RSS
Share of human accomplishment by race:
Graphed by Emil Kirkegaard, based on Charles Murray’s Human Accomplishment data.
gwern also made some graphs.
Here is the same thing in absolute figures:
Consequently:
1. Dark Ages were definitely a real thing (in Europe), recent attempts to revise this regardless.
2. The age of Asian predominance lasted from the Crisis of the Third Century, when the Roman Empire fell into intellectual as well as political decline (Tainter: “increase in mysticism, and knowledge by revelation”), until about 1100, which coincided with the rise of medieval scholasticism, as opposed to the Renaissance, which is more commonly cited as the divergence point. In truth, at least as proxied by human accomplishment, Europe was already massively ahead even by the time of the Renaissance.
To do: Analyzing this wrt to demographic weight, historical literacy, and historical IQ levels (soon, potentially, with help of aDNA) .
English
Arabic
Chinese (Simplified)
Dutch
French
German
Hebrew
Hindi
Italian
Persian
Portuguese
Russian
Spanish
Swedish
According to the Graph, the dark ages in Europe lasted from 200 to 1000 ad. This is a very unusual definition of ” dark ages”.
For 600-400 BC, brown people’s achievements are very much understated. Until 600 BC “brown” (Mesopotamia+Egypt+Phoenicia) were the main creative force on the planet.
I see little problem with these graphs.Replies: @Sam
Not good. The data is 50% useful and 50% bunk. For example, the vastly influential Church Fathers are missing, while some facepalm-worthy “literally who’s” are for some reason included. (Like Hypatia of Alexandria, who is famous for being a daughter of a mathematician and having a vagina, along with a host of second-rate Arabic and Indian poets.)
The so-called “Dark Ages” gave us the concept of human rights. That has to count for something at least.
Similarly, among the very many Russian writers, I see no mention of Tsvetaeva, Solzhenitsyn or Bulgakov(!). (He also refers to Ilya Ehrenburg as "Ehrenberg," which somehow seems revealing of the lack of care that went into the list.)
Most unforgivably, however, the list makes no mention of Saul Bellow, who was even a Nobel laureate.Replies: @Anatoly Karlin, @reiner Tor, @reiner Tor
“Dark ages” in Europe (according to the graph) 200-1000 ad? A very unusual timespan
For 600-400 BC, brown people’s achievements are very much understated. Until 600 BC “brown” (Mesopotamia+Egypt+Phoenicia) were the main creative force on the planet.
As other posters have mentioned it is likely that the "brown people" inhabiting those places then and now were/are remnant populations who took over in later periods. I find it unlikely that Arabs as we know them would have been capable of creating those civilizations and when you look into, say, Mesopotamia/Sumer you find considerable evidence that there were likely Indo-European farmers who originally settled in the FC (as they did throughout the present day ME from Iran to India, as we know), who were then replaced by or fused within the "Sumerians" whose genetic origins are somewhat ambiguous (but who carried traces of the Indo-European culture they perhaps replaced and may have been hybrids of it), who were then overtaken by the Akkadians (semites (jews?)) who moved in from the northwest out of Assyria (iirc), took over and centralized power, tried to turn the decentralized region into an empire, and ultimately collapsed it in just a handful of decades. The Akkadian period was also known for an overall decline in culture and art.
Lot of parallels in ancient Egypt as well. The more I study this stuff the more I seem to see the above trend, which obviously implies that many things attributed to these "brown people" are understandably misattributed since, well, they're still there, aren't they, so they must have been the original progenitors of what was there before.Replies: @melanf, @Dmitry
The “Dark Ages” was a propaganda term that became popular with Europes early proto liberals, they had this perception that the fall of the Roman Empire was some kind of huge castastrophe, this belief still persists with most people today. The reality is that the Roman empire was a vast stagnant entity with no new developments in technology, science or society, if one takes the period 1 AD to 400AD and compares it 400 AD to 1000 AD, then one will in fact find much more significant advances in agriculture, society and even science and technology in the so called “Dark Ages”.
The rise of Rome was a rise of stagnancy.Replies: @for-the-record
A very interesting graph, which seems to generally confirm intuitions. The start and end dates of the dark ages you mention ( 300-1100 or so) seem highly plausible. But I would add that the “trend” in each period is just as important as the comparative “total output.” I.E, is the European share growing or shrinking at any given time? This indicates whether it was an age of growth or decline in achievement, relative to other areas.
This could be shown graphically by taking the derivative of the “total” output graph, but just eyeballing it would seem to indicate the start of the western “expansion” can be dated to around 750/800 AD. This aligns perfectly with the Carolingian Renaissance, so no surprise. On the other hand, the start of the “decline” dates all the way back to 300 BC (comparatively), or even earlier in absolute terms. I find it absurd to claim that the Hellenistic period, a time of explosive scientific and philosophical achievement, could in any way constitute a reduction in sig. figs. compared to 600 BC, as the lower graph would indicate. In fact the downward slope in general from 600 BC through the entire Greek and Roman golden ages seems ridiculous, to the point where it almost discredits the whole data set imo. Any thoughts on an explanation?
Also, the whole idea of measuring achievement by counting celebrity names is ridiculous. The anonymous dude who invented the watermill contributed a million times more to human accomplishment than any given Arabian poet.Replies: @melanf, @JerseyJeffersonian
This could be shown graphically by taking the derivative of the "total" output graph, but just eyeballing it would seem to indicate the start of the western "expansion" can be dated to around 750/800 AD. This aligns perfectly with the Carolingian Renaissance, so no surprise. On the other hand, the start of the "decline" dates all the way back to 300 BC (comparatively), or even earlier in absolute terms. I find it absurd to claim that the Hellenistic period, a time of explosive scientific and philosophical achievement, could in any way constitute a reduction in sig. figs. compared to 600 BC, as the lower graph would indicate. In fact the downward slope in general from 600 BC through the entire Greek and Roman golden ages seems ridiculous, to the point where it almost discredits the whole data set imo. Any thoughts on an explanation?Replies: @anonymous coward
Our gracious host linked to the actual data set. If you open it, you’ll see that it’s a mix of pop-sci celebrities and affirmative action token minorities.
Also, the whole idea of measuring achievement by counting celebrity names is ridiculous. The anonymous dude who invented the watermill contributed a million times more to human accomplishment than any given Arabian poet.
Technology at a really fundamental level being powerfully influential on European society's prospects.Replies: @Philip Owen
The most interesting insight from Kirkegaard’s graph is that the decline in terms of accomplishments begins with the Roman Empire. Presumably the empire precipitated the decline in Greeks without Romans replacing them as the new high achievers.
Also, the whole idea of measuring achievement by counting celebrity names is ridiculous. The anonymous dude who invented the watermill contributed a million times more to human accomplishment than any given Arabian poet.Replies: @melanf, @JerseyJeffersonian
This is fair criticism, but if you count the actual achievements in technology and science, you get a similar graph. For example The watermill was invented by Greek engineers in the 2nd century BC (the first maximum of blue lines in graph).
Not everyone agrees.
I think you can not call the European scientists of the period 400 AD to 1000 AD, comparable to the Hero of Alexandria or Diophantus
The proto liberals I mentioned are no different to the current liberal elites, any casual inspection of the Roman Empire will show that the vast majority were not living with high standards of living or reading the latest literature (if they could even read). What really appeals to them is a simply a massive empire with all the people under their control. Like I already said, the narrative of the Roman empire consisting of enlightened toga wearing citizens vs the endless rape and pillage of the "Dark Ages" is propaganda.Replies: @German_reader, @melanf, @Philip Owen
What does “Asian” mean in that context? Just East Asia? Or does it include India? I assume the brown “others” are mostly Mideasterners, but would be good to have this clarified.
For 600-400 BC, brown people's achievements are very much understated. Until 600 BC "brown" (Mesopotamia+Egypt+Phoenicia) were the main creative force on the planet.Replies: @reiner Tor, @Dmitry
Well, normally the Dark Ages are considered to be the early Middle Ages, so traditionally from 476 AD until roughly 1000 AD. 200-476 it’s not yet “Dark Ages” because the Roman Empire with its superior administration and great cities and stone structures was still standing. (Strictly speaking, outside of Italy this had already been gone shortly after 400 AD, and in Italy, Odoacer’s kingdom can still be considered a continuation of the Roman Empire, and even the Ostrogothic Kingdom still largely employed Roman administration, until the middle of the 5th century, when war and pestilence destroyed most remnants of antiquity even in Italy.) So it depends, because Europe stopped producing much after 200 AD, but it could still live off the knowledge it had accumulated earlier at a relatively high level until roughly the 5th or even 6th centuries, after which the Dark Ages set on.
I see little problem with these graphs.
For 600-400 BC, brown people's achievements are very much understated. Until 600 BC "brown" (Mesopotamia+Egypt+Phoenicia) were the main creative force on the planet.Replies: @reiner Tor, @Anonymous
They were probably genetically closer to present-day Greeks or Italians than to present-day Middle Easterners…
http://factsanddetails.com/media/2/20120211-Tutankhamun%20cairo%20museum.jpg
Assyrians and Babylonians (on the bas-reliefs) IMHO are very similar to bearded Arabs
http://www.e-reading.club/illustrations/144/144986-i_151.jpgReplies: @reiner Tor
Have to say those graphs seem pretty worthless to me...what is "European" even supposed to mean in antiquity? The Roman empire was centred on the Mediterranaen, and many major figures weren't what we'd consider "European". Are people like the 3rd century jurist Ulpian (probably from Tyre in Syria) or the 4th century historian Ammianus Marcellinus (from Antiochia) "European" because they belonged to Greco-Roman civilization, or are they "other" because of their geographical (and perhaps ethnic) origin?
And of course "European" in antiquity wasn't really a meaningful identity...for the Greeks and Romans the northern barbarians weren't part of the same civilization, and physical differences were noted as well.
There certainly was a Dark Age in Europe after the fall of the Roman empire (though with strong regional variations, Britain and the Balkans being the most extreme cases), but just counting well-known figures seems like a dubious way to prove it.Replies: @Verymuchalive
The ancient Egyptians (in the images) had relatively dark skin. According to the American classification the ancient Egyptians – “brown”.
Assyrians and Babylonians (on the bas-reliefs) IMHO are very similar to bearded Arabs
Regarding Middle Easterners, their Sub-Saharan ancestry grew from basically nothing to I think over 10%. Also there's a significant Bedouin admixture (who already have higher levels of Sub-Saharan admixture from previous periods), and Bedouins themselves are peninsular Arabs, distant from ancient Middle Easterners. But these admixtures only (or mostly) show up in Muslims, not in religious minorities. (Yazidis, Alawites, Druze, Christians, etc.) Bashar Assad with his light complexion and blue eyes looks like ancient Middle Easterners. (Except for the beard, but I guess he could grow if he wanted to.) These folks are I think due to the Sub-Saharan and Bedouin admixture of Muslims closer to Mediterranean Europeans than to Muslim Middle Easterners.Replies: @Talha
That seems highly dubious to me at least regarding Mesopotamians and Egyptians (and tbh probably Phoenicians as well).
Have to say those graphs seem pretty worthless to me…what is “European” even supposed to mean in antiquity? The Roman empire was centred on the Mediterranaen, and many major figures weren’t what we’d consider “European”. Are people like the 3rd century jurist Ulpian (probably from Tyre in Syria) or the 4th century historian Ammianus Marcellinus (from Antiochia) “European” because they belonged to Greco-Roman civilization, or are they “other” because of their geographical (and perhaps ethnic) origin?
And of course “European” in antiquity wasn’t really a meaningful identity…for the Greeks and Romans the northern barbarians weren’t part of the same civilization, and physical differences were noted as well.
There certainly was a Dark Age in Europe after the fall of the Roman empire (though with strong regional variations, Britain and the Balkans being the most extreme cases), but just counting well-known figures seems like a dubious way to prove it.
Romania, as the Roman Empire was called, was split into a Latin-speaking West and a Greek-speaking East. The African and Asian Provinces were lost to Muslims, but the division remains to this day. We are either Roman Europeans or Greek Europeans. God help us, all.Replies: @German_reader
http://factsanddetails.com/media/2/20120211-Tutankhamun%20cairo%20museum.jpg
Assyrians and Babylonians (on the bas-reliefs) IMHO are very similar to bearded Arabs
http://www.e-reading.club/illustrations/144/144986-i_151.jpgReplies: @reiner Tor
Point taken about Egyptians. Though their Sub-Saharan ancestry grew a great deal since the Islamic conquest.
Regarding Middle Easterners, their Sub-Saharan ancestry grew from basically nothing to I think over 10%. Also there’s a significant Bedouin admixture (who already have higher levels of Sub-Saharan admixture from previous periods), and Bedouins themselves are peninsular Arabs, distant from ancient Middle Easterners. But these admixtures only (or mostly) show up in Muslims, not in religious minorities. (Yazidis, Alawites, Druze, Christians, etc.) Bashar Assad with his light complexion and blue eyes looks like ancient Middle Easterners. (Except for the beard, but I guess he could grow if he wanted to.) These folks are I think due to the Sub-Saharan and Bedouin admixture of Muslims closer to Mediterranean Europeans than to Muslim Middle Easterners.
I see little problem with these graphs.Replies: @Sam
Well Charles Murray’s Dark Age historiographical classification doesn’t have to coincide with those used broadly in general history. The Renaissance for example is a distinct period for art historians while general historians prefer the overlapping term Early Modern. There is no reason Murray’s periodisation in terms of accomplishments couldn’t be a distinct subfield in itself.
Regarding Middle Easterners, their Sub-Saharan ancestry grew from basically nothing to I think over 10%. Also there's a significant Bedouin admixture (who already have higher levels of Sub-Saharan admixture from previous periods), and Bedouins themselves are peninsular Arabs, distant from ancient Middle Easterners. But these admixtures only (or mostly) show up in Muslims, not in religious minorities. (Yazidis, Alawites, Druze, Christians, etc.) Bashar Assad with his light complexion and blue eyes looks like ancient Middle Easterners. (Except for the beard, but I guess he could grow if he wanted to.) These folks are I think due to the Sub-Saharan and Bedouin admixture of Muslims closer to Mediterranean Europeans than to Muslim Middle Easterners.Replies: @Talha
Mwaahahahaha – can’t have sand niggaz without da niggaz!
But on a serious note, yes – most of the Black admixture in the Arabs prior to the massive expansion in the 7th century onwards was from people like Nubians and Abyssinians and I don’t think they qualify to be called Sub-Saharan.
Peace.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NH_OCBtspaU
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cFmpQBfjfGg
Any of his videos are great though - I wonder if Mr. Unz wouldn't mind putting up a channel for this guy or having him write a couple of articles. He seems to come at it from an academic and factual perspective without off-putting biases.
Peace.Replies: @neutral
The first info graphic suggests the same.
The rise of Rome was a rise of stagnancy.
Here is what the Encyclopaedia Britannica has to say about Roman science:Replies: @reiner Tor
Until Evropa begum Bagan again all these things irrelevant।।
Look at me, I do the greatest things in the world।।
& I, dedicate it to the Jew
By the way, this guy does great videos on genetics from across the world – two relevant videos to this particular branch from the main topic:
Any of his videos are great though – I wonder if Mr. Unz wouldn’t mind putting up a channel for this guy or having him write a couple of articles. He seems to come at it from an academic and factual perspective without off-putting biases.
Peace.
Things like water mills, heavy ploughs and advances in time keeping occurred during the period I mentioned. We may not know who exactly invented these things, but their impact was much more significant than most famous people had during the Roman Empire.
The proto liberals I mentioned are no different to the current liberal elites, any casual inspection of the Roman Empire will show that the vast majority were not living with high standards of living or reading the latest literature (if they could even read). What really appeals to them is a simply a massive empire with all the people under their control. Like I already said, the narrative of the Roman empire consisting of enlightened toga wearing citizens vs the endless rape and pillage of the “Dark Ages” is propaganda.
