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But could they stick their hands in their pockets?

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Good stuff by Steinhab.

And it hammers home the point that merely dabbling in stories about antiquity is never going to afford you a complete picture.  You can't just read a wikipedia entry and equate things to modern constructs.  That applies to topics like this, politics, religion...the world was very very different then, and to truly try and draw parallels you really do have to dive completely into the subject and read many books looking at many different aspects of life back then.

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fall asleep on guard duty and your centurion took your head

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The Aztecs and Incas had roads, they used them to eat people.

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Reconstructions put the weight at around 20lbs which is about 3.5lbs more than interceptor body armor with plates.

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That's pretty light compared to a MTV with all four plates.

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I believe those weigh in around 30lbs or so don't they? Talk about a suckfest there... I just referenced the interceptor armor cause that's what I was familiar with.

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That's a whole lot of really big piles of bullshit stories about German troops in WW2 doing superhuman feats like marching at distances, at absurd speeds. The Nazis always lied about talked up their game.

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The average IQ of the native populations was abysmal, it still sucks even after hundreds of years of interbreeding with Europeans.

They can PC it up to try explaining it away but they just weren't that smart.

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I don't know if the Native Americans were any less smart than the Europeans. Same with the natives in Central and South America. What I do know is they were isolated. IMO, that isolation resulted in technical stagnation. Those who lived around the Mediterranean Sea mixed their respective cultures for thousands of years. They spread language, customs, and technology. Some had no choice but to look to the sea, which resulted in the creation of boats capable of keeping men alive for weeks on end. The Native Americans of the Pacific Northwest, for instance, had much smaller boats capable of day trips, yet they were able to use those small boats to take whales of all sizes.

IMO, North America was wasted on the natives. They didn't have the technology to exploit its vast resources. Someone was going to take it from them. It was just a matter of time. Better us than Spain.

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Yeah... Care to try again, and with something that could actually, y'know, be verified?

I'd never have the arrogance to suggest that there is even any way to effectively ascertain something like that, and if you stopped to think about it, you'd be embarrassed to have even made that assertion. The data simply isn't available, and to suggest that what remained to interbreed with the conquering Spanish represented anything other than the most random sample of the intellectuals of those societies...? Insane. What survived the apocalyptic nature of those epidemic diseases wasn't the flower of civilization, and given the random nature of the disease effects, couldn't have been. Trying to assess the general intelligence of a population from what remained would be ludicrously foolish, not to mention the deliberate destruction of so much of their culture by the Spaniards. It's only by sheerest accident that any of the various codexes have survived, and what is in them indicates tantalizing glimpses into what might have been in the rest. Trying to say that the people who produced that stuff, without any of the various advantages that European culture had...? Nuts.

The work that indicates you're out on a limb would be the complex and sophisticated nature of a lot of their accomplishments, both in terms of construction and mathematics. Their calendars and astronomical observations were at least as accurate as ours are, and in some cases, even more so. There are sites up in the Andes where we can't even say for sure how the hell they built the damn things, or managed to do the stonework, which is why the "Ancient Astronauts" theories get so much credence. Everybody is so sure that the Amerindian cultures couldn't have done those things, so of course, it had to be "aliens".

Frankly, I don't think there is really any way we could even begin to make a case, one way or another. There's so much that we don't even have a clue about--Look at all the huge earthworks they're starting to excavate in the Amazon, where early Spanish explorers reported huge cities and massive cultivation. A few generations after those guys transited the areas, likely taking diseases with them, and there was nothing left but jungle that we've only begun to look underneath of. Hell, de Soto may have single-handedly wiped out what was left of the Mound-Builders here in the Southeastern US, what with his introduction of the pig and the various zoonotic diseases they brought with them.

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Meh. What have they ever done for us?

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The natives of Mexico were still in the city-state phase, were they not? If Tenochtitlan was in fact cleaner than European cities, it was because they didn't burn coal for heat. The weather in Central Mexico rarely calls for the need of fossil fuels, IIRC. Not to mention I don't think they knew how to mine coal even if they needed it. Hell, I don't think they even had invented steel yet. Not even iron.

