone who insists on authenticity in the design of ancient weapons , you suddenly want to call all modern axes tomahawks, when it is clearly and accurately ONLY the item that was used by the native Americans consisting of a stone head, you defined tomahalks as having a stone head early in this discussion.


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## lklawson (Feb 26, 2018)

jobo said:


> you appear to be engaging in cultural theft, as someone who insists on authenticity in the design of ancient weapons , you suddenly want to call all modern axes tomahawks, when it is clearly and accurately ONLY the item that was used by the native Americans consisting of a stone head, you defined tomahalks as having a stone head early in this discussion.


I don't know if this is humor, trolling, or just being dense.  If it's humor, then good job.  If it's trolling, then, well, I'm replying so I guess it worked.

No, I did not define tomahawks as only having a stone head.  That's where they started.  Notice when I wrote "were?" That's a past-tense.  I also wrote in the next sentence about the trade axes which replaced the stone.  

At this point, I'm pretty sure that you're just arguing.  Unless you can come up with a real discussion, I just going to let you blather.


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## jobo (Feb 26, 2018)

lklawson said:


> I don't know if this is humor, trolling, or just being dense.  If it's humor, then good job.  If it's trolling, then, well, I'm replying so I guess it worked.
> 
> No, I did not define tomahawks as only having a stone head.  That's where they started.  Notice when I wrote "were?" That's a past-tense.  I also wrote in the next sentence about the trade axes which replaced the stone.
> 
> At this point, I'm pretty sure that you're just arguing.  Unless you can come up with a real discussion, I just going to let you blather.


no back about twenty posts, where you were talking about authentic foot ware AND stone headed tomahawks,


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## lklawson (Feb 26, 2018)

jobo said:


> no back about twenty posts, where you were talking about authentic foot ware AND stone headed tomahawks,


Apparently you didn't read it too closely.

Blocking useless?
_"The first "tomahawks" were either stone maces with lozenge type heads or were stone axes, carried and used by pre-colonial [indiginates] who did not have horses. The pre-colonial traders used trade axes (just the ax heads) which were mounted to local wood handles, and thus is has been since. The basic design remains the same, and a hand-ax has been a combination tool/combat-tool since the idea was invented by Og wearing his untanned anteater skins.

It's a short ax. Hold it in one hand and chop the other guy's body."
_
This was in response to your claim that using a tomakawk to chop on someone wasn't using it as it was "intended."  

See where I wrote "The first..."  Then I describe those "first" ones.  Then I talk about their replacement with trade axes.

Are you done yet?


----------



## Gerry Seymour (Feb 26, 2018)

jobo said:


> you appear to be engaging in cultural theft, as someone who insists on authenticity in the design of ancient weapons , you suddenly want to call all modern axes tomahawks, when it is clearly and accurately ONLY the item that was used by the native Americans consisting of a stone head, you defined tomahalks as having a stone head early in this discussion.


You seem to be engaging in trolling.


----------



## Danny T (Feb 27, 2018)

jobo said:


> nb please not e if it's hasn't got a stone head its NOT a tomahawk, its a modern axe


Metal hawks were being utilized in North America in the late 1500s.


----------



## jobo (Feb 27, 2018)

Danny T said:


> Metal hawks were being utilized in North America in the late 1500s.


after the Spanish arrived you mean ? European axes are NOT hawks, they are European axes


----------



## oftheherd1 (Feb 27, 2018)

gpseymour said:


> I haven't heard anyone say a tomahawk had to be stone-headed.



You are usually so good at picking up on strawmen.  Were you asleep at the keyboard?


----------



## oftheherd1 (Feb 27, 2018)

jobo said:


> I'm looking for a single instance of a tomahawk being use to chop someone up, anytime since say the 1800s,
> nb please not e if it's hasn't got a stone head its NOT a tomahawk, its a modern axe



Villisca axe murders - Wikipedia


----------



## Danny T (Feb 27, 2018)

jobo said:


> after the Spanish arrived you mean ? European axes are NOT hawks, they are European axes


Sorry I should have stated 'Iron' hawks. There were stone, brass, and copper war hawks well before that.

The Iron hawks were smaller than the European axe though designs were influenced by them. The Pipe Hawk was designed and made by the European traders specifically to trade with the indigenous people.

Either way the term tomahawk derived from the Algonquian words “tamahak” or “tamahakan" meaning 'cutting off tool'.
When the French began trading they brought the 'Francisca' that was adapted by some of the tribes they traded with.

Hawks were used by the military in WWll, the Korean War, and in the Vietnam War.

Today there are still metal versions of the tomahawk made by both American and European manufactures.

You are certainly entitled to your opinions and as good opinions they may be. Just because they are your opinions doesn't make them correct.


----------



## jobo (Feb 27, 2018)

oftheherd1 said:


> Villisca axe murders - Wikipedia


that say axe murders, we are talking about tomahawks


----------



## jobo (Feb 27, 2018)

Danny T said:


> Sorry I should have stated 'Iron' hawks. There were stone, brass, and copper war hawks well before that.
> 
> The Iron hawks were smaller than the European axe though designs were influenced by them. The Pipe Hawk was designed and made by the European traders specifically to trade with the indigenous people.
> 
> ...


that's interesting, the native American were a stone,aged people in the,1500s, that's not that they couldnt do limited casting of metals, just that , that casting was very limited and only involved low melting point metals, gold, silver and copper, and mostly for decoration purposes, even the more advanced southern and central American peoples were,stone aged in technology, that being the vast majority of their tools and equipment were made of stone, with metal being the exception.

that said I'm wondering how you have decieded that the northern tribes had managed to perfect brass for use in tomahawks, not that it would have been of much use for chopping, its not much harder than copper and quite probably inferior to stone


----------



## JowGaWolf (Feb 27, 2018)

jobo said:


> that's interesting, the native American were a stone,aged people in the,1500s,


This is not accurate.  It's already historical fact that they worked with and used metals long before the 1500's  and long before any European contact.


----------



## jobo (Feb 27, 2018)

JowGaWolf said:


> This is not accurate.  It's already historical fact that they worked with and used metals long before the 1500's  and long before any European contact.


and i admitted as much above BUT, if you haven't reached a state of development to be bronze aged, then you are stone aged, there wasn't a copper age, or a gold age or even a brass age


----------



## JowGaWolf (Feb 27, 2018)

Native  American Metal Works
Here's what gets me.  We have historical records about Europeans coming to the Americas and seeing gold.   If they actually saw that much gold then it would mean that Native Americans were working metal long before the arrival of Europeans.  The only thing that hasn't been proven is the use of blacksmith technology that was found on other cultures.  But they definitely worked with metals.


----------



## JowGaWolf (Feb 27, 2018)

jobo said:


> and i admitted as much above BUT, if you haven't reached a state of development to be bronze aged, then you are stone aged, there wasn't a copper age, or a gold age or even a brass age


There actually is a Copper Age
"The Chalcolithic period, or *Copper Age*, was an era of transition between the stone tool-using farmers of the Neolithic and the metal-obsessed civilizations of the Bronze *Age*."


----------



## jobo (Feb 27, 2018)

JowGaWolf said:


> Native  American Metal Works
> Here's what gets me.  We have historical records about Europeans coming to the Americas and seeing gold.   If they actually saw that much gold then it would mean that Native Americans were working metal long before the arrival of Europeans.  The only thing that hasn't been proven is the use of blacksmith technology that was found on other cultures.  But they definitely worked with metals.


yes but not bronze, so they were stone aged, all stone aged peoples work metal to some extent, that doesn't stop them being stoned aged


----------



## lklawson (Feb 27, 2018)

jobo said:


> and i admitted as much above BUT, if you haven't reached a state of development to be bronze aged, then you are stone aged, there wasn't a copper age, or a gold age or even a brass age


There was a "Copper Age," most artists I know consider any Copper alloy, including "brass" (Copper-Zinc) to be a form of "Bronze," and it looks like "Brass" (Copper-Zinc) might have actually predated "Bronze" (Copper-Tin):

Brass before bronze? Early copper-alloy metallurgy in China - Journal of Analytical Atomic Spectrometry (RSC Publishing)


----------



## JowGaWolf (Feb 27, 2018)

jobo said:


> yes but not bronze, so they were stone aged, all stone aged peoples work metal to some extent, that doesn't stop them being stoned aged


Stone Age only refers to the tools, weapons, and crafts that only used stone as the main material.  Stone age is a classification of non-metal tools of what were used, before the use of metal.  Based on what I was able to find, Europeans entered the scene during the transition stage that would have eventually taken Native Americans into a "Bronze Age" 

The slow pace of metal advancement is probably due to the location of the Americas (on the other side of the world).  In Europe and Asia the many cultures were able to share trade and science, in this case dealing with metals.  The Americas did not have that advantage so metallurgy developed with limited influence from other foreign cultures.

Native American (North America) metal use is referred to as Old Copper Culture.   
Quote from the link Old Copper Culture website. above.

"_The most conclusive evidence suggests that native copper was utilized to produce a wide variety of tools beginning in the Middle Archaic period circa 4,000 BC. The vast majority of this evidence comes from dense concentrations of Old Copper finds in eastern Wisconsin. These copper tools cover a broad range of artifact types: axes, adzes, various forms of projectile points, knives, perforators, fishhooks, and harpoons_."

Native American Copper Axe Heads from that period






Knives.  Notice how the knife handle have that similar shape found other cultures.  Also take note of the curved blades in the picture





Tang Points.   The interesting thing is that you can find this same pattern of Metallurgy development across many different cultures.  Stone Age -> Copper Age->  Bronze Age->  Iron Age?  The weapon design also takes a similar development path as other cultures.   A lot of knowledge has been about their use of metals, as Europeans didn't exactly try to preserve native American knowledge, accomplishments, and history.  It was quite the opposite, and as a result, much of what people know about Native American Culture, Pre-European, comes from old assumptions and incorrect information that has been passed down from generation to generation.  Before today I knew nothing about Native American Metallurgy.  The only thing I knew and understood is that ancient people weren't as primitive as past historians once stated them as.


----------



## drop bear (Feb 27, 2018)

oftheherd1 said:


> Just my humble opinion, but I would guess you would probably be expert on that.  It seems demonstrated often in your answers.  Could you try to make more sense in your replies?  Please?



It is all the boring content and not enough trolling  isn't  it?

I should just attack the poster constantly instead of defending my position with logic.


----------



## drop bear (Feb 27, 2018)

lklawson said:


> <sigh>  Well, your lazy (or trolling?) ways continue.  I've stated any number of time her on MT that I focus on mid-to-late 19th C. Western martial arts, straying occasionally into very early 20th C.
> 
> I'm not sure what you have convinced yourself that you've "proven," but the fact is that studying 19th Century martial pursuits while wearing 19th Century footwear, particularly for tomahawk, is pretty standard.



But is different to modern axe fighting. So this link you are now making to relevant martial arts you have already broken.

Different footwear different system.

Same argument Jojo made. Old timey axe is not modern axe.

Old timey boxing is not modern boxing.

It is nice that you are saving a bit of history for people to enjoy. But it is not relevant from a practical perspective.

Quite simply if you get more people collaborating in an activity they get better at it. There is more people striking. And more people wrestling. And more capacity to be good at it.

The idea that old timey boxing has some  sort of relevance is just clever marketing from the people who are invested in selling old timey boxing.


----------



## lklawson (Feb 27, 2018)

drop bear said:


> But is different to modern axe fighting. So this link you are now making to relevant martial arts you have already broken.
> 
> Different footwear different system.
> 
> ...


Poor Trolling.  Not bothering.


----------



## drop bear (Feb 27, 2018)

lklawson said:


> Poor Trolling.  Not bothering.



Ha!

Predictable response when you don't have an answer.


----------



## jobo (Feb 27, 2018)

JowGaWolf said:


> Stone Age only refers to the tools, weapons, and crafts that only used stone as the main material.  Stone age is a classification of non-metal tools of what were used, before the use of metal.  Based on what I was able to find, Europeans entered the scene during the transition stage that would have eventually taken Native Americans into a "Bronze Age"
> 
> The slow pace of metal advancement is probably due to the location of the Americas (on the other side of the world).  In Europe and Asia the many cultures were able to share trade and science, in this case dealing with metals.  The Americas did not have that advantage so metallurgy developed with limited influence from other foreign cultures.
> 
> ...


if you don't like the term stone aged, then we will settle for Neolithic . Neolithic also know as the stone age, ended with the bronze age, ergo, any culture that didn't have wide spread use of bronze is stone,aged or neolithic.

there a move to try and portray the native Americans as far more advanced than they were. All neolithic cultures worked metals, the difference is the rest of the world starting the wide spread use of bronze four and a half thousand years before the Europeans introduce it into the America,  finding and working copper is easy, mining tin and making alloys is not. It's possible they would have had a bronze age on their own, if they had had another 500 years or so

the Americas are also note able as the only culture that did not invent the wheel,or the plough or the road


----------



## JowGaWolf (Feb 27, 2018)

jobo said:


> if you don't like the term stone aged, then we will settle for Neolithic . Neolithic also know as the stone age, ended with the bronze age, ergo, any culture that didn't have wide spread use of bronze is stone,aged or neolithic.
> 
> there a move to try and portray the native Americans as far more advanced than they were. All neolithic cultures worked metals, the difference is the rest of the world starting the wide spread use of bronze four and a half thousand years before the Europeans introduce it into the America,  finding and working copper is easy, mining tin and making alloys is not. It's possible they would have had a bronze age on their own, if they had had another 500 years or so
> 
> the Americas are also note able as the only culture that did not invent the wheel,or the plough or the road


My purpose of posting the information was not directed in proving that they used bronze.  The information I posted only verified that the used and made copper weapons and that there was actually a Copper Age.

As I stated the only reason they didn't reach the bronze age was due to the limited exposure to a variety of cultures. For example, when you fight a battle against another village you can learn from the weapons that were used.  During peace black smith's could share knowledge of working metal.  But this opportunity doesnt exist when their is isolation.  The technology development on some pacific islands suffered the same disadvantages.   Countries and people that are isolated will always have a slower technology development.  The temples and city building in the Americas showed their level of advancement.  

If you want to debate the use of bronze by native Americans then you'll be by yourself.  The initial argument was Stone vs Metal.  It wasn't about Stone vs Bronze.  The discussion about bronze has nothing to do with copper metal weapons.


----------



## oftheherd1 (Feb 28, 2018)

drop bear said:


> It is all the boring content and not enough trolling  isn't  it?
> 
> I should just attack the poster constantly instead of defending my position with logic.



That doesn't make any sense to me.  But forget it.  Trying to discuss things with you is like trying to shout at a strong wind.


----------



## oftheherd1 (Feb 28, 2018)

jobo said:


> if you don't like the term stone aged, then we will settle for Neolithic . Neolithic also know as the stone age, ended with the bronze age, ergo, any culture that didn't have wide spread use of bronze is stone,aged or neolithic.
> 
> there a move to try and portray the native Americans as far more advanced than they were. All neolithic cultures worked metals, the difference is the rest of the world starting the wide spread use of bronze four and a half thousand years before the Europeans introduce it into the America,  finding and working copper is easy, mining tin and making alloys is not. It's possible they would have had a bronze age on their own, if they had had another 500 years or so
> 
> *the Americas are also note able as the only culture that did not invent the wheel,or the plough or the road*



Are you just down of the pre-Columbian peoples of the Americas?  The Incas did have the wheel but apparently it was used more as a child toy.  Makes some sense considering where they lived.

Plough?  Most were hunter gatherers.  Even those who had begun farming, mostly in the east, didn't do so to the extent that poking holes in the ground wouldn't suffice.  And who was going to be the lucky one who was going to pull the plough, or tame buffalo to pull it?


----------



## pdg (Feb 28, 2018)

Seeing as the thread has gone anthropological, I'm going to ponder... There'll probably be disagreement, and that's fine.

Advancement from stone to iron isn't/wasn't about collaboration with other peoples - it's about conflict and what that leads to.

To get to sufficient conflict requires a certain set of conditions, mainly land topography and population size (into density).

So, you have small (family) groups of people which tend to naturally grow in numbers until they become a tribe - hunting and gathering is sufficient, but there's going to be small scale conflict with neighbouring tribes over resources (food, women, etc.).

These small conflicts can be utterly devastating for the losing tribe, but the winning side isn't 'safe' because the tribes on their other 6 (say) sides are still going to be competing...

If the land available is restricted (an island, bordered by mountains, that sort of thing) then eventually you'll get one overriding winning tribe.

If there's enough land (Africa, the Americas, mid/west Asia, Australia) you won't. There'll always be another neighbour, or a nomadic tribe coming in.

In the restricted areas, you'll get relative peace. People will breed without constant invasion, population will grow. Tribal chiefs become kings. You'll then get the divergence of fighters and feeders. There's always a chance of an invasion force coming over the mountains, but because it's less likely you get people develop into being farmers and the technology in that area increases - but only if hunting and gathering can't sustain your population.

Once you get to a certain density you look to expand even more, so you send out scouting parties over the mountains or over the water to see what others have. If you want what they have you can trade, or invade.

With the Americas, the Europeans went to explore, then they traded for a while - once they decided that the indigenous peoples weren't much of a military threat (and they could ship sufficient numbers) they brought superior weaponry and tactics and invaded.

It's the expansion that drives weapon and tactic development, and the following peace that drives farming and cultural development.


----------



## Tez3 (Feb 28, 2018)

pdg said:


> Seeing as the thread has gone anthropological, I'm going to ponder... There'll probably be disagreement, and that's fine.
> 
> Advancement from stone to iron isn't/wasn't about collaboration with other peoples - it's about conflict and what that leads to.
> 
> ...




Is this your theory or do you have academic citations for this?


----------



## jobo (Feb 28, 2018)

pdg said:


> Seeing as the thread has gone anthropological, I'm going to ponder... There'll probably be disagreement, and that's fine.
> 
> Advancement from stone to iron isn't/wasn't about collaboration with other peoples - it's about conflict and what that leads to.
> 
> ...


these are all good points, some of which like progress through war I've made myself.

but the technology first has to be feasible, that is you have,set up an infrastructure o support it, you can use bronze for war or farming, but you first have to set up a way to mine cooper and more importantly tin and then the process for making alloys and a way to work the mettle which is a lit more difficult that copper, there is a whole level of technological development that has to be reached before you can even use war as a driver to progress.

the ancient Egyptian, who were very advanced for their time, struggled to be come a bronze age people, as they had lots of copper but no tin. They did however have the,ability to buy tin, which requires a medium of exchange, ie money or gold and be ale to drag it thousand of miles, which required ships and wheels, they were shipping it in from England amongst other places, they also had a real problem if having no tree to make things like ships and wheels out of, so they shipped those in as well.

with out the ability to build an infra structure those pyramids should still be sand stone
the Inca's and the,aztecs had a real problem with trade, as they kept murdering every one, including millions of their own people. They quite likely murdered the mother of the guy who would invent Bronze


----------



## Gerry Seymour (Feb 28, 2018)

jobo said:


> these are all good points, some of which like progress through war I've made myself.
> 
> but the technology first has to be feasible, that is you have,set up an infrastructure o support it, you can use bronze for war or farming, but you first have to set up a way to mine cooper and more importantly tin and then the process for making alloys and a way to work the mettle which is a lit more difficult that copper, there is a whole level of technological development that has to be reached before you can even use war as a driver to progress.
> 
> ...


