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The map's a pretty strong argument for a British Isles setting, but why would it have to be Arthurian? It'd be a bit of a stretch to call that a 'historical' setting and I don't think it has much of...

I like the "Sagas" concept, and it'll be cool to see which eras they decide to aim them at.

Any ideas what this first one might be about? It's a Rome II spinoff, which pushes the start date...

I have to say, that list uses a really muddled and inconsistent definition of continuity. When the Roman Empire moves its capitol to Constantinople, it stops being the Roman Empire, but when the...

I'd say this was probably the case with Gempei War samurai, who were mostly mounted archers at that time. But the Sengoku Jidai was more like the Peloponnesian Wars, with higher stakes and fewer...

Kanabo, like naginata, may have been common around the time of the Gempei wars but seem to have declined by the time of the Sengoku Jidai. In artworks it's associated with historical or mythological...

Being a modern American combatant commander, especially in a region as complicated as CENTCOM, absolutely IS a political job. Even where there is combat, the generals fighting a counterinsurgency...

In that case, the real difference is just between argive shields and bossed ones. Classical hoplite shields were faced with bronze (expensive and heavy) and carried braced across the forearm (lots of...

Another thing to keep in mind is that the hoplite was specialized for fighting in Greece, among Greeks, in a somewhat ritualized fashion. Two phalanges made of men of similar social status fighting...

If the Norse settlement lasted long enough to firmly introduce at least horses, wheat and steel into North America, there would be some very interesting consequences for the continent's later...

Can anyone here elaborate on the "European-specific" DNA from Xinjiang? How exactly does it stand out from the Iranian/Scythian background of the people native to the Tarim Basin?

The conclusion that I've come to on this issue is that questions of range and accuracy in the mechanical sense are not very useful in assessing combat weapons. The Napoleonic anecdote shows that even...

I've also gotten interested in some of the eerie similarities of Roman and Chinese history, but I do think that for the most part they're coincidence. Global cooling may have been an enabling factor...

I'd say this is more true of the pre-Marian army, because of the limitations on how well-drilled a militia force can be. The manipular system was already a significant improvement over the classical...

There are geographic issues in Africa that prevented the rise of an empire equivalent to the big Eurasian ones. Some areas had the trade and communications routes to support a sophisticated...

Before Han migration, Yunnan was home to a mix of Tai and Tibeto-Burmese peoples, but the Dali kingdom seems to have been based mostly on the Bai people (who speak a Tibeto-Burman language). The Tai...

Furthermore, the reason why Marius' reforms were so important is exactly because small landholders were in decline and there was a shrinking number of people who met the property requirements to...

That's ridiculous. The Triumvirs got rich by plundering Gaul and the East and got powerful through patronage networks between themselves, soldiers, civil servants, etc. The grain dole was used to...

Well, for one thing it factors in your belief in astrology. For another, if you look at "the US primary candidates 2016" it rates everyone except for Sanders as a Right-Authoritarian.

I'm not a...

Well, the current situation is clearly :wub:. The only solace I can take from Trump's ridiculous and humiliating candidacy is that it might cause a serious political reshuffling and a breakdown in...

I'm a big believer in the High-Level Equilibrium Trap myself. Labor was so cheap in the productive parts of China that it made no economic sense to drill coal in Shanxi and cart it 1000km to the...

I do agree that there were deep problems with the Qing that made effective reform much less likely, so I guess I should say that under some hypothetical other regime China could have performed much...

Ok, let's break this down.

Slave society: Marx identifies these with early civilizations through the classical era. He claims the state emerged to guarantee slaveholder's ownership of slaves, and...

Thanks for your thorough rebuttal. I can tell you're really putting in the effort here :eh:

Here's the things you need to do in order to make an effective case here.
1) Prove that terrorism is a...

So, say we take the Opium War (1840) as a starting point. At this time, there were two major problems facing the Qing:
1) The banner armies had atrophied as an institution, and local officials...

He really, really wasn't. That theory was based on a fragmentary 19th-century knowledge of history and one that was almost totally limited to western history. By any useful definition of...

'We' as in 'the West,' including at least western Europe and North America but also numerous other countries depending on which definition you prefer. Western civilization. It's still there. Our...

You think we should have done this 15 years ago. We did not. And we still have a civilization. I think you just wished we'd slaughtered more brown people.

:eh:
Well-off people in developed countries, who disproportionately but not entirely white, are choosing to reproduce less as a whole. Where's that 'preservation instinct' you're talking about?
...

Well feel free to clarify if I've misunderstood you, but you just proposed a genocidal war with "possibly a few dozen million casualties" and then unironically called someone ELSE's idea a "communist...

This is based on the definition of 'nation' versus 'state' where a nation is about a continuous ethnic/historic/cultural identity and not just a shared government. The classical Roman empire was...

So, to recap: summary execution of any supporter of a cause you dislike = the right thing to do; monitoring of some supporters of a cause you like = a communist purge.

Yeah, NBD. We'd just respond to a few thousand civilians killed by 19 extremists by carrying out a Holocaust-level global spree of murder and vengeance that would mean reshaping the basic nature of...

I've got to strongly, strongly disagree with this here, especially regarding his response to 9/11. His message to the American people afterwards? Go shopping, we've got this. After some success in...

Yeah, not like the most prominent Irish political family in American history are all Democrats or anything :whistling

Yes, rights are socially constructed. But it is impossible for there to be any social organization without a concept of rights (who is obligated to do what). You can propose alternatives to the...

How much damage could a bad president do? I'd say the biggest potential comes from presidential war powers.


Correct me if I'm wrong on this, but I remember looking into that and finding out that...

Ok, so this has fractured into a bunch of different parallel debates, and for the sake of clarity we can refocus it. I can do point-by-point counterarguments if you'd prefer but I think it's best to...

Understood, no offense taken:thumbsup2

"Mopping the floor" is a pretty big simplification, I just didn't want the post to give the impression that I was any kind of apologist for central planning....

Private property is ancient, capitalism is a specific bundle of institutions and norms that started developing in the early modern era because of a mix of monetization (huge amounts of gold and...

Good God, my entire family are rural southerners and I've never come across such a determined apologist for slavery in my whole life. I have relatives who fly the rebel flag but even they won't...