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I went to that museum and it was awesome. IIRC there were some special circumstances that allowed the ship to be preserved extremely well (something about the salt concentration, water temperature, maybe the kind of wood used as well).

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She was carying one million bags of the best Sligo Rags, two million barrels of stone, three million sides of old blind horses hides and four million barrels of bones.

Now that I think about it, the answer might be simpler than I thought. Many primitive societies did not have written languages, so there would be a few people who spent their time memorizing long stories and other things word for word. If someone were disabled and couldn't hunt or farm, then it was only natural that they would fill that role. To the extent that that person was perceived as more knowledgable than others, people would take their advice on spiritual matters as well.

Almost correct.

My guess is it's bronze. The item seems to be a cannon. While in 1672, iron cannons were commonplace, they stopped manufacturing bronze cannons at least a century ago. But ships cannons got reused extensively since they were so expensive. So it's quite possible that a 200 year old bronze cannon stands next to a 1 year old iron one.

The Vasa is an excellent example of raising and preserving this kind of ship. She sunk in 1628 and is accepting visitors today.

Hi!

It looks like you are talking about the book Guns, Germs, and Steel by Jared Diamond.

The book over the past years has become rather popular, which is hardly surprising since it is a good and entertaining read. It has reached the point that for some people it has sort of reached the status of gospel. On /r/history we noticed a trend where every time a question was asked that has even the slightest relation to the book a dozen or so people would jump in and recommend the book. Which in the context of history is a bit problematic and the reason this reply was written.

Why it is problematic can be broken down into two reasons:

1. In academic history there isn't such thing as one definitive authority or work on things. There are often others who research the same subjects and people that dive into work of others to build on it or to see if it indeed holds up. This being critical of your sources and not relying on one source is actually a very important skill in studying history often lacking when dozens of people just spam the same work over and over again as a definite guide and answer to "everything".
2. There are a good amount of modern historians and anthropologists who are quite critical of Guns, Germs, and Steel and there are some very real issues with Diamond's work. These issues are often overlooked or not noticed by the people reading his book. Which is understandable, given the fact that for many it will be their first exposure to the subject. Considering the popularity of the book it is also the reason that we felt it was needed to create this response.

In an ideal world, every time the book was posted in /r/history, it would be accompanied by critical notes and other works covering the same subject. Lacking that a dozen other people would quickly respond and do the same. But simply put, that isn't always going to happen and as a result, we have created this response so people can be made aware of these things. Does this mean that the /r/history mods hate the book or Diamond himself? No, if that was the case, we would simply instruct the bot to remove every mention of it. This is just an attempt to bring some balance to a conversation that in popular history had become a bit unbalanced. It should also be noted that being critical of someone's work isn't the same as outright dismissing it. Historians are always critical of any work they examine, that is part of their core skill set and key in doing good research.

Below you'll find a list of other works covering much of the same subject. Further below you'll find an explanation of why many historians and anthropologists are critical of Diamonds work.

Other works covering the same and similar subjects.

• Seven Myths of the Spanish Conquest

• 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus

• Last Days of the Inca

• Epidemics and Enslavement: Biological Catastrophe in the Native Southeast, 1492-1715

• The Great Divergence

• Why the West Rules for Now

• Ecological Imperialism: The Biological Expansion of Europe, 900-1900

Criticism of Guns, Germs, and Steel

Many historians and anthropologists believe Diamond plays fast and loose with history by generalizing highly complex topics to provide an ecological/geographical determinist view of human history. There is a reason historians avoid grand theories of human history: those "just so stories" don't adequately explain human history. It's true however that it is an entertaining introductory text that forces people to look at world history from a different vantage point. That being said, Diamond writes a rather oversimplified narrative that seemingly ignores the human element of history.

Cherry-picked data while ignoring the complexity of issues

In his chapter "Lethal Gift of Livestock" on the origin of human crowd infections he picks 5 pathogens that best support his idea of domestic origins. However, when diving into the genetic and historic data, only two pathogens (maybe influenza and most likely measles) could possibly have jumped to humans through domestication. The majority were already a part of the human disease load before the origin of agriculture, domestication, and sedentary population centers. This is an example of Diamond ignoring the evidence that didn't support his theory to explain conquest via disease spread to immunologically naive Native Americas.

A similar case of cherry-picking history is seen when discussing the conquest of the Inca.

> Pizarro's military advantages lay in the Spaniards' steel swords and other weapons, steel armor, guns, and horses... Such imbalances of equipment were decisive in innumerable other confrontations of Europeans with Native Americans and other peoples. The sole Native Americans able to resist European conquest for many centuries were those tribes that reduced the military disparity by acquiring and mastering both guns and horses.

This is a very broad generalization that effectively makes it false. Conquest was not a simple matter of conquering a people, raising a Spanish flag, and calling "game over." Conquest was a constant process of negotiation, accommodation, and rebellion played out through the ebbs and flows of power over the course of centuries. Some Yucatan Maya city-states maintained independence for two hundred years after contact, were "conquered", and then immediately rebelled again. The Pueblos along the Rio Grande revolted in 1680, dislodged the Spanish for a decade, and instigated unrest that threatened the survival of the entire northern edge of the empire for decades to come. Technological "advantage", in this case guns and steel, did not automatically equate to battlefield success in the face of resistance, rough terrain and vastly superior numbers. The story was far more nuanced, and conquest was never a cut and dry issue, which in the book is not really touched upon. In the book it seems to be case of the Inka being conquered when Pizarro says they were conquered.