I think one of the defining points has to be staying in one place. A society will not mine, smelt, or smith while nomadic. They also have no need for things like plows. And nomadic groups can only carry so much, so they tend to have less "stuff" in general. They tend to work with what's available as they move from place to place (often revolving among places over and over).

IIRC, many of the tribes in North America were still relatively nomadic, which puts them right out of developing metal technology. That, combined with the progression @pdg noted above probably explains the lack of widespread use of metals in indigenous weapons. Once they got metal (trading with Europeans, etc.), they quickly adopted it into their weapons.

(No citations for this - just general observations.)


----------



## jobo (Feb 28, 2018)

oftheherd1 said:


> Are you just down of the pre-Columbian peoples of the Americas?  The Incas did have the wheel but apparently it was used more as a child toy.  Makes some sense considering where they lived.
> 
> Plough?  Most were hunter gatherers.  Even those who had begun farming, mostly in the east, didn't do so to the extent that poking holes in the ground wouldn't suffice.  And who was going to be the lucky one who was going to pull the plough, or tame buffalo to pull it?


well yes taming wild beasts to pull ploughs is what the rest of the world did, the south Americans only had llamas, so that a bit of an issue, inventing a wheels ie a circle of wood, is easy, chop a bit off a tree, the issue was inventing an axel,to bolt it to, to turn your circle of wood into a wheel.


----------



## pdg (Feb 28, 2018)

Tez3 said:


> Is this your theory or do you have academic citations for this?



It's "my" theory.

I can't claim it as fully mine because some of it is based on things I've learned about history from a variety of sources, some is based on speculation.

Some of the speculation may very well be stuff that I've heard/read but forgotten that I'd heard/read and therefore thought I'd thought it 

As a whole, it makes sense in my tiny mind.


----------



## lklawson (Feb 28, 2018)

drop bear said:


> Ha!
> 
> Predictable response when you don't have an answer.


----------



## jobo (Feb 28, 2018)

gpseymour said:


> I think one of the defining points has to be staying in one place. A society will not mine, smelt, or smith while nomadic. They also have no need for things like plows. And nomadic groups can only carry so much, so they tend to have less "stuff" in general. They tend to work with what's available as they move from place to place (often revolving among places over and over).
> 
> IIRC, many of the tribes in North America were still relatively nomadic, which puts them right out of developing metal technology. That, combined with the progression @pdg noted above probably explains the lack of widespread use of metals in indigenous weapons. Once they got metal (trading with Europeans, etc.), they quickly adopted it into their weapons.
> 
> (No citations for this - just general observations.)


but that's a chicken ir egg argument, true, technology takes off, when you stop chasing your food all over the place .

but its developing the technology to control nature, ie farming that puts you in one place to develop further technology,

there are places in the world were farming is more difficult, hence the nomadic life style lasted thousands of years longer, the great plains are,NOT one if those places


----------



## pdg (Feb 28, 2018)

Further pondering...

A population can stay in one place but retain nomadic tendencies if the environment can support them there.

If you can hunt while animals are present (either during migration or animals that just stay put too) and gather the rest, the only reason to move is threat from other tribes.

If your tribe has wiped out the competition you stay put.

Then you develop farming to support your population that grows because it's not being hunted.

The longer you stay there, the more you become fixed, but also your opportunity to develop in other areas (science as an extreme) increases. You might discover how to work base metals (copper, iron, gold, etc.) but you need the stability of peace to experiment.

Because the areas I mentioned above are so vast, and a nomadic lifestyle is possible, that stability doesn't present itself.

So, my (kind of) summary is that while places like the Americas/Africa/Australasia may very well have had their own mini iron age if left to their own devices, they probably wouldn't have developed much past that - because they didn't need to and they wouldn't have had the opportunity.


----------



## pdg (Feb 28, 2018)

jobo said:


> but its developing the technology to control nature, ie farming that puts you in one place to develop further technology,
> 
> there are places in the world were farming is more difficult, hence the nomadic life style lasted thousands of years longer, the great plains are,NOT one if those places



That fits with "my" theory.

Farming may not have been difficult on the great plains due to the land, but it was difficult due to the tribal natures I've described.

Until you are able to settle in one place, you can't develop farming.

But, if you have 'peace' (by being the tribe who has wiped out or assimilated all others in the region) you can get to the "fighter and feeder" stage of civilisation, then that stability allows farming to develop.

The only chicken and egg is whether your farming was facilitated or necessitated by your lack of migration.


----------



## jobo (Feb 28, 2018)

JowGaWolf said:


> My purpose of posting the information was not directed in proving that they used bronze.  The information I posted only verified that the used and made copper weapons and that there was actually a Copper Age.
> 
> As I stated the only reason they didn't reach the bronze age was due to the limited exposure to a variety of cultures. For example, when you fight a battle against another village you can learn from the weapons that were used.  During peace black smith's could share knowledge of working metal.  But this opportunity doesnt exist when their is isolation.  The technology development on some pacific islands suffered the same disadvantages.   Countries and people that are isolated will always have a slower technology development.  The temples and city building in the Americas showed their level of advancement.
> 
> If you want to debate the use of bronze by native Americans then you'll be by yourself.  The initial argument was Stone vs Metal.  It wasn't about Stone vs Bronze.  The discussion about bronze has nothing to do with copper metal weapons.


yes isolation can hold you back if its a few thousand people and your stuck on Easter island etal. 
but the Americas were not in isolation, there were million of people on two continents, that much the same as saying Europe and,Asia were isolated, because they didn't have contact with the Americas and Australia


----------



## oftheherd1 (Feb 28, 2018)

drop bear said:


> Ha!
> 
> Predictable response when you don't have an answer.



Sadly, as is yours for the same apparent reason.


----------



## pdg (Feb 28, 2018)

jobo said:


> yes isolation can hold you back if its a few thousand people and your stuck on Easter island etal.
> but the Americas were not in isolation, there were million of people on two continents, that much the same as saying Europe and,Asia were isolated, because they didn't have contact with the Americas and Australia



This point as well, furthers "my" theory.

Easter island is small, too small for the necessary competition. Many tribes couldn't be supported by the environment. Also, not really big enough for mass scale farming to evolve.

In isolation, the UK might be just big enough. Without the proximity to mainland Europe (and subsequent threat of invasion) it may have developed, just slowly - a thought borne out by the comparison of development with say the far east if taken at the same points in history, we had gone past tents and caves, but didn't have houses as other places did.

The great plains (well, the Americas as a whole) are too big.


----------



## jobo (Feb 28, 2018)

pdg said:


> That fits with "my" theory.
> 
> Farming may not have been difficult on the great plains due to the land, but it was difficult due to the tribal natures I've described.
> 
> ...


i don't see that Neolithic America, was any different to Neolithic Europe, when it came to tribal wars etc, 

you could put forward the opposite view, that there was so much land and so few people to contest ownership of that land that there was no necessity to develop farming, and why keep cattle when a  buffalo keeps walking through you front garden


----------



## pdg (Feb 28, 2018)

Oh, another thing.

It was mentioned about things like making alloys of metals were due to cultural mixing - I don't believe that's the case, although it didn't hurt.

To experiment enough to discover how to alloy metals requires stability (staying in one place), free time (not spending all your time hunting and gathering) and security (not being invaded 3 times a day).

So, a stable society discovers iron and how to use it, another society discovers a different way to use it - when they meet (through trade or conflict) the people who do that work can then collaborate and further the development.

But they can't collaborate without relative peace and stability - which is brought about by either a societal agreement, or one 'race' assimilating the other by force.


----------



## pdg (Feb 28, 2018)

jobo said:


> i don't see that Neolithic America, was any different to Neolithic Europe, when it came to tribal wars etc,
> 
> you could put forward the opposite view, that there was so much land and so few people to contest ownership of that land that there was no necessity to develop farming, and why keep cattle when a  buffalo keeps walking through you front garden



That's essentially part what I've been saying...

The European neolithics were hemmed in to a space that allowed a tribe to become big enough to settle and ward off invaders while either assimilating or annihilating the competition, but not a space big enough to make farming unnecessary.

The American neolithics weren't.


----------



## pdg (Feb 28, 2018)

To continue the above.

That's where size comes in.

You need enough space to provide enough resources to grow your population to such an extent that it 'fills' that space so that farming becomes necessary.

Not enough space means you don't grow to that point.

Too much space means you'll never fill it...


----------



## Martial D (Feb 28, 2018)

Are you guys really getting fired up over stone axes and the level of technology the people that made them had?

Just lol.


Btw tomahawk tends to refer to the design not the material, and they are still in use in militaries today.


----------



## jobo (Feb 28, 2018)

pdg said:


> That's essentially part what I've been saying...
> 
> The European neolithics were hemmed in to a space that allowed a tribe to become big enough to settle and ward off invaders while either assimilating or annihilating the competition, but not a space big enough to make farming unnecessary.
> 
> The American neolithics weren't.


no the European neolithics had the whole of Europe ,Asian and a,short boat ride away Africa, they wernt by any means hemmed in


----------



## pdg (Feb 28, 2018)

Martial D said:


> Are you guys really getting fired up over stone axes and the level of technology the people that made them had?
> 
> Just lol.



Well, I'm not fired up about it - I'm just helping with the drift


----------



## jobo (Feb 28, 2018)

pdg said:


> To continue the above.
> 
> That's where size comes in.
> 
> ...


but again Europe and,Asia has at least the same land mass as the,Americas

some of the north American tribes did farm, the issue is they lagged behivd the,Europe, north Africa, Asian development by thousands of  years or

the south American tribe who were fairly advanced in  farming and building were three thousand  thousand years behind, they were about par with ancient Egyptians. The north American tribes were more like five thousand years out of date


----------



## lklawson (Feb 28, 2018)

Martial D said:


> Are you guys really getting fired up over stone axes and the level of technology the people that made them had?


No.  Jobo is arguing about it, well, more like trolling.  The others, myself for a while, were trying to correct his (deliberate?) misunderstanding.



> Btw tomahawk tends to refer to the design not the material,


To a certain degree.   But at the same time there is a great variability of design ranging from broad heads and curved bits to narrow heads and straight bits, with pols that could range from plain curved, to hammer-pol, to spikes, to pipes.  It's harder to nail down the actual definition of a Tomahawk than it is to define a saber.  But don't tell that to jobo; for reasons clear only to him, he's arguing that it only covers stone heads - which he's expanded into a bizarre argument about whether or not pre-contact American natives were Stone Age, Copper Age, or Bronze age.



> and they are still in use in militaries today.


As has been pointed out to jobo several times now.  

Peace favor your sword,
Kirk


----------



## pdg (Feb 28, 2018)

jobo said:


> no the European neolithics had the whole of Europe ,Asian and a,short boat ride away Africa, they wernt by any means hemmed in



I would contend that they were.

Mountain ranges require that you have foodstuffs you can carry, which means storage, which means you have to be beyond hunter gatherer.

Seas (a short boat ride) need the same, but they also need boats of a size capable of carrying more than a few people - you can't develop a longship if you're nomadic because you can't carry it.

So, to get past those 'hemmings' means you have to have reached a level of stability and security that the indigenous peoples of larger areas never needed (or weren't able) to reach.

If that weren't the case, and everyone in Europe, Africa and Asia could just wander between each area, everyone would look the same.

Because they were 'hemmed in', a Frenchman looks different to a German, who looks different to a Spaniard, who looks different to an Asian - who all look different to a native American, who looks different to an aboriginal Australian, who looks different to an African.


----------



## jobo (Feb 28, 2018)

Martial D said:


> Are you guys really getting fired up over stone axes and the level of technology the people that made them had?
> 
> Just lol.
> 
> ...


no at the moment its just a friendly exchange of ideas, I'm sure the fire up guys will be,a long when America walked up

the matterial IS the,design, try making a football out of stone and youl see what i mean


----------



## jobo (Feb 28, 2018)

pdg said:


> I would contend that they were.
> 
> Mountain ranges require that you have foodstuffs you can carry, which means storage, which means you have to be beyond hunter gatherer.
> 
> ...



but the,south Americans look different to the mid Americans who look different that the Inuit who look different that the,west coast natives who look different than the east coast natives, so either every one,was hemmed in ir no one,was

nb they have lots of mountains in America?


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## hoshin1600 (Feb 28, 2018)

the vikings were trading with the Canadian and American indians.  it was common to trade European axes.
just saying...


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## pdg (Feb 28, 2018)

jobo said:


> but the,south Americans look different to the mid Americans who look different that the Inuit who look different that the,west coast natives who look different than the east coast natives, so either every one,was hemmed in ir no one,was



The south Americans were 'hemmed' from the north Americans by distance - ditto east vs west or mid/south/north/more north.

The difference is that the area they were 'restricted' to was larger, so for reasons I've given previously they didn't have the necessitation to develop.


----------



## pdg (Feb 28, 2018)

jobo said:


> nb they have lots of mountains in America?



As you added this after my previous reply I shall address it separately...

Look at the distance between American mountain ranges and European mountain ranges.


----------



## hoshin1600 (Feb 28, 2018)

Hannibal crossed the Alps in 218 BC in the Second Punic War.  he brought elephants from Africa. it is a notable occurrence because no one thought it could be done.


----------



## hoshin1600 (Feb 28, 2018)

why are we talking about human migration?
people did not migrate much because the knowledge of food sources keeps them to areas that they know.  as you travel the food sources and methods of procuring that food source changes.  if you do not know the local food sources you starve.
if the food source changes due to something like climate change then people will be forced to migrate.


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## hoshin1600 (Feb 28, 2018)

lets not forget that we had an ice age. a 30ft wall of ice tends to keep people where they are.
then there is the Sahara desert.  that is something you dont just wander off into.


----------



## hoshin1600 (Feb 28, 2018)

what was the topic again?????


----------



## pdg (Feb 28, 2018)

hoshin1600 said:


> why are we talking about human migration?
> people did not migrate much because the knowledge of food sources keeps them to areas that they know.  as you travel the food sources and methods of procuring that food source changes.  if you do not know the local food sources you starve.
> if the food source changes due to something like climate change then people will be forced to migrate.



Because...

You stick with hunting and gathering the local food.

Once you have thoroughly trounced the local competition you settle down and expand, so you need to farm.

Once you're farming you can support technological advancements and with that, an army.

With that army (sustained by farmed and stored food) you can cross previously insurmountable obstacles and invade other areas.

In those other areas, you can collaborate and develop new weapons to invade yet more areas.

Then, your army can develop ways to block attacks.

Then the competing armies, through ongoing smallish conflicts, can develop ways to block attacks.

Eventually, you get someone asking whether blocking those attacks is pointless!



(See, I had a plan aaaaallllll along )


----------



## Martial D (Feb 28, 2018)

jobo said:


> no at the moment its just a friendly exchange of ideas, I'm sure the fire up guys will be,a long when America walked up
> 
> the matterial IS the,design, try making a football out of stone and youl see what i mean


When I say design I mean shape, weight distribution, functionality and aesthetic. What it's made of would be it's composition.


----------



## Martial D (Feb 28, 2018)

lklawson said:


> But at the same time there is a great variability of design ranging from broad heads and curved bits to narrow heads and straight bits, with pols that could range from plain curved, to hammer-pol, to spikes, to pipes.



To be fair, this was also true of the original stone type. Every tribe made them differently.


----------



## jobo (Feb 28, 2018)

Martial D said:


> When I say design I mean shape, weight distribution, functionality and aesthetic. What it's made of would be it's composition.


bur it's shape, its weight distribution and it's functionality are all dependent on the matterial used . If i build a house out of Lego, it requires a completely different design to if i use bricks, though the end result will have some,similarities, which as over,all dimensions and colour, if i use red lego, so that's the,aesthetic element


----------



## Gerry Seymour (Feb 28, 2018)

jobo said:


> but that's a chicken ir egg argument, true, technology takes off, when you stop chasing your food all over the place .
> 
> but its developing the technology to control nature, ie farming that puts you in one place to develop further technology,
> 
> there are places in the world were farming is more difficult, hence the nomadic life style lasted thousands of years longer, the great plains are,NOT one if those places


I don't know enough on the topic to speak definitively, but there are some technologies that simply aren't likely to develop within a nomadic society. They won't develop those technologies THEN stop being nomadic. Mining seems one of those. It takes a lot of work to mine and smelt metal ore, and I can't see there'd be any payoff to a society to do that if they aren't staying put - or at least keeping only two locations (summer/winter), so the mine and facility is at hand a large part of the year.

In some places I don't doubt the retention of nomadic was is linked to the difficulty in farming. I suspect the inverse is also sometimes true (the move to agrarian ways is due difficulty in nomadic life). If the nomadic life is easy enough (as it is likely to be in temperate areas with sufficient natural flora and fauna, with no competing tribes nearby), I suspect some groups opt to keep that approach.


----------



## Gerry Seymour (Feb 28, 2018)

jobo said:


> no the European neolithics had the whole of Europe ,Asian and a,short boat ride away Africa, they wernt by any means hemmed in


I think it's less a matter of what they have access to, than population density. If the nearest tribe is 2 days away (with settlements) there's less conflict than if it's one day away. And the lower the density, the easier it is to subsist on a nomadic hunter/gatherer approach without conflict. I don't know the population progression in Europe when it moved toward agrarianism, but the population density was clearly centuries ahead of the Americas by the 1500's. That difference in population density (when you're looking at an area large enough to have competing societies) is likely a heavy driver of change.


----------



## Gerry Seymour (Feb 28, 2018)

jobo said:


> but the,south Americans look different to the mid Americans who look different that the Inuit who look different that the,west coast natives who look different than the east coast natives, so either every one,was hemmed in ir no one,was
> 
> nb they have lots of mountains in America?


That's a different span of area. France is slightly larger than the state of Texas. I don't think the same level of physical distinction occurred over the same geographic span in the Americas. There's definitely a recognizable difference between most Eastern US aboriginal tribes and those in the Southwest. But that's equivalent to opposite corners of Europe, not neighbor states.


----------



## Gerry Seymour (Feb 28, 2018)

jobo said:


> nb they have lots of mountains in America?


I missed this earlier. Nothing in the contiguous US really compares to the Alps and Himalayas. The closest you get would be the Rocky Mountains and their neighbors. The mountains further East would never have been an obstacle to travel. Anyone in average shape can hike over one of those, and the weather in them is only marginally harsher than the surrounding area. Moving west, the mountains created much more of an obstacle, especially in the Winter, but you're talking a distance between that takes the better part of a day (16 hours) to drive at highway speeds.