One can of course have a negative view of the Roman empire (for many different reasons...I assume you dislike it because of its supposed "race mixing"...whereas "anonymous coward" above seems to favor the Christian triumphalist narrative plus "human rights" so decline on a material level doesn't matter that much), but there's a good case imo that its downfall was accompanied by a massive reduction in economic complexity.Replies: @Daniel Chieh, @The Big Red Scary, @The Big Red Scary
http://www.virtuhall.com/images/virtuel/martel/poster-3.jpg"In the works of Pliny, a Roman writer of the first century ad, we find a description of the plough, which, unlike previous ones, is equipped with a wheel, a knife and planks. The wheel did not allow the plow to enter too deep into the ground, the knife was used to cut the turf."http://ekplug.narod.ru/pic/25.jpg
The Hellenistic and Roman city Clocks were much better than any city clock of 1000 ad.http://www.clock3x.com/images/stories/clock_strel/uctopuya/BodyaH/10.jpg
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NH_OCBtspaU
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cFmpQBfjfGg
Any of his videos are great though - I wonder if Mr. Unz wouldn't mind putting up a channel for this guy or having him write a couple of articles. He seems to come at it from an academic and factual perspective without off-putting biases.
Peace.Replies: @neutral
Interesting, but whatever one thinks of MENA people, they can never be considered white (and that includes Askenazi jews).
If Whites (don't know if that means just Europeans or what exactly) want to exclude others from their little club, I think most people are fine with it - at least I am.
Peace.Replies: @Dmitry
I’m not really sure they are interested in being labeled such – I’ve been around plenty of people from MENA and it’s fairly obvious that fair skin and light colored features are generally prized, but I’ve never heard one of them want to be labelled “White” – even though some could easily pass. I mean, I’m from Pakistan and people think I’m Mediterranean due to my features (in fact, most Pakistanis when they first meet me think I’m North African or Persian or something). At UCLA, Mexicans and Jews used to approach me thinking I was one of them.
If Whites (don’t know if that means just Europeans or what exactly) want to exclude others from their little club, I think most people are fine with it – at least I am.
Peace.
If you are in a Northern region, then it's great to be white - likely due to vitamin D synthesis.
But if you are in a Mediterranean, subtropical region, or tropical region - it is better to have higher melanin content.Replies: @Talha
Have to say those graphs seem pretty worthless to me...what is "European" even supposed to mean in antiquity? The Roman empire was centred on the Mediterranaen, and many major figures weren't what we'd consider "European". Are people like the 3rd century jurist Ulpian (probably from Tyre in Syria) or the 4th century historian Ammianus Marcellinus (from Antiochia) "European" because they belonged to Greco-Roman civilization, or are they "other" because of their geographical (and perhaps ethnic) origin?
And of course "European" in antiquity wasn't really a meaningful identity...for the Greeks and Romans the northern barbarians weren't part of the same civilization, and physical differences were noted as well.
There certainly was a Dark Age in Europe after the fall of the Roman empire (though with strong regional variations, Britain and the Balkans being the most extreme cases), but just counting well-known figures seems like a dubious way to prove it.Replies: @Verymuchalive
Actually, several Roman Emperors were of Gallic origin. Not for nothing was Gaul called Gallia Togata. By 400 AD Gaul, Roman Britain, Rhaetia ( Switzerland ), Southern Germany, Batavia etc had been Roman for 350 to 500 years ! Of course, they were regarded as Roman,even if they spoke Celtic or Germanic languages amongst themselves.
Romania, as the Roman Empire was called, was split into a Latin-speaking West and a Greek-speaking East. The African and Asian Provinces were lost to Muslims, but the division remains to this day. We are either Roman Europeans or Greek Europeans. God help us, all.
The proto liberals I mentioned are no different to the current liberal elites, any casual inspection of the Roman Empire will show that the vast majority were not living with high standards of living or reading the latest literature (if they could even read). What really appeals to them is a simply a massive empire with all the people under their control. Like I already said, the narrative of the Roman empire consisting of enlightened toga wearing citizens vs the endless rape and pillage of the "Dark Ages" is propaganda.Replies: @German_reader, @melanf, @Philip Owen
There’s that book by Bryan Ward-Perkins “The fall of Rome and the end of civilization” where he argues that material conditions and general living standards declined massively with the end of the Roman empire in large parts of Europe and reached similar levels again only in the 14th century.
One can of course have a negative view of the Roman empire (for many different reasons…I assume you dislike it because of its supposed “race mixing”…whereas “anonymous coward” above seems to favor the Christian triumphalist narrative plus “human rights” so decline on a material level doesn’t matter that much), but there’s a good case imo that its downfall was accompanied by a massive reduction in economic complexity.
Romania, as the Roman Empire was called, was split into a Latin-speaking West and a Greek-speaking East. The African and Asian Provinces were lost to Muslims, but the division remains to this day. We are either Roman Europeans or Greek Europeans. God help us, all.Replies: @German_reader
I can’t think of any, you’re probably confusing them with Illyrians who were prominent as soldier-emperors in the 3rd and 4th century.
That’s Northern Italy.
Sure, but that doesn’t change the fact that the Roman empire was centred on the Mediterranean, and that the northern barbarians who remained outside of the empire weren’t regarded as “fellow Europeans” or anything of the kind.
Gallia Togata was a province composed almost entirely of Gauls. Gaul proper quickly followed likewise.Actually, not true. In the West, there was a steady northwards drift. By the C4th AD, the Western Roman Capital was in Milan, with the sub-Capital in Trier. The 3rd or 4th largest city in the West was a certain Londinium. The Western Empire had ceased being Mediterranean-based and had become much more West European based.
Many northern barbarians were quickly assimilated into the empire, not only through service in the Roman army, but also through the later influence of the Church.Replies: @German_reader
The proto liberals I mentioned are no different to the current liberal elites, any casual inspection of the Roman Empire will show that the vast majority were not living with high standards of living or reading the latest literature (if they could even read). What really appeals to them is a simply a massive empire with all the people under their control. Like I already said, the narrative of the Roman empire consisting of enlightened toga wearing citizens vs the endless rape and pillage of the "Dark Ages" is propaganda.Replies: @German_reader, @melanf, @Philip Owen
The water mill was invented by Greek engineers (probably in the service of king Mithridates), and was widespread in the Roman Empire (on water wheels worked whole factory)
“In the works of Pliny, a Roman writer of the first century ad, we find a description of the plough, which, unlike previous ones, is equipped with a wheel, a knife and planks. The wheel did not allow the plow to enter too deep into the ground, the knife was used to cut the turf.”
The Hellenistic and Roman city Clocks were much better than any city clock of 1000 ad.
The watermill was invented by Greek engineers in the 2nd century BC
Not everyone agrees.
The rise of Rome was a rise of stagnancy.Replies: @for-the-record
The rise of Rome was a rise of stagnancy.
Here is what the Encyclopaedia Britannica has to say about Roman science:
At a glance, I would agree. The list of artistic accomplishments by Swedes is odd to say the least. A good few obscure 19th century writers, but no Hjalmar Söderberg (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hjalmar_Söderberg) and no Astrid Lindgren, who is among the most translated writers in the world (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astrid_Lindgren).
Similarly, among the very many Russian writers, I see no mention of Tsvetaeva, Solzhenitsyn or Bulgakov(!). (He also refers to Ilya Ehrenburg as “Ehrenberg,” which somehow seems revealing of the lack of care that went into the list.)
Most unforgivably, however, the list makes no mention of Saul Bellow, who was even a Nobel laureate.
E.g.,for Russian literature: https://www.unz.com/akarlin/most-eminent-russian-writers/Replies: @Swedish Family
Similarly, among the very many Russian writers, I see no mention of Tsvetaeva, Solzhenitsyn or Bulgakov(!). (He also refers to Ilya Ehrenburg as "Ehrenberg," which somehow seems revealing of the lack of care that went into the list.)
Most unforgivably, however, the list makes no mention of Saul Bellow, who was even a Nobel laureate.Replies: @Anatoly Karlin, @reiner Tor, @reiner Tor
There are certain things with which I’ve can quibble but overall, Murray’s HA has impressive levels of agreement with national lists of greats.
E.g.,for Russian literature: https://www.unz.com/akarlin/most-eminent-russian-writers/
Similarly, among the very many Russian writers, I see no mention of Tsvetaeva, Solzhenitsyn or Bulgakov(!). (He also refers to Ilya Ehrenburg as "Ehrenberg," which somehow seems revealing of the lack of care that went into the list.)
Most unforgivably, however, the list makes no mention of Saul Bellow, who was even a Nobel laureate.Replies: @Anatoly Karlin, @reiner Tor, @reiner Tor
Two criteria: people who died by 1950; writers based on foreign encyclopedias. So if foreigners don’t value your greatest national poet because he’s difficult to translate, then too bad. But there’d be no objective criterium on which to compare the relative worth of national poets. The only way to do that is through their effect on foreigners. It’s not a perfect method, because some writers have better translations than others, but you have to live with imperfections.
Similarly, among the very many Russian writers, I see no mention of Tsvetaeva, Solzhenitsyn or Bulgakov(!). (He also refers to Ilya Ehrenburg as "Ehrenberg," which somehow seems revealing of the lack of care that went into the list.)
Most unforgivably, however, the list makes no mention of Saul Bellow, who was even a Nobel laureate.Replies: @Anatoly Karlin, @reiner Tor, @reiner Tor
By the way English authors are also judged based on non-English speakers’ opinions. Shakespeare is the greatest according to non-English speakers.
Most European countries treat their national poets like the above. However, England has a Shakespeare Mafia entrenched in the Universities who have built their careers on treating Shakespeare as some Universal genius. They have failed to convince the educated, on the whole. Thank Goodness.
Only one place in Europe seems to have been successful in promoting the National Poet as some sort of Universal Genius. I admit I do not speak Russian, but based on my own knowledge, I am deeply sceptical of Pushkin's genius. No matter who has been in charge of Russia, the sun has always been shining out of Aleksandr Sergeyevich's arse.
Of course, I could be wrong. Maybe educated Russians regard Pushkin rather like educated English people regard Shakespeare. Or maybe they DO think that that the sun shines out of ............
Is that you Martyanov............Replies: @melanf, @DFH, @Daniel Chieh
Here is what the Encyclopaedia Britannica has to say about Roman science:Replies: @reiner Tor
However, I guess the results of the former Greek science were around for a while. It probably took some time until it was forgotten how to make the Antikythera mechanism. Obviously there was a lot of decline, recent revisionism notwithstanding.
https://www.amazon.de/Forgotten-Revolution-Science-Born-Reborn/dp/3540203966
Haven't read it myself, so no idea what to make of this.Replies: @reiner Tor, @for-the-record
The Gallic Empire of the 3rd Century certainly had Gallic emperors and showed how Gaul had completely adapted the Roman system for their own purposes.
Gallia Togata was a province composed almost entirely of Gauls. Gaul proper quickly followed likewise.
Actually, not true. In the West, there was a steady northwards drift. By the C4th AD, the Western Roman Capital was in Milan, with the sub-Capital in Trier. The 3rd or 4th largest city in the West was a certain Londinium. The Western Empire had ceased being Mediterranean-based and had become much more West European based.
Many northern barbarians were quickly assimilated into the empire, not only through service in the Roman army, but also through the later influence of the Church.
And anyway, my point wasn't to deny that the Roman provinces in Western/northwestern Europe had been heavily Romanized by the late empire and that provincials there had adopted a Roman identity, I know all that. My point is was that the Roman empire was fundamentally centred on the Mediterranean (not least econimically, the grain from Egypt and North Africa was certainly more important than anything the northern provinces produced) and that "Europeans" is a strange and somewhat anachronistic concept for those graphs.Replies: @German_reader, @Verymuchalive
Gallia Togata was a province composed almost entirely of Gauls. Gaul proper quickly followed likewise.Actually, not true. In the West, there was a steady northwards drift. By the C4th AD, the Western Roman Capital was in Milan, with the sub-Capital in Trier. The 3rd or 4th largest city in the West was a certain Londinium. The Western Empire had ceased being Mediterranean-based and had become much more West European based.
Many northern barbarians were quickly assimilated into the empire, not only through service in the Roman army, but also through the later influence of the Church.Replies: @German_reader
That was a separatist special empire, so I didn’t count it.
I don’t believe that, iirc Roman Britain didn’t even produce a single senator.
And anyway, my point wasn’t to deny that the Roman provinces in Western/northwestern Europe had been heavily Romanized by the late empire and that provincials there had adopted a Roman identity, I know all that. My point is was that the Roman empire was fundamentally centred on the Mediterranean (not least econimically, the grain from Egypt and North Africa was certainly more important than anything the northern provinces produced) and that “Europeans” is a strange and somewhat anachronistic concept for those graphs.
The British and North Gallic Grain supplies were very important because they supplied the army in Britain and along the Rhine. Indeed, the mechanised harvest system ( Vallum) was unique until the C19th. The large grain yields were probably the original reason the Romans invaded Britannia.Replies: @German_reader
There’s a book about this issue by an Italian who makes the argument that Hellenistic science had been quite advanced and that it already regressed during the early centuries of the Roman empire:
Haven’t read it myself, so no idea what to make of this.
Here it is -- you can read it for free. Look forward to your report! (the thesis sounds completely reasonable to me, in fact it's what I have assumed for a long time -- see the earlier quote about Roman science).
https://archive.org/stream/springer_10.1007-978-3-642-18904-3/10.1007-978-3-642-18904-3#page/n3/mode/2upReplies: @German_reader
https://www.amazon.de/Forgotten-Revolution-Science-Born-Reborn/dp/3540203966
Haven't read it myself, so no idea what to make of this.Replies: @reiner Tor, @for-the-record
Possible, but I think it certainly regressed further after the fall of the empire.
And anyway, my point wasn't to deny that the Roman provinces in Western/northwestern Europe had been heavily Romanized by the late empire and that provincials there had adopted a Roman identity, I know all that. My point is was that the Roman empire was fundamentally centred on the Mediterranean (not least econimically, the grain from Egypt and North Africa was certainly more important than anything the northern provinces produced) and that "Europeans" is a strange and somewhat anachronistic concept for those graphs.Replies: @German_reader, @Verymuchalive
e.g. that list of “Human accomplishment” by Murray includes authors like Apuleius (from North Africa), Lucian (from Mesopotamia, and clearly of Semitic family background), Tertullian (Christian from North Africa), Claudian (from Egypt)…and probably a few more. If you listed those authors under Greco-Roman (even Tertullian…at least he wrote in Latin) there’d be no problem, but categories like “Western”, “European” or “white” all don’t fit and are anachronistic.
Sure, that isn’t in doubt. I just thought it was an interesting idea because it’s so counter-intuitive, but as I wrote, no idea if there’s anything to that thesis.
One can of course have a negative view of the Roman empire (for many different reasons...I assume you dislike it because of its supposed "race mixing"...whereas "anonymous coward" above seems to favor the Christian triumphalist narrative plus "human rights" so decline on a material level doesn't matter that much), but there's a good case imo that its downfall was accompanied by a massive reduction in economic complexity.Replies: @Daniel Chieh, @The Big Red Scary, @The Big Red Scary
Its pretty obvious that it was a fall simply considering the decline of metal tools: Roman metallurgy was highly advanced with huge bloomeries and it took hundreds of years and reurbanization before blacksmiths could replicate either in quality or quantity. Large projects would be impossible as well – the Empire’s income vastly overshadowed post-collapse kingdoms until centralization in the Late Middle Ages.
For 600-400 BC, brown people's achievements are very much understated. Until 600 BC "brown" (Mesopotamia+Egypt+Phoenicia) were the main creative force on the planet.Replies: @reiner Tor, @Anonymous
“For 600-400 BC, brown people’s achievements are very much understated. Until 600 BC “brown” (Mesopotamia+Egypt+Phoenicia) were the main creative force on the planet.”
As other posters have mentioned it is likely that the “brown people” inhabiting those places then and now were/are remnant populations who took over in later periods. I find it unlikely that Arabs as we know them would have been capable of creating those civilizations and when you look into, say, Mesopotamia/Sumer you find considerable evidence that there were likely Indo-European farmers who originally settled in the FC (as they did throughout the present day ME from Iran to India, as we know), who were then replaced by or fused within the “Sumerians” whose genetic origins are somewhat ambiguous (but who carried traces of the Indo-European culture they perhaps replaced and may have been hybrids of it), who were then overtaken by the Akkadians (semites (jews?)) who moved in from the northwest out of Assyria (iirc), took over and centralized power, tried to turn the decentralized region into an empire, and ultimately collapsed it in just a handful of decades. The Akkadian period was also known for an overall decline in culture and art.
Lot of parallels in ancient Egypt as well. The more I study this stuff the more I seem to see the above trend, which obviously implies that many things attributed to these “brown people” are understandably misattributed since, well, they’re still there, aren’t they, so they must have been the original progenitors of what was there before.
