"Look at all those nails on the ground in there, better not chance it"-grave robber

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Nothing to see here. Just move along…

(continues to play backgammon and drink bourbon with Civil War ghosts)

Except in America. Wait. Nvm.

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Couldn't help but notice you didn't exactly answer the question...

Why are you hoarding the ghosts?

Hominids are not equal to humans. Hominids include different australopithecus in older classification and gorillas, chimpanzee and orangutans in more recent classification.

Given they sincerely believed in witchcraft or flock of birds showing will of the god with it's fly path, I think that we can be pretty sure that it was not just annoying behavior that they feared.

Supranatural was accepted fact of every day life.

Makes me wonder why they didn't find anything during the initial construction of the Aldi or the roads around it. Surely they should have come across something. I wonder how many historical sites are never uncovered because builders literally choose to bury it to avoid their projects being delayed or cancelled.

And it is quite literally the only cool thing about Gloucester lol.

Sorry if you get two notifications, hit send too soon...

Yes, correct, the ram was not primarily used as a boarding device. But other boarding devices did exist that were primarily used for that purpose well before the First Punic War.

Polybius speaks up the beauty of the corvus, it plays a major role in a couple of battles, and then disappears very quickly, it's a bit of an enigma. Though we need to keep in mind that Polybius wasn't even born until 67 years or so after the First Punic War started, and not in Rome until about 95 years after. There's zero expectation that he's going to know the exact actions occurring during each naval battle (and this is the case for most naval battles in antiquity), but he can create a really good narrative. His objective is, after all, to talk about how Rome became the greatest power. He states this outright in his work so it's not exactly some hidden bias.

He also creates this dichotomy of where Rome is apparently only entering the sea for the first time at the start of this war, but also reportedly had naval treaties with Carthage dating back to the start of the Republic. As it is written, it doesn't make much sense. Perhaps he's speaking of Rome as more of a unified state, perhaps, but this story does match similarly to what other Greek historians did with navies (Herodotus and Athens for example). We definitely know there's more going on there though, and from the 70s onward we really start to question Polybius on this. But it wouldn't really be until with Steinby throwing down the gauntlet to challenge historians in 2007, and it picking up steam from about 2017 onwards with Harris and others that we started to really try and figure out what was going on if not what Polybius was describing. Projects like the Egadi's Island project and studies on iconography have helped to slowly morph our understanding but there's still a lot of unknowns; the evidence for this era was just not great. I know there's a few projects in the works at the moment that should hopefully make things a bit more clear though, but cannot comment too much as they are still unpublished.

As for the corvus: Campbell argues it was a grappling hook (he wasn't the first but he's the only one that comes to mind right now), and de Souza and others have discussed how similar hooks were called corvii in later Roman works but long after. I do think Lazenby is correct to say we need to be careful with these later named tools, but there's still plenty of reason to question whether it was a grappling hook in these earlier instances as we know they are using these in Sicily and obvious Sicily has a large impact on seafaring in the region. Polybius described some other siege weaponry almost exactly like he described the corvus later in his work, this may show where some of the inspiration for how he imagined the corvus came from.

This is not to say that we need to bin Polybius, again there's not a lot of evidence from the period and Polybius is incredibly important to our understanding of this period. But we do need to be a bit careful and not take everything he says as gospel. As stated before, Wallinga's work on the corvus and investigating Polybius from a scientific standpoint was a good step forward as well, but the era was still dominated by traditionalists and for the longest time Polybius was gospel.

Writing this quickly on my phone so hopefully not too chaotic, excuse any errors.

If you want a really detailed account, I'd recommend the British History Podcast (be warned, though, Jamie is now at episode 414, and has just reached the Norman conquest in 1066, so there's a lot of detail and probably still a few decades to go until he reaches the 20th century)

That would have been really cool if there where interesting things happening but it was just a regular, old house.

I live in ljubljana, which used to be an old roman town many years ago.

Half a city is built on roman remains, which means that every construction project will be delayed for many months. Major road closed for a few weeks to replace the sewer pipes below it? Nope, three+ months of archeologists with brushes looking at stones first. Was the road and the pipes replaced 20, 30 years ago? Yep. And 30 years before that? Also yep. Did they brush every stone back then? Yes they did. Will they do it again? Sure.

I'm not racist but that sounds like a superior race if you ask me

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Well it depends on a lot of factors. For roman mosaics they were an expression of wealth, with wealthier individuals having both more of them and better quality ones. It's estimated that about 2000 were made in just the UK, of which 150 have been found. They're also difficult to move, as it's an entire concrete floor with the tiny coloured tiles stuck into it.

Was it haunted?

>Oxford Archaeology said that following consultations with Historic England and Milton Keynes Council, the mosaic has been preserved in situ.

>It means materials have been placed over the brickwork to protect it, to allow construction to continue without causing damage.

I don't know this was even an option. But makes sense. I wonder how long until it's lost then rediscovered.

In Chester there used to be a Spud-U-Like where you could just go downstairs and see a roman spa! Not signposted or anything but it was part of a roman history trail.

I've never disliked Tim Key before.

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Same with here in Australia. The coolest artefacts i've seen are glass spearheads made from bottles that convicts/explorers (I assume) threw away.

For more info you will need to track down books, podcasts or videos. I'm sorry but I don't have anything specific to recommend on England.

Why did a lot of people invade England? Actually England is nothing special. Before the year 1000 the history of Europe is the history of massive invasions. For example France: Celts took over the local people (we don't know anything about them) in 700 BC (and the local people probably took over other people before), the Romans came around 50 BC, then a small number of Germans (called the Franks) took it over around 500... Europe before the year 1000 had a lot of migrations and Invasions. It was just part of the local scene. Why it stopped is complicated but a theory is that when countries became stronger it became a lot more difficult to take over a place and so vast migrations stopped. Also those migrations/invasions were often due to a lack of resources which can be prevented by stronger trade network: if you can buy food elsewhere you don't need to leave your country. And this wasn't true just for Europe: in America, Africa, Asia, you see vast migrations throughout the ages.

For what remains of theses culture... depends where you are. In Wales Celtic culture (in the form of the Welsh language, spoken by 18% of the population of Wales) is still very present. In other places? Not really. Outside of places names it's very difficult to see. This video is interesting on that subject (also it's funny). Those cultures haven't been relevant in a thousand years, so outside of the occasional town name, there isn't really anything.

>Am I understanding you right, 800 Scandinavias (thanks for the correction about Vikins!) people were enough to attack and settle down?

My bad! I meant that in the year 800 several thousands of Scandinavians took over eastern England. They still weren't a lot of them, they exploited rivalries between Anglo-Saxons to succeed.