----------



## Gerry Seymour (Feb 28, 2018)

hoshin1600 said:


> lets not forget that we had an ice age. a 30ft wall of ice tends to keep people where they are.
> then there is the Sahara desert.  that is something you dont just wander off into.


I didn't even consider the differences in climactic shift. I really want to take a global anthropology course now.


----------



## Gerry Seymour (Feb 28, 2018)

hoshin1600 said:


> what was the topic again?????


It had something to do with martial arts, I think. Or beading. Maybe it was beading.


----------



## pdg (Feb 28, 2018)

gpseymour said:


> I don't know enough on the topic to speak definitively



I don't either.

All I can do is say that I definitively think something, and theorise.


----------



## Gerry Seymour (Feb 28, 2018)

jobo said:


> the matterial IS the,design, try making a football out of stone and youl see what i mean


You could make one out of vinyl (and they do).


----------



## jobo (Feb 28, 2018)

gpseymour said:


> I don't know enough on the topic to speak definitively, but there are some technologies that simply aren't likely to develop within a nomadic society. They won't develop those technologies THEN stop being nomadic. Mining seems one of those. It takes a lot of work to mine and smelt metal ore, and I can't see there'd be any payoff to a society to do that if they aren't staying put - or at least keeping only two locations (summer/winter), so the mine and facility is at hand a large part of the year.
> 
> In some places I don't doubt the retention of nomadic was is linked to the difficulty in farming. I suspect the inverse is also sometimes true (the move to agrarian ways is due difficulty in nomadic life). If the nomadic life is easy enough (as it is likely to be in temperate areas with sufficient natural flora and fauna, with no competing tribes nearby), I suspect some groups opt to keep that approach.


yes but ALL societies where nomadic, yet did develop the technology to stop being nomadic

some southern american native tribes stopped being nomadic, but lagged the euroasia natives by several thousand years in technology

as good percentage of the north American tribes, were bot nomadic and did farm and mine, yet they were further behind in tech then there south American cousins.

just saying they were nomads and couldn't progress, is ignoring the fact that a lit were not nomads and did progress, just not very far


----------



## Gerry Seymour (Feb 28, 2018)

jobo said:


> bur it's shape, its weight distribution and it's functionality are all dependent on the matterial used . If i build a house out of Lego, it requires a completely different design to if i use bricks, though the end result will have some,similarities, which as over,all dimensions and colour, if i use red lego, so that's the,aesthetic element


While your extreme example is true, a knife can be made of obsidian or steel, with quite similar designs. A hammer can be made of rock or bronze with quite similar designs. They'll function differently (there's a reason metal is generally preferred once it's discovered), but the design from the rock version can be copied in metal.


----------



## jobo (Feb 28, 2018)

gpseymour said:


> You could make one out of vinyl (and they do).


i know, cows bladders are so 1800s


----------



## Gerry Seymour (Feb 28, 2018)

jobo said:


> yes but ALL societies where nomadic, yet did develop the technology to stop being nomadic
> 
> some southern american native tribes stopped being nomadic, but lagged the euroasia natives by several thousand years in technology
> 
> ...


I'd argue they developed the technology as they needed. They probably started as stationary hunter-gatherers (perhaps because of climate, perhaps because of encroaching tribes, etc.). That can only work for a while - they'd deplete resources. Then they figure out the basic (no plowing needed) agrarianism and perhaps animal husbandry. None of that requires metal and such, but gives them the ability to stay in place long enough for such discoveries to take place.


----------



## pdg (Feb 28, 2018)

gpseymour said:


> The mountains further East would never have been an obstacle to travel. Anyone in average shape can hike over one of those, and the weather in them is only marginally harsher than the surrounding area.



Maybe not an obstacle to a nomadic tribe.

Which would further expand the area over which competing tribes can range.

But, as an individual or a small part of a tribe, would you necessarily want to cross them purely for exploration purposes, when you can't say whether you can find food (and have nothing of note storable to carry) and the rest of your tribe is under 'constant' threat of attack?


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## jobo (Feb 28, 2018)

gpseymour said:


> While your extreme example is true, a knife can be made of obsidian or steel, with quite similar designs. A hammer can be made of rock or bronze with quite similar designs. They'll function differently (there's a reason metal is generally preferred once it's discovered), but the design from the rock version can be copied in metal.


yes it could, but then you would have a  bad iron hammer, with the head held on with string and no bit on one end for pulling nails out.


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## Gerry Seymour (Feb 28, 2018)

jobo said:


> i know, cows bladders are so 1800s


You said changing materials would change the design. It doesn't have to. As long as you're not substituting rock for leather or some other silly example.


----------



## Gerry Seymour (Feb 28, 2018)

pdg said:


> Maybe not an obstacle to a nomadic tribe.
> 
> Which would further expand the area over which competing tribes can range.
> 
> But, as an individual or a small part of a tribe, would you necessarily want to cross them purely for exploration purposes, when you can't say whether you can find food (and have nothing of note storable to carry) and the rest of your tribe is under 'constant' threat of attack?


With those mountains, unless there was a competing tribe nearby (and there often wasn't - many of the tribes had plenty of room to roam) food wouldn't be an issue. They are filled with game year-round, and most plants found at the foot of a mountain here are also found 90% of the way up. It's just not a harsh environment, so a nomadic group or an individual could easily traverse it at will. The only disadvantage would be speed of travel and how much you could carry, so of course they'd favor the flatter routes, but there wouldn't' have been a lot of those in some tribal areas (like much of the Cherokee lands).


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## Gerry Seymour (Feb 28, 2018)

jobo said:


> yes it could, but then you would have a  bad iron hammer, with the head held on with string and no bit on one end for pulling nails out.


If you have no nails, you don't need the end for pulling nails. And yes, it might not be as good a design as what could be done later. That's why designs progress - as the design of the tomahawk did, both due to the availability of better material, and borrowing ideas from European axes.


----------



## lklawson (Feb 28, 2018)

gpseymour said:


> It had something to do with martial arts, I think. Or beading. Maybe it was beading.









Peace favor your sword,
Kirk


----------



## pdg (Feb 28, 2018)

jobo said:


> yes it could, but then you would have a  bad iron hammer, with the head held on with string and no bit on one end for pulling nails out.



Erm...

I have a few hammers, and mallets, that look hammery...

Amongst them are hammers made of - or with striking surfaces comprising of - hide, plastic, rubber, copper, steel, other iron alloys, aluminium, lead.

Then there's the shafts/handles - wood, metal, fibreglass/other composite. Some have separate grips (rubber or hide).

I'd say maybe 10% of them have "a bit on one end for pulling nails out", because the rest aren't designed for carpentry.

There's also a variety of methods to attach the head to the shaft - tapered hole with wedges, straight hole with cross pins, straight hole with lugs for binding, hole in the shaft that the head passes through, etc.

They're all hammers though, and they all hit stuff.


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## pdg (Feb 28, 2018)

Oops, I forgot wood as one of the striking faces - like the wooden mallet I use for striking chisels.

And a different shape wooden mallet that was developed for fitting lock pins.


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## jobo (Feb 28, 2018)

gpseymour said:


> If you have no nails, you don't need the end for pulling nails. And yes, it might not be as good a design as what could be done later. That's why designs progress - as the design of the tomahawk did, both due to the availability of better material, and borrowing ideas from European axes.


no my point is the properties of the matterial change the design, no one is going to recreate a,stone hammer in iron, the,stone hammers design was limited by its matterial, there is no pint recreating design flaws in a superior matterial. As,soon as they invented metal hammers, they invented the nail


----------



## pdg (Feb 28, 2018)

gpseymour said:


> With those mountains, unless there was a competing tribe nearby (and there often wasn't - many of the tribes had plenty of room to roam) food wouldn't be an issue. They are filled with game year-round, and most plants found at the foot of a mountain here are also found 90% of the way up. It's just not a harsh environment, so a nomadic group or an individual could easily traverse it at will. The only disadvantage would be speed of travel and how much you could carry, so of course they'd favor the flatter routes, but there wouldn't' have been a lot of those in some tribal areas (like much of the Cherokee lands).



Well in that case (maybe the point you were making in the first place?) they aren't really obstacles, just a part of the environment that's available to range, thereby increasing the size of the relatively easily habitable area and effectively reducing competition and the subsequent need to develop new solutions.


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## jobo (Feb 28, 2018)

pdg said:


> Erm...
> 
> I have a few hammers, and mallets, that look hammery...
> 
> ...


those are mallets, you cant hammer with a mallet by defintion.

you can strike or knock it thump, but only hammers can hammer, ,


----------



## pdg (Feb 28, 2018)

jobo said:


> no my point is the properties of the matterial change the design, no one is going to recreate a,stone hammer in iron, the,stone hammers design was limited by its matterial, there is no pint recreating design flaws in a superior matterial. As,soon as they invented metal hammers, they invented the nail



According to a quick google, metal nails predate metal hammers...

Maybe because it's easier to make a nail than a hammer, and you can drive a nail with a rock.



jobo said:


> those are mallets, you cant hammer with a mallet by defintion.
> 
> you can strike or knock it thump, but only hammers can hammer, ,



The earliest metal hammers I found pictures of in the last 2 minutes look surprisingly like slightly better finished stone mallets...



Oh, and if you really want to restrict it to things actually sold as hammers, then - claw, ball pein, cross pein, roofing. They all look different and have different uses, and only one of those can remove nails.

Oh, and sledge hammer - looks a sight like a big mallet to me


----------



## jobo (Feb 28, 2018)

gpseymour said:


> That's a different span of area. France is slightly larger than the state of Texas. I don't think the same level of physical distinction occurred over the same geographic span in the Americas. There's definitely a recognizable difference between most Eastern US aboriginal tribes and those in the Southwest. But that's equivalent to opposite corners of Europe, not neighbor states.


i see European history is a bit lacking, the French are celts, that took over much of Europe, there is very little,difference between the,French, the welsh the Spanish and the Italians. The germanic tribes had significant differences, so Sweden, Norway Germany Poland England etc are much the same as,each other and very different to the,celts. It's nit proximity that makes a difference to the national look, so much as who invaded who .


----------



## jobo (Feb 28, 2018)

pdg said:


> According to a quick google, metal nails predate metal hammers...
> 
> Maybe because it's easier to make a nail than a hammer, and you can drive a nail with a rock.
> 
> ...


the intrinsic difference between a mallet and a hammer is it purpose, hammers are hard designed to hit as hard as possible with out damaging the hammer, mallets are soft( er) designed to deform so not as to damage the thing being hit


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## pdg (Feb 28, 2018)

jobo said:


> the intrinsic difference between a mallet and a hammer is it purpose, hammers are hard designed to hit as hard as possible with out damaging the hammer, mallets are soft( er) designed to deform so not as to damage the thing being hit



So basically what you're saying is that it's the intended use that dictates the design, and influences which of the available materials is most suitable?

And that later, the properties of newly available materials can allow changes in the design


----------



## jobo (Feb 28, 2018)

pdg said:


> So basically what you're saying is that it's the intended use that dictates the design, and influences which of the available materials is most suitable?
> 
> And that later, the properties of newly available materials can allow changes in the design


well its an evolving spiral of use changing design and design changing use, the cowhide mallet hasnt changed much since the year dot, the hammer has gone through a,steady development of better matterial allowing better,design, the composite handle was a major and,fairly recent development, you can hit harder with out breaking the handle and it doesn't crack in the rain


----------



## jobo (Feb 28, 2018)

gpseymour said:


> I think it's less a matter of what they have access to, than population density. If the nearest tribe is 2 days away (with settlements) there's less conflict than if it's one day away. And the lower the density, the easier it is to subsist on a nomadic hunter/gatherer approach without conflict. I don't know the population progression in Europe when it moved toward agrarianism, but the population density was clearly centuries ahead of the Americas by the 1500's. That difference in population density (when you're looking at an area large enough to have competing societies) is likely a heavy driver of change.


i think that another chicken and egg argument, farming increases population density considerably, ergo when Europa people were nomadic/ hunter gatherers  they had a low population density as that's all that life style would support,


----------



## oftheherd1 (Feb 28, 2018)

Martial D said:


> Are you guys really getting fired up over stone axes and the level of technology the people that made them had?
> 
> Just lol.
> 
> ...



I'm just wondering where was Martial Talk and the experts here when I was taking Anthropology 101, Physical Anthropology, Archeology, and yes, Extraterrestrial Life and Interstellar Travel?  Oh I forgot Logic 101.    Imagine the help I could have gotten!  Not that any of my professors would have been likely to have been delighted at the concepts.  But who would have cared about that?  

Of course I wouldn't have cared about the beading advice: I couldn't fit that class into my curriculum.  But please don't look down on me, I wanted to, honest.


----------



## hoshin1600 (Feb 28, 2018)

jobo said:


> es but ALL societies where nomadic, yet did develop the technology to stop being nomadic


what are you rambling on about???   most of the South, North and Arctic continental tribes where not nomadic. at least not since they traveled (supposedly) over the ice bridge from Asia and Russia.  the native american tribes in the mid west plains where nomadic because they followed the natural migration of the bison.
other then that no....not nomadic.
Newspaper Rock: Were Indian tribes nomadic?

_ "Once you build a mound, longhouse, or totem pole, you probably don't carry it around with you.  Or leave it after you've invested so much time in it."_


----------



## pdg (Feb 28, 2018)

oftheherd1 said:


> I'm just wondering where was Martial Talk and the experts here when I was taking Anthropology 101, Physical Anthropology, Archeology, and yes, Extraterrestrial Life and Interstellar Travel?  Oh I forgot Logic 101.    Imagine the help I could have gotten!  Not that any of my professors would have been likely to have been delighted at the concepts.  But who would have cared about that?



I'm no expert, I'm simply someone who likes to think/learn about stuff and come up with or modify theories.

I'm aware there are competing theories, and if you have any (yours or someone else's) then I'm eager to hear and consider.

Of course, I may dismiss them after considering - but it'd have to be quite outlandish for me to dismiss without consideration.


----------



## jobo (Feb 28, 2018)

hoshin1600 said:


> what are you rambling on about???   most of the South, North and Arctic continental tribes where not nomadic. at least not since they traveled (supposedly) over the ice bridge from Asia and Russia.  the native american tribes in the mid west plains where nomadic because they followed the natural migration of the bison.
> other then that no....not nomadic.
> Newspaper Rock: Were Indian tribes nomadic?
> 
> _ "Once you build a mound, longhouse, or totem pole, you probably don't carry it around with you.  Or leave it after you've invested so much time in it."_


people are putting forward there being nomadic as an excuse for them being tech backwards, I've made the point that a lot were not , that being so, we need to look elsewhere for a reason they remained neolithic long long after most of the rest of the world progressed


----------



## pdg (Feb 28, 2018)

jobo said:


> people are putting forward there being nomadic as an excuse for them being tech backwards, I've made the point that a lot were not , that being so, we need to look elsewhere for a reason they remained neolithic long long after most of the rest of the world progressed



I'm not...

A tribe can be static yet have enough resources to support hunting and gathering  and still have it's population controlled by conflict with neighbouring tribes.

While they're there like that, the impetus to advance isn't present or easily available.


----------



## oftheherd1 (Feb 28, 2018)

pdg said:


> I'm no expert, I'm simply someone who likes to think/learn about stuff and come up with or modify theories.
> 
> *I'm aware there are competing theories*, and if you have any (yours or someone else's) then I'm eager to hear and consider.
> 
> Of course, I may dismiss them after considering - but it'd have to be quite outlandish for me to dismiss without consideration.



Indeed there are.  And I don't agree with all of them either.  And let me say I am not an expert.  I just have a keen interest in anthropology, archeology, and linguistics, at a very amateur level.  Like you, I like to think things through for myself.  If I don't agree, I don't agree.  And I may be wrong in my disagreement.


----------



## JowGaWolf (Feb 28, 2018)

jobo said:


> yes isolation can hold you back if its a few thousand people and your stuck on Easter island etal.
> but the Americas were not in isolation, there were million of people on two continents, that much the same as saying Europe and,Asia were isolated, because they didn't have contact with the Americas and Australia


They were isolated.   Show me one example of pre-columbian Native American culture that shows any influence from the Greeks, Celts, Chinese, Romans,  Indians, Japanese or any of the other cultures that are found in Africa, Europe, or Asian that opened trade routes across various cultures.

The fact that Portuguese, Spanish, English, and French are Dominant in the Americas pretty much shows the effects that other cultures have on each other when they finally do meet.  The Americas were isolated pre-columbian.


----------



## jobo (Feb 28, 2018)

JowGaWolf said:


> They were isolated.   Show me one example of pre-columbian Native American culture that shows any influence from the Greeks, Celts, Chinese, Romans,  Indians, Japanese or any of the other cultures that are found in Africa, Europe, or Asian that opened trade routes across various cultures.
> 
> The fact that Portuguese, Spanish, English, and French are Dominant in the Americas pretty much shows the effects that other cultures have on each other when they finally do meet.  The Americas were isolated pre-columbian.


millions of people on two contents with a land bridge are not isolated, north could go south and south could go north, how on earth is that issolation. That's,aside from the fact that the Vikings made it over and you could walk across the ice to Russia if you wanted to, in fact sailing to Russia is no distance

nb the Chinese were effectively isolated for hundreds of years and made massive strides in technology in that time

nbb there is an emerging body of evidence that some of the med cultures made it over pre christ as well, its on maps that predate columbus by a long long time


----------



## JowGaWolf (Feb 28, 2018)

gpseymour said:


> That's a different span of area. France is slightly larger than the state of Texas.


I think people people forget this.  The Americas are huge in terms of land.  If we were to turn the U.S. into the same format as Europe. Many of the states would be separate countries with completely distinct cultures.  The entire Native American population in all the U.S. was estimated to be 10 million.   Considering the size of the Entire US, this is a really small population.  Georgia currently has a population of 10 million.   Now think of 10 million  spread across the entire U.S., that's not 1 million for every state that we currently have.


----------



## jobo (Feb 28, 2018)

JowGaWolf said:


> I think people people forget this.  The Americas are huge in terms of land.  If we were to turn the U.S. into the same format as Europe. Many of the states would be separate countries with completely distinct cultures.  The entire Native American population in all the U.S. was estimated to be 10 million.   Considering the size of the Entire US, this is a really small population.  Georgia currently has a population of 10 million.   Now think of 10 million  spread across the entire U.S., that's not 1 million for every state that we currently have.


Russia is huge as well, Asia is a lot bigger, they still managed to stop being stone aged


----------



## pdg (Feb 28, 2018)

jobo said:


> Russia is huge as well, Asia is a lot bigger, they still managed to stop being stone aged



Yes, Asia is huge, but it's geographically subdivided. And what is contained within the modern political border of Russia is huge too - that is an area that has less topographical divisions and what is there?

Nomadic or semi nomadic tribes...