But overall, living in Middle East and Mediterranean would be badly adapted if your skin burns after five minutes in the sun.
The idea that Mediterranean and Middle Eastern people were lighter in the past than they are today - it's not something particularly convincing, and perhaps even the reverse for some countries (i.e. Italy and Israel).
In actual murals, as opposed to sculptures who were designed to be painted - Ancient peoples, e.g. the Etruscans. (Really don't look any lighter than modern Greeks, Spanish, Italians you will see on your holidays today - and even with this stronger skin the sun is still intolerable in those regions, although paler people can still exist in them, it's not the majority.)
https://media-cdn.tripadvisor.com/media/photo-s/09/05/28/87/arcadia.jpg
http://www.tarquinia-cerveteri.it/upload/images/visuals/Visual_TC_Tarquinia.jpg
http://www.romafu.it/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/419041_606117496072688_420419456_n-765x415.jpg
https://i.pinimg.com/236x/04/7d/e3/047de3d7bb0ed5669ff9577baedc3909--ancient-greek-ancient-art.jpgReplies: @reiner Tor
https://www.amazon.de/Forgotten-Revolution-Science-Born-Reborn/dp/3540203966
Haven't read it myself, so no idea what to make of this.Replies: @reiner Tor, @for-the-record
Haven’t read it myself, so no idea what to make of this.
Here it is — you can read it for free. Look forward to your report! (the thesis sounds completely reasonable to me, in fact it’s what I have assumed for a long time — see the earlier quote about Roman science).
https://archive.org/stream/springer_10.1007-978-3-642-18904-3/10.1007-978-3-642-18904-3#page/n3/mode/2up
You will find that most educated native English speakers do not rate Shakespeare as some “Universal Genius”, as proposed by the Shakespeare Industry. To summarise, they think that some Shakespeare works- eg The Tempest – are absolutely outstanding. Others are not so outstanding, eg Hamlet. And some were written by some drunk guy(s) in a pub, eg Titus Andronicus. As someone who thinks that the plays were written by Edward De Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford ( probably with the help of his mates ), this is not surprising. The plays are a mixed bunch, in quality and content.
Most European countries treat their national poets like the above. However, England has a Shakespeare Mafia entrenched in the Universities who have built their careers on treating Shakespeare as some Universal genius. They have failed to convince the educated, on the whole. Thank Goodness.
Only one place in Europe seems to have been successful in promoting the National Poet as some sort of Universal Genius. I admit I do not speak Russian, but based on my own knowledge, I am deeply sceptical of Pushkin’s genius. No matter who has been in charge of Russia, the sun has always been shining out of Aleksandr Sergeyevich’s arse.
Of course, I could be wrong. Maybe educated Russians regard Pushkin rather like educated English people regard Shakespeare. Or maybe they DO think that that the sun shines out of …………
Is that you Martyanov…………
http://cultobzor.ru/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/0230.jpgReplies: @Swedish Family, @Philip Owen
As other posters have mentioned it is likely that the "brown people" inhabiting those places then and now were/are remnant populations who took over in later periods. I find it unlikely that Arabs as we know them would have been capable of creating those civilizations and when you look into, say, Mesopotamia/Sumer you find considerable evidence that there were likely Indo-European farmers who originally settled in the FC (as they did throughout the present day ME from Iran to India, as we know), who were then replaced by or fused within the "Sumerians" whose genetic origins are somewhat ambiguous (but who carried traces of the Indo-European culture they perhaps replaced and may have been hybrids of it), who were then overtaken by the Akkadians (semites (jews?)) who moved in from the northwest out of Assyria (iirc), took over and centralized power, tried to turn the decentralized region into an empire, and ultimately collapsed it in just a handful of decades. The Akkadian period was also known for an overall decline in culture and art.
Lot of parallels in ancient Egypt as well. The more I study this stuff the more I seem to see the above trend, which obviously implies that many things attributed to these "brown people" are understandably misattributed since, well, they're still there, aren't they, so they must have been the original progenitors of what was there before.Replies: @melanf, @Dmitry
Sumerians were a separate language group (not Semites, nor Indo-Europeans), Acadians, Babylonians, Assyrians, and Phoenicians – were unambiguously Semites. As can be seen from the numerous images, these peoples had a typical middle Eastern appearance. Indo-Europeans were the Hittites, mitannians, and of course the Persians.
"Anonymous" seems to be promoting the "white people/Nordics/Aryans are behind every civilization in history, others only destroy" theory of history...unconvincing imo.Replies: @DFH
"All that remains of the Ma’rib Dam today are its sluice gates, which stand as a testament to the engineering capabilities of the ancient Sabaeans. In 2015, these ruins were damaged by airstrikes* during the ongoing conflict in Yemen."
http://www.ancient-origins.net/ancient-places-asia/ma-rib-dam-engineering-wonder-ancient-world-torn-apart-rats-009396
Peace.
*Thanks Saudis for extending your ancient-history trashing ways to beyond your borders!
Believe I indicated as much right after the part you quoted. The question is whether they were the first group there, and the significance of some of their purported linguistic and cultural ties to Indo-Europeans.
iirc there are theories that it’s related to the Dravidian languages in southern India (presumably those languages would have spread from Mesopotamia to India), but nothing is proven.
“Anonymous” seems to be promoting the “white people/Nordics/Aryans are behind every civilization in history, others only destroy” theory of history…unconvincing imo.
The Sabaens and Nabateans were also people of the Arabian peninsula and did some fairly incredible things back at the height of their civilizations:
“All that remains of the Ma’rib Dam today are its sluice gates, which stand as a testament to the engineering capabilities of the ancient Sabaeans. In 2015, these ruins were damaged by airstrikes* during the ongoing conflict in Yemen.”
http://www.ancient-origins.net/ancient-places-asia/ma-rib-dam-engineering-wonder-ancient-world-torn-apart-rats-009396
Peace.
*Thanks Saudis for extending your ancient-history trashing ways to beyond your borders!
Here it is -- you can read it for free. Look forward to your report! (the thesis sounds completely reasonable to me, in fact it's what I have assumed for a long time -- see the earlier quote about Roman science).
https://archive.org/stream/springer_10.1007-978-3-642-18904-3/10.1007-978-3-642-18904-3#page/n3/mode/2upReplies: @German_reader
Interesting, thanks, I’ll look at it…eventually…
Most European countries treat their national poets like the above. However, England has a Shakespeare Mafia entrenched in the Universities who have built their careers on treating Shakespeare as some Universal genius. They have failed to convince the educated, on the whole. Thank Goodness.
Only one place in Europe seems to have been successful in promoting the National Poet as some sort of Universal Genius. I admit I do not speak Russian, but based on my own knowledge, I am deeply sceptical of Pushkin's genius. No matter who has been in charge of Russia, the sun has always been shining out of Aleksandr Sergeyevich's arse.
Of course, I could be wrong. Maybe educated Russians regard Pushkin rather like educated English people regard Shakespeare. Or maybe they DO think that that the sun shines out of ............
Is that you Martyanov............Replies: @melanf, @DFH, @Daniel Chieh
The fictitious genius of Russian literature is Leo Tolstoy. His unofficial name is”classic by mistake.” Pushkin (unlike L. Tolstoy) is really popular. In particular, Pushkin’s fairy tales are familiar to almost all children
And anyway, my point wasn't to deny that the Roman provinces in Western/northwestern Europe had been heavily Romanized by the late empire and that provincials there had adopted a Roman identity, I know all that. My point is was that the Roman empire was fundamentally centred on the Mediterranean (not least econimically, the grain from Egypt and North Africa was certainly more important than anything the northern provinces produced) and that "Europeans" is a strange and somewhat anachronistic concept for those graphs.Replies: @German_reader, @Verymuchalive
The 50 years from 230 AD to 280 AD were times of chaos and crisis, but Britannia was largely unscathed. Indeed, there were few problems until the disastrous year of 367 AD. During this period the cities of Roman Britain prospered, as other Roman cities went into decline. I got the information from Peter Salway, “Roman Britain”. I will try and look up the particular quote.
I accept your point that the Eastern Roman Empire remained largely centred round the Med. However, the Western Empire’s economic centre of gravity continued to migrate northwards and westwards during this period. The North African grain exports were only important for Rome, whose citizens received free supplies. This was one of the reasons for moving the Capital to Milan, which could be supplied from its own Po valley. The Population of Rome continued to decline sharply under the later Empire.
The British and North Gallic Grain supplies were very important because they supplied the army in Britain and along the Rhine. Indeed, the mechanised harvest system ( Vallum) was unique until the C19th. The large grain yields were probably the original reason the Romans invaded Britannia.
But anyway, those issues don't really affect my criticism of those graphs.Replies: @Verymuchalive
Most European countries treat their national poets like the above. However, England has a Shakespeare Mafia entrenched in the Universities who have built their careers on treating Shakespeare as some Universal genius. They have failed to convince the educated, on the whole. Thank Goodness.
Only one place in Europe seems to have been successful in promoting the National Poet as some sort of Universal Genius. I admit I do not speak Russian, but based on my own knowledge, I am deeply sceptical of Pushkin's genius. No matter who has been in charge of Russia, the sun has always been shining out of Aleksandr Sergeyevich's arse.
Of course, I could be wrong. Maybe educated Russians regard Pushkin rather like educated English people regard Shakespeare. Or maybe they DO think that that the sun shines out of ............
Is that you Martyanov............Replies: @melanf, @DFH, @Daniel Chieh
It probably helps that Shakespeare is much, much less comprehensible to a modern English speaker than Cervantes to a Spaniard, Dante to an Italian, Racine to a Frenchman etc.
"Anonymous" seems to be promoting the "white people/Nordics/Aryans are behind every civilization in history, others only destroy" theory of history...unconvincing imo.Replies: @DFH
Insane, meglamoniacal nationalism, on the same level as Sun Language Theory
"Sun language theory"...lol, hadn't known about that, but doesn't surprise me Turks would come up with something like this.Replies: @reiner Tor, @DFH
Shakespeare is probably more popular among other peoples because they read him in translation. The Hungarian translation was for example the work of a great 19th century poet, and his Hungarian is probably the nicest sounding Hungarian, while of course easy to understand. The native English speakers have the problem that they simply don’t understand it. Which is probably the main reason that they usually cannot enjoy it.
Beowulf is another story...Replies: @reiner Tor
The British and North Gallic Grain supplies were very important because they supplied the army in Britain and along the Rhine. Indeed, the mechanised harvest system ( Vallum) was unique until the C19th. The large grain yields were probably the original reason the Romans invaded Britannia.Replies: @German_reader
As far as I know the main reason was military, to better deal with the incursions of barbarians who penetrated into Italy and carried away loot and captives (iirc Gallienus stationed a mobile cavalry force in Milan to respond to such raids).
I admit that I don’t know much about this, so I can’t comment. But in any case, despite undoubted Romanization, the city system in Northern Gaul and Britain was underdeveloped when compared to Italy, southern Gaul (Gallia Narbonensis had been Roman already since the 2nd century BC), mediterranean Spain or Northern Africa.
But anyway, those issues don’t really affect my criticism of those graphs.
Most European countries treat their national poets like the above. However, England has a Shakespeare Mafia entrenched in the Universities who have built their careers on treating Shakespeare as some Universal genius. They have failed to convince the educated, on the whole. Thank Goodness.
Only one place in Europe seems to have been successful in promoting the National Poet as some sort of Universal Genius. I admit I do not speak Russian, but based on my own knowledge, I am deeply sceptical of Pushkin's genius. No matter who has been in charge of Russia, the sun has always been shining out of Aleksandr Sergeyevich's arse.
Of course, I could be wrong. Maybe educated Russians regard Pushkin rather like educated English people regard Shakespeare. Or maybe they DO think that that the sun shines out of ............
Is that you Martyanov............Replies: @melanf, @DFH, @Daniel Chieh
I thought that Shakesphere’s contemporaries such as Thomas Middleton were quite accomplished and unfortunately not well known these days despite his work.
Is there some sort of nationalist background to that theory? If so, I was unaware of that.
“Sun language theory”…lol, hadn’t known about that, but doesn’t surprise me Turks would come up with something like this.
I think I summarized the theory well, but left out the embarrassingly stupid parts.Replies: @German_reader, @Talha
The proto liberals I mentioned are no different to the current liberal elites, any casual inspection of the Roman Empire will show that the vast majority were not living with high standards of living or reading the latest literature (if they could even read). What really appeals to them is a simply a massive empire with all the people under their control. Like I already said, the narrative of the Roman empire consisting of enlightened toga wearing citizens vs the endless rape and pillage of the "Dark Ages" is propaganda.Replies: @German_reader, @melanf, @Philip Owen
People became taller during the dark ages. Leprosy took over from tubercolosis (same bacterium but well fed – good nutrition – populations develop leprosy) until the High Middle Ages were over.
E.g.,for Russian literature: https://www.unz.com/akarlin/most-eminent-russian-writers/Replies: @Swedish Family
Interesting post, but I lean toward agreeing with melanf, who wrote this about the Russian data set:
The entrenched unpopular writers are a phenomenon within the nation, but the writers were ranked using foreign sources only. Foreign writers are way less entrenched in education.Replies: @Swedish Family
"Sun language theory"...lol, hadn't known about that, but doesn't surprise me Turks would come up with something like this.Replies: @reiner Tor, @DFH
There is a retarded Hungarian nationalist myth that Sumerians were actually Hungarians. It turns out that the original Hungarians came from the star system Sirius, they have occupied Hungary since 50,000 (or two million?) years ago. Then they were all the nomads (at least the Scythians, Sarmatians, Huns, and Magyars), as well as the Sumerians. All the while being somehow related to the Japanese.
I think I summarized the theory well, but left out the embarrassingly stupid parts.
Kind of depressing and embarrassing how stupid nationalists often are.Replies: @reiner Tor
You could say even more about Marlowe and Ben Johnson. The problem about having a Universal Genius is that other contemporaries – often very capable- are reduced to chumps.
I think I summarized the theory well, but left out the embarrassingly stupid parts.Replies: @German_reader, @Talha
It could possibly get more stupid than “the original Hungarians came from the star system Sirius”???
Kind of depressing and embarrassing how stupid nationalists often are.
The guy who first wrote about the Hungarian origins of Sumerians had a book with the title King Jesus, the Parthian Prince. As you now probably suspect, Parthians were also Hungarians.
I really didn’t actually read these things, but I had the autistic tendency of debating these guys. Several books could be filled with their nonsense, and they have indeed filled hundreds of books with it. They often contradict each other (occasionally there are serious contradictions within just one book), but it doesn’t matter.
What matters is that the Vatican-Habsburg-freemason-Bolshevik grand conspiracy decided to destroy Hungarians, and because Hungarians are indestructible, they went about by the somewhat roundabout way of convincing Hungarians that our most beautiful language (276.4% more expressive than the second best Japanese language) is related to the language of the Lapps. This destroyed our self-confidence, directly leading to the loss of the First World War and the Treaty of Trianon.
Let me remark that such nonsense (there’s way more of it) was the product of the postwar era immigration. The book I linked was written in Argentina, for example. Hungarian nationalists in the 1930s were much much smarter (both the pro-Nazis and the Anglophiles).Replies: @dried peanuts
It’s a reliable method to indicate what the literati (i.e. those who spend time actually reading the books) think over a longer period of time, and this is probably better than simple popularity – the latter would be won by bodice rippers.
The entrenched unpopular writers are a phenomenon within the nation, but the writers were ranked using foreign sources only. Foreign writers are way less entrenched in education.
I think I summarized the theory well, but left out the embarrassingly stupid parts.Replies: @German_reader, @Talha
Wait – you left OUT the stupid parts??!! WOW!
I hope Thomm’s not watching – he’s going to use this as ammo.
Peace.
But anyway, those issues don't really affect my criticism of those graphs.Replies: @Verymuchalive
I will disagree with you over the Roman Empire, but agree with you over the graphs. The latter seem highly subjective in content.
There are writers who say that the northerners metal work was better. None to hand.
We don't have records for post-collapse production, but we do know that blacksmiths were using local materials and nonstandardized procedures. They definitely couldn't produce the quantity, and its dubious that they could produce the same quality.Replies: @German_reader, @Philip Owen
The animus behind the myth of Dark Ages is anti-Christian (and more recently also anti-Muslim) and specifically anti-Catholic.