As far as warfare, the Europeans (Spain) were able to take large areas of land with small forces. If they had brought a full-sized invasion force like they did to England during Elizabeth I's time, they would completely dominate the natives in record time. Not a Viking like win, but a total domination win. The Spanish had firearms and artillery. Even if the natives had access to these weapons, Spain would have still kicked their ass. Spain had years of experience with firearms and artillery, not to mention access to written military tactics from the Romans onward.

The natives didn't have jack. They didn't stand a chance, disease or no disease. The fact Spain dominated with such small numbers says it all.

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The natives of Mexico were still in the city-state phase, were they not? If Tenochtitlan was in fact cleaner than European cities, it was because they didn't burn coal for heat.

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Go look up the IQ data yourself, it's hardly a secret. It's just something mainstream education and media try to avoid addressing.

http://www.devilsdictionaries.com/uploads/2/7/3/8/27389329/319972_orig.jpg

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The average IQ of the native populations was abysmal, it still sucks even after hundreds of years of interbreeding with Europeans.

They can PC it up to try explaining it away but they just weren't that smart.

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The Europeans weren't burning coal in those days, either...

I was talking about minor little things like public sanitation and so forth--It's an embarrassing fact, but a huge part of why the Euros probably managed to prevail came down to shitty personal and public hygiene. That, and zoonotic diseases from domestic animals that the Amerindians mostly didn't have. In North America, the natives had pretty sophisticated agriculture in terms of planting nut trees and other things we didn't recognize as being done deliberately. The American Chestnut was probably an excellent example, and a leading cause for why the population of Passenger Pigeons exploded after the great die-offs following the Columbian Exchange. Same-same with much of what's in the Amazon basin--Just because they weren't going out and plowing the land doesn't mean they weren't practicing a fairly sophisticated agriculture. Many of the plants and soils in the Amazon are now being recognized as being remnants of man-made activities, not nature.

The laughable thing is that everyone assumes an entirely unwarranted set of things about the colonization era. Like as not, without the shitty sanitation and the prevalence of diseases in Europe, the same thing that happened to the Viking settlements would have happened to the Elizabethan English--They'd have been swamped by the locals. Interesting data point, too--The Norse were notable for being overly hygienic by just about everyone else in Europe at the time. They insisted on clean settlements, bathing, and all sorts of other practices that the average European of the Elizabethan era would have thought both effete and unnecessary. The Euros who came over after Columbus were some filthy, nasty people--The Indians they encountered on the shores of North America all made comment on that, and also were disgusted by the filth in their settlements. This was the era when they thought it was fine to just chuck the contents of their chamber pots out into the street in front of their homes. Try that in an Indian village of the era, and see what happens--The individual trying that would have been driven out into the forest.

It's an ugly truth, but poor public sanitation and shitty personal hygiene are probably what gave us the Americas.

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I'm not saying it, but someone may say the IQ tests are biased in favor of European cultural norms and European ways of looking at and approaching problems.

Or maybe the natives were dumb asses, I don't know. Some of them seemed fairly advanced, maybe up to the level of ancient Egypt.

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Erm...the aqueduct?

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4 mph is decent but doable.

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From Steinhab:



This is for Roman history buffs, so if you don't like history, skip this:

Romans by and large were never that mobile of a force. A lot of that wasn't due to the inability of the soldiers themselves, but came down to the overall mobility of the army, its mules, oxen, etc., and the logistical situation. Men can't walk faster than they can be fed and watered, can't walk faster then an ox cart/wagon carrying supplies. What this means is the standard daily march of an army would be wake up at dawn, eat breakfast, break down camp, march about 10-12 miles to the next watering hole/bivouac site, build new camp. Not fast but faster than most barbarian armies, more disciplined, with a much superior logistics system that allowed the Romans to out maneuver their enemy.