Fine, they have shoes and AK-47s, but they travel on horses and live in huts.

The only reason they left the stone age is because they were carried.


Edit to add: It's not like they've not been given access to more modern technologies, but the necessity to adopt them isn't there.


----------



## JowGaWolf (Feb 28, 2018)

gpseymour said:


> I missed this earlier. Nothing in the contiguous US really compares to the Alps and Himalayas. The closest you get would be the Rocky Mountains and their neighbors. The mountains further East would never have been an obstacle to travel. Anyone in average shape can hike over one of those, and the weather in them is only marginally harsher than the surrounding area. Moving west, the mountains created much more of an obstacle, especially in the Winter, but you're talking a distance between that takes the better part of a day (16 hours) to drive at highway speeds.


Don't forget about the deserts that we have.


----------



## jobo (Feb 28, 2018)

pdg said:


> Yes, Asia is huge, but it's geographically subdivided. And what is contained within the modern political border of Russia is huge too - that is an area that has less topographical divisions and what is there?
> 
> Nomadic or semi nomadic tribes...
> 
> ...


you think Russia doesn't have electricity and,antibiotics ?


----------



## pdg (Feb 28, 2018)

Oh, and because it was mentioned - China is quite large too. That's modern China...

But the areas where technological advances were made are relatively small and bordered by obstacles of one form or another - after those advancements were made was when the political expansion of borders happened.

Look into the sparsely populated areas of China - more huts.


----------



## jobo (Feb 28, 2018)

JowGaWolf said:


> Don't forget about the deserts that we have.


yes don't forget Egypt didnt have,desserts to contend with, oh wait!


----------



## pdg (Feb 28, 2018)

jobo said:


> you think Russia doesn't have electricity and,antibiotics ?



So do the Americas now. They've come a long way recently


----------



## jobo (Feb 28, 2018)

pdg said:


> Oh, and because it was mentioned - China is quite large too. That's modern China...
> 
> But the areas where technological advances were made are relatively small and bordered by obstacles of one form or another - after those advancements were made was when the political expansion of borders happened.
> 
> Look into the sparsely populated areas of China - more huts.


but huts are a major advance on hide tents, china has always been pretty big and more or less match with in its current borders


----------



## jobo (Feb 28, 2018)

pdg said:


> So do the Americas now. They've come a long way recently


not in hill billy land they dont


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## pdg (Feb 28, 2018)

jobo said:


> yes don't forget Egypt didnt have,desserts to contend with, oh wait!



Yes, desert one side, sea the other - strips of fertile habitable land that have an area larger than the UK, smaller than quite a few American political states.

Ideally sized in fact for advancement in technology to be necessary to support continued expansion and survival.


----------



## pdg (Feb 28, 2018)

oftheherd1 said:


> Indeed there are.  And I don't agree with all of them either.  And let me say I am not an expert.  I just have a keen interest in anthropology, archeology, and linguistics, at a very amateur level.  Like you, I like to think things through for myself.  If I don't agree, I don't agree.  And I may be wrong in my disagreement.



Disagreement is encouraged 

If you simply disagree without a competing theory, you can't really say my theory is wrong.

If you have a competing theory, we can both say each others is because xyz.

The more evidence there is for either can sway which is more likely.

As for this particular theory, I am yet to see anything that can show it doesn't apply...


----------



## pdg (Feb 28, 2018)

jobo said:


> not in hill billy land they dont



Buuuut...

Hillbillies are descendents of immigrants, so they had the historical access to the technologies imported with said immigrants.

They cannot be classified as indigenous.


----------



## JowGaWolf (Feb 28, 2018)

jobo said:


> millions of people on two contents with a land bridge are not isolated, north could go south and south could go north, how on earth is that issolation. That's,aside from the fact that the Vikings made it over and you could walk across the ice to Russia if you wanted to, in fact sailing to Russia is no distance
> 
> nb the Chinese were effectively isolated for hundreds of years and made massive strides in technology in that time
> 
> nbb there is an emerging body of evidence that some of the med cultures made it over pre christ as well, its on maps that predate columbus by a long long time


And yet none of what you say is evidence of the influence that would have occurred due to trade.


----------



## jobo (Feb 28, 2018)

pdg said:


> Yes, desert one side, sea the other - strips of fertile habitable land that have an area larger than the UK, smaller than quite a few American political states.
> 
> Ideally sized in fact for advancement in technology to be necessary to support continued expansion and survival.


I'm not understanding where you are going with this, America is an idea location for humanity to progress, it has everything the rest of the world has all in one place, you want fertile land , , tons of it, you want rivers loads of them, you want raw matterial, more than you can count. There is no better place on earth to build a civilisation, the whole point is, they,didn't, then the Europeans turned it into a supper power, in two hundred years, after 12,000 years of just walking after the buffalo


----------



## JowGaWolf (Feb 28, 2018)

pdg said:


> Buuuut...
> 
> Hillbillies are descendents of immigrants, so they had the historical access to the technologies imported with said immigrants.
> 
> They cannot be classified as indigenous.


This fact is not widely known.  Most people in the U.S. think that Hillbillies were U.S. born backwards people.  They actually have a very interesting history and are not accurately portrayed.  The way they are portrayed in the U.S. is more of what people thought of them and not who they were.  My jaw dropped when I learned about the history of the "Hillbilly"


----------



## jobo (Feb 28, 2018)

JowGaWolf said:


> And yet non of what you say is evidence of the influence that would have occurred due to trade.


they could have traded with the,Aztec or the Inca, that they chose not to is because of their lack of abilities, not a cause of those lack of abilities


----------



## Gerry Seymour (Feb 28, 2018)

jobo said:


> no my point is the properties of the matterial change the design, no one is going to recreate a,stone hammer in iron, the,stone hammers design was limited by its matterial, there is no pint recreating design flaws in a superior matterial. As,soon as they invented metal hammers, they invented the nail


The properties of the material _can _cahnge the design. They don't have to. Like the vinyl football, which can follow the same design as the leather one. A stone head can, in fact, be replaced with a nearly identically shaped metal one. That may not be the best use of the material (metal), but it will actually work - perhaps better than the stone, perhaps not. Is that best practice? Probably not. Does it still happen? Of course.

You're arguing "doesn't happen", using "shouldn't happen" evidence.


----------



## Gerry Seymour (Feb 28, 2018)

jobo said:


> those are mallets, you cant hammer with a mallet by defintion.
> 
> you can strike or knock it thump, but only hammers can hammer, ,


A ball-peen hammer doesn't usually have a claw on the other end of the head.


----------



## Gerry Seymour (Feb 28, 2018)

jobo said:


> i see European history is a bit lacking, the French are celts, that took over much of Europe, there is very little,difference between the,French, the welsh the Spanish and the Italians. The germanic tribes had significant differences, so Sweden, Norway Germany Poland England etc are much the same as,each other and very different to the,celts. It's nit proximity that makes a difference to the national look, so much as who invaded who .


I'm not sure you and I are saying anything in this part that conflicts.


----------



## Gerry Seymour (Feb 28, 2018)

jobo said:


> the intrinsic difference between a mallet and a hammer is it purpose, hammers are hard designed to hit as hard as possible with out damaging the hammer, mallets are soft( er) designed to deform so not as to damage the thing being hit


Wait, I thought all hammers had claws. Wasn't that your claim a few posts ago?


----------



## Gerry Seymour (Feb 28, 2018)

jobo said:


> i think that another chicken and egg argument, farming increases population density considerably, ergo when Europa people were nomadic/ hunter gatherers  they had a low population density as that's all that life style would support,


Agreed. The two can work in reverse. In either case, there's technology that won't likely spontaneously occur among traveling groups.

One correction: farming doesn't directly increase population density. It makes it possible/supportable. It probably does have an attraction effect in more mature societies, but among competing tribes, that wouldn't occur.


----------



## jobo (Feb 28, 2018)

gpseymour said:


> The properties of the material _can _cahnge the design. They don't have to. Like the vinyl football, which can follow the same design as the leather one. A stone head can, in fact, be replaced with a nearly identically shaped metal one. That may not be the best use of the material (metal), but it will actually work - perhaps better than the stone, perhaps not. Is that best practice? Probably not. Does it still happen? Of course.
> 
> You're arguing "doesn't happen", using "shouldn't happen" evidence.


apart from the end object being a,sphere , there is no comparison between leather and vinyl footballs in there qualities of flight, bounce curve or if they knock you out cold when you head one ,

could they have made one as bad out of vinyl , I'm not sure they could, they could never get vinyl to absorb 5times it own weight in water or if you waterproofed it 4times its own weight in dubbing


----------



## Gerry Seymour (Feb 28, 2018)

jobo said:


> people are putting forward there being nomadic as an excuse for them being tech backwards, I've made the point that a lot were not , that being so, we need to look elsewhere for a reason they remained neolithic long long after most of the rest of the world progressed


You think people are making excuses? You've missed the point. They're putting forth theories (which are attempts to explain, not attempts to excuse).

You're also looking at dates, but that ignores differential progression from population density, climactic factors, and ease of living. Disease probably factors in, as well.

And if you made the point that many weren't nomadic, I missed that. All I've seen you do is argue the relationship between nomadic lifestyle (and what leads to its end) and the development of metallurgy.


----------



## jobo (Feb 28, 2018)

gpseymour said:


> Agreed. The two can work in reverse. In either case, there's technology that won't likely spontaneously occur among traveling groups.
> 
> One correction: farming doesn't directly increase population density. It makes it possible/supportable. It probably does have an attraction effect in more mature societies, but among competing tribes, that wouldn't occur.


it dies directly increase population, over,several generations, at least that what happened to all cultures when farming took off


----------



## jobo (Feb 28, 2018)

gpseymour said:


> You think people are making excuses? You've missed the point. They're putting forth theories (which are attempts to explain, not attempts to excuse).
> 
> You're also looking at dates, but that ignores differential progression from population density, climactic factors, and ease of living. Disease probably factors in, as well.
> 
> And if you made the point that many weren't nomadic, I missed that. All I've seen you do is argue the relationship between nomadic lifestyle (and what leads to its end) and the development of metallurgy.


the point that a nomadic life meant technology was difficult was,somebody elses, i just pointed out that, that didn't stop other nomadic tribes and,ALSO that being nomadic wasn't universal


----------



## JowGaWolf (Feb 28, 2018)

jobo said:


> Russia is huge as well, Asia is a lot bigger, they still managed to stop being stone aged


 They both traded with countries that had significantly different technology and cultures as well.  Their technology did not develop in a vacuum.


----------



## pdg (Feb 28, 2018)

jobo said:


> I'm not understanding where you are going with this, America is an idea location for humanity to progress, it has everything the rest of the world has all in one place, you want fertile land , , tons of it, you want rivers loads of them, you want raw matterial, more than you can count. There is no better place on earth to build a civilisation, the whole point is, they,didn't, then the Europeans turned it into a supper power, in two hundred years, after 12,000 years of just walking after the buffalo



Yes, exactly.

There was enough directly available resources to support tribal society with no need to develop technology to survive.

The Europeans, who had societal and environmental pushes to force development in agriculture and warfare took those advances with them, and all but wiped out the indigenous people.

Then they used that technology to exploit the rich new environment to a whole other level.

Take away farming and transport from the Americas and the population would rapidly reduce to (probably) pre-Columbian levels, and likely fall back to tribal communities.


----------



## Gerry Seymour (Feb 28, 2018)

jobo said:


> they could have traded with the,Aztec or the Inca, that they chose not to is because of their lack of abilities, not a cause of those lack of abilities


Do you have any idea how far the Navajo were from the Inca and Aztec? I think you underestimate the distance between, the natural barriers that exist in that direction, etc. Remember that travel and expansion first tend to follow the easier routes. Mainland NA has vast regions that are easy to traverse. When tribes came to barriers, there was little reason to cross them. And I don't recall there being a sea-faring culture (might just be my ignorance) among the NA aboriginals. Without that, there's little chance of interaction bleeding across larger distances. The northern Europeans (and others, I'd guess) provided a better early dispersion of ideas because of their sea travel.

You'd have to compare similar development levels, not similar dates, to get relevant comparison. So compare neolithic ground travel in Europe to the same in NA.


----------



## jobo (Feb 28, 2018)

JowGaWolf said:


> They both traded with countries that had significantly different technology and cultures as well.  Their technology did not develop in a vacuum.


the inca had have,a very different culture to the pains natives, one your idea that should have helped the plain natives if not the inca


----------



## Gerry Seymour (Feb 28, 2018)

jobo said:


> apart from the end object being a,sphere , there is no comparison between leather and vinyl footballs in there qualities of flight, bounce curve or if they knock you out cold when you head one ,
> 
> could they have made one as bad out of vinyl , I'm not sure they could, they could never get vinyl to absorb 5times it own weight in water or if you waterproofed it 4times its own weight in dubbing


I've owned leather footballs that didn't absorb water at that rate, and had similar feel to vinyl.


----------



## jobo (Feb 28, 2018)

pdg said:


> Yes, exactly.
> 
> There was enough directly available resources to support tribal society with no need to develop technology to survive.
> 
> ...


??? So your saying that having access to raw material slows progress, rather than speed it up?


----------



## pdg (Feb 28, 2018)

jobo said:


> but huts are a major advance on hide tents, china has always been pretty big and more or less match with in its current borders



This as well - define "always".

If by "always" you mean that there are records of it, then yes - but for records to exist (that aren't legend) requires the development of some form of writing.

That doesn't develop by itself to a sufficient level within tribal societies, so it stands to reason that those developments were made in the slightly smaller coastal and/or mountain bordered regions and expansion occured, and it was then recorded that the people covered such a large range.


----------



## jobo (Feb 28, 2018)

gpseymour said:


> I've owned leather footballs that didn't absorb water at that rate, and had similar feel to vinyl.


 well not round here we didn't, i still remember the flashing lights i had when i headed a goal for the under 12s in a monsoon , it was like heading a house brick


----------



## jobo (Feb 28, 2018)

pdg said:


> This as well - define "always".
> 
> If by "always" you mean that there are records of it, then yes - but for records to exist (that aren't legend) requires the development of some form of writing.
> 
> That doesn't develop by itself to a sufficient level within tribal societies, so it stands to reason that those developments were made in the slightly smaller coastal and/or mountain bordered regions and expansion occured, and it was then recorded that the people covered such a large range.


by always i mean all the time,china has existed its had very much the same borders, mongal uprising not withstanding


----------



## pdg (Feb 28, 2018)

jobo said:


> ??? So your saying that having access to raw material slows progress, rather than speed it up?



Yes and no.

Unless you have a reason to use the raw materials you won't use them.

If your society can survive relatively well by chucking rocks at lizards then that red rock is as good or bad as that grey one.

If your society outgrows the food resources in an area and it's difficult to leave (because mountains/sea/desert) you'll look for ways to make your use of those resources more efficient - so suddenly that red rock becomes a source of iron.


----------



## jobo (Feb 28, 2018)

gpseymour said:


> A ball-peen hammer doesn't usually have a claw on the other end of the head.


no, I'm pretty sure i didn't say it did, ball peen hammers, are,quite,a late invention, they had to wait for the rivet to be invented before they had a use for them


----------



## jobo (Feb 28, 2018)

pdg said:


> Yes and no.
> 
> Unless you have a reason to use the raw materials you won't use them.
> 
> ...


but they had a reason, they wanted better tools to hunt fight and farm with, but they,still didn't use them


----------



## pdg (Feb 28, 2018)

jobo said:


> by always i mean all the time,china has existed its had very much the same borders, mongal uprising not withstanding



So in other words, in recorded history.

Before records began?

China as a people didn't just suddenly appear from nowhere and they certainly didn't suddenly appear occupying thousands upon thousands of square miles.

We know about things that happened in and around China because of Chinese records - if the Chinese didn't keep records we wouldn't know about the mongal uprising.

We also wouldn't know much, if anything, about Korea before the 15th century and the introduction of hangul (just about all previous records were in Chinese or hanja, which itself wouldn't exist without Chinese).


----------



## pdg (Feb 28, 2018)

Anyway, a lot of these arguments/challenges are becoming extremely circular...

If there's anything else to challenge it (something that makes sense) then I'll continue the discussion, but unless that happens I'll be over there for a bit.


----------



## JowGaWolf (Feb 28, 2018)

jobo said:


> they could have traded with the,Aztec or the Inca, that they chose not to is because of their lack of abilities, not a cause of those lack of abilities


  They traded with Aztec,  it as already been found through research that there were Aztec influences in other Native American tribes found in what is now the U.S.  











Also look at totem poles, and mound builders.


----------



## JowGaWolf (Feb 28, 2018)

gpseymour said:


> You think people are making excuses? You've missed the point. They're putting forth theories (which are attempts to explain, not attempts to excuse).
> 
> You're also looking at dates, but that ignores differential progression from population density, climactic factors, and ease of living. Disease probably factors in, as well.
> 
> And if you made the point that many weren't nomadic, I missed that. All I've seen you do is argue the relationship between nomadic lifestyle (and what leads to its end) and the development of metallurgy.


  And just think the orginal discussion was about Stone vs Metal Axes and how Native Americans only used stone axes. (which is incorrect)lol


----------



## jobo (Feb 28, 2018)

gpseymour said:


> Do you have any idea how far the Navajo were from the Inca and Aztec? I think you underestimate the distance between, the natural barriers that exist in that direction, etc. Remember that travel and expansion first tend to follow the easier routes. Mainland NA has vast regions that are easy to traverse. When tribes came to barriers, there was little reason to cross them. And I don't recall there being a sea-faring culture (might just be my ignorance) among the NA aboriginals. Without that, there's little chance of interaction bleeding across larger distances. The northern Europeans (and others, I'd guess) provided a better early dispersion of ideas because of their sea travel.
> 
> You'd have to compare similar development levels, not similar dates, to get relevant comparison. So compare neolithic ground travel in Europe to the same in NA.


the arguments was they,didn't have,a,different culture to trade with, and they did, and if they had bothered to invent the wheels and the road and trainers buffalo to tow a cart they could have done so


----------



## jobo (Feb 28, 2018)

JowGaWolf said:


> They traded with Aztec,  it as already been found through research that there were Aztec influences in other Native American tribes found in what is now the U.S.
> 
> 
> 
> ...


so that your point amout of the window then, they did have,access to more developed cultures


----------



## pdg (Feb 28, 2018)

jobo said:


> so that your point amout of the window then, they did have,access to more developed cultures



Sporadic and difficult access, not constant and easy. As say a Navajo, you couldn't exactly pop down and visit the Aztecs for the weekend.

And no need to adopt much of the 'technology'. If hunting and gathering works well enough and fits, you don't need to farm.


Much like the sub Saharan Africans, or the Australian Aboriginals - who both had 'difficult' access to more developed cultures but didn't adopt the tech. They didn't need to adopt it to support their way of life.