The author of the above text also addresses graphs like the one produced by Kierkegaard based on arbitrary list form a popular book by author of dubious repute known for strong predilections and biases:
Something like that, but not quite. It seems the criterion is that the participant must have been born no later than 1910.
I would agree if this were a parlor game on a boozy Friday night, but since Karlin seems to plan basing parts of his book on this data, I think a more solid foundation is called for. My first thought was that he should just scrap the cultural figures altogether. The silliness just goes on and on (Bach ranked below Mozart and Beethoven — really? On whose authority?).
"Sun language theory"...lol, hadn't known about that, but doesn't surprise me Turks would come up with something like this.Replies: @reiner Tor, @DFH
My understanding is that the theory was invented by a Tamil, Devaneya Pavana, aiming to prove its superiority to Sanskrit. I’ve also seen it associated with lots of obviously silly claims like that Tamil is the oldest language in the world and about an ancient super-advanced ancient Tamil civilisation.
That’s interesting. I’ve heard the same thing about the Russian translations of Walter Scott, and I imagine something similar applies to Schiller’s translations of Shakespeare and explains their popularity.
I remember reading or being told about some American writer that no one had ever heard of (science fiction perhaps) who was very popular in Czechoslovakia in Soviet times, and the explanation turned out to be a brilliant translator.Replies: @LH, @Bies Podkrakowski
Kind of depressing and embarrassing how stupid nationalists often are.Replies: @reiner Tor
Okay, maybe not more embarrassing qualitatively, but there’s a huge quantity of further embarrassingly stupid stuff.
The guy who first wrote about the Hungarian origins of Sumerians had a book with the title King Jesus, the Parthian Prince. As you now probably suspect, Parthians were also Hungarians.
I really didn’t actually read these things, but I had the autistic tendency of debating these guys. Several books could be filled with their nonsense, and they have indeed filled hundreds of books with it. They often contradict each other (occasionally there are serious contradictions within just one book), but it doesn’t matter.
What matters is that the Vatican-Habsburg-freemason-Bolshevik grand conspiracy decided to destroy Hungarians, and because Hungarians are indestructible, they went about by the somewhat roundabout way of convincing Hungarians that our most beautiful language (276.4% more expressive than the second best Japanese language) is related to the language of the Lapps. This destroyed our self-confidence, directly leading to the loss of the First World War and the Treaty of Trianon.
Let me remark that such nonsense (there’s way more of it) was the product of the postwar era immigration. The book I linked was written in Argentina, for example. Hungarian nationalists in the 1930s were much much smarter (both the pro-Nazis and the Anglophiles).
Ah, ok, I didn’t know that, sounds like it’s rather suspect then. Thanks for the correction!
http://cultobzor.ru/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/0230.jpgReplies: @Swedish Family, @Philip Owen
You made a similarly sweeping statement in another thread, claiming that “no one” in Russia watches Tarkovsky films. That claim was easily disproven by a few minutes of searching around on Kinopoisk, and I suspect this is also true of your Tolstoy claim.
Tarkovsky "Andrew Rublev" 36 thousand results;
Gayday "Ivan Vasilievich changes profession" 53 million results;
Danelia "Don't Grieve" 4 million;
Eisenstein "Alexander Nevsky" 25 million
In Russia, almost no one is interested in TarkovskyReplies: @E, @Dmitry
The drama is great. Shakespeare is way better than any other drama. (Though I heard some English dramas written at the same time were also very good.) But it needs to be written in an intelligible and nice language to make it enjoyable.
This is very true. The Swedish translations I have seen read like 19th century books.
He’s wrong. It’s Hungarians who are the most ancient civilization!
I’ve heard the same thing about the Russian translations of Walter Scott
I remember reading or being told about some American writer that no one had ever heard of (science fiction perhaps) who was very popular in Czechoslovakia in Soviet times, and the explanation turned out to be a brilliant translator.
The entrenched unpopular writers are a phenomenon within the nation, but the writers were ranked using foreign sources only. Foreign writers are way less entrenched in education.Replies: @Swedish Family
Ideally, perhaps, but this data would presumably be heavily skewed toward Soviet-era acquisitions (unless Russian libraries have a huge turnover, which I doubt), and what’s worse, it would be disproportionally heavy on authors with huge outputs over this time (Ilya Ehrenburg published over a hundred books) and light on those who didn’t (his friend Vasily Grossman managed maybe a tenth of that, depending on how you count).
I assume you mean the Germanics? Tacticus, who is generally positive about them, specifically notes their scarcity of metal.
If Roman records are to be believed, they produced an average annual output of 80k tons of iron, 15k tons of copper, and 80k tons of lead(which they probably should not have used for their piping) at their peak. Roman furnaces, while limited(they don’t seem to have ever been able to make wootz), were able to forge steel in consistent, significant quantities.
We don’t have records for post-collapse production, but we do know that blacksmiths were using local materials and nonstandardized procedures. They definitely couldn’t produce the quantity, and its dubious that they could produce the same quality.
We don't have records for post-collapse production, but we do know that blacksmiths were using local materials and nonstandardized procedures. They definitely couldn't produce the quantity, and its dubious that they could produce the same quality.Replies: @German_reader, @Philip Owen
That had clearly changed though by late antiquity, I don’t have time to look for references now, but iirc there’s a general consensus that regarding weapons technology the Germanic peoples could produce high-quality weapons by the 4th century. That’s one of the reasons why their raids become so much more dangerous (together with others like larger and more permanent tribal confederations, increased familiarity with the Roman military system etc.).
For 600-400 BC, brown people's achievements are very much understated. Until 600 BC "brown" (Mesopotamia+Egypt+Phoenicia) were the main creative force on the planet.Replies: @reiner Tor, @Dmitry
Ancient Greeks and Romans were also quite brown.
“Sumerians were a separate language group (not Semites, nor Indo-Europeans)”
Believe I indicated as much right after the part you quoted. The question is whether they were the first group there, and the significance of some of their purported linguistic and cultural ties to Indo-Europeans.
Probably true for Greeks and Italians (if anything Greeks might be fairer-skinned today than in antiquity because of the Slav admixture from the early medieval period). But as reiner tor has pointed out above, there’s evidence for non-trivial demographic change in the Near East as a result of the Arab conquests and the importation of black slaves.
Well, German steel is now a byword for quality so at some point they clearly took it to seriously and very much made it their own, highly superior brand. The “maker’s mark” of various German cities is commonly found on late medieval armor and arms – apparently the mark was of such quality that some armorers even copied the mark in an early example of copyright infringement.
As other posters have mentioned it is likely that the "brown people" inhabiting those places then and now were/are remnant populations who took over in later periods. I find it unlikely that Arabs as we know them would have been capable of creating those civilizations and when you look into, say, Mesopotamia/Sumer you find considerable evidence that there were likely Indo-European farmers who originally settled in the FC (as they did throughout the present day ME from Iran to India, as we know), who were then replaced by or fused within the "Sumerians" whose genetic origins are somewhat ambiguous (but who carried traces of the Indo-European culture they perhaps replaced and may have been hybrids of it), who were then overtaken by the Akkadians (semites (jews?)) who moved in from the northwest out of Assyria (iirc), took over and centralized power, tried to turn the decentralized region into an empire, and ultimately collapsed it in just a handful of decades. The Akkadian period was also known for an overall decline in culture and art.
Lot of parallels in ancient Egypt as well. The more I study this stuff the more I seem to see the above trend, which obviously implies that many things attributed to these "brown people" are understandably misattributed since, well, they're still there, aren't they, so they must have been the original progenitors of what was there before.Replies: @melanf, @Dmitry
It’s true there was and still is variety – with some blonde and pale people surviving in these regions.
But overall, living in Middle East and Mediterranean would be badly adapted if your skin burns after five minutes in the sun.
The idea that Mediterranean and Middle Eastern people were lighter in the past than they are today – it’s not something particularly convincing, and perhaps even the reverse for some countries (i.e. Italy and Israel).
In actual murals, as opposed to sculptures who were designed to be painted – Ancient peoples, e.g. the Etruscans. (Really don’t look any lighter than modern Greeks, Spanish, Italians you will see on your holidays today – and even with this stronger skin the sun is still intolerable in those regions, although paler people can still exist in them, it’s not the majority.)
But modern people spend very little time in the sun, and they go there very suddenly in the middle of summer (or travel to the tropics in the middle of winter). I know that my head can survive at least a couple of hours under the Sun with very few chances to go to shades and then only for a few minutes, also without a hat or sunscreen, even in the summer around noon. And even my face gets relatively little chance to adapt to summer conditions, because I spend most of my days in an office or inside some other buildings.
Given that probably most people spent a lot of time under the Sun already in winter or spring, their skins adapted much better than ours. It’s like we are vastly less fit or strong than our ancestors, should be little surprise that we are less able to withstand the summer sunshine at noon. By the way the winter is the same. Have you ever swam in icy water? It’s possible. With some practice you can get to almost an hour. But most people think it’s impossible to even spend a few minutes in, say, two-degree (Celsius) water.Replies: @Dmitry
If Whites (don't know if that means just Europeans or what exactly) want to exclude others from their little club, I think most people are fine with it - at least I am.
Peace.Replies: @Dmitry
It depends on the latitude where you are living.
If you are in a Northern region, then it’s great to be white – likely due to vitamin D synthesis.
But if you are in a Mediterranean, subtropical region, or tropical region – it is better to have higher melanin content.
This Oriental Institute video is cued to a series of charts that indicate that the end of the Roman Empire in the west meant harder lives for the typical person in Europe. (The first one seems to support your point with respect to timing, however.)
The period after the fall in the west saw declines in metal smelting, shipping, building, meat eating, and personal security.
If you are in a Northern region, then it's great to be white - likely due to vitamin D synthesis.
But if you are in a Mediterranean, subtropical region, or tropical region - it is better to have higher melanin content.Replies: @Talha
Totally agree here – but there is white as phenotype and White as some kind of racial classification (which seems to be a bit difficult to pin down). I know Syrians that could pass for Irish if they wanted to but don’t feel the need to be called White. If you listen to the second video I posted, starting at 6:30, you’ll notice the guy states that people in the US from MENA background have asked for a new classification other than White that has been historically assigned to them.
I guess what I’m saying is; if Whites want to make White a Europeans-only club, that’s fine – nobody’s exactly going to be pounding on the doors for inclusion.
Peace.
If the United States were to have a white nationalist revolution that produced pro-white ruling classes, there would of course immediately be a pounding of the doors for inclusion into the white club. That's just the way humans work.Replies: @Talha
In a country with a Northern latitude, it is physically better to be white as you are adapted for the climate and don't need as many vitamin D pills. And socially - you blend in with everyone else.
There is also alternatively a social aspect also in some New World warmer countries (as in Australia, New Zealand, and parts of America) , where it is a country created by people from Northern latitude, and it is equally better to be white for social reasons to blend with the original settlers of those countries.
And personally, I would prefer to live in one of these countries where I could blend in and not obviously a foreigner, at least until I speak - so I'm sure I would not be comfortable living in Japan, as a non-Japanese looking person, or even in Spain or Italy, as a non-Spanish or non-Italian looking person.
But if you're in the Mediterranean, Middle East - any subtropical or tropical region, then it really does suck (on a basic physical level) to be pale. It is physically painful to be pale.
I can tell you when you travel in Israel, you feel genuinely oppressed by the sun - and when you're in the 'Russian ghetto' in Israeli hinterlands, you see the Russian-speaking blonde people looking genuinely oppressed by the terrible sun (all of them hiding underneath Adidas baseball caps and factor 50 sunscreen, and diving desperately into the nearest covered and air-conditioned shopping malls).
And as for contemplating your children in that climate, you kind of understand instinctually why the blonde olim in Israel are famous for dating the first brown, Moroccan that they meet in the country.Replies: @Talha, @Dmitry
Being classified as white is a severe disadvantage in university admissions and the like in the United States so obviously no one wants to be white if they can get away with another classification. Back in the days of segregation when being classified as white was actually an advantage Middle Easterners of course wanted to be white.
If the United States were to have a white nationalist revolution that produced pro-white ruling classes, there would of course immediately be a pounding of the doors for inclusion into the white club. That’s just the way humans work.
At this point, I see no reason for people to.
Peace.
Lol well I will state the very obvious below, just for some clarity purposes, but it depends completely where you want to live.
In a country with a Northern latitude, it is physically better to be white as you are adapted for the climate and don’t need as many vitamin D pills. And socially – you blend in with everyone else.
There is also alternatively a social aspect also in some New World warmer countries (as in Australia, New Zealand, and parts of America) , where it is a country created by people from Northern latitude, and it is equally better to be white for social reasons to blend with the original settlers of those countries.
And personally, I would prefer to live in one of these countries where I could blend in and not obviously a foreigner, at least until I speak – so I’m sure I would not be comfortable living in Japan, as a non-Japanese looking person, or even in Spain or Italy, as a non-Spanish or non-Italian looking person.
But if you’re in the Mediterranean, Middle East – any subtropical or tropical region, then it really does suck (on a basic physical level) to be pale. It is physically painful to be pale.
I can tell you when you travel in Israel, you feel genuinely oppressed by the sun – and when you’re in the ‘Russian ghetto’ in Israeli hinterlands, you see the Russian-speaking blonde people looking genuinely oppressed by the terrible sun (all of them hiding underneath Adidas baseball caps and factor 50 sunscreen, and diving desperately into the nearest covered and air-conditioned shopping malls).
And as for contemplating your children in that climate, you kind of understand instinctually why the blonde olim in Israel are famous for dating the first brown, Moroccan that they meet in the country.
https://uznayvse.ru/images/content/2017/8/uzn_15030454646.jpg
https://cdn.img.inosmi.ru/images/19151/26/191512631.jpg
If the United States were to have a white nationalist revolution that produced pro-white ruling classes, there would of course immediately be a pounding of the doors for inclusion into the white club. That's just the way humans work.Replies: @Talha
Yeah, I’ll agree there – people would likely try if it conferred some sort of material advantage.
At this point, I see no reason for people to.
Peace.
In a country with a Northern latitude, it is physically better to be white as you are adapted for the climate and don't need as many vitamin D pills. And socially - you blend in with everyone else.
There is also alternatively a social aspect also in some New World warmer countries (as in Australia, New Zealand, and parts of America) , where it is a country created by people from Northern latitude, and it is equally better to be white for social reasons to blend with the original settlers of those countries.
And personally, I would prefer to live in one of these countries where I could blend in and not obviously a foreigner, at least until I speak - so I'm sure I would not be comfortable living in Japan, as a non-Japanese looking person, or even in Spain or Italy, as a non-Spanish or non-Italian looking person.
But if you're in the Mediterranean, Middle East - any subtropical or tropical region, then it really does suck (on a basic physical level) to be pale. It is physically painful to be pale.
I can tell you when you travel in Israel, you feel genuinely oppressed by the sun - and when you're in the 'Russian ghetto' in Israeli hinterlands, you see the Russian-speaking blonde people looking genuinely oppressed by the terrible sun (all of them hiding underneath Adidas baseball caps and factor 50 sunscreen, and diving desperately into the nearest covered and air-conditioned shopping malls).
And as for contemplating your children in that climate, you kind of understand instinctually why the blonde olim in Israel are famous for dating the first brown, Moroccan that they meet in the country.Replies: @Talha, @Dmitry
Yes, totally makes sense.
LOL! Very true. I remember we went on a trip to Egypt with my Swedish mother-in-law and not very far south either – just stayed along the Mediterranean coast like Alexandria (and I think Port Said, it was a while back) and think we only went as far south as Mansoura. Anyway, the poor lady, she basically stayed in the hotel room as much as she could with the AC cranked to 65 degrees! My wife is younger so she could do a little better.
Peace.
In a country with a Northern latitude, it is physically better to be white as you are adapted for the climate and don't need as many vitamin D pills. And socially - you blend in with everyone else.
There is also alternatively a social aspect also in some New World warmer countries (as in Australia, New Zealand, and parts of America) , where it is a country created by people from Northern latitude, and it is equally better to be white for social reasons to blend with the original settlers of those countries.
And personally, I would prefer to live in one of these countries where I could blend in and not obviously a foreigner, at least until I speak - so I'm sure I would not be comfortable living in Japan, as a non-Japanese looking person, or even in Spain or Italy, as a non-Spanish or non-Italian looking person.
But if you're in the Mediterranean, Middle East - any subtropical or tropical region, then it really does suck (on a basic physical level) to be pale. It is physically painful to be pale.