Uncritical examining of the historical record surrounding conquest

Being critical of the sources you come across and being aware of their context, biases and agendas is a core skill of any historian.

Pizarro, Cortez and other conquistadores were biased authors who wrote for the sole purpose of supporting/justifying their claim on the territory, riches and peoples they subdued. To do so they elaborated their own sufferings, bravery, and outstanding deeds, while minimizing the work of native allies, pure dumb luck, and good timing. If you only read their accounts you walk away thinking a handful of adventurers conquered an empire thanks to guns and steel and a smattering of germs. No historian in the last half century would be so naive to argue this generalized view of conquest, but European technological supremacy is one keystone to Diamond's thesis so he presents conquest at the hands of a handful of adventurers.

The construction of the arguments for GG&S paints Native Americans specifically, and the colonized world in general, as categorically one step behind.

To believe the narrative you need to view Native Americans as somehow naive, unable to understand Spanish motivations and desires, unable react to new weapons/military tactics, unwilling to accommodate to a changing political landscape, incapable of mounting resistance once conquered, too stupid to invent the key technological advances used against them, and doomed to die because they failed to build cities, domesticate animals and thereby acquire infectious organisms. This while they often did fare much better as suggested in the book (and the sources it tends to cite). They often did mount successful resistance, were quick to adapt to new military technologies, build sprawling citiest and much more. When viewed through this lens, we hope you can see why so many historians and anthropologists are livid that a popular writer is perpetuating a false interpretation of history while minimizing the agency of entire continents full of people.

Further reading

If you are interested in reading more about what others think of Diamon's book you can give these resources a go:

• /r/askHistorians section in their FAQ about GG&S
• Jim Blaut on Jared Diamond

I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please contact the moderators of this subreddit if you have any questions or concerns.

Not sure if this is the right place to ask, but I would like to ask if there are any pop history books like Diamond's Gun, Germs, and Steel or Tuchman's The Guns of August or maybe something like Kissinger's On China. These were entertaining as well as informative. I think something good for the lay reader.

Then how did they raise the Mary Rose? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Rose

It's probably not written down because there was no standard. Hoplites trained themselves if they even did that much. Underhand or overhand? Depends on what they were more comfortable with. What they did at the front line? Probably a bit of standoff fighting techniques combined with tactical repositioning, maybe with cavalry, something like what you see in the opening of the Bollywood film Panipat. Though obviously we have no proof and every battle was different but are you really about to run head first into a bunch of dudes with swords? Seems pretty obvious to me that no, not even in a battle would people be that stupid.

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https://www.dsm.museum/en/exhibition/exhibitions/bremen-cog

For anyone interested in similar topics, this is a short museum page about a 1380s Hansa cog found in the Weser river discovered in 1962. It took about 40 years to preserve it enough to be able to present it to the public.

I think that there is a copper object because some green metal is visibal

But in my post I give the text.

> # Quacks

>Another trap set is called an "Anatomical Museum." The anatomical part of the exhibition consists chiefly of models and figures calculated to excite the passions to the highest pitch. At stated intervals the proprietor, who is always a "doctor," and by preference a German, delivers lectures on the effects of masturbation, in which he resorts to every device to excite the fears and exaggerate the symptoms of his hearers, who are mostly young men and boys. Thus he prepares his victim, and when he once gets him within his clutches, he does not let him go until he has robbed him of his last dollar.

And argue he's basically just doing a lampoon. He literally says ...lectures on the effects of masturbation, in which he resorts to every device to excite the fears and exaggerate the symptoms of his hearers, who are mostly young men and boys. Thus he prepares his victim, and when he once gets him within his clutches, he does not let him go until he has robbed him of his last dollar.

The citation source for your quote is this. > 59. “Degeneration of the Anglo Saxon Race,” Modern Medicine 10, no. 2 (1901): 44.

And I can't find anything in there about masturbation.

https://i.imgur.com/h5kUD5g.png

The effort to promote circumcision was probably much larger than Kellog himself and doesn't seem to have accounted for the fact that the poverty in which many people were forced to live in Kellog's time was the cause of bad hygenie, not necessarily the moral character of the menthemselves. Even in the Sixties its medical value was being misrepresented by doctors to mothers..

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The Mary Rose was raised in the early 80's. I remember watching it live on tv.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Rose

Its the Vasa, a Swedish warship from 1626. The ship sunk after sailing 1300 meter.

vasa

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Don't forget, it has cost over £50 million to preserve The Mary Rose so far. And it will continue to cost a lot to keep the preservation up. And remember £1 million in 1981 money is almost £3.5 million now.

Saying "we can just preserve it" is a lot easier than actually preserving it.

From what I understand, Ireland had representation in the British parliament before becoming independent. Would I be correct in guessing that those MPs were wealthy protestants? Were there any Catholic MPs? Did Ireland have any seats in the House of Lords?