----------



## JowGaWolf (Feb 28, 2018)

jobo said:


> That's,aside from the fact that the Vikings made it over and you could walk across the ice to Russia if you wanted to, in fact sailing to Russia is no distance


This did not result in a trade route. Were vikings were making repeated visits for the purpose of engaging in trade.   Once again you have not given any examples of how the Vikings made a cultural impact on the Native American Culture.


----------



## Martial D (Feb 28, 2018)

jobo said:


> bur it's shape, its weight distribution and it's functionality are all dependent on the matterial used . If i build a house out of Lego, it requires a completely different design to if i use bricks, though the end result will have some,similarities, which as over,all dimensions and colour, if i use red lego, so that's the,aesthetic element


You are free to define whatever you wish however you wish.


----------



## jobo (Mar 1, 2018)

JowGaWolf said:


> This did not result in a trade route. Were vikings were making repeated visits for the purpose of engaging in trade.   Once again you have not given any examples of how the Vikings made a cultural impact on the Native American Culture.


your both throwing up a,smoke screen and moving the goal posts

your claim was they were isolated, and they wernt, they had access to other cultures with in the,Americas AND they have f visitors from out side, both from Europe and Asia. America wasn't " discovered"  in the 1500s, every one knew it was there, as Europeans had been before, just as they knew Australia was there when they set off to " discover " it.
what effect did that contact have,? We'll it must have had some, the Vikings were there for,500 years, perhaps the limit farming and metal work they did have arose from that. If the effect Was limited, that's the fault of the natives for not taking advantage of it, even more so for not making the return journey themselves,

your point seems to be they were backward as they didnt have contact with the rest of the world, when it's equal valid to suggest they didn't have contact or take advantage of that contact because they were backward


----------



## Gerry Seymour (Mar 1, 2018)

jobo said:


> the arguments was they,didn't have,a,different culture to trade with, and they did, and if they had bothered to invent the wheels and the road and trainers buffalo to tow a cart they could have done so


You say "if they had bothered". Early cultures rarely "bother" to make advances that don't meet a need. As someone pointed out earlier, at least one tribe did have "the wheel", but it amounted to a play toy for children. Why didn't it become a tool? Apparently they didn't find it all that useful in their way of living. Perhaps it was too rocky and steep in their area, or too sandy. Or perhaps they had another working method for hauling. But here's the kicker: they didn't have to, because someone brought wheeled carts to them (when the Europeans arrived). Would they eventually have developed wheels as tools? Probably, since (accepting your prior claim as true) everyone else did.

You're trying to compare them to other cultures of the same calendar dates and look at the difference in development. That's just not how cultures develop. You're ignoring all but the most obvious influences. There's a reason there are multiple sciences that study this stuff: it's complicated.


----------



## Gerry Seymour (Mar 1, 2018)

jobo said:


> that's the fault of the natives for not taking advantage of it


See, you're once again approaching this as a matter of fault and excuse. Cultures adopt what they find useful. If it doesn't fit a need (or interest) for them at the time, they likely won't adopt. That's a reason - an explanation - not an excuse. History and science don't need excuses.


----------



## jobo (Mar 1, 2018)

gpseymour said:


> You say "if they had bothered". Early cultures rarely "bother" to make advances that don't meet a need. As someone pointed out earlier, at least one tribe did have "the wheel", but it amounted to a play toy for children. Why didn't it become a tool? Apparently they didn't find it all that useful in their way of living. Perhaps it was too rocky and steep in their area, or too sandy. Or perhaps they had another working method for hauling. But here's the kicker: they didn't have to, because someone brought wheeled carts to them (when the Europeans arrived). Would they eventually have developed wheels as tools? Probably, since (accepting your prior claim as true) everyone else did.
> 
> You're trying to compare them to other cultures of the same calendar dates and look at the difference in development. That's just not how cultures develop. You're ignoring all but the most obvious influences. There's a reason there are multiple sciences that study this stuff: it's complicated.


of courses. I'm comparing off,dates, the nub of my point is they lagged most of the,rest of the world by THOUSANDS of years

the whole they didn't have a need, argument is silly, every other culture had a need for better tools , they clearly had a need if they made copper tools and as the owner of a,copper chisel, i can reliably inform you that owners of copper tools need better tools.

living in thousands of sq miles of flat plain is just crying out for a wheel, particularly when you have beasts of burden just wondering by. To suggest that they didn't have a need is nonsense, as soon as the wheel arrived they suddenly found a need for it, ergo they always had a need for it. New invention that don't meet a need don't get very far, i have a betermax vid in my cellar


----------



## jobo (Mar 1, 2018)

gpseymour said:


> See, you're once again approaching this as a matter of fault and excuse. Cultures adopt what they find useful. If it doesn't fit a need (or interest) for them at the time, they likely won't adopt. That's a reason - an explanation - not an excuse. History and science don't need excuses.


however you want to wrap it up, they were responsible for not advancing in technology, if that's through lack of imagination or making themselves isolated is by the,way, it their own fault


----------



## pdg (Mar 1, 2018)

jobo said:


> New invention that don't meet a need don't get very far, i have a betermax vid in my cellar



Sorry, that's a bad comparison.

Betamax outperformed VHS in every way except length of recording time, and it came first - so it was the first thing to meet the perceived "need".

The only reason VHS won was superior marketing.

Oh, and both formats (plus the even shorter lived video2000) weren't "new" inventions, they were extensions of existing technology.

Using that argument transferred to the wheel is akin to comparing tyre materials - not "wheel vs no wheel".


----------



## Gerry Seymour (Mar 1, 2018)

jobo said:


> of courses. I'm comparing off,dates, the nub of my point is they lagged most of the,rest of the world by THOUSANDS of years


And they were as advanced as some other areas of the world. At one time, China had technology more advanced than most other cultures. Cultures differ in their needs and circumstances. They do not generally develop at the same rate as other cultures with dissimilar circumstances, unless there's heavy interaction with them. 



> the whole they didn't have a need, argument is silly, every other culture had a need for better tools , they clearly had a need if they made copper tools and as the owner of a,copper chisel, i can reliably inform you that owners of copper tools need better tools.


I've discussed the reasons I can think of that probably explain their lack of advancement in metallurgy. And no, there is not always a need for better tools. Until economics (profit motive) are introduced, subsistence is the primary driver of development. So long as it is easy to subsist, cultures don't tend to progress as quickly. Economics (and other social analogs) breaks that cycle.



> living in thousands of sq miles of flat plain is just crying out for a wheel, particularly when you have beasts of burden just wondering by. To suggest that they didn't have a need is nonsense, as soon as the wheel arrived they suddenly found a need for it, ergo they always had a need for it. New invention that don't meet a need don't get very far, i have a betermax vid in my cellar


I'd have to look at how carts were adopted. I suspect the tribes that adopted quickly weren't those that had wheel-toys. But that adoption was precisely one of my points. You said they never developed the wheel. Most never needed to - it was introduced to them before they developed it.


----------



## Gerry Seymour (Mar 1, 2018)

jobo said:


> however you want to wrap it up, they were responsible for not advancing in technology, if that's through lack of imagination or making themselves isolated is by the,way, it their own fault


Again, you're working to blame, when that doesn't even make sense when discussing societal development. You must be a joy to work with. Who do you blame at work when it's cloudy?


----------



## hoshin1600 (Mar 1, 2018)

jobo said:


> of courses. I'm comparing off,dates, the nub of my point is they lagged most of the,rest of the world by THOUSANDS of years
> 
> the whole they didn't have a need, argument is silly, every other culture had a need for better tools , they clearly had a need if they made copper tools and as the owner of a,copper chisel, i can reliably inform you that owners of copper tools need better tools.
> 
> living in thousands of sq miles of flat plain is just crying out for a wheel, particularly when you have beasts of burden just wondering by. To suggest that they didn't have a need is nonsense, as soon as the wheel arrived they suddenly found a need for it, ergo they always had a need for it. New invention that don't meet a need don't get very far, i have a betermax vid in my cellar



i really wish you had a better grasp on the history of the American Indian.  your understanding is the equivalent of a 1950's western movie.  its getting annoying.
The plains indian like the Lakota where just one of many different cultures.  these cultures are so distinct and different from one another its like comparing vikings to mongols to greeks.  
as far as "beasts of burden"  ...you think you can tame a bison?  yeah good luck with that, it cant be done.  while your at it maybe you could think about why you cant ride a Zebra.
so that being said while a wheel would be good for a wheelbarrow it wasnt much good for anything else without a pulling system.

the indigenous people where on this continent before the Egyptian pyramids were built, if not for disease and plagues they would still be here.  in less than a thousand years, your so called "progress" has ruined the earth and wiped out 80 percent of all animal species during that time.
*who's culture is backwards again????*


----------



## hoshin1600 (Mar 1, 2018)

i should also add that at one point the most advanced civilization was the middle east.  they invented our "arabic" writting and math. the library was full of knowledge from all over the globe..
where are they today??  and why??


----------



## pdg (Mar 1, 2018)

gpseymour said:


> I've discussed the reasons I can think of that probably explain their lack of advancement in metallurgy. And no, there is not always a need for better tools. Until economics (profit motive) are introduced, subsistence is the primary driver of development. So long as it is easy to subsist, cultures don't tend to progress as quickly. Economics (and other social analogs) breaks that cycle.



Better tooling is only better if you need it.

Let's take the stereotypical dugout canoe - if you're making one for you you can do it with stone tools. It takes a while, but it works. Maybe it'll take 100 hours to get something workable, but it'll work for years so you don't need to make more.

It's only when you're the village/tribe canoe builder that you absolutely need to start getting the efficiency that comes with better tooling.

A few years back I made a part for a breech loading rifle - I used a hacksaw and a couple of files, took ages but it didn't matter because it was just for me and it wasn't really a pressing need.

If I needed to make the same part right now I'd nip out to the shed and fire up the lathe and the mill and have it done in minutes - but I didn't get those machines through need - the society I live in is such that they're toys...



hoshin1600 said:


> i really wish you had a better grasp on the history of the American Indian. your understanding is the equivalent of a 1950's western movie



That's probably equal to my knowledge of them tbh - everything I've said is based on my understanding of requirement driving development wherever and by whoever. I think my theory covers worldwide 



hoshin1600 said:


> as far as "beasts of burden" ...you think you can tame a bison? yeah good luck with that, it cant be done



I'm going to have to question that...

Why is it harder to domesticate a bison than an oxen, or a horse, or an elephant?

You only need a beast of burden if the burden you choose is too great for you.

Also, a challenge to that statement comes from the New England Historical Society:


----------



## oftheherd1 (Mar 1, 2018)

hoshin1600 said:


> i should also add that at one point the most advanced civilization was the middle east.  they invented our "arabic" writting and math. the library was full of knowledge from all over the globe..
> where are they today??  and why??



We don't use an Arabic system for writing English (thankfully), or even most other European languages.  It is mostly Roman, which they got from the Greeks, which the Greeks got from the Phoenicians.  Each pass-a-long involved some changes to suit the next language.

The victor gets to write the history and claim the glory.  Arabic math mostly came from India.  Geometry from the Greeks.


----------



## oftheherd1 (Mar 1, 2018)

hoshin1600 said:


> *i really wish you had a better grasp on the history of the American Indian.*  your understanding is the equivalent of a 1950's western movie.  its getting annoying.
> The plains indian like the Lakota where just one of many different cultures.  these cultures are so distinct and different from one another its like comparing vikings to mongols to greeks.
> as far as "beasts of burden"  ...you think you can tame a bison?  yeah good luck with that, it cant be done.  while your at it maybe you could think about why you cant ride a Zebra.
> so that being said while a wheel would be good for a wheelbarrow it wasnt much good for anything else without a pulling system.
> ...



Probably best he doesn't.  He might make more believable assertions which might make it harder to detect that he was simply throwing out stuff he surely doesn't even believe himself; all to elicit responses. 

Just my belief of course, but it is why I won't be answering his posts.


----------



## jobo (Mar 1, 2018)

hoshin1600 said:


> i really wish you had a better grasp on the history of the American Indian.  your understanding is the equivalent of a 1950's western movie.  its getting annoying.
> The plains indian like the Lakota where just one of many different cultures.  these cultures are so distinct and different from one another its like comparing vikings to mongols to greeks.
> as far as "beasts of burden"  ...you think you can tame a bison?  yeah good luck with that, it cant be done.  while your at it maybe you could think about why you cant ride a Zebra.
> so that being said while a wheel would be good for a wheelbarrow it wasnt much good for anything else without a pulling system.
> ...



the excuses being offered are getting bizare, here is,a jockey and zebra and AGAIN the rest of the world managed to tame bison, i suppose. That has special difficult to train bison.

they also hunted a whole collection of large mammals to extinction, so that another point gone


----------



## jobo (Mar 1, 2018)

hoshin1600 said:


> i should also add that at one point the most advanced civilization was the middle east.  they invented our "arabic" writting and math. the library was full of knowledge from all over the globe..
> where are they today??  and why??


the romans, invaded,set fire to the library and that was more or less the end of them,  and i don't know,about you, but the language i write isn't aerobic, perhaps you need more European history before you speculate ?


----------



## jobo (Mar 1, 2018)

pdg said:


> Better tooling is only better if you need it.
> 
> Let's take the stereotypical dugout canoe - if you're making one for you you can do it with stone tools. It takes a while, but it works. Maybe it'll take 100 hours to get something workable, but it'll work for years so you don't need to make more.
> 
> ...





pdg said:


> Sorry, that's a bad comparison.
> 
> Betamax outperformed VHS in every way except length of recording time, and it came first - so it was the first thing to meet the perceived "need".
> 
> ...


and and most especially price, people did not have a need for  better quality at at MUCH higher price. So it Didnt meet the Needs of most purchasers.  a, vhs players cost me 6 weeks wages in the,early 80s, betermax was three times that, PLUS all the porn was on vhs, so they were never going to win

however every one who has a need for a copper chisel has a need for a bronze one( at least)


----------



## hoshin1600 (Mar 1, 2018)

oftheherd1 said:


> We don't use an Arabic system for writing English (thankfully), or even most other European languages.  It is mostly Roman, which they got from the Greeks, which the Greeks got from the Phoenicians.  Each pass-a-long involved some changes to suit the next language.
> 
> The victor gets to write the history and claim the glory.  Arabic math mostly came from India.  Geometry from the Greeks.





jobo said:


> the romans, invaded,set fire to the library and that was more or less the end of them,  and i don't know,about you, but the language i write isn't aerobic, perhaps you need more European history before you speculate ?



yup i got finger tied there for a second.. i was thinking Arabic numerals which replaced the Roman numbers.  my bad.


----------



## hoshin1600 (Mar 1, 2018)

here is an article on why some species can not be tamed.  and the Zebra thing is mentioned as a very rare case.
Why Can't All Animals Be Domesticated?


_ domestic animals *cannot have a strong tendency to panic and flee* when startled._
ever see what happens when bison get agitated??




.

this kid almost died ......


----------



## pdg (Mar 1, 2018)

hoshin1600 said:


> here is an article on why some species can not be tamed.  and the Zebra thing is mentioned as a very rare case.
> Why Can't All Animals Be Domesticated?
> 
> 
> ...



From the link you provided:

"Some evolutionary biologists do not consider docility to be a criterion of domestication, as many domestic animals are derived from very aggressive species, such as the dog from the wolf"

And... Ever seen what a cow can do if it gets agitated?

A friend of mine is a dairy farmer, last year he got trapped between a tractor and gatepost when a cow got spooked and tried to get through the same gap - one of his farm hands had to use a telehandler to lift the panicking cow off him so that the paramedics could get him on a stretcher. If the farm hand hadn't been there I'd likely be one friend down today.

The reason (imo) that buffalo and bison haven't been domesticated is/was lack of need.

You don't need to fence them in and provide for their well-being (which is a huge amount of work, which is dangerous if you might get attacked by a competing tribe) if your lifestyle is to follow the herd or take a few when it's passing.


----------



## jobo (Mar 1, 2018)

hoshin1600 said:


> here is an article on why some species can not be tamed.  and the Zebra thing is mentioned as a very rare case.
> Why Can't All Animals Be Domesticated?
> 
> 
> ...


a bit of,selective breading will sort that out, they got wolves to chase balls and do tricks, how hard can it be to get a bison to PULL a cart, every other part of the world managed it


----------



## hoshin1600 (Mar 1, 2018)

jobo said:


> a bit of,selective breading will sort that out, they got wolves to chase balls and do tricks, how hard can it be to get a bison to PULL a cart, every other part of the world managed it



bison dont pull carts anywhere. those are ox.  different animal.


----------



## hoshin1600 (Mar 1, 2018)

pdg said:


> The reason (imo) that buffalo and bison haven't been domesticated is/was lack of need.


yeah i dont know i think there is something about there need to run and the aggressive head butting thing that keeps them from being a good candidate.


----------



## jobo (Mar 1, 2018)

hoshin1600 said:


> bison dont pull carts anywhere. those are ox.  different animal.


pdg has already posted a picture of them doing so,


----------



## hoshin1600 (Mar 1, 2018)

jobo said:


> how hard can it be to get a bison to PULL a cart, every other part of the world managed it





jobo said:


> pdg has already posted a picture of them doing so,



having one publicity photo of bison and "having every other part of the world"  use bison is different. i was addressing your assumed view that there are domesticated bison all over the world.  those are not bison they are oxen.


----------



## jobo (Mar 1, 2018)

hoshin1600 said:


> having one publicity photo of bison and "having every other part of the world"  use bison is different. i was addressing your assumed view that there are domesticated bison all over the world.  those are not bison they are oxen.


hang on, you said they don't pull carts ANYWHERE, and low and behold here is a picture of them pulling a cart, so clearly they do, 

clearly there are not bison all over the world, there are none at all round here, however other parts of the world that have bison have domesticated them, they have even been domesticated in the good old USA,


----------



## pdg (Mar 1, 2018)

hoshin1600 said:


> yeah i dont know i think there is something about there need to run and the aggressive head butting thing that keeps them from being a good candidate.





hoshin1600 said:


> having one publicity photo of bison and "having every other part of the world"  use bison is different. i was addressing your assumed view that there are domesticated bison all over the world.  those are not bison they are oxen.



Do a google image search for "bison pulling cart" - the image I chose was far from the first result, of hundreds.

Also, there's a place not a huge distance from me with bison on what is essentially a farm with a campsite - the bison they keep are for tourist attraction and meat.

Plus, there are bison in zoos all over the world (admittedly, less of a fully domesticated situation, but restricted and kept without issue).

I don't really think there's much in the way of challenge to domesticating them - especially if you have a look at where 'normal' cattle came from originally, and pigs...


The apparent difference with my opinion is that I don't think it's a matter of lack of intelligence as to why native Americans didn't domesticate bison but a lack of need (and, this might highlight my lack of real knowledge of the people - wasn't that level of interference with the habitat and it's fauna against their beliefs?)