I can tell you when you travel in Israel, you feel genuinely oppressed by the sun - and when you're in the 'Russian ghetto' in Israeli hinterlands, you see the Russian-speaking blonde people looking genuinely oppressed by the terrible sun (all of them hiding underneath Adidas baseball caps and factor 50 sunscreen, and diving desperately into the nearest covered and air-conditioned shopping malls).
And as for contemplating your children in that climate, you kind of understand instinctually why the blonde olim in Israel are famous for dating the first brown, Moroccan that they meet in the country.Replies: @Talha, @Dmitry
This reminds me of Surkov dying his hair lighter, after which the media just speculated that he might be unhealthy and actually dying. Alternative explanation, that he is trying to emulate the Japanese style of male Jpop fans.
Murray’s list is just weird in some parts, unless I’m missing something it includes neither St Jerome (translator of the Vulgate version of the Bible) nor Gregory the Great. Whatever one thinks of Christianity, there can be little doubt that their writings (massive in volume) were vastly more influential for the course of human history than a few dozen love poems of a poet like Catullus.
Though on second thought, they didn’t actually produce anything original. I don’t know if they should be included in the significant literary figures or scientists lists.
Search in Yandex:
Tarkovsky “Andrew Rublev” 36 thousand results;
Gayday “Ivan Vasilievich changes profession” 53 million results;
Danelia “Don’t Grieve” 4 million;
Eisenstein “Alexander Nevsky” 25 million
In Russia, almost no one is interested in Tarkovsky
I think a better method is to compare how many people rated the films on Kinopoisk.
By that metric:
Tarkovsky. Andrei Rublyov: 29 thousand
Gayday. Ivan Vasilyevich Changes Profession: 322 thousand
Danelia. Don't Grieve: 5 thousand
Eisenstein. Aleksandr Nevsky: 9 thousand
More like nobody watches Danelia and Eisenstein, amirite?
Now let's compare those classics to a pathetic decade-old animated box-office failure with a 1.7/10 review score:
Наша Маша и Волшебный орех: 12 thousand
So... this makes it more significant than Eisenstein, right? Perhaps, except that people will still be watching Eisenstein decades from now long after that other travesty has been completely forgotten...
Other Tarkovsky films:
Ivan's Childhood: 20 thousand.
Solaris: 36 thousand.
Stalker: 51 thousand.
Mirror: 19 thousand.
So from the looks of it, Tarkovsky's only 10-20% as popular as the biggest Soviet comedy blockbusters like "Ivan Vasilyevich" (322 thousand), "Operation Y" (279 thousand), "Kidnapping, Caucasian Style" (228 thousand). On the other hand, his films match or exceed the popularity of Bondarchuk's "War and Peace" (19 thousand), the most expensive Soviet blockbuster film ever made.Replies: @Swedish Family, @melanf
Nowadays, people are developing shorter attention spans - which is impacted by modern communications technology -, and watching his films becomes painful for contemporary people who are used to whatsapp and youtube.
Not browner than modern Greeks and Italians. Actually, Sicilians have a few percentage points of Sub-Saharan ancestry which they acquired during late antiquity. So they are slightly browner than they were at the time of the Emperor Augustus.
The guy who first wrote about the Hungarian origins of Sumerians had a book with the title King Jesus, the Parthian Prince. As you now probably suspect, Parthians were also Hungarians.
I really didn’t actually read these things, but I had the autistic tendency of debating these guys. Several books could be filled with their nonsense, and they have indeed filled hundreds of books with it. They often contradict each other (occasionally there are serious contradictions within just one book), but it doesn’t matter.
What matters is that the Vatican-Habsburg-freemason-Bolshevik grand conspiracy decided to destroy Hungarians, and because Hungarians are indestructible, they went about by the somewhat roundabout way of convincing Hungarians that our most beautiful language (276.4% more expressive than the second best Japanese language) is related to the language of the Lapps. This destroyed our self-confidence, directly leading to the loss of the First World War and the Treaty of Trianon.
Let me remark that such nonsense (there’s way more of it) was the product of the postwar era immigration. The book I linked was written in Argentina, for example. Hungarian nationalists in the 1930s were much much smarter (both the pro-Nazis and the Anglophiles).Replies: @dried peanuts
Genetic analysis will soon prove all of this correct
Saddam had a general who looked like an Irishman. Complete with extremely white skin and he was a redhead.
http://newsru.co.il/pict/id/large/685475_20140816081217.jpgReplies: @neutral, @Silva
True, that’s a real problem with the method.
Though on second thought, they didn’t actually produce anything original. I don’t know if they should be included in the significant literary figures or scientists lists.
There are some phrases that require explanation, but any intelligent native speaker should be comfortable reading Shakespeare and the “King James Bible”, as a matter of self-respect. I’ve been doing so since childhood, and I’m far from a “universal genius”.
Beowulf is another story…
I am not a native speaker, which immediately disqualifies me from reading it.Replies: @The Big Red Scary, @Dmitry, @Lars Porsena
Kurdish girl from Iraq
One can of course have a negative view of the Roman empire (for many different reasons...I assume you dislike it because of its supposed "race mixing"...whereas "anonymous coward" above seems to favor the Christian triumphalist narrative plus "human rights" so decline on a material level doesn't matter that much), but there's a good case imo that its downfall was accompanied by a massive reduction in economic complexity.Replies: @Daniel Chieh, @The Big Red Scary, @The Big Red Scary
More subjective than a study based on archaeological data, but also much more vivid, is the History of the Franks of St. Gregory of Tours. A stagnant but stable society, like the Roman Empire at its height, looks rather attractive compared to the most common ancient alternative.
Another striking contrast between Roman times and the early medieval period involves the general administration of justice...the Roman empire certainly contained a lot of cruelty, even in its (somewhat) Christianized late antique form, with all the slavery, judicial torture of the lower orders, sending offenders to forced labour in mines etc. But its judicial system was certainly more rational than such bizarre practices as the ordeal or judicial combat.
One can of course have a negative view of the Roman empire (for many different reasons...I assume you dislike it because of its supposed "race mixing"...whereas "anonymous coward" above seems to favor the Christian triumphalist narrative plus "human rights" so decline on a material level doesn't matter that much), but there's a good case imo that its downfall was accompanied by a massive reduction in economic complexity.Replies: @Daniel Chieh, @The Big Red Scary, @The Big Red Scary
More subjective than a study based on archaeological data, but also much more vivid, is the History of the Franks of St. Gregory of Tours. A stagnant but stable society, like the Roman Empire at its height, looks rather attractive compared to the most common alternative.
Beowulf is another story...Replies: @reiner Tor
You probably have an IQ over 130, at worst 115. It’s very difficult to read for the bottom two thirds. It’s probably not even easy for you. I bet you missed more than you noticed, for example there must have been lots of phrases you misunderstood, or nuances you didn’t get, and probably it was way slower (i.e. less enjoyable) to read than if it was translated from early modern to modern English.
I am not a native speaker, which immediately disqualifies me from reading it.
But soft! What light through yonder window breaks?
It is the east, and Juliet is the sun.
Arise, fair sun, and kill the envious moon,
Who is already sick and pale with grief,
That thou, her maid, art far more fair than she.
Be not her maid since she is envious.
Her vestal livery is but sick and green,
And none but fools do wear it. Cast it off!
It is my lady. Oh, it is my love.
Oh, that she knew she were!
She speaks, yet she says nothing. What of that?
Her eye discourses. I will answer it.—
I am too bold. 'Tis not to me she speaks.
Two of the fairest stars in all the heaven,
Having some business, do entreat her eyes
To twinkle in their spheres till they return.
What if her eyes were there, they in her head?
The brightness of her cheek would shame those stars
As daylight doth a lamp. Her eye in heaven
Would through the airy region stream so bright
That birds would sing and think it were not night.
See how she leans her cheek upon her hand.
Oh, that I were a glove upon that hand
That I might touch that cheek!Replies: @Dmitry
But overall, living in Middle East and Mediterranean would be badly adapted if your skin burns after five minutes in the sun.
The idea that Mediterranean and Middle Eastern people were lighter in the past than they are today - it's not something particularly convincing, and perhaps even the reverse for some countries (i.e. Italy and Israel).
In actual murals, as opposed to sculptures who were designed to be painted - Ancient peoples, e.g. the Etruscans. (Really don't look any lighter than modern Greeks, Spanish, Italians you will see on your holidays today - and even with this stronger skin the sun is still intolerable in those regions, although paler people can still exist in them, it's not the majority.)
https://media-cdn.tripadvisor.com/media/photo-s/09/05/28/87/arcadia.jpg
http://www.tarquinia-cerveteri.it/upload/images/visuals/Visual_TC_Tarquinia.jpg
http://www.romafu.it/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/419041_606117496072688_420419456_n-765x415.jpg
https://i.pinimg.com/236x/04/7d/e3/047de3d7bb0ed5669ff9577baedc3909--ancient-greek-ancient-art.jpgReplies: @reiner Tor
No one will get skinburn after five minutes. I need at least forty-five minutes even if it’s the first time that year, and I’m in the top whitest percentile of the population, being ginger.
But modern people spend very little time in the sun, and they go there very suddenly in the middle of summer (or travel to the tropics in the middle of winter). I know that my head can survive at least a couple of hours under the Sun with very few chances to go to shades and then only for a few minutes, also without a hat or sunscreen, even in the summer around noon. And even my face gets relatively little chance to adapt to summer conditions, because I spend most of my days in an office or inside some other buildings.
Given that probably most people spent a lot of time under the Sun already in winter or spring, their skins adapted much better than ours. It’s like we are vastly less fit or strong than our ancestors, should be little surprise that we are less able to withstand the summer sunshine at noon. By the way the winter is the same. Have you ever swam in icy water? It’s possible. With some practice you can get to almost an hour. But most people think it’s impossible to even spend a few minutes in, say, two-degree (Celsius) water.
I start going red in what has seemed just 5-10 minutes on the beach in a subtropical latitude. That was before I remembering to get covered sunscreen. And even after wearing sunscreen, with skin peeling off days later. My mother has had even worse experiences in the Mediterranean - ending up looking like a burn victim.
Relating to climate, I agree with your general point about toughness for sure. The extreme heat (and even humidity( you can adapt to with time, and it's mainly psychological (it's not like Africans experience it any differently, they just get accustomed).
Likewise, temperatures which felt cold in October, start to feel warm in April - after a few months of winter.
But sunburn is not psychological, and you either have the genetics to get a tan after sun-exposure or to go red and have your skin peel off.Replies: @reiner Tor, @Lars Porsena
Anatoly, it is time to turn Anti-Semetic।।
Many Muslim accomplishment come from Medieval Persia, but Persians are considered white or brown? There is not a clear “race border” in ME.
Tarkovsky "Andrew Rublev" 36 thousand results;
Gayday "Ivan Vasilievich changes profession" 53 million results;
Danelia "Don't Grieve" 4 million;
Eisenstein "Alexander Nevsky" 25 million
In Russia, almost no one is interested in TarkovskyReplies: @E, @Dmitry
“Andrei Rublyov” was never widely released, though (also, I get 188 thousand results for it, not 36). His film “Stalker” (тарковский сталкер) gets 12 million results on Yandex. Not that I’m particularly convinced that this is a perfect method for measuring such things… (Edit: yep, adding “-game” to the search narrows it to 126 thousand)
I think a better method is to compare how many people rated the films on Kinopoisk.
By that metric:
Tarkovsky. Andrei Rublyov: 29 thousand
Gayday. Ivan Vasilyevich Changes Profession: 322 thousand
Danelia. Don’t Grieve: 5 thousand
Eisenstein. Aleksandr Nevsky: 9 thousand
More like nobody watches Danelia and Eisenstein, amirite?
Now let’s compare those classics to a pathetic decade-old animated box-office failure with a 1.7/10 review score:
Наша Маша и Волшебный орех: 12 thousand
So… this makes it more significant than Eisenstein, right? Perhaps, except that people will still be watching Eisenstein decades from now long after that other travesty has been completely forgotten…
Other Tarkovsky films:
Ivan’s Childhood: 20 thousand.
Solaris: 36 thousand.
Stalker: 51 thousand.
Mirror: 19 thousand.
So from the looks of it, Tarkovsky’s only 10-20% as popular as the biggest Soviet comedy blockbusters like “Ivan Vasilyevich” (322 thousand), “Operation Y” (279 thousand), “Kidnapping, Caucasian Style” (228 thousand). On the other hand, his films match or exceed the popularity of Bondarchuk’s “War and Peace” (19 thousand), the most expensive Soviet blockbuster film ever made.
Ёлки (highest grossing Russian film of 2010): 96,684 ratings
Высоцкий. Спасибо, что живой (highest grossing Russian film of 2011): 65,081 ratings
Сталинград (highest grossing of all releases in 2013): 67,501 ratings
Вий 3D (highest grossing Russian film of 2014): 46,595 ratings
Экипаж (highest grossing Russian film of 2016): 80,614 ratings
Движение вверх (highest grossing of all releases in 2017): 68,457 ratings
Soviet films tend to have fewer ratings still. Daneliya's Афоня, the Soviet film that drew the largest audience in 1975, has 36,890 ratings, and Пираты ХХ века, the most popular film of 1979, a mere 9,363.
Tarkovsky films:
Ivan's Childhood: 33 thousand.
Andrey Rublev: 36 thousand. (you must enter Yandex in the search field «Тарковский Андрей Рублев»)
Nostalgia: 66 thousand resultsThe exceptions are:
Solaris: 274 thousand.
Stalker: 13 million.
Mirror: 15 millionHowever, Stalker is a series of books and computer games (not related to Tarkovsky)
http://stalkerportaal.ru/_pu/0/00331247.jpgMirror is a film festival of the same name, Solaris is a book by Stanislav Lем. That is, these results are not related to Tarkovsky. If we evaluate Tarkovsky's own achievements in Yandex, Tarkovsky's films lose to popular Soviet films by about three orders of magnitude.
For example "amphibian Man"
http://cdn.fishki.net/upload/post/201412/19/1356651/1_118669.jpg - 61 million results in YandexThis is easily seen in Russia – popular films are used as the source of memes, visuals, quotes, http://alive-ua.com/uploads/posts/2013-01/1357247702_33.jpg
etc. These quotes are clear to everyone ("Ja, ja, Kemska volost!"- meme from "Ivan Vasilyevich" 1 million results in Yandex; "кто с мечом к нам придет от меча и погибнет" - meme from "Alexander Nevsky" 72 million results in Yandex).
On the contrary for 99% of the population of Russian, Tarkovsky's films unknown and uninteresting. When (rarely) Tarkovsky's films are shown on TV, the average Russian viewer switches the TV.
There is a sect of "intellegencia" in which Tarkovsky is the object of worship. When this sect dies out, Tarkovsky will finally turn into a dead fossil known only to film historians.Replies: @Dmitry, @Swedish Family
OT
Persian woman alert!
Greasy, would you bang Nasim Aghdam?
LOL! Maybe we can come up with an official Unz.com T-shirt with site info on the front and simply “WWGB?” On the back...Replies: @reiner Tor
OT
I put it into the other thread, but I guess no one is reading it anymore, so I risk it repeating here:
https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-04-03/uk-authorities-unable-prove-novichok-nerve-agent-came-russia
https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-04-03/russia-demands-uk-apologize-after-scientists-stunning-admission-about-skripal
Persian woman alert!
Greasy, would you bang Nasim Aghdam?Replies: @Talha
I love how that is a regularly recurring sub-thread; who would Greasy bang?
LOL! Maybe we can come up with an official Unz.com T-shirt with site info on the front and simply “WWGB?” On the back…
http://newsru.co.il/pict/id/large/685475_20140816081217.jpgReplies: @neutral, @Silva
The exception does not make the rule however, Kurds are not white as most do not look like that. The same applies to jews and using Scarlet Johansen as the example.
The problem (including for Jews themselves) is using a multinational population, bound by ancient religious heritage, as a nationality.Replies: @Lars Porsena
LOL! Maybe we can come up with an official Unz.com T-shirt with site info on the front and simply “WWGB?” On the back...Replies: @reiner Tor
Similar to the Paul Walker T-shirts and coffee mugs for Steve Sailer…
We can release a new edition every year.
Peace.
