Recent comments in /f/history

Sgt_Colon t1_ix2fyt5 wrote

Reply to comment by getBusyChild in Simple/Short/Silly History Questions Saturday! by AutoModerator

Both had steel. The issue with steel is that creating it via a bloomery furnace is a finicky process on top of what was already finicky process just to produce a bloom of iron, enough that even during the (central) medieval when it was more common, the price of steel was four times that of iron, being able to outfit multiple legions with steel equipment was an expensive process such that making do with relatively inferior wrought iron for most of the gear was a more pragmatic choice that did little to hinder effectiveness.

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Sgt_Colon t1_ix2f4jr wrote

Reply to comment by mOdSolCrow in Simple/Short/Silly History Questions Saturday! by AutoModerator

Timber wasn't that valuable, especially as the cost of moving it from North America to Europe would have blow its price out of all reasonable proportion. Timber was valuable to those living in Greenland due to the scarcity of trees there, but much of the rest of Europe instead used managed woodlands to provide the timber they needed.

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Sgt_Colon t1_ix2etai wrote

Reply to comment by Geisselreiter in Simple/Short/Silly History Questions Saturday! by AutoModerator

Certain deities correspond to certain areas with some degree of overlap, if you wanted things to go according to plan they needed to be appeased, you might not like them (Ares wasn't thought of fondly by the Greeks) but they all needed to be paid off nevertheless. Say you were a ship's captain about to leave port, obviously you are going to give an offering to Poseidon an offering as he's god of the seas, but because you want a favourable wind, you're going to give one to Zeus too, because if you neglected either one you'd face difficulty from that area even if you were good with other one(s).

If you want, there's a series of blog posts from a lecturer at the university of North Carolina that goes into the nuts and bolts of polytheism and how dealing with multiple gods worked.

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