----------



## jobo (Mar 1, 2018)

well they hunted at least 35 species to extinction, including the ground sloth, the American lion and the,short faced bear, so clearly not that bothered about fauna interference


----------



## hoshin1600 (Mar 1, 2018)

jobo said:


> well they hunted at least 35 species to extinction, including the ground sloth, the American lion and the,short faced bear, so clearly not that bothered about fauna interference


Um, just exactly who hunted them to extinction? 
The bear and lion were around until the pleistoce extinction. That has nothing to do with native indians. Your time line is off by about 6 to 100 thousand years.


----------



## hoshin1600 (Mar 1, 2018)

pdg said:


> Also, there's a place not a huge distance from me with bison on what is essentially a farm with a campsite - the bison they keep are for tourist attraction and meat.


are you aware that today 90 something % of all bison are genetically altered and mixed with domesticated livestock?  there are almost no bison of authentic genetics. this is how we brought the species back and made it easier to control them.



pdg said:


> Plus, there are bison in zoos all over the world (admittedly, less of a fully domesticated situation, but restricted and kept without issue).


and we also have crocodiles, lions and tigers but you wont get them to pull a cart either.


----------



## jobo (Mar 1, 2018)

hoshin1600 said:


> Um, just exactly who hunted them to extinction?
> The bear and lion were around until the pleistoce extinction. That has nothing to do with native indians. Your time line is off by about 6 to 100 thousand years.


???? 100,000 years 
the extinction of the lion matches EXACTLY with the,arrival of the first native Americans, well almost exactly, the people arrived and with in a few hundred years it was extinct, is Wikipedia broken in America?


----------



## hoshin1600 (Mar 1, 2018)

https://www.quora.com/Can-the-American-Bison-be-domesticated
_ the problem becomes *inheritability of temper* - if bison are anything like acorn trees and their bitterness isn't governed by just one gene, then you're always crapshooting. You might end up having generation after generation of docile bison only to have the next generation completely feral. Or more likely, you'll have members within the same generation with varying degrees of temper - and so you get an unmanageable herd. Shepherds would be sunk if 25% of their sheep just decided to wander off. Until we understand more about the genetic and epigenetics of bison temper, widescale domestication is a dream._
_
Why was the American Bison never domesticated? • r/AskAnthropology

nearly all animal species that have been domesticated produce very low levels of cortisol in comparison to related species that have never been successfully domesticated.....
Cortisol is a stress hormone, and most animals with normal cortisol levels will be skittish, unpredictable, and potentially aggressive in human presence. Domestication involves selecting a species that contains a genetic mutation for low cortisol production.

_
can we put this domesticated bison idea to rest now???


----------



## jobo (Mar 1, 2018)

hoshin1600 said:


> are you aware that today 90 something % of all bison are genetically altered and mixed with domesticated livestock?  there are almost no bison of authentic genetics. this is how we brought the species back and made it easier to control them.
> 
> 
> and we also have crocodiles, lions and tigers but you wont get them to pull a cart either.


dies it never occur to you to google things,Before you post


hoshin1600 said:


> are you aware that today 90 something % of all bison are genetically altered and mixed with domesticated livestock?  there are almost no bison of authentic genetics. this is how we brought the species back and made it easier to control them.
> 
> 
> and we also have crocodiles, lions and tigers but you wont get them to pull a cart either.


does it never occur to you to google BEFORE you make,rash statements

here is,a,vid of lions pulling a,cart , its one of hundreds of pictures of lions pulling carts





lion pulling cart - Bing video


----------



## jobo (Mar 1, 2018)

hoshin1600 said:


> https://www.quora.com/Can-the-American-Bison-be-domesticated
> _ the problem becomes *inheritability of temper* - if bison are anything like acorn trees and their bitterness isn't governed by just one gene, then you're always crapshooting. You might end up having generation after generation of docile bison only to have the next generation completely feral. Or more likely, you'll have members within the same generation with varying degrees of temper - and so you get an unmanageable herd. Shepherds would be sunk if 25% of their sheep just decided to wander off. Until we understand more about the genetic and epigenetics of bison temper, widescale domestication is a dream.
> 
> Why was the American Bison never domesticated? • r/AskAnthropology
> ...


no, that just says you need to selectively breed them, which is what i said upteen posts ago. No one,said it was easy, just Not impossible


----------



## jobo (Mar 1, 2018)

hoshin1600 said:


> are you aware that today 90 something % of all bison are genetically altered and mixed with domesticated livestock?  there are almost no bison of authentic genetics. this is how we brought the species back and made it easier to control them.
> 
> 
> and we also have crocodiles, lions and tigers but you wont get them to pull a cart either.


couldn't find a crocodile, but here is an alligator pulling a cart, not sure id have let my kid on that


----------



## pdg (Mar 1, 2018)

hoshin1600 said:


> can we put this domesticated bison idea to rest now???



Yes, because it's shown to be possible.

Cross breeding can be considered part of selective breeding.


Thing is, the fact it's possible doesn't mean it was required by the natives.

Buffalo are also able to be domesticated, and have been for many years - but not by the tribal people who shared their habitat.

Was that because the native Africans lacked the intelligence to do so or because they had no requirement to? I'm going for the latter myself.



Edit... This 90 something % of mixed breed bison - domesticated cattle weren't just plonked on earth in a domesticated form, they were derived from a single, very wild, animal and selectively bred over many generations to reach the state they're in now...


----------



## hoshin1600 (Mar 1, 2018)

jobo said:


> ???? 100,000 years
> the extinction of the lion matches EXACTLY with the,arrival of the first native Americans, well almost exactly, the people arrived and with in a few hundred years it was extinct, is Wikipedia broken in America?



From wiki;
_The *short-faced bear* ....It has been hypothesized that their extinction coincides with the Younger Dryas period._
_The *Younger Dryas* (c. 12,900 to c. 11,700 years BP)
The *American lion* .... is an extinct subspecies of lion that lived in North America during thePleistocene epoch (340,000 to 11,000 years ago)

Na-Dené-speaking peoples entered North America starting around 8000 BCE, reaching the Pacific Northwest by 5000 BCE,[26]_

maybe you meant the Clovis people not american indians?


----------



## jobo (Mar 1, 2018)

pdg said:


> Yes, because it's shown to be possible.
> 
> Cross breeding can be considered part of selective breeding.
> 
> ...


they could have just been to lazy to try?


----------



## jobo (Mar 1, 2018)

hoshin1600 said:


> From wiki;
> _The *short-faced bear* ....It has been hypothesized that their extinction coincides with the Younger Dryas period.
> The *Younger Dryas* (c. 12,900 to c. 11,700 years BP)
> The *American lion* .... is an extinct subspecies of lion that lived in North America during thePleistocene epoch (340,000 to 11,000 years ago)
> ...


arnt clocks people American natives people


hoshin1600 said:


> From wiki;
> _The *short-faced bear* ....It has been hypothesized that their extinction coincides with the Younger Dryas period.
> The *Younger Dryas* (c. 12,900 to c. 11,700 years BP)
> The *American lion* .... is an extinct subspecies of lion that lived in North America during thePleistocene epoch (340,000 to 11,000 years ago)
> ...


google first, its recently been revealed that the clovis people are the,ancestors off all the native Americans, id be ashamed if i knew so little of my own country history

hers a link. Where Native Americans come from


----------



## hoshin1600 (Mar 1, 2018)

pdg said:


> Yes, because it's shown to be possible.
> 
> Cross breeding can be considered part of selective breeding.
> 
> ...




here is my point though.....
there was only one species on this continent.  where the heck were the indians going to get a more domesticated DNA from?  sure we can mix species with a lot of differnt Bovine now, but not then...and i wouldnt want that job of manually "stimulating" a male bison to get some DNA


----------



## hoshin1600 (Mar 1, 2018)

jobo said:


> no, that just says you need to selectively breed them, which is what i said upteen posts ago. No one,said it was easy, just Not impossible


you didnt read the link..  the domesticated gene does not reliably get passed down.  you could get a few docile bison then lose that trait again. you keep trying but you keep losing the trait.
.


----------



## hoshin1600 (Mar 1, 2018)

jobo said:


> arnt clocks people American natives people


i think you mean clovis, not clocks....or am i missing something?
and no i wouldnt consider the clovis the same as native american any more then i would consider you neanderthal.  but i do sometimes wonder about you?

Europeans are closer to Neanderthals than first thought | Daily Mail Online


----------



## jobo (Mar 1, 2018)

hoshin1600 said:


> i think you mean clovis, not clocks....or am i missing something?
> and no i wouldnt consider the clovis the same as native american any more then i would consider you neanderthal.  but i do sometimes wonder about you?
> 
> Europeans are closer to Neanderthals than first thought | Daily Mail Online


did you read the link, it clearly say they have dna evidence that they are indeed the same people


----------



## jobo (Mar 1, 2018)

hoshin1600 said:


> you didnt read the link..  the domesticated gene does not reliably get passed down.  you could get a few docile bison then lose that trait again. you keep trying but you keep losing the trait.
> .


no, not Reliably, so you eat that one and pull your cart wit one that does have the gene


----------



## jobo (Mar 1, 2018)

hers the link AGAIN that says the clovis, people are the ancestors of All native Americans, you missed it first time 

Where Native Americans come from


----------



## drop bear (Mar 1, 2018)

jobo said:


> and and most especially price, people did not have a need for  better quality at at MUCH higher price. So it Didnt meet the Needs of most purchasers.  a, vhs players cost me 6 weeks wages in the,early 80s, betermax was three times that, PLUS all the porn was on vhs, so they were never going to win
> 
> however every one who has a need for a copper chisel has a need for a bronze one( at least)



Beta VHS for me was choice. More movies were made in VHS. So I went VHS.


----------



## jobo (Mar 1, 2018)

hoshin1600 said:


> are you aware that today 90 something % of all bison are genetically altered and mixed with domesticated livestock?  there are almost no bison of authentic genetics. this is how we brought the species back and made it easier to control them.
> 
> 
> and we also have crocodiles, lions and tigers but you wont get them to pull a cart either.


a quick google,finds there are THOUSANDS of genetically original bison wandering round yellow,stone nation park


----------



## jobo (Mar 1, 2018)

drop bear said:


> Beta VHS for me was choice. More movies were made in VHS. So I went VHS.


nothing to do with the abundant supply of porn on vhs then?


----------



## pdg (Mar 1, 2018)

hoshin1600 said:


> here is my point though.....
> there was only one species on this continent.  where the heck were the indians going to get a more domesticated DNA from?  sure we can mix species with a lot of differnt Bovine now, but not then...and i wouldnt want that job of manually "stimulating" a male bison to get some DNA



The people who domesticated the auroch didn't have anything else to bung in the mix either nor did they map the genome to engineer different smaller subspecies, yet that's what all modern cattle came from...

Cross breeding other subspecies with bison is simply a shortcut, the regressive gene theory as an excuse to not domesticate them really doesn't hold up to scrutiny if you compare to auroch.


----------



## pdg (Mar 1, 2018)

hoshin1600 said:


> and i wouldnt want that job of manually "stimulating" a male bison to get some DNA



Get someone else to do it - according to rule 34 all you need is a camera


----------



## jobo (Mar 1, 2018)

pdg said:


> The people who domesticated the auroch didn't have anything else to bung in the mix either nor did they map the genome to engineer different smaller subspecies, yet that's what all modern cattle came from...
> 
> Cross breeding other subspecies with bison is simply a shortcut, the regressive gene theory as an excuse to not domesticate them really doesn't hold up to scrutiny if you compare to auroch.


??? I'm off to google auroch?


----------



## jobo (Mar 1, 2018)

jobo said:


> ??? I'm off to google auroch?


says here that hitler brought it back to be a master cow for the master race.
Aurochs: How Hitler and Goering resurrected extinct species to make 'Nazi super cows'
didn't know bovines were this intresting, hope it comes up in a quiz sometime


----------



## hoshin1600 (Mar 1, 2018)

My Google - fu  was not as strong today as it usually is. Maybe the topic is just a little too complex for skim reading.

Next time..next time I will crush you...buwahaha.


----------



## jobo (Mar 1, 2018)

hoshin1600 said:


> My Google - fu  was not as strong today as it usually is. Maybe the topic is just a little too complex for skim reading.
> 
> Next time..next time I will crush you...buwahaha.


good fun having a good,debate though,


----------



## drop bear (Mar 1, 2018)

jobo said:


> nothing to do with the abundant supply of porn on vhs then?


----------



## pdg (Mar 1, 2018)

Interestingly, with reference to bison being unpredictable, from the page that Jobo linked:

"Historical accounts suggests the beasts (auroch) were fast and very aggressive. They were not afraid of humans, and if they were hunted would attack back in response.


Evidence suggests the wild species began to be domesticated around 8,000 years ago"


----------



## pdg (Mar 1, 2018)

hoshin1600 said:


> My Google - fu  was not as strong today as it usually is. Maybe the topic is just a little too complex for skim reading.



Yes, it's an incredibly complex (and at the same time astoundingly simple) subject - ancient genetic engineering by selective breeding.

Effectively it's survival of the fittest, but having choice over what constitutes 'fittest' for your needs.


----------



## Gerry Seymour (Mar 1, 2018)

pdg said:


> Yes, it's an incredibly complex (and at the same time astoundingly simple) subject - ancient genetic engineering by selective breeding.
> 
> Effectively it's survival of the fittest, but having choice over what constitutes 'fittest' for your needs.


Most evidence points more to "survival of the best adapted/best at adapting".


----------



## drop bear (Mar 1, 2018)

gpseymour said:


> Most evidence points more to "survival of the best adapted/best at adapting".



Dogs as pets is the weirdest example of that.

Survival of the cutest.


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## Gerry Seymour (Mar 1, 2018)

drop bear said:


> Dogs as pets is the weirdest example of that.
> 
> Survival of the cutest.


That's definitely the case with me. If a dog up for adoption can make an adorable face at me, I'm liable to end up with a new dog. "Strongest" doesn't really matter. "Cutest" gets better food.


----------



## JowGaWolf (Mar 1, 2018)

jobo said:


> your both throwing up a,smoke screen and moving the goal posts
> 
> your claim was they were isolated


My Claim is that Native Americans used metal weapons before the arrival of the Europeans and that they weren't in the stone age, and that there is a such thing as a Copper Age.   Any movement beyond that topic was of your own doing by pivoting from the original Stone axes vs Metal axes statement from which all of this was born from.  



jobo said:


> your point seems to be they were backward as they didnt have contact with the rest of the world, when it's equal valid to suggest they didn't have contact or take advantage of that contact because they were backward


Nothing of anything I've said about Native Americans suggest that.  You were the one who classified them as not advancing beyond the stone age.  I'm the one who posted proof that they were beyond the stone age technology and were working with metal.  I'm the one who posted references from reliable surfaces about the technology that they had.  


jobo said:


> your both throwing up a,smoke screen and moving the goal posts
> 
> your claim was they were isolated


My Claim is that Native Americans used metal weapons before the arrival of the Europeans and that they weren't in the stone age, and that there is a such thing as a Copper Age.   Any movement beyond that topic was of your own doing by pivoting from the original Stone axes vs Metal axes statement from which all of this was born from.  



jobo said:


> your point seems to be they were backward as they didnt have contact with the rest of the world, when it's equal valid to suggest they didn't have contact or take advantage of that contact because they were backward


Nothing of anything I've said about Native Americans suggest that.  You were the one who classified them as not advancing beyond the stone age.  I'm the one who posted proof that they were beyond the stone age technology and were working with metal.  I'm the one who posted references from reliable surfaces about the technology that they had.  

As for the U.S. being isolated.  The fact that they say Columbus "Discovered" the Americas pretty much shows how isolated the Americas was from Europe, Asia, and India who had long been trading goods and knowledge with each other long before Columbus "Discovered" the U.S.


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## Martial D (Mar 1, 2018)

gpseymour said:


> Most evidence points more to "survival of the best adapted/best at adapting".


Which makes a thing more fit for it's environment. Hence fittest.


----------



## JowGaWolf (Mar 1, 2018)

gpseymour said:


> I'd have to look at how carts were adopted.


Talk about a hijacked thread lol.

Native Americans in what is now the U.S. used Travois. It looks primitive but it's very practical.  This would navigate better through animal trails, uneven ground, wooded areas where trees have fallen, up a hill because it doesn't roll back.  If you had to go off trail you could easily do this.  It could be used with horses, dogs, and humans. In South America the native Americans used llamas to transport items probably for the same reason the Travois were use.  It was more efficient and in some cases safer than using a wheeled cart due to the terrain.  A quick google image search for llamas carrying supplies will clearly show where these animals are traveling where a wheeled cart would cause problems. 

It is also said that there was also a lack of animals of burden that could carry the load that a cart would carry.  I can see where this would be the case in maybe central and  South America, but not so much in the case of North America where there are Bison.  So there had to be another reason to not use a wheel. They made wheel like objects but it doesn't seem to have advanced beyond that for some reason.  Which isn't  uncommon for civilizations. According to historians the oldest evidence of a wheeled vehicle is in Turkey.  They say that the science of the wheel spread through the countries trading with each other.  Like you come to my country and see the wheel. You ask what is that and where can you get one.  I take it back to my country in plan on making money by creating it in my country and with each new creation improvements were made.


----------



## JowGaWolf (Mar 1, 2018)

hoshin1600 said:


> i should also add that at one point the most advanced civilization was the middle east.  they invented our "arabic" writting and math. the library was full of knowledge from all over the globe..
> where are they today??  and why??


They burned their library of knowledge and declared knowledge to be unholy.  Then history repeated itself when the Taliban started destroying schools and museums that contained their past history.  
But back to pre-taliban,Thanks to the interaction with other cultures and countries that learned from those people (forgot exactly who) a great deal of the knowledge was saved.  

I want to say Alexander the Great was the one who saved the information by creating a library of his own that had some of that information.  So the story goes.

To put it in a Martial Arts perspective, we can say the same with the functionality of Chinese Martial Arts.  Where many in China say that martial arts isn't for fighting, it's the west that is actually doing a lot to preserve the functionality of it.


----------



## JowGaWolf (Mar 1, 2018)

gpseymour said:


> That's definitely the case with me. If a dog up for adoption can make an adorable face at me, I'm liable to end up with a new dog. "Strongest" doesn't really matter. "Cutest" gets better food.


You must have watched the same show that I watched, that talked about the history of the dog.  They said the same thing.


----------



## JowGaWolf (Mar 1, 2018)

hoshin1600 said:


> here is an article on why some species can not be tamed.  and the Zebra thing is mentioned as a very rare case.
> Why Can't All Animals Be Domesticated?
> 
> 
> ...


Good information.  I learned something new.  I guess that's why the first Europeans never bothered to use them as beast of burden to plow the fields.


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## JowGaWolf (Mar 1, 2018)

jobo said:


> well they hunted at least 35 species to extinction, including the ground sloth, the American lion and the,short faced bear, so clearly not that bothered about fauna interference


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## Anarax (Mar 1, 2018)

JowGaWolf said:


> They burned their library of knowledge and declared knowledge to be unholy.