I put it into the other thread, but I guess no one is reading it anymore, so I risk it repeating here:
https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-04-03/uk-authorities-unable-prove-novichok-nerve-agent-came-russiaReplies: @reiner Tor
Perhaps of interest:
https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-04-03/russia-demands-uk-apologize-after-scientists-stunning-admission-about-skripal
https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-um351GGapao/WsQPRCbAGuI/AAAAAAAAFwM/lAZwJZkh2dU-y6vtBJpaFty98tPFH0cAACLcBGAs/s1600/nra.pngReplies: @neutral
Despite these graphs you still have the cuckservative Republicans willing to sell their kidneys to support Israel and the jews, it never crosses their minds who wants to take their 2nd Amendment away.
I’ve yet to read that, but when I skimmed through it, I did get the impression that it involved many stories about interpersonal violence…and not just at the level of the Merovingian royals who were famous for their violent family disputes.
Another striking contrast between Roman times and the early medieval period involves the general administration of justice…the Roman empire certainly contained a lot of cruelty, even in its (somewhat) Christianized late antique form, with all the slavery, judicial torture of the lower orders, sending offenders to forced labour in mines etc. But its judicial system was certainly more rational than such bizarre practices as the ordeal or judicial combat.
I am not a native speaker, which immediately disqualifies me from reading it.Replies: @The Big Red Scary, @Dmitry, @Lars Porsena
Surely I must have missed something, since when I read Shakespeare now, some passages are a bit difficult, and footnotes can be helpful. But in my day (grumbles this old man) everyone read Romeo and Juliet in their high school English class. It’s really not the difficult, so long as the spelling is modernized:
But soft! What light through yonder window breaks?
It is the east, and Juliet is the sun.
Arise, fair sun, and kill the envious moon,
Who is already sick and pale with grief,
That thou, her maid, art far more fair than she.
Be not her maid since she is envious.
Her vestal livery is but sick and green,
And none but fools do wear it. Cast it off!
It is my lady. Oh, it is my love.
Oh, that she knew she were!
She speaks, yet she says nothing. What of that?
Her eye discourses. I will answer it.—
I am too bold. ‘Tis not to me she speaks.
Two of the fairest stars in all the heaven,
Having some business, do entreat her eyes
To twinkle in their spheres till they return.
What if her eyes were there, they in her head?
The brightness of her cheek would shame those stars
As daylight doth a lamp. Her eye in heaven
Would through the airy region stream so bright
That birds would sing and think it were not night.
See how she leans her cheek upon her hand.
Oh, that I were a glove upon that hand
That I might touch that cheek!
The metaphors used in poetry of all languages are quite constant. E.g. eyes - stars.
The issue is whether people are used to reading poetry or prose.
For Shakespeare, the metaphor-dense language is poetry, and needs to be read slowly as poetry (and becomes very difficult to understand when heard rapidly spoken by actors in theatre).Replies: @Anon
But modern people spend very little time in the sun, and they go there very suddenly in the middle of summer (or travel to the tropics in the middle of winter). I know that my head can survive at least a couple of hours under the Sun with very few chances to go to shades and then only for a few minutes, also without a hat or sunscreen, even in the summer around noon. And even my face gets relatively little chance to adapt to summer conditions, because I spend most of my days in an office or inside some other buildings.
Given that probably most people spent a lot of time under the Sun already in winter or spring, their skins adapted much better than ours. It’s like we are vastly less fit or strong than our ancestors, should be little surprise that we are less able to withstand the summer sunshine at noon. By the way the winter is the same. Have you ever swam in icy water? It’s possible. With some practice you can get to almost an hour. But most people think it’s impossible to even spend a few minutes in, say, two-degree (Celsius) water.Replies: @Dmitry
It sounds like you are lucky, despite being ginger 🙂
I start going red in what has seemed just 5-10 minutes on the beach in a subtropical latitude. That was before I remembering to get covered sunscreen. And even after wearing sunscreen, with skin peeling off days later. My mother has had even worse experiences in the Mediterranean – ending up looking like a burn victim.
Relating to climate, I agree with your general point about toughness for sure. The extreme heat (and even humidity( you can adapt to with time, and it’s mainly psychological (it’s not like Africans experience it any differently, they just get accustomed).
Likewise, temperatures which felt cold in October, start to feel warm in April – after a few months of winter.
But sunburn is not psychological, and you either have the genetics to get a tan after sun-exposure or to go red and have your skin peel off.
I normally only go shirtless for 10-20 minutes initially, and even later rarely over 30 minutes. (Except for the face...)
Are you sure about the 5-10 minutes? Are you sunbathing, or just walking around shirtless?Replies: @Dmitry
Funnily enough, I have an arab friend who only burns and can't tan.
It was an issue with the Jomon in Japan for anthropologists. There are some accounts that they were nearly black and others that they were quite white, with anthropologists speculating both that might have been from australoid groups occupying Japan prior to the Japanese and also that might have been caucasoid. Both these theories were ostensibly wrong, they are asian.
Apparently part of the issue though was lifestyle, the young ones would spend all day in a boat and turn quite dark. The children and the older ones who stayed out of the sun though were even paler than the Japanese.Replies: @Dmitry
Maybe on the back, with the “WWGB?” we can have small thumbnails of the faces of all the official Greasy-approved bangable women.
We can release a new edition every year.
Peace.
They need to be Sanskritized to immunize them against the Afro bomb।।
https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcQxbBSHAH76_gS1Dh4ah82tCC3Mzh8SD9z64IDfeUb0Fiy3yq9-Tw
Hmmm…I don’t think I ever considered the resemblance with an afro – it’s uncanny really!
https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcQxbBSHAH76_gS1Dh4ah82tCC3Mzh8SD9z64IDfeUb0Fiy3yq9-Tw
The UK made a communications error, and it opened the backdoor for Russian propagandists and their useful idiots to revive their nonsense conspiracy theories!
I start going red in what has seemed just 5-10 minutes on the beach in a subtropical latitude. That was before I remembering to get covered sunscreen. And even after wearing sunscreen, with skin peeling off days later. My mother has had even worse experiences in the Mediterranean - ending up looking like a burn victim.
Relating to climate, I agree with your general point about toughness for sure. The extreme heat (and even humidity( you can adapt to with time, and it's mainly psychological (it's not like Africans experience it any differently, they just get accustomed).
Likewise, temperatures which felt cold in October, start to feel warm in April - after a few months of winter.
But sunburn is not psychological, and you either have the genetics to get a tan after sun-exposure or to go red and have your skin peel off.Replies: @reiner Tor, @Lars Porsena
I’m not sure about the 45 minutes. Last year once I spent 35-40 minutes under the Sun (in the tropics, and this was one of the first days in the year to go shirtless), and I got slightly pink that afternoon, but nothing more. Usually it takes just 5 more minutes for a full-blown sunburn to appear.
I normally only go shirtless for 10-20 minutes initially, and even later rarely over 30 minutes. (Except for the face…)
Are you sure about the 5-10 minutes? Are you sunbathing, or just walking around shirtless?
Although it depends on what the UV index is on the particular day/time as well.
https://www.aimatmelanoma.org/prevention/uv-index/
I'm sensitive to sunburn, but I know there are people who are more sensitive than me.
I know a girl who was sitting in outdoors cafe for lunch, for less than an hour, in Russian summer (UV index is never more than around 8 in Russia), and got sunburn all over her scalp, underneath her hair - even though she has long hair (her face was only ok because she was wearing makeup).
I've never got sunburn underneath my hair (how do you even defend against that - rubbing sunscreen on your hair?).
I think a better method is to compare how many people rated the films on Kinopoisk.
By that metric:
Tarkovsky. Andrei Rublyov: 29 thousand
Gayday. Ivan Vasilyevich Changes Profession: 322 thousand
Danelia. Don't Grieve: 5 thousand
Eisenstein. Aleksandr Nevsky: 9 thousand
More like nobody watches Danelia and Eisenstein, amirite?
Now let's compare those classics to a pathetic decade-old animated box-office failure with a 1.7/10 review score:
Наша Маша и Волшебный орех: 12 thousand
So... this makes it more significant than Eisenstein, right? Perhaps, except that people will still be watching Eisenstein decades from now long after that other travesty has been completely forgotten...
Other Tarkovsky films:
Ivan's Childhood: 20 thousand.
Solaris: 36 thousand.
Stalker: 51 thousand.
Mirror: 19 thousand.
So from the looks of it, Tarkovsky's only 10-20% as popular as the biggest Soviet comedy blockbusters like "Ivan Vasilyevich" (322 thousand), "Operation Y" (279 thousand), "Kidnapping, Caucasian Style" (228 thousand). On the other hand, his films match or exceed the popularity of Bondarchuk's "War and Peace" (19 thousand), the most expensive Soviet blockbuster film ever made.Replies: @Swedish Family, @melanf
Building on this, I would add that those Gaidai films are extreme outliers. The number of ratings for modern box-office hits typically range in the 50 to 100 thousands. Some examples:
Ёлки (highest grossing Russian film of 2010): 96,684 ratings
Высоцкий. Спасибо, что живой (highest grossing Russian film of 2011): 65,081 ratings
Сталинград (highest grossing of all releases in 2013): 67,501 ratings
Вий 3D (highest grossing Russian film of 2014): 46,595 ratings
Экипаж (highest grossing Russian film of 2016): 80,614 ratings
Движение вверх (highest grossing of all releases in 2017): 68,457 ratings
Soviet films tend to have fewer ratings still. Daneliya’s Афоня, the Soviet film that drew the largest audience in 1975, has 36,890 ratings, and Пираты ХХ века, the most popular film of 1979, a mere 9,363.
http://cultobzor.ru/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/0230.jpgReplies: @Swedish Family, @Philip Owen
Goldilocks and the three bears? Tolstoy.
We don't have records for post-collapse production, but we do know that blacksmiths were using local materials and nonstandardized procedures. They definitely couldn't produce the quantity, and its dubious that they could produce the same quality.Replies: @German_reader, @Philip Owen
Yes. Germanics. It was a long time ago. It could even have referred to decorative metalwork but I seem to remember that it was about the history of technology. It seemed strange at the time.
I normally only go shirtless for 10-20 minutes initially, and even later rarely over 30 minutes. (Except for the face...)
Are you sure about the 5-10 minutes? Are you sunbathing, or just walking around shirtless?Replies: @Dmitry
You might have quite tough skin, which is a lucky blessing for the traveler.
Although it depends on what the UV index is on the particular day/time as well.
https://www.aimatmelanoma.org/prevention/uv-index/
I’m sensitive to sunburn, but I know there are people who are more sensitive than me.
I know a girl who was sitting in outdoors cafe for lunch, for less than an hour, in Russian summer (UV index is never more than around 8 in Russia), and got sunburn all over her scalp, underneath her hair – even though she has long hair (her face was only ok because she was wearing makeup).
I’ve never got sunburn underneath my hair (how do you even defend against that – rubbing sunscreen on your hair?).
Italy was invaded by various people from central Europe and even Northern Europe, from the late Roman days.
Plenty of Jews – if you walk around in Israel – look like Northern European peasants, with even a lot with stereotypical unrefined, peasant faces. That’s somewhere like 10%-20%. While another over half look like Arabs.
The problem (including for Jews themselves) is using a multinational population, bound by ancient religious heritage, as a nationality.
Tarkovsky "Andrew Rublev" 36 thousand results;
Gayday "Ivan Vasilievich changes profession" 53 million results;
Danelia "Don't Grieve" 4 million;
Eisenstein "Alexander Nevsky" 25 million
In Russia, almost no one is interested in TarkovskyReplies: @E, @Dmitry
Tarkovsky was still very popular in our parents’ generation.
Nowadays, people are developing shorter attention spans – which is impacted by modern communications technology -, and watching his films becomes painful for contemporary people who are used to whatsapp and youtube.
But soft! What light through yonder window breaks?
It is the east, and Juliet is the sun.
Arise, fair sun, and kill the envious moon,
Who is already sick and pale with grief,
That thou, her maid, art far more fair than she.
Be not her maid since she is envious.
Her vestal livery is but sick and green,
And none but fools do wear it. Cast it off!
It is my lady. Oh, it is my love.
Oh, that she knew she were!
She speaks, yet she says nothing. What of that?
Her eye discourses. I will answer it.—
I am too bold. 'Tis not to me she speaks.
Two of the fairest stars in all the heaven,
Having some business, do entreat her eyes
To twinkle in their spheres till they return.
What if her eyes were there, they in her head?
The brightness of her cheek would shame those stars
As daylight doth a lamp. Her eye in heaven
Would through the airy region stream so bright
That birds would sing and think it were not night.
See how she leans her cheek upon her hand.
Oh, that I were a glove upon that hand
That I might touch that cheek!Replies: @Dmitry
I do not have such problems to understand this language.
The metaphors used in poetry of all languages are quite constant. E.g. eyes – stars.
The issue is whether people are used to reading poetry or prose.
For Shakespeare, the metaphor-dense language is poetry, and needs to be read slowly as poetry (and becomes very difficult to understand when heard rapidly spoken by actors in theatre).
I am not a native speaker, which immediately disqualifies me from reading it.Replies: @The Big Red Scary, @Dmitry, @Lars Porsena
This is very negative/depressing view, which I do not think is true.
Some of the most famous readers of Shakespeare in its original English language versions – Pasternak, Borges, Ketcher – were not Englishmen.
High-art should be something universal, which can be understood to men of all times and cultures.
http://newsru.co.il/pict/id/large/685475_20140816081217.jpgReplies: @neutral, @Silva
Shortly after that photo, the photographer’s head blew up.
LOL! Or he caught on fire!
Except Scott was popular everywhere.
I understand and greatly enjoy Shakespeare, anyone bringing up De Vere is a crank. Shakespeare deserves his reputation.
Nobody thinks they’re chumps, but neither Jonson nor Marlowe has had the influence of Shakespeare. He has the position in English literature of Pushkin in Russian and Cervantes in Spanish literature.
He has the same sort of lingering presence in English writing since somewhat after his own time as Pope has in the writing of the eighteenth century.
I start going red in what has seemed just 5-10 minutes on the beach in a subtropical latitude. That was before I remembering to get covered sunscreen. And even after wearing sunscreen, with skin peeling off days later. My mother has had even worse experiences in the Mediterranean - ending up looking like a burn victim.
Relating to climate, I agree with your general point about toughness for sure. The extreme heat (and even humidity( you can adapt to with time, and it's mainly psychological (it's not like Africans experience it any differently, they just get accustomed).
Likewise, temperatures which felt cold in October, start to feel warm in April - after a few months of winter.
But sunburn is not psychological, and you either have the genetics to get a tan after sun-exposure or to go red and have your skin peel off.Replies: @reiner Tor, @Lars Porsena
Sun is an issue. Not all pale people burn on contact with it you know. I am myself quite pale if I stay out of it, but I can tan pretty damn bronze if I’m outside all summer. At least 97% northern euro DNA and red highlights.
Funnily enough, I have an arab friend who only burns and can’t tan.
It was an issue with the Jomon in Japan for anthropologists. There are some accounts that they were nearly black and others that they were quite white, with anthropologists speculating both that might have been from australoid groups occupying Japan prior to the Japanese and also that might have been caucasoid. Both these theories were ostensibly wrong, they are asian.
Apparently part of the issue though was lifestyle, the young ones would spend all day in a boat and turn quite dark. The children and the older ones who stayed out of the sun though were even paler than the Japanese.
The metaphors used in poetry of all languages are quite constant. E.g. eyes - stars.
The issue is whether people are used to reading poetry or prose.
For Shakespeare, the metaphor-dense language is poetry, and needs to be read slowly as poetry (and becomes very difficult to understand when heard rapidly spoken by actors in theatre).Replies: @Anon
Not entirely so– take the original of Khayyam’s “a loaf of bread”, etc. verse, or some of the established metaphors of the ancient Greeks: the “wine-dark sea” for instance.
The problem (including for Jews themselves) is using a multinational population, bound by ancient religious heritage, as a nationality.Replies: @Lars Porsena
Are class differences usually expressed in facial features? What does a stereotypical peasant look like?
I've spent multiple months overall in Israel over my life. European peasant looking Jews are more common than you imagine, especially if you go in an upper class area of Israel (ironically), you see a lot of them, and their peasant look and behaviour is much more than in Europe (you know they have 0% aristocrat blood).
It's also their manners and way of behaving.
(If you ever invited to the house of native Israelis, you are guaranteed they will all randomly shouting at each other, and eat with their hands, and from each other's spoons.)