It is noted that Marius reformed his army in North Africa (Jugurthine War) to make it more mobile, which makes sense since the enemy they faced fought unconventionally, predominately with light infantry and cavalry, and had the support of the local population, while the Romans were constantly being harassed and ambushed while they unsuccessfully tried to trap the enemy army. Marius didn't so much as create new techniques, instead he took little used pre-existing TTPs and applied them to his army in Africa, then his army in Gaul (Cimbri War), where all told he commanded major theater armies for seven straight years (107-105 BC, 104-101 BC). Owning to the successes Marius had, and that most future top notch generals are known or suspected to have served with him in Africa or Gaul, this explains the great transformation of the Roman army in skill and training during the Late Republic.

When it comes to mobility there is the Marius' Mules, which possibly was created to explain Marius, as a young officer, being a stickler for inspecting the mules. But the more common explanation is the increased load for the common foot soldier, it deals with him removing the traditional personal mule that all soldiers had been allowed to bring (if they had the means to own it). But mules eat more food and drink more water than people, while the army definitely needed a mule for the mess section/tent group as well for other groups, the normal infantryman didn't need his own mule. So Marius abolished the use, sold off the extras, making the men carry all their own equipment, using a single mule per tent mess section to carry collective equipment (tents and shit). He did the same with personal slaves, he allowed a single Calo (camp servant) per tent section (and to mind the single mule), with only officers allowed to have their own man. Marius is not the first one to do this, Philip II did it with his Phalanx, previous Roman generals had done something similar. With Romans, it was a common custom for armies operating in hilly Spain as they chased bandits and rebels. And it just so happens that Marius spend most of his adulthood campaigning in Spain (this is hugely important).  It greatly eased the logistics burden, making the army more mobile, with less fodder needed, less foraging needed to be conducted (which was time consuming and which led to ambush),

Next, the Furca, the marching pole. Marius didn't create that either, sources describe conditioning marches with heavy loads a hundred years before Marius, though they don't mention furca, they would have had to have used them to carry the heavy loads, as they did not carry rucksacks. Again, this is something that armies occupying Spain were known to use, as they needed more mobility to deal with guerrillas, rebels, bandits. While previous generals only used these advanced TTPs for tough theaters, Marius was the first to take these advanced mobility TTPs and apply them to "normal" use in other wars, like in Africa and Gaul, and then his successors used them everywhere, so the techniques became standardized. The furca allowed a comfortable method of carrying a few days worth of prepared food (hard tack, salted meat, etc), water, extra tunics, foraging gear, entrenching equipment, hygiene equipment, etc. With the scutum shield carrying on the back like a backpack (it is known to have rings screwed into it for this function), with the furca sitting on top of the scutum.

Caesar, nephew of Marius, was probably the most mobile Roman general ever. His audacious speed marches were so impressive that even today its hard to believe, thirty Roman miles a day for weeks at a time. He outmaneuvered all his enemy, whether they be Gallic warriors or fellow Romans, who did not possess armies capable of moving with such speed. Caesar slashed everything that could slow him down, and having a large army of 4-12 legions in a single theater, he could detach numerous legions to protect the slower baggage train (large stockpiles of food and fodder, siege equipment, forge equipment, booty) while the main force of his legions could speed march with a few days worth of food and little else, with those forces actually being led by a force that was not even carrying any additional equipment, just arms and armor (with their sustainment equipment carried in the main force mule supply train).

Caesar's tradition carried on, with both Marcus Antonius and Augustus/Agrippa using Marius' and Caesar's mobility TTPs. Those same techniques would go on when Augustus cemented the Pax Romana, and the legions became professional, long standing garrison units.

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Oh yeah, they did give us that.

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The roads.

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Sanitation!

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But, apart from the sanitation, the aqueduct, and the roads...

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Alright... but apart from the sanitation, the medicine, education, wine, public order, irrigation, roads, the fresh water system, and public health... what have the Romans ever done for us?