What are you basing this on? I'm curious on the source you used.


hoshin1600 said:


> i should also add that at one point the most advanced civilization was the middle east. they invented our "arabic" writting and math. the library was full of knowledge from all over the globe..
> where are they today?? and why??


First, I do not think the explanation I'm about to give is the only reason for the state of some middle eastern countries today. There are other factors that have and are at work today, I'm just giving the more economic side of it.  

The biggest economic factor that attributed in the decline of the Middle East(pre-USA) was the Frankincense trade. For thousands of years Frankincense was one the of the largest Arab exports that made up a huge part of their economy. Frankincense was mostly used in temples and religious ceremonies as incense. The major shift from polytheism to monotheism throughout many countries resulted in a massive reduction in religious temples, who were the biggest consumers of Frankincense. This meant that only a small fraction of Frankincense would be required now than before. The Arabs built a lot of their economy around Frankincense, thus the massive reduction in demand nearly crippled their economy. However; they persevered and managed as best as they could, some countries fared better than others, but overall the Middle East went through a long economical depression. Many years passed until they discovered oil, and it revitalized some Middle Eastern countries' economies. 

I agree that Arabs have played a significant part in scientific history and sometimes some of there contributions are brushed over. I'm not saying it's intentional, but it is evident. 2/3 of visible stars have Arabic names and Algebra is Arabic for "to make even" or "to rejoin".


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## pdg (Mar 2, 2018)

Martial D said:


> Which makes a thing more fit for it's environment. Hence fittest.



Exactly, best fit.

Fittest doesn't mean strongest in most cases, it means best fit...

If the environment is in a manmade field, doing service to man then the traits that become prominent are going to be the ones that best fit - being docile one of the main ones.



JowGaWolf said:


> Good information.  I learned something new.  I guess that's why the first Europeans never bothered to use them as beast of burden to plow the fields.



I personally think that article is wrong due to being very short sighted.

It describes elephants as being unsuitable for domestication, yet they can be seen "working for" humans daily in some places.

The animal modern cattle comes from is described as being particularly vicious and wont to attack anything that it perceives as a threat - even more so than bison.

Just how long do you think it took to breed those traits out?

Why, as a settler, spend maybe 50-100+ years domesticating an animal when you have a perfectly serviceable alternative on hand already?


----------



## hoshin1600 (Mar 2, 2018)

Anarax said:


> What are you basing this on? I'm curious on the source you used.
> 
> First, I do not think the explanation I'm about to give is the only reason for the state of some middle eastern countries today. There are other factors that have and are at work today, I'm just giving the more economic side of it.
> 
> ...


I agree with Jow gar wolf. The explanation I remember was the rejection of knowledge due to religion.


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## pdg (Mar 2, 2018)

JowGaWolf said:


> Talk about a hijacked thread lol.



It's been an interesting hijack though, and it'd be a shame (imo) to lose the discussion.

If it's deemed to far off topic could the anthropological discussion get parted and moved instead of thrown away?


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## pdg (Mar 2, 2018)

This quoted because latest message on the subject:



hoshin1600 said:


> I agree with Jow gar wolf. The explanation I remember was the rejection of knowledge due to religion.



I can't comment on anything so modern...

My previous field of interest has been how civilisation developed from "ug" level through to trade/conflict.

That can include ritualistic activities to attract rain and ward off wind, but then I pretty much stop.

As soon as organised religion enters the fray, logic and reason pack their bags and leave...


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## jobo (Mar 2, 2018)

JowGaWolf said:


> They burned their library of knowledge and declared knowledge to be unholy.  Then history repeated itself when the Taliban started destroying schools and museums that contained their past history.
> But back to pre-taliban,Thanks to the interaction with other cultures and countries that learned from those people (forgot exactly who) a great deal of the knowledge was saved.
> 
> I want to say Alexander the Great was the one who saved the information by creating a library of his own that had some of that information.  So the story goes.
> ...


you seem to be mixing up your time lines, the library at Alexandra was burnt by the romans, this was about a thousand years Before the rise if Islam and any book burning that may have gone on, as a result of that. Alexander the great had been dead over 500 years when Mohamed was born, I'm not sure how you think he saved anything

what is now the Islamic world kept the knowledge of man kind alive, through the dark ages and through the persecution of science by the Christian church, this slowed progress by about a thousand years, only in the,1600s  did western science take of again, so over a thousand years of being stifled by god. I'm not sure why you are blaming Islam for this


----------



## JowGaWolf (Mar 2, 2018)

Anarax said:


> What are you basing this on? I'm curious on the source you used.


I watched a history document long ago so my memory may be off on it.  So I looked it up to see where I was off.   Here is where I wasn't as accurate. using the source The Burning of the Library of Alexandria | eHISTORY
"Alexandria was founded in Egypt by Alexander the Great. His successor as Pharaoh, Ptolemy I Soter, founded the Museum (also called Museum of Alexandria, Greek Mouseion, “Seat of the Muses”) or Royal Library of Alexandria in 283 BC."  

" It contained It has been estimated that at one time the Library of Alexandria held over half a million documents from Assyria, Greece, Persia, *Egypt*, India and many other nations." 

"The final individual to get blamed for the destruction is the Moslem Caliph Omar. In 640 AD the Moslems took the city of Alexandria. Upon learning of "a great library containing all the knowledge of the world" the conquering general supposedly asked Caliph Omar for instructions. The Caliph has been quoted as saying of the Library's holdings, "they will either contradict the Koran, in which case they are heresy, or they will agree with it, so they are superfluous." So, allegedly, all the texts were destroyed by using them as tinder for the bathhouses of the city. Even then it was said to have taken six months to burn all the documents. But these details, from the Caliph's quote to the incredulous six months it supposedly took to burn all the books, weren't written down until 300 years after the fact. These facts condemning Omar were written by Bishop Gregory Bar Hebræus, a Christian who spent a great deal of time writing about Moslem atrocities without much historical documentation."  

After reading.  There are 3 main stories about who burned the library.  One involved Julius Caesar, The other was it was lost in a natural decline of the Roman Empire, and the last story is that the Moslems burned then the library because they believed it contradicted the Koran.  Which is the same reason the Modern Taliban destroyed libraries.  It was the third story that I had learned.  I don't remember the original documentary that I watch but it was from a reliable source.  My mind just didn't remember it accurately. Along with the accuracy of my initial thoughts about it.    But after researching I now remember.

"I was thinking that Alexander the Great saved the knowledge because he created the library which allowed the knowledge to spread across cultures."  Had it not been for the library much of the knowledge would have been lost.   Here's a video of the 3 stories. around the 42:00 mark


----------



## jobo (Mar 2, 2018)

JowGaWolf said:


> I watched a history document long ago so my memory may be off on it.  So I looked it up to see where I was off.   Here is where I wasn't as accurate. using the source The Burning of the Library of Alexandria | eHISTORY
> "Alexandria was founded in Egypt by Alexander the Great. His successor as Pharaoh, Ptolemy I Soter, founded the Museum (also called Museum of Alexandria, Greek Mouseion, “Seat of the Muses”) or Royal Library of Alexandria in 283 BC."
> 
> " It contained It has been estimated that at one time the Library of Alexandria held over half a million documents from Assyria, Greece, Persia, *Egypt*, India and many other nations."
> ...


your still mixing things up, the book burning you describe was in what is now Iraq, the library of Alexandra wasn't in Iraq, it was as the name,suggest in Alexandra, which is in Egypt


----------



## JowGaWolf (Mar 2, 2018)

pdg said:


> Just how long do you think it took to breed those traits out?
> 
> Why, as a settler, spend maybe 50-100+ years domesticating an animal when you have a perfectly serviceable alternative on hand already?


That makes sense too.  You wouldn't because there would be no need for it.  Inventions and advancements usually come out of the need to do something better.  Even the inventions by mistakes were born out of trying to improve on something or trying to develop something to meet a need.

I don't know what kind of effort it would take to domesticate a bison back, but I'm pretty sure that injuries back then were a bigger threat than they are now and taking unnecessary risks would be frowned upon.



jobo said:


> you seem to be mixing up your time lines


Yes I was.  I went back to check my statement and I saw where I was getting things mixed up.   Book Burning (destruction of knowledge) however is known to have happen in history.  It happened in Europe, Asia, and Africa.  It's happened in the past and in modern times.  When people want to oppress knowledge or a people they tend to destroy records of it and outlaw the practice of that knowledge.   The one thing that seems to be true about knowledge is that if a culture wants that knowledge to survive then, the best way to do it, is to spread it beyond that culture's borders. 

I think this is one of the frustrations I have with "Secret Martial Arts" that only a few people can take.  That's a recipe for extinction.


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## JowGaWolf (Mar 2, 2018)

jobo said:


> your still mixing things up, the book burning you describe was in what is now Iraq, the library of Alexandra wasn't in Iraq, it was as the name,suggest in Alexandra, which is in Egypt


No I'm not mixing things up.   Taliban was just an example, of a group that did the same thing and used the Koran as a reason for burning the knowledge.    I was describing 2 separate events in which knowledge was destroyed with the Koran being used a the reason to validate the destruction, even if some of that knowledge was their own knowledge.  One was an ancient event and the other was a modern event.

The reason I used a modern event is to show that it's not a far fetched idea.


----------



## jobo (Mar 2, 2018)

JowGaWolf said:


> No I'm not mixing things up.   Taliban was just an example, of a group that did the same thing and used the Koran as a reason for burning the knowledge.    I was describing 2 separate events in which knowledge was destroyed with the Koran being used a the reason to validate the destruction, even if some of that knowledge was their own knowledge.  One was an ancient event and the other was a modern event.


you said quite clearly twice they burn the.  library at Alexandra, they did not, what they burnt was a library in Iraq .


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## jobo (Mar 2, 2018)

you are aware that the Christian church has burnt books that didn't agree with the bible? You seem to be singing out Islam for book burning, when the Christians were at least as bad for destroying non religious text (and killing the author), to destroy science


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## JowGaWolf (Mar 2, 2018)

jobo said:


> you said quite clearly twice they burn the.  library at Alexandra, they did not, what they burnt was a library in Iraq .


Sorry that was not clear.   I was referring to twice they burned their own knowledge.  The library included the knowledge from "everywhere" including their own, so if you believe the story about them burning their library then that is twice that they destroyed their own knowledge. 

Normally you have one culture destroying another  cultures knowledge so that only one cultural influence will control things.  It's rare for a culture to destroy it's own knowledge because that's the knowledge that you want to be dominant.   However Muslims have done it twice.  China has done it once, Christians have done it once,  Not sure if Japan has ever done that.  But I know the other groups have.   I know at one time Japan was against outside knowledge but I don't think they destroyed their own knowledge in any point of its history.


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## hoshin1600 (Mar 2, 2018)

jobo said:


> you are aware that the Christian church has burnt books that didn't agree with the bible? You seem to be singing out Islam for book burning, when the Christians were at least as bad for destroying non religious text (and killing the author), to destroy science


the key concept however is the muslims were and are active in destroying all historically significant artifacts.  books, temples, statues, you name it they are actively destroying them.


----------



## jobo (Mar 2, 2018)

JowGaWolf said:


> Sorry that was not clear.   I was referring to twice they burned their own knowledge.  The library included the knowledge from "everywhere" including their own, so if you believe the story about them burning their library then that is twice that they destroyed their own knowledge.
> 
> Normally you have one culture destroying another  cultures knowledge so that only one cultural influence will control things.  It's rare for a culture to destroy it's own knowledge because that's the knowledge that you want to be dominant.   However Muslims have done it twice.  China has done it once, Christians have done it once,  Not sure if Japan has ever done that.  But I know the other groups have.   I know at one time Japan was against outside knowledge but I don't think they destroyed their own knowledge in any point of its history.


Christians have done it ONCE, Christians have done it thousands of times, if IT is supressing science literature and killing the,scientist,


----------



## pdg (Mar 2, 2018)

When it comes to societal indiscretions, there's no such thing as a blameless religion...

And I shan't comment further on this particular subject.


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## JowGaWolf (Mar 2, 2018)

jobo said:


> you are aware that the Christian church has burnt books that didn't agree with the bible? You seem to be singing out Islam for book burning, when the Christians were at least as bad for destroying non religious text (and killing the author), to destroy science


 But the theory of burning of the library didn't say that Christians burned the library.  Had they said that Christians burned the library because the library didn't agree with the bible, then I would have given a modern day example of Christians burning their own knowledge (which I can't think of a modern day example).   But the theory is that Muslims burned it, so I gave a modern example of the Taliban destroying their own knowledge.


----------



## jobo (Mar 2, 2018)

hoshin1600 said:


> the key concept however is the muslims were and are active in destroying all historically significant artifacts.  books, temples, statues, you name it they are actively destroying them.


but they are no madder than the,abundance of anti science , flat earthers , moon hoaxers, evolution didn't happen lot that American has,, that is all built on it not agreeing with the bible that would destroy the books if they had the chance, not to mention the lot destroying historical statues all over the south , and don't forget they burnt Beatles records for being anti god


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## jobo (Mar 2, 2018)

JowGaWolf said:


> But the theory of burning of the library didn't say that Christians burned the library.  Had they said that Christians burned the library because the library didn't agree with the bible, then I would have given a modern day example of Christians burning their own knowledge (which I can't think of a modern day example).   But the theory is that Muslims burned it, so I gave a modern example of the Taliban destroying their own knowledge.


well no they arnt,destroying their own knowledge, all that they are destroying it pre Muslim, so ergo, nit theirs

the most modern example of mass book burning, by christians was the,serbs,( Christians) destroying the books of the Bosnians ( Muslims) back in 1992


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## jobo (Mar 2, 2018)

*quite possibly the biggest loss to man kind since the burning of the library of Alexandra, was the,Christians burning the manuscripts of the,mayans back in the,1500s, god only knows what knowledge of early civilisations was lost*


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## JowGaWolf (Mar 2, 2018)

jobo said:


> Christians have done it ONCE, Christians have done it thousands of times, if IT is supressing science literature and killing the,scientist,


Suppressing and destroying are 2 different things.  Suppressing is an effort to keep something from coming into existence.  Destroying is a "permanent" removal of something that exists.   Christians destroyed works from their scientists, but much of their destruction of knowledge was the destruction of knowledge that came from different cultures.  They took what they needed and claimed it their own and destroyed the rest.   This is the more common type of destruction of knowledge that humans do.  Destruction of your own knowledge isn't common in comparison since destroying your own knowledge is the same as destroying your own group, culture, or civilization.  Which is what Christians were doing when they were destroying early science.  Literature books are a different type of knowledge destruction.  Here the knowledge may or may not be a historical or science base knowledge.  Literature could be an opinion, satire, or even about sex. 
When I use the term knowledge I'm thinking of something that can be used to improve or understand the world around us. Things that are done for entertainment like the National Enquirer type literature doesn't rank high on what I consider knowledge.


----------



## jobo (Mar 2, 2018)

JowGaWolf said:


> Suppressing and destroying are 2 different things.  Suppressing is an effort to keep something from coming into existence.  Destroying is a "permanent" removal of something that exists.   Christians destroyed works from their scientists, but much of their destruction of knowledge was the destruction of knowledge that came from different cultures.  They took what they needed and claimed it their own and destroyed the rest.   This is the more common type of destruction of knowledge that humans do.  Destruction of your own knowledge isn't common in comparison since destroying your own knowledge is the same as destroying your own group, culture, or civilization.  Which is what Christians were doing when they were destroying early science.  Literature books are a different type of knowledge destruction.  Here the knowledge may or may not be a historical or science base knowledge.  Literature could be an opinion, satire, or even about sex.
> When I use the term knowledge I'm thinking of something that can be used to improve or understand the world around us. Things that are done for entertainment like the National Enquirer type literature doesn't rank high on what I consider knowledge.


killing what is currently one of the,clevererest men in the world for writing a book that contradicts the bible, IS destroying knowledge that would benefit man kind and the,countless millions that,died through the,destruction of medical knowledge 

there are a long list of ancient book the,Christians burnt , fir not being Christian, are you in denial of this fact?


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## JowGaWolf (Mar 2, 2018)

jobo said:


> Christians burning the manuscripts of the,mayans back in the,1500s, god only knows what knowledge of early civilisations was lost


I agree with this.  This is why there is such a gap.  But that type of destruction of knowledge was common back then.  If it was foreign knowledge, discovers would take what was useful to them and claim it as their own, destroy the rest, and force the inhabitants to learn their history, language, and perspectives.  It wasn't until later on as civilizations matured, that they understood the value of what was lost by destroying that knowledge.   I would hope that the lesson has been learned but human history has shown that there will always be someone out there that makes it a goal to destroy knowledge.  A nuclear war would have a similar effect. Things of great value would be lost that aren't related to money, jewels, and precious metal.  All research, knowledge, and information within the area of destruction would vanish.


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## JowGaWolf (Mar 2, 2018)

jobo said:


> killing what is currently one of the,clevererest men in the world for writing a book that contradicts the bible, IS destroying knowledge that would benefit man kind and the,countless millions that,died through the,destruction of medical knowledge


this fits my definition of what destroying means.  I'll wait for you to catch up to my other statements before I reply


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## jobo (Mar 2, 2018)

JowGaWolf said:


> I agree with this.  This is why there is such a gap.  But that type of destruction of knowledge was common back then.  If it was foreign knowledge, discovers would take what was useful to them and claim it as their own, destroy the rest, and force the inhabitants to learn their history, language, and perspectives.  It wasn't until later on as civilizations matured, that they understood the value of what was lost by destroying that knowledge.   I would hope that the lesson has been learned but human history has shown that there will always be someone out there that makes it a goal to destroy knowledge.  A nuclear war would have a similar effect. Things of great value would be lost that aren't related to money, jewels, and precious metal.  All research, knowledge, and information within the area of destruction would vanish.


no, if it contradicted the bible they would destroy t, if it was other wise useful ir not, anything that said the garden if Eden wasn't the birth of humanity and any thing that,suggested the tribes of Israel wernt the colonizers  of the world was destroyed.

any Medicine that didn't involve praying would have you burn as a witch, 

even suggesting the earth was a) round and b) not the centre of the universe was instant death. 

the, suppression of,science was,absolute, at a1000ad europe was backwards compared to the romans and very much behind the Muslim word in Technology, which is why they kept getting beat in the crusades


----------



## JowGaWolf (Mar 2, 2018)

jobo said:


> no, if it contradicted the bible they would destroy t, if it was other wise useful ir not, anything that said the garden if Eden wasn't the birth of humanity and any thing that,suggested the tribes of Israel wernt the colonizers  of the world was destroyed.
> 
> any Medicine that didn't involve praying would have you burn as a witch,
> 
> ...