I'm in love this with culture and studying Hebrew for years, but most people are horrified - also it is the complete opposite of how I imagined Jews would be before I first started going there. I imagined they were a kind of sophisticated intellectual people.
It's also their primitive facial expressions (which is not just for television, they actually are making faces like this).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WMdW1E4UEfU
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3qjQ6WoqFjg
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w1T3U1Reg4c
The Arab Jews in Israel - which is actually the majority of the Jews in Israel (over 60%), also have different expressions of their own - more like this guy (it's really a different culture, which you have to meet them to believe it). It's probably actually more low-class than the native Arab culture (as the Arab Jews again, have likely 0% Arab aristocratic origin).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V8e3NXxWSDI
I am not a native speaker, which immediately disqualifies me from reading it.Replies: @The Big Red Scary, @Dmitry, @Lars Porsena
Have you tried? I think you are way overestimating how difficult it is to read Shakespeare’s version of english. It’s basically just like modern english, but with “thou” instead of you and “speaketh” instead of “speak”.
Now, middle english like Chaucer’s Canterburry Tales is quite difficult to parse at all, incomprehensible in places, and old english like Beowulf may as well be dutch or something, it is a totally different language. Shakespeare’s english though is almost just like the modern one with barely some verb conjugation differences.
To wit:
“Oh pardon me, thou bleeding piece of earth, that I am meek and gentle with these butchers. Thou art the ruins of the greatest man that ever lived in the tide of times”
Thou art – you are.
Or,
“We few, we happy few, we band of brothers. For he that fights with me today shall be my brother, be he ne’er so vile, this day shall gentle his condition, and gentlemen in England now in bed shall think themselves accursed they were not here and hold their manhoods cheap whilst any speaks that fought with us upon St. Crispin’s day”
Ne’er – never and whilst – while.
“Thou callest me a dog before thou hast a reason, but since I am a dog beware my fangs”
Thou – you, callest – called, and hast – had.
Nothing from your writing on your comments, whether you are a native speaker or not, suggests you would not be able to parse the text.
Maybe I’ll try later. My English vocabulary keeps improving, so I guess I’m already much better than when I tried it some ten or fifteen years ago. But I’m not that eager.Replies: @Dmitry, @Anon, @Philip Owen
“You call me a dog before you have a reason, but since I am a dog beware my fangs”Replies: @Lars Porsena
I am aware of thou and art and speaketh. But I ran into words I didn’t understand at all, or sentences where I looked up all words and still didn’t get it, or where there’s an explanation how some words had a different meaning back then, etc. I already read normal modern English at roughly half or a third of my Hungarian reading speed (though in Hungarian I’m considered a fast reader), and even if I understood everything Shakespeare would be roughly twice slower than other English texts. I’d just give it up.
Maybe I’ll try later. My English vocabulary keeps improving, so I guess I’m already much better than when I tried it some ten or fifteen years ago. But I’m not that eager.
My English is not perfect, but I can understand and find the text very interesting.
By the way, I can write notes in the commas of what I think this says.
"Two households, both alike in dignity [two families both of equal high class status],
In fair Verona, where we lay our scene,
From ancient grudge [they became enemies long ago] break to new mutiny [a new war will break out],
Where civil blood makes civil hands unclean [due to their war with each other, neither has hands without blood and crime, which dirties their civic duties - implication is whole civic life of Verona is undermined by this war between the families].
From forth the fatal loins of these two foes [children born from the two fatal families]
A pair of star-cross'd lovers take their life; [two ill-fated lovers will kill themselves]
Whose misadventured piteous overthrows [whose unfortunate rebellion]
Do with their death bury their parents' strife. [will end the war between their parents]
The fearful passage of their death-mark'd love, [the frightening story of their tragic/fatal romance]
And the continuance of their parents' rage, [and continued anger of the parents]
Which, but their children's end, nought could remove, [which while Romeo and Juliet are alive will not end, but peace between the families will only happen as result of their death]
Is now the two hours' traffic of our stage; [is now the topic of the next two hours - actors running off and on the stage]
The which if you with patient ears attend, [if you listen carefully]
What here shall miss, our toil shall strive to mend." [what is difficult to understand in the story - I think he means in terms of senselessness of the tragedy - the actors will work hard to make clear in their art]"
-------------
ACT I
PROLOGUE
Two households, both alike in dignity,
In fair Verona, where we lay our scene,
From ancient grudge break to new mutiny,
Where civil blood makes civil hands unclean.
From forth the fatal loins of these two foes
A pair of star-cross'd lovers take their life;
Whose misadventured piteous overthrows
Do with their death bury their parents' strife.
The fearful passage of their death-mark'd love,
And the continuance of their parents' rage,
Which, but their children's end, nought could remove,
Is now the two hours' traffic of our stage;
The which if you with patient ears attend,
What here shall miss, our toil shall strive to mend.
http://shakespeare.mit.edu/romeo_juliet/full.html
Shakespeare in general is not an easy read but not a particularly hard one either. (Browning is a hard read).
As for "Dante to an Italian", that's a laugh, I think.
I think “callest” and “hast” are actually present tense second person conjugated (the same conjugation as in German), so the sentence would be:
“You call me a dog before you have a reason, but since I am a dog beware my fangs”
Here is the whole of one of those parts above I quoted, probably my favorite Shakespeare excerpt ever, Julius Caesar, Act 3 Scene 1, right after the assassination of Caesar, the ultimate declaration of Taking The Ball and Going Home, where Mark Anthony basically declares war on the universe and a reality that would turn out this way for him:
ANTONY
O, pardon me, thou bleeding piece of earth,
That I am meek and gentle with these butchers!
Thou art the ruins of the noblest man
That ever livèd in the tide of times.
Woe to the hand that shed this costly blood!
Over thy wounds now do I prophesy—
Which, like dumb mouths, do ope their ruby lips
To beg the voice and utterance of my tongue—
A curse shall light upon the limbs of men.
Domestic fury and fierce civil strife
Shall cumber all the parts of Italy.
Blood and destruction shall be so in use,
And dreadful objects so familiar,
That mothers shall but smile when they behold
Their infants quartered with the hands of war,
All pity choked with custom of fell deeds,
And Caesar’s spirit, ranging for revenge,
With Ate by his side come hot from hell,
Shall in these confines with a monarch’s voice
Cry “Havoc!” and let slip the dogs of war,
That this foul deed shall smell above the earth
With carrion men, groaning for burial.
You can read it a bit faster if you take alot of it to be flowery and evocative and poetic, you don't have to quite understand all of it to get the image. To be honest, it's not quite obvious what "With Ate by his side come hot from hell" means entirely even if you speak English perfectly, why is Ate capitalized and what is this Ate by his side? A poetic reading is something like, a consumption or destruction urge by his side come back from hell for revenge? It's a bit open to interpret exactly what he means. I think that's enough, you can get the idea without catching the reference.
If you want to spend more time out of it you can google stuff like that and I just found this out myself:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/At%C3%AB
Apparently Ate is the Greek goddess of mischief, folly, and delusion and ruin.
I have just learned that but it does not really change my interpretation. Stuff like "That this foul deed shall smell above the earth With carrion men, groaning for burial." is a very fancy way of saying "I will cover the world with rotting corpses". But it is meant poetically, it paints a picture, it mentions the smell, rotting men, groaning (which their corpses probably would due to out-gassing and whatnot) for burial. It's evocative.
If you contrast with the so called 'modern' version of Shakespeare, to the extent they modernize it they usually do strip all the poetry and imagery out of it. You could go and modernize any modern or past poets the same way by simply stripping all the poetry out of their poems and trying to state them plainly. Instead of Tennyson's 'Half a league, half a league, half a league onward, all in the valley of Death rode the 600' it would just say '600 guys rode half a mile into a dangerous place where people were shooting at them. Then one of them yelled 'charge' and most of them got shot.' But that's not poetic but it reads much quicker.
With Shakespeare the whole point would be you have to enjoy it, or it would not be worth it. No one can claim reading Shakespeare will teach you world class philosophy, or physics, or accurate history. It was just entertainment. The biggest barrier is probably not that the language has changed but the type and style of story we enjoy has changed, it's half fiction drama, half poetry with (inaccurate) historical references. Homer's Iliad was poetry, the Norse Poetic Edda. Nowadays it would be weird for people to be using poems as a vehicle to tell stories. But Shakespeare's plays are all in Iambic pentameter so they are actually poems, it's not the way people normally spoke even back at that time, it's in a singsong verse.Replies: @Anon
Low cheekbones, kind of unrefined expression. You know when you see it (I mean West European peasant).
I’ve spent multiple months overall in Israel over my life. European peasant looking Jews are more common than you imagine, especially if you go in an upper class area of Israel (ironically), you see a lot of them, and their peasant look and behaviour is much more than in Europe (you know they have 0% aristocrat blood).
It’s also their manners and way of behaving.
(If you ever invited to the house of native Israelis, you are guaranteed they will all randomly shouting at each other, and eat with their hands, and from each other’s spoons.)
I’m in love this with culture and studying Hebrew for years, but most people are horrified – also it is the complete opposite of how I imagined Jews would be before I first started going there. I imagined they were a kind of sophisticated intellectual people.
It’s also their primitive facial expressions (which is not just for television, they actually are making faces like this).
The Arab Jews in Israel – which is actually the majority of the Jews in Israel (over 60%), also have different expressions of their own – more like this guy (it’s really a different culture, which you have to meet them to believe it). It’s probably actually more low-class than the native Arab culture (as the Arab Jews again, have likely 0% Arab aristocratic origin).
Maybe I’ll try later. My English vocabulary keeps improving, so I guess I’m already much better than when I tried it some ten or fifteen years ago. But I’m not that eager.Replies: @Dmitry, @Anon, @Philip Owen
It’s probably not your lack of English, but more just reading too fast.
My English is not perfect, but I can understand and find the text very interesting.
By the way, I can write notes in the commas of what I think this says.
“Two households, both alike in dignity [two families both of equal high class status],
In fair Verona, where we lay our scene,
From ancient grudge [they became enemies long ago] break to new mutiny [a new war will break out],
Where civil blood makes civil hands unclean [due to their war with each other, neither has hands without blood and crime, which dirties their civic duties – implication is whole civic life of Verona is undermined by this war between the families].
From forth the fatal loins of these two foes [children born from the two fatal families]
A pair of star-cross’d lovers take their life; [two ill-fated lovers will kill themselves]
Whose misadventured piteous overthrows [whose unfortunate rebellion]
Do with their death bury their parents’ strife. [will end the war between their parents]
The fearful passage of their death-mark’d love, [the frightening story of their tragic/fatal romance]
And the continuance of their parents’ rage, [and continued anger of the parents]
Which, but their children’s end, nought could remove, [which while Romeo and Juliet are alive will not end, but peace between the families will only happen as result of their death]
Is now the two hours’ traffic of our stage; [is now the topic of the next two hours – actors running off and on the stage]
The which if you with patient ears attend, [if you listen carefully]
What here shall miss, our toil shall strive to mend.” [what is difficult to understand in the story – I think he means in terms of senselessness of the tragedy – the actors will work hard to make clear in their art]”
————-
ACT I
PROLOGUE
Two households, both alike in dignity,
In fair Verona, where we lay our scene,
From ancient grudge break to new mutiny,
Where civil blood makes civil hands unclean.
From forth the fatal loins of these two foes
A pair of star-cross’d lovers take their life;
Whose misadventured piteous overthrows
Do with their death bury their parents’ strife.
The fearful passage of their death-mark’d love,
And the continuance of their parents’ rage,
Which, but their children’s end, nought could remove,
Is now the two hours’ traffic of our stage;
The which if you with patient ears attend,
What here shall miss, our toil shall strive to mend.
http://shakespeare.mit.edu/romeo_juliet/full.html
Funnily enough, I have an arab friend who only burns and can't tan.
It was an issue with the Jomon in Japan for anthropologists. There are some accounts that they were nearly black and others that they were quite white, with anthropologists speculating both that might have been from australoid groups occupying Japan prior to the Japanese and also that might have been caucasoid. Both these theories were ostensibly wrong, they are asian.
Apparently part of the issue though was lifestyle, the young ones would spend all day in a boat and turn quite dark. The children and the older ones who stayed out of the sun though were even paler than the Japanese.Replies: @Dmitry
Yes susceptibility to sunburn will correlate with paleness of skin. But the result is a scatter plot, which you can summarise with a straight line (but the actual reality is not straight line). Some pale people are much more tolerant to sun than others. And some will even be more tolerant to sun than less pale people than themselves (just a lower proportion of them than vice-versa).
I remember reading or being told about some American writer that no one had ever heard of (science fiction perhaps) who was very popular in Czechoslovakia in Soviet times, and the explanation turned out to be a brilliant translator.Replies: @LH, @Bies Podkrakowski
It could be American poet Robinson Jeffers (1887 – 1962), translated to Czech language by poet Kamil Bednář (1912 – 1972).
“You call me a dog before you have a reason, but since I am a dog beware my fangs”Replies: @Lars Porsena
I would agree with Dmitry that even apart from translation issues, Shakespeare while not terribly hard is not terribly quick to read either. It is in many places poetic, so it is meant to be perhaps a bit evocative and open to interpretation, and there is in terms of sentence structure and reading level a bit more complexity to the old style, I think they even use to speak slower back then. It does have to be read with a bit of rumination. It’s neither the slowest or the quickest thing you could read. To see it in a play, maybe they figured you wouldn’t want them to catch it all on one viewing so they would come back a few times. If it’s a drag and you don’t enjoy it then it’s probably not worth it.
Here is the whole of one of those parts above I quoted, probably my favorite Shakespeare excerpt ever, Julius Caesar, Act 3 Scene 1, right after the assassination of Caesar, the ultimate declaration of Taking The Ball and Going Home, where Mark Anthony basically declares war on the universe and a reality that would turn out this way for him:
ANTONY
O, pardon me, thou bleeding piece of earth,
That I am meek and gentle with these butchers!
Thou art the ruins of the noblest man
That ever livèd in the tide of times.
Woe to the hand that shed this costly blood!
Over thy wounds now do I prophesy—
Which, like dumb mouths, do ope their ruby lips
To beg the voice and utterance of my tongue—
A curse shall light upon the limbs of men.
Domestic fury and fierce civil strife
Shall cumber all the parts of Italy.
Blood and destruction shall be so in use,
And dreadful objects so familiar,
That mothers shall but smile when they behold
Their infants quartered with the hands of war,
All pity choked with custom of fell deeds,
And Caesar’s spirit, ranging for revenge,
With Ate by his side come hot from hell,
Shall in these confines with a monarch’s voice
Cry “Havoc!” and let slip the dogs of war,
That this foul deed shall smell above the earth
With carrion men, groaning for burial.
You can read it a bit faster if you take alot of it to be flowery and evocative and poetic, you don’t have to quite understand all of it to get the image. To be honest, it’s not quite obvious what “With Ate by his side come hot from hell” means entirely even if you speak English perfectly, why is Ate capitalized and what is this Ate by his side? A poetic reading is something like, a consumption or destruction urge by his side come back from hell for revenge? It’s a bit open to interpret exactly what he means. I think that’s enough, you can get the idea without catching the reference.
If you want to spend more time out of it you can google stuff like that and I just found this out myself:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/At%C3%AB
Apparently Ate is the Greek goddess of mischief, folly, and delusion and ruin.
I have just learned that but it does not really change my interpretation. Stuff like “That this foul deed shall smell above the earth With carrion men, groaning for burial.” is a very fancy way of saying “I will cover the world with rotting corpses”. But it is meant poetically, it paints a picture, it mentions the smell, rotting men, groaning (which their corpses probably would due to out-gassing and whatnot) for burial. It’s evocative.
If you contrast with the so called ‘modern’ version of Shakespeare, to the extent they modernize it they usually do strip all the poetry and imagery out of it. You could go and modernize any modern or past poets the same way by simply stripping all the poetry out of their poems and trying to state them plainly. Instead of Tennyson’s ‘Half a league, half a league, half a league onward, all in the valley of Death rode the 600’ it would just say ‘600 guys rode half a mile into a dangerous place where people were shooting at them. Then one of them yelled ‘charge’ and most of them got shot.’ But that’s not poetic but it reads much quicker.