Which burnings destroyed some knowledge but the majority of it wasn't on destroying knowledge.  The majority of it was simply accusing people of things that weren't true.  Some of the killings were done to advance power or to feel powerful.   There were regular people who didn't practice medicine or science that were burned or drowned for being a witch.  They are records of women being burned as a witch simply for having sex.     While some people who had valuable knowledge were killed.  I wouldn't classify it as a culture destroying it's own knowledge.   Anymore than a murder killing a doctor or scientist today.  

For me when a culture destroys it's own knowledge, it's done by destroying the institutions that distribute that knowledge.  Your example of the round earth vs flat earth would fit into this category as the church really did attack the institution with the goal of destroying it and later suppressing it


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## jobo (Mar 2, 2018)

mean while the Chinese had discovered gun powder, whilst Europe was,still trying to get the bow and arrow to work properly


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## jobo (Mar 2, 2018)

JowGaWolf said:


> Which burnings destroyed some knowledge but the majority of it wasn't on destroying knowledge.  The majority of it was simply accusing people of things that weren't true.  Some of the killings were done to advance power or to feel powerful.   There were regular people who didn't practice medicine or science that were burned or drowned for being a witch.  They are records of women being burned as a witch simply for having sex.     While some people who had valuable knowledge were killed.  I wouldn't classify it as a culture destroying it's own knowledge.   Anymore than a murder killing a doctor or scientist today.
> 
> For me when a culture destroys it's own knowledge, it's done by destroying the institutions that distribute that knowledge.  Your example of the round earth vs flat earth would fit into this category as the church really did attack the institution with the goal of destroying it and later suppressing it


that not my point, people who were using medicine proven to work from ancient times, were burnt, this as late,as the,1700s, it was considered a black art 

that non medical people were also burnt doesn't change that


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## jobo (Mar 2, 2018)

jobo said:


> that not my point, people who were using medicine proven to work from ancient times, were burnt, this as late,as the,1700s, it was considered a black art
> 
> that non medical people were also burnt doesn't change that


there have been witch trials in Europe, Italy springs to mind in the,20th century


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## jobo (Mar 2, 2018)

jobo said:


> there have been witch trials in Europe, Italy springs to mind in the,20th century


in fact witch craft was a criminal offence in the UK u till 1951


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## JowGaWolf (Mar 2, 2018)

jobo said:


> in fact witch craft was a criminal offence in the UK u till 1951


Well regardless.  Thanks for the conversation but I don't want to get into any discussion about Witch Craft. So I will end my contribution to taking the conversation so far off topic.


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## Martial D (Mar 2, 2018)

This is descending into Art Bell territory, and fast.


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## Dirty Dog (Mar 2, 2018)

JowGaWolf said:


> Well regardless.  Thanks for the conversation but I don't want to get into any discussion about Witch Craft. So I will end my contribution to taking the conversation so far off topic.



Why are you willing to discuss other religions but not paganism?


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## Martial D (Mar 2, 2018)

Dirty Dog said:


> Why are you willing to discuss other religions but not paganism?


Witchcraft =/= Paganism


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## jks9199 (Mar 2, 2018)

Admin Note:

This thread was created as a split from another thread after major thread drift.  Please try to stay on topic, folks.

jks9199
Administrator


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## Anarax (Mar 2, 2018)

gpseymour said:


> I see your point, Kirk. But "should" is a subjective concept. In my opinion (for all that's really worth), even those maintaining a tradition should evolve. Sword styles should strive for better swords (surely we can actually make better swords today than were made 100's of years ago) and better technique - even if they are aiming to maintain a tradition held long ago. By "better sword" I don't mean necessarily a wholesale change of the weapon, but the tweaks over time that leverage what can be improved without discarding the entire concept. If they don't strive to improve (which will lead to evolution, even if only slowly), my argument would be that they are practicing a performance art (though I might still refer to it as a martial art - my usage is not consistent). My attitude is driven by what one can safely assume was the likely motivation of those who practiced the art at whatever point in time is being recreated/maintained: they likely were trying to be as good at it as they could.


Good point. IMO functional martial arts should strive to adapt to the time and geographical location that they're in. For example; if a Karate or Kung Fu teacher moved to the Philippines and opened a martial arts school their curriculum might start to incorporate more knife defenses. Considering the overwhelming majority of murders in the Philippines are done with blades, it would simply makes sense to do so. This can be done while still maintaining the concepts of your system though. 

However; if preservation is what some want to focus on then I can understand their reasoning for doing so. Post Boxer Rebellion Wushu is probably the best way to got about it. Properly advertising what category your martial art fits into I think is were some schools could be a lot clearer. "preservation takes precedence over functional self-defense" probably isn't going to bring in a lot of students, but explaining that to students before they join is an important disclaimer.

If martial arts never evolved nor adapted we wouldn't have nearly as many diverse styles, which I think would be unfortunate.


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## JowGaWolf (Mar 2, 2018)

Dirty Dog said:


> Why are you willing to discuss other religions but not paganism?


Because the topic jumped from stone axes vs metal axes, to Native Americans were in the Stone age, there wasn't a copper age, to the Americas weren't Isolated, to native Americans weren't advanced, to the library of Alexandria, to the destruction of the library, to religion and the destruction of knowledge and then somewhere along the way the topic of bison and beasts of burden were added, and now the topic of witches?

I don't have problems discussing a topic but I prefer for it to stay on track and not jump to 15 million different things.   If you want to talk about witch craft then go ahead and talk about it in a separate post and I may or may not have something to say about it.  But I tire of the topic jumping.  Side track by one or 2 topics is just too much.  

I've known people who have done witchcraft, I know a little bit about the history of it.  But being that it's a religion eventually it'll get to the point were people will believe what they want.  As long as it stays on topic and in a separate thread I don't have any problems talking about it.


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## JowGaWolf (Mar 2, 2018)

jks9199 said:


> Admin Note:
> 
> This thread was created as a split from another thread after major thread drift.  Please try to stay on topic, folks.
> 
> ...


Exactly


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## pdg (Mar 2, 2018)

JowGaWolf said:


> I don't have problems discussing a topic but I prefer for it to stay on track and not jump to 15 million different things. If you want to talk about witch craft then go ahead and talk about it in a separate post and I may or may not have something to say about it. But I tire of the topic jumping



According to the new title, all of that is on topic


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## JowGaWolf (Mar 2, 2018)

pdg said:


> According to the new title, all of that is on topic


lol.  yeah I just realized the change in the topic.  Anthropology is very general, but I'm assuming that it's in the context of  Weapon  and tool development and not religion.  And I don't know any religion based weapons.


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## pdg (Mar 2, 2018)

JowGaWolf said:


> And I don't know any religion based weapons



Where _have_ you been???


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## JowGaWolf (Mar 2, 2018)

pdg said:


> Where _have_ you been???


lol. Go figure lol


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## Dirty Dog (Mar 2, 2018)

Martial D said:


> Witchcraft =/= Paganism



Really? All the witches I know identify themselves as pagans.
But I'm sure you know more about it than they do.


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## Martial D (Mar 2, 2018)

Dirty Dog said:


> Really? All the witches I know identify themselves as pagans.
> But I'm sure you know more about it than they do.


Apparently.

Calling yourself a thing does not magically impart knowledge of that thing. I've met many a Christian that doesn't know a thing about the Bible, and the 'pagan' community have more than their share of such people.

All that aside, these words have wildly different definitions.
Paganism - Wikipedia

Witchcraft - Wikipedia


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## Dirty Dog (Mar 2, 2018)

Martial D said:


> Apparently.
> 
> Calling yourself a thing does not magically impart knowledge of that thing. I've met many a Christian that doesn't know a thing about the Bible, and the 'pagan' community have more than their share of such people.
> 
> ...



Well, since you like Wikipedia so much... 
"Wicca (English: /ˈwɪkə/), also termed Pagan Witchcraft, is a contemporary Pagan new religious movement. "

Wicca - Wikipedia


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## jobo (Mar 2, 2018)

JowGaWolf said:


> lol.  yeah I just realized the change in the topic.  Anthropology is very general, but I'm assuming that it's in the context of  Weapon  and tool development and not religion.  And I don't know any religion based weapons.


what about being stabbed with a crucifix


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## jobo (Mar 2, 2018)

Martial D said:


> Apparently.
> 
> Calling yourself a thing does not magically impart knowledge of that thing. I've met many a Christian that doesn't know a thing about the Bible, and the 'pagan' community have more than their share of such people.
> 
> ...


.according to the,church of England being a Christian requires 4 attendances' at church in a year, no requirement to know the first thing about the bible


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## pdg (Mar 2, 2018)

jobo said:


> .according to the,church of England being a Christian requires 4 attendances' at church in a year



That's me out then...


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## Dirty Dog (Mar 2, 2018)

jobo said:


> what about being stabbed with a crucifix



I think that only works if the vampire was a Christian before they were turned.


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## jobo (Mar 2, 2018)

pdg said:


> That's me out then...


i just manage to scrape in, I'm not convinced about god, but its better to be on the safe side , with eternal damnation at,stake


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## pdg (Mar 2, 2018)

Dirty Dog said:


> I think that only works if the vampire was a Christian before they were turned.



For use against non vampires, a crucifix works well as a bludgeon.

Source: I once hit my head on a crucifix and it hurt.

It was a stone one though, maybe the christians who painstakingly carved it were too lazy to cast up an iron one...


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## pdg (Mar 2, 2018)

jobo said:


> i just manage to scrape in, I'm not convinced about god, but its better to be on the safe side , with eternal damnation at,stake



I'll take the risk - it can't be any worse than working in an office and I survived doing that for a while.

If I change my mind, I can always just ask the gatekeeper to forgive me


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## JowGaWolf (Mar 2, 2018)

Dirty Dog said:


> Really? All the witches I know identify themselves as pagans.
> But I'm sure you know more about it than they do.


Sorry Dirty Dog, if you read my previous comment.. I responded to the wrong comment..  I took some benedryll so I'm way off at the moment.  half way asleep


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## jobo (Mar 2, 2018)

JowGaWolf said:


> The ones you knew identified themselves as pagans.  The ones I knew identified themselves as witches, Wiccans, or Wicca.  I don't know what to say beyond that.  I'm not Wiccan or Pagan.  I can only tell you what the ones I knew called themselves.


well it depends , pagan in its original sence is any religion not based on Abraham, particulary those with multiple gods. So in that sense witch craft is most definetly pagan


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## JowGaWolf (Mar 2, 2018)

[


jobo said:


> what about being stabbed with a crucifix


I never heard of it.


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## jobo (Mar 2, 2018)

JowGaWolf said:


> [
> 
> I never heard of it.


well you have clearly not watched the omen or any hammer horrors


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## JowGaWolf (Mar 2, 2018)

jobo said:


> well it depends , pagan in its original sence is any religion not based on Abraham, particulary those with multiple gods. So in that sense witch craft is most definetly pagan


I understand that.  Just saying what they told me and how they referred to themselves..  I don't practice it so , the people who do can call themselves whatever they want.


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## jobo (Mar 2, 2018)

JowGaWolf said:


> I understand that.  Just saying what they told me and how they referred to themselves..  I don't practice it so , the people who do can call themselves whatever they want.


i think pagan was an insulting term you called others, not what you call yourself,


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## JowGaWolf (Mar 2, 2018)

jobo said:


> well you have clearly not watched the omen or any hammer horrors


I thought the omen (original one) used daggers? Now I have to look it up.  Yep. They were daggers.  I didn't see the newer Omen..


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## JowGaWolf (Mar 2, 2018)

jobo said:


> i think pagan was an insulting term you called others, not what you call yourself,


oh.  I know that a lot of them have new age shops or groups.  They have grown quite a bit since the availability of the Internet.


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## Martial D (Mar 2, 2018)

Dirty Dog said:


> Well, since you like Wikipedia so much...
> "Wicca (English: /ˈwɪkə/), also termed Pagan Witchcraft, is a contemporary Pagan new religious movement. "
> 
> Wicca - Wikipedia


With all due respect, you don't seem to know this subject matter very well. Me, I've been a student of all things occult and religious for several decades.

Firstly ''pagan" is a first century term to describe all non Christian religions. This was an accusatory/pejorative word. That term was very recently rebooted  as an umbrella self designated term for a wide variety of beliefs, from Egyptian Ra worship to Norse assatru to indiginous native beliefs. There is no one ''pagan" religion.

Some of these religions contain "magical" rites, some do not. Likewise not all that do "magic" or ritual would describe themselves as "pagan"

As for Wicca, it's a fringe religion started in the 1950s, that invokes both Christian and non Christian elements. Not many wiccans would describe themselves as pagans, although some would.

Or tl;dr

Some "pagans" do "witchcraft" and some don't.

Some people that do "witchcraft" are "pagan", and some are not.

Much like how many mma guys do both BJJ and MT, but that doesn't make MT and BJJ the same thing.


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## Dirty Dog (Mar 2, 2018)

Martial D said:


> Firstly ''pagan" is a first century term to describe all non Christian religions. That term was later rebooted to as an umbrella term for a wide variety of beliefs, from Egyptian Ra worship to Norse assatru to indiginous native beliefs. There is no one ''pagan" religion.



I didn't say there was. All thumbs are fingers, but not all fingers are thumbs.
Pagan, as an umbrella term, includes witchcraft.
Just as the word 'cult', as an even bigger umbrella term, includes all religions.



> Some of these religions contain "magical" rites, some do not. Likewise not all that do "magic" or ritual would describe themselves as "pagan"



All religions contain magical rites, whether they acknowledge that or not.


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## Martial D (Mar 2, 2018)

Dirty Dog said:


> I didn't say there was. All thumbs are fingers, but not all fingers are thumbs.
> Pagan, as an umbrella term, includes witchcraft.
> Just as the word 'cult', as an even bigger umbrella term, includes all religions.
> 
> ...


I said they were different things, which lead you to argue they were not. Now you seem to agree they mean different things.

So you are arguing what exactly?

With that said, no, not all witchcraft falls under the header of Paganism, as you seem to admit when you say all religions contain magical rites.

Unless you are claiming all religions are pagan?


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## Martial D (Mar 2, 2018)

jobo said:


> .according to the,church of England being a Christian requires 4 attendances' at church in a year, no requirement to know the first thing about the bible


Of course not, gotta keep the tithes rolling in.

Nobody said anything about any requirements, just that saying you are something doesn't make you an expert on that thing.


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## _Simon_ (Mar 3, 2018)

Wow... this has got to be the fastest growing thread... 300+ in a few days?? Golly gosh! Haven't read a word of it, just thought I'd mention that XD


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## jobo (Mar 3, 2018)

going back a few pages, here is a documentary on who discovered American.

for those who don't have an hour and a half spare, the conclusions are

that anyone could have made it, right back to the ancient Egyptians, in that they had the boats and navigation skills to do it, using currents and trade winds. Hard evidence of who did is harder to come by. But there are credible  claims for the Chinese, the Japanese , and multiple European and med cultures, but actual evidence they made it, for just the polynesians and the Vikings. And the Vikings did it in what are more or less rowing boats, 

though there are things like maps showing America and cocaine in Egyptian tombs etc that certainly suggest there was some contact.

and someone, quite probably European, was killing mamoths 20,000 years ago,a good 7 thousand years before the clovis people turned up


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## Gerry Seymour (Mar 3, 2018)

jobo said:


> destroying historical statues all over the south


That's an entirely different (and political) issue. That's not at all about destroying history, but about who should be glorified in history.


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## Gerry Seymour (Mar 3, 2018)

Martial D said:


> Apparently.
> 
> Calling yourself a thing does not magically impart knowledge of that thing. I've met many a Christian that doesn't know a thing about the Bible, and the 'pagan' community have more than their share of such people.
> 
> ...


If you look halfway down that at the "Modern Paganism" section, that's where Wicca fits in. Wiccans commonly refer to themselves as witches.


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## Gerry Seymour (Mar 3, 2018)

jobo said:


> what about being stabbed with a crucifix


Or using it against vampires.


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## Gerry Seymour (Mar 3, 2018)

pdg said:


> That's me out then...


Heck, I think that lets out most of the Christians I know.


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## Gerry Seymour (Mar 3, 2018)

jobo said:


> well it depends , pagan in its original sence is any religion not based on Abraham, particulary those with multiple gods. So in that sense witch craft is most definetly pagan


Add to that the common current usages: polytheism (based on the original Christian usage), and nature-oriented religions. Both of those would also include Wicca.


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## Gerry Seymour (Mar 3, 2018)

jobo said:


> i think pagan was an insulting term you called others, not what you call yourself,


It used to be. It has been co-opted by many non-Christians now.


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## jobo (Mar 3, 2018)

gpseymour said:


> That's an entirely different (and political) issue. That's not at all about destroying history, but about who should be glorified in history.


its clearly the same issue of destroying icons that represent things you disaprove of.


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## Gerry Seymour (Mar 3, 2018)

jobo said:


> its clearly the same issue of destroying icons that represent things you disaprove of.


Similar motivation, different issue. And, quite a different reason, actually. Depends how you look at it.


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## Martial D (Mar 3, 2018)

gpseymour said:


> If you look halfway down that at the "Modern Paganism" section, that's where Wicca fits in. Wiccans commonly refer to themselves as witches.


Yes, I realize some people classify Wicca as 'modern paganism', and that wiccans sometimes call themselves witches. There are quite a few different subsects of Wicca, as it is with many religions/cults. Gardnerian/non gardnerian, Rede/non Rede. Some accept a horned god, others do not, some like to be called witches, others are straight up offended by that.

You aren't going to find hard uniform definitions of much from the crystal and dreamcatchers set, just like you won't from most religious sects.

Did you know there are over 30,000 flavours of Christianity alone?


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## jobo (Mar 3, 2018)

gpseymour said:


> Similar motivation, different issue. And, quite a different reason, actually. Depends how you look at it.


its the same, reason,


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## Gerry Seymour (Mar 3, 2018)

jobo said:


> its the same, reason,


Not entirely. One is because they don't approve of any idol, and is religious. The other is because they don't approve of the reason behind the (current) veneration of the individual in question, and may or may not be political (and is rarely religious, except to the extent that politics sometimes resembles religion).


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## jobo (Mar 3, 2018)

gpseymour said:


> Not entirely. One is because they don't approve of any idol, and is religious. The other is because they don't approve of the reason behind the (current) veneration of the individual in question, and may or may not be political (and is rarely religious, except to the extent that politics sometimes resembles religion).


well there both certainly political statements, with a lower case p.


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## Gerry Seymour (Mar 3, 2018)

jobo said:


> well there both certainly political statements, with a lower case p.


Depending how you define that, I can see it.


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## jks9199 (Mar 3, 2018)

Folks,
Discussions about removing statues, renaming schools and roads, or similar issues from modern politics are most definitely political discussions, and don't belong on MT.  Go to US Message Board if you feel you must discuss that issue.  Historical events like the destruction of the Library of Alexandria are fine.

jks9199
Administrator


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