With Shakespeare the whole point would be you have to enjoy it, or it would not be worth it. No one can claim reading Shakespeare will teach you world class philosophy, or physics, or accurate history. It was just entertainment. The biggest barrier is probably not that the language has changed but the type and style of story we enjoy has changed, it’s half fiction drama, half poetry with (inaccurate) historical references. Homer’s Iliad was poetry, the Norse Poetic Edda. Nowadays it would be weird for people to be using poems as a vehicle to tell stories. But Shakespeare’s plays are all in Iambic pentameter so they are actually poems, it’s not the way people normally spoke even back at that time, it’s in a singsong verse.
Maybe I’ll try later. My English vocabulary keeps improving, so I guess I’m already much better than when I tried it some ten or fifteen years ago. But I’m not that eager.Replies: @Dmitry, @Anon, @Philip Owen
What words? “Gentle his condition” was the only phrase I didn’t already know, and the meaning is obvious in context.
Shakespeare in general is not an easy read but not a particularly hard one either. (Browning is a hard read).
As for “Dante to an Italian”, that’s a laugh, I think.
Here is the whole of one of those parts above I quoted, probably my favorite Shakespeare excerpt ever, Julius Caesar, Act 3 Scene 1, right after the assassination of Caesar, the ultimate declaration of Taking The Ball and Going Home, where Mark Anthony basically declares war on the universe and a reality that would turn out this way for him:
ANTONY
O, pardon me, thou bleeding piece of earth,
That I am meek and gentle with these butchers!
Thou art the ruins of the noblest man
That ever livèd in the tide of times.
Woe to the hand that shed this costly blood!
Over thy wounds now do I prophesy—
Which, like dumb mouths, do ope their ruby lips
To beg the voice and utterance of my tongue—
A curse shall light upon the limbs of men.
Domestic fury and fierce civil strife
Shall cumber all the parts of Italy.
Blood and destruction shall be so in use,
And dreadful objects so familiar,
That mothers shall but smile when they behold
Their infants quartered with the hands of war,
All pity choked with custom of fell deeds,
And Caesar’s spirit, ranging for revenge,
With Ate by his side come hot from hell,
Shall in these confines with a monarch’s voice
Cry “Havoc!” and let slip the dogs of war,
That this foul deed shall smell above the earth
With carrion men, groaning for burial.
You can read it a bit faster if you take alot of it to be flowery and evocative and poetic, you don't have to quite understand all of it to get the image. To be honest, it's not quite obvious what "With Ate by his side come hot from hell" means entirely even if you speak English perfectly, why is Ate capitalized and what is this Ate by his side? A poetic reading is something like, a consumption or destruction urge by his side come back from hell for revenge? It's a bit open to interpret exactly what he means. I think that's enough, you can get the idea without catching the reference.
If you want to spend more time out of it you can google stuff like that and I just found this out myself:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/At%C3%AB
Apparently Ate is the Greek goddess of mischief, folly, and delusion and ruin.
I have just learned that but it does not really change my interpretation. Stuff like "That this foul deed shall smell above the earth With carrion men, groaning for burial." is a very fancy way of saying "I will cover the world with rotting corpses". But it is meant poetically, it paints a picture, it mentions the smell, rotting men, groaning (which their corpses probably would due to out-gassing and whatnot) for burial. It's evocative.
If you contrast with the so called 'modern' version of Shakespeare, to the extent they modernize it they usually do strip all the poetry and imagery out of it. You could go and modernize any modern or past poets the same way by simply stripping all the poetry out of their poems and trying to state them plainly. Instead of Tennyson's 'Half a league, half a league, half a league onward, all in the valley of Death rode the 600' it would just say '600 guys rode half a mile into a dangerous place where people were shooting at them. Then one of them yelled 'charge' and most of them got shot.' But that's not poetic but it reads much quicker.
With Shakespeare the whole point would be you have to enjoy it, or it would not be worth it. No one can claim reading Shakespeare will teach you world class philosophy, or physics, or accurate history. It was just entertainment. The biggest barrier is probably not that the language has changed but the type and style of story we enjoy has changed, it's half fiction drama, half poetry with (inaccurate) historical references. Homer's Iliad was poetry, the Norse Poetic Edda. Nowadays it would be weird for people to be using poems as a vehicle to tell stories. But Shakespeare's plays are all in Iambic pentameter so they are actually poems, it's not the way people normally spoke even back at that time, it's in a singsong verse.Replies: @Anon
Shakespeare’s country clowns often speak normal speech, not Iambic pentameter, which is not all that much easier to understand.
I think a better method is to compare how many people rated the films on Kinopoisk.
By that metric:
Tarkovsky. Andrei Rublyov: 29 thousand
Gayday. Ivan Vasilyevich Changes Profession: 322 thousand
Danelia. Don't Grieve: 5 thousand
Eisenstein. Aleksandr Nevsky: 9 thousand
More like nobody watches Danelia and Eisenstein, amirite?
Now let's compare those classics to a pathetic decade-old animated box-office failure with a 1.7/10 review score:
Наша Маша и Волшебный орех: 12 thousand
So... this makes it more significant than Eisenstein, right? Perhaps, except that people will still be watching Eisenstein decades from now long after that other travesty has been completely forgotten...
Other Tarkovsky films:
Ivan's Childhood: 20 thousand.
Solaris: 36 thousand.
Stalker: 51 thousand.
Mirror: 19 thousand.
So from the looks of it, Tarkovsky's only 10-20% as popular as the biggest Soviet comedy blockbusters like "Ivan Vasilyevich" (322 thousand), "Operation Y" (279 thousand), "Kidnapping, Caucasian Style" (228 thousand). On the other hand, his films match or exceed the popularity of Bondarchuk's "War and Peace" (19 thousand), the most expensive Soviet blockbuster film ever made.Replies: @Swedish Family, @melanf
Kinopoisk-site to search for rare films, this data is irrelevant.
Yandex search
Tarkovsky films:
Ivan’s Childhood: 33 thousand.
Andrey Rublev: 36 thousand. (you must enter Yandex in the search field «Тарковский Андрей Рублев»)
Nostalgia: 66 thousand results
The exceptions are:
Solaris: 274 thousand.
Stalker: 13 million.
Mirror: 15 million
However, Stalker is a series of books and computer games (not related to Tarkovsky)
Mirror is a film festival of the same name, Solaris is a book by Stanislav Lем. That is, these results are not related to Tarkovsky. If we evaluate Tarkovsky’s own achievements in Yandex, Tarkovsky’s films lose to popular Soviet films by about three orders of magnitude.
For example “amphibian Man”
– 61 million results in Yandex
This is easily seen in Russia – popular films are used as the source of memes, visuals, quotes,
etc. These quotes are clear to everyone (“Ja, ja, Kemska volost!”- meme from “Ivan Vasilyevich” 1 million results in Yandex; “кто с мечом к нам придет от меча и погибнет” – meme from “Alexander Nevsky” 72 million results in Yandex).
On the contrary for 99% of the population of Russian, Tarkovsky’s films unknown and uninteresting. When (rarely) Tarkovsky’s films are shown on TV, the average Russian viewer switches the TV.
There is a sect of “intellegencia” in which Tarkovsky is the object of worship. When this sect dies out, Tarkovsky will finally turn into a dead fossil known only to film historians.
All things that require quiet contemplation and meditative states, are becoming anathema in the 21st century.
But it is not perhaps all gloomy. In the future, when people are finally genetically engineered for longer attention spans - perhaps in 2130 - then the re-releases of Tarkovsky, and of classic Japanese films like Imamura or Ozu - will become international bestsellers. With this context, we can also imagine that not just the more contemplative forms of art, will enjoy a renaissance, but also that people will start to emulate traditional customs like Japanese tea ceremony.
To sum up, and throwing in Елки for comparison, we have:
Человек-амфибия
Yandex hits: 61 million (I take your word for it)
Kinopoisk ratings: 15,574
RuTracker downloads: around 100,000
Андрей Рублев
Yandex hits: 36,000 (again, taking your word for it)
Kinopoisk ratings: 29,504
RuTracker downloads: around 100,000
Елки
Yandex hits: [hard to say]
Kinopoisk ratings: 96,684 ratings
RuTracker downloads: around 200,000
I rest my case.
Also, the whole idea of measuring achievement by counting celebrity names is ridiculous. The anonymous dude who invented the watermill contributed a million times more to human accomplishment than any given Arabian poet.Replies: @melanf, @JerseyJeffersonian
Not to forget the introduction of an efficient horse collar between the 10th and 12th centuries that permitted utilizing powerful horses to pull the weight of plows suitable for tilling the heavier soils of northern Europe, thereby increasing the crop yields, and permitting the expansion of arable lands. Getting away from mere subsistence farming to farming with a surplus likely assisted in the rise of towns, trade, and more sophisticated craft activities since the town dwellers were liberated from the toil of providing their own food. Previously, only small segments of the population, lords and knights, were able to free ride on the shoulders of the peasants/serfs and escape the onerous necessity to participate in sustenance agriculture. Hence the increasing social friction between the feudal elites and the townspeople, as in absolute numbers, townspeople began to become a real force in Europe, a population whose interests were not reducible any longer to those of feudal lords.
Technology at a really fundamental level being powerfully influential on European society’s prospects.
Serfs working for lords or the local clergy were not very productive. They delivered their obligations and their own modest wants from their strip farms. They typically used oxen. The surplus was produced on monastic estates. These were the big horse users. They had big fields with excellent crop rotation and yields not bettered before the 1920's. They had the land to use heavy horses and heavy ploughs. Towns, Cities (London and Paris by boat) and armies were their market. The monks collected people. Single mothers, the ill, the lame, sturdy beggars and so on to work their huge properties.
But the works of such Hellenistic lights as Hero and Diophantus were certainly groundbreaking within their circles, the impact was largely confined to those circles, and not more broadly, societally or economically influential. So what if the rudimentary principles of a steam engine were made available by Hero? In a slavery-based economy there was no perceived advantage to a labor-saving technology that would lessen the economic value of owning slaves. In the Middle Ages, such technologies were not left to molder; their value was seized upon and through diffusion became revolutionary in their impacts.
You mean he’s going to say the League of Women Voters made them do it?
Maybe I’ll try later. My English vocabulary keeps improving, so I guess I’m already much better than when I tried it some ten or fifteen years ago. But I’m not that eager.Replies: @Dmitry, @Anon, @Philip Owen
Shakespeare made up words. Some took, some didn’t.
Technology at a really fundamental level being powerfully influential on European society's prospects.Replies: @Philip Owen
And yes, the Romans had water mills but did not install them in every village with a stream or a windmill instead.
Serfs working for lords or the local clergy were not very productive. They delivered their obligations and their own modest wants from their strip farms. They typically used oxen. The surplus was produced on monastic estates. These were the big horse users. They had big fields with excellent crop rotation and yields not bettered before the 1920’s. They had the land to use heavy horses and heavy ploughs. Towns, Cities (London and Paris by boat) and armies were their market. The monks collected people. Single mothers, the ill, the lame, sturdy beggars and so on to work their huge properties.
I remember reading or being told about some American writer that no one had ever heard of (science fiction perhaps) who was very popular in Czechoslovakia in Soviet times, and the explanation turned out to be a brilliant translator.Replies: @LH, @Bies Podkrakowski
Robert Silverberg?
Tarkovsky films:
Ivan's Childhood: 33 thousand.
Andrey Rublev: 36 thousand. (you must enter Yandex in the search field «Тарковский Андрей Рублев»)
Nostalgia: 66 thousand resultsThe exceptions are:
Solaris: 274 thousand.
Stalker: 13 million.
Mirror: 15 millionHowever, Stalker is a series of books and computer games (not related to Tarkovsky)
http://stalkerportaal.ru/_pu/0/00331247.jpgMirror is a film festival of the same name, Solaris is a book by Stanislav Lем. That is, these results are not related to Tarkovsky. If we evaluate Tarkovsky's own achievements in Yandex, Tarkovsky's films lose to popular Soviet films by about three orders of magnitude.
For example "amphibian Man"
http://cdn.fishki.net/upload/post/201412/19/1356651/1_118669.jpg - 61 million results in YandexThis is easily seen in Russia – popular films are used as the source of memes, visuals, quotes, http://alive-ua.com/uploads/posts/2013-01/1357247702_33.jpg
etc. These quotes are clear to everyone ("Ja, ja, Kemska volost!"- meme from "Ivan Vasilyevich" 1 million results in Yandex; "кто с мечом к нам придет от меча и погибнет" - meme from "Alexander Nevsky" 72 million results in Yandex).
On the contrary for 99% of the population of Russian, Tarkovsky's films unknown and uninteresting. When (rarely) Tarkovsky's films are shown on TV, the average Russian viewer switches the TV.
There is a sect of "intellegencia" in which Tarkovsky is the object of worship. When this sect dies out, Tarkovsky will finally turn into a dead fossil known only to film historians.Replies: @Dmitry, @Swedish Family
Well people like my parents do not write on the internet, and do not show in search results. But they have a very different view. People are developing shorter attention spans every year and our generation is not yet the worst. The people that are teenagers now, that grow up on instagram and whatsapp. will be even worse than our generation.
All things that require quiet contemplation and meditative states, are becoming anathema in the 21st century.
But it is not perhaps all gloomy. In the future, when people are finally genetically engineered for longer attention spans – perhaps in 2130 – then the re-releases of Tarkovsky, and of classic Japanese films like Imamura or Ozu – will become international bestsellers. With this context, we can also imagine that not just the more contemplative forms of art, will enjoy a renaissance, but also that people will start to emulate traditional customs like Japanese tea ceremony.
Tarkovsky films:
Ivan's Childhood: 33 thousand.
Andrey Rublev: 36 thousand. (you must enter Yandex in the search field «Тарковский Андрей Рублев»)
Nostalgia: 66 thousand resultsThe exceptions are:
Solaris: 274 thousand.
Stalker: 13 million.
Mirror: 15 millionHowever, Stalker is a series of books and computer games (not related to Tarkovsky)
http://stalkerportaal.ru/_pu/0/00331247.jpgMirror is a film festival of the same name, Solaris is a book by Stanislav Lем. That is, these results are not related to Tarkovsky. If we evaluate Tarkovsky's own achievements in Yandex, Tarkovsky's films lose to popular Soviet films by about three orders of magnitude.
For example "amphibian Man"
http://cdn.fishki.net/upload/post/201412/19/1356651/1_118669.jpg - 61 million results in YandexThis is easily seen in Russia – popular films are used as the source of memes, visuals, quotes, http://alive-ua.com/uploads/posts/2013-01/1357247702_33.jpg
etc. These quotes are clear to everyone ("Ja, ja, Kemska volost!"- meme from "Ivan Vasilyevich" 1 million results in Yandex; "кто с мечом к нам придет от меча и погибнет" - meme from "Alexander Nevsky" 72 million results in Yandex).
On the contrary for 99% of the population of Russian, Tarkovsky's films unknown and uninteresting. When (rarely) Tarkovsky's films are shown on TV, the average Russian viewer switches the TV.
There is a sect of "intellegencia" in which Tarkovsky is the object of worship. When this sect dies out, Tarkovsky will finally turn into a dead fossil known only to film historians.Replies: @Dmitry, @Swedish Family
Not being Russian, it’s tricky for me to comment on this statement. What I do know is that (1) Kinopoisk has an Alexa rank of 15 among Russian websites (https://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/kinopoisk.ru), which suggests that it’s far more than a tool for looking up rare films, and (2) that recent films receive far more rankings than older films (as I showed in my previous post), and (3) that lowbrow TV series often receive plenty of rankings and high average scores. Put together, all this suggests to my mind that your ideas about the site amount to little more than one man’s opinion. (I have some anecdata to share myself: a Ukrainian bimbo I know uses Kinopoisk to look up here favorite soap-opera actresses.)
This confounded intelligentsia wouldn’t have spread its tentacles all the way to RuTracker, would it? I see around 100,000 downloads for “Человек-амфибия,” about the same for “Андрей Рублев,” and more than double that for Сталкер (only including hits for the film from 1979).
To sum up, and throwing in Елки for comparison, we have:
Человек-амфибия
Yandex hits: 61 million (I take your word for it)
Kinopoisk ratings: 15,574
RuTracker downloads: around 100,000
Андрей Рублев
Yandex hits: 36,000 (again, taking your word for it)
Kinopoisk ratings: 29,504
RuTracker downloads: around 100,000
Елки
Yandex hits: [hard to say]
Kinopoisk ratings: 96,684 ratings
RuTracker downloads: around 200,000
I rest my case.
Certainly not. None of his books was translated and published before 1990’s, and I am not aware him being notably popular among the Czechs.