Chariots

[katmai]

Keep your damn dirty indo-european languages away from me.

What are you going to do, swear at me in Nahuatl?

I can if you want, but i was talking Euskara, ya dumbass

[Razgovory]

 

[jimmy olsen]

Languages are very closely related to culture in this period.  Most of the oldest Indo-Europeans ethnoyms are based on the ability to perform the correct sacrifices to the various Gods, and maintaining the classic Indo-European class structure.  The Proto-Indo-Europeans would franchise out across the steppe, taking on traits of conquered peoples along the way. 

What was that? And how do we know?

[Razgovory]

My guess is he's going on about the Triparte division theory.  Worker, Priest, Warrior.

[Iormlund]

Okay, it was you.  Thanks.  I think large shields existed in 8th century.  They certainly did after.  Romans were keen on large body shields.  I suspect that Ajax's shield is large because Ajax as large.  It's sort of a reflection of him.  Like the finely made shield of Achilles or the Bow of Odysseus.

There are some things indicative of Mycenaean times that are described by Homer, such as the helmet of Odysseus.  I don't think this means that Homer is giving an accurate account of a battle.  For instance, I doubt there was a man named Achilles who got in a fight with a river.

I'm not saying Homer should be taken literally.

Much of the poems was added along the way, during several hundred years. But some stuff is clearly older. That shield or the helmet are just examples. Another is the mere presence of chariots themselves, which were common in Bronze Age warfare, but not at all during the Dark Ages.

[Queequeg]

Languages are very closely related to culture in this period.  Most of the oldest Indo-Europeans ethnoyms are based on the ability to perform the correct sacrifices to the various Gods, and maintaining the classic Indo-European class structure.  The Proto-Indo-Europeans would franchise out across the steppe, taking on traits of conquered peoples along the way. 

What was that? And how do we know?

By burial it is possible to acknowledge a warrior caste, and the sheer complexity of the sacrifices and religious rights required a priest caste, with a likely office of king.  If it sounds like Dark Age Europe, that's because it is pretty close at least in the outline. 

[Iormlund]

Languages are very closely related to culture in this period.  Most of the oldest Indo-Europeans ethnoyms are based on the ability to perform the correct sacrifices to the various Gods, and maintaining the classic Indo-European class structure.  The Proto-Indo-Europeans would franchise out across the steppe, taking on traits of conquered peoples along the way. 

What was that? And how do we know?

By analyzing words. You can deduce when a concept took root by looking at which languages share common words and which do not. You can also reconstruct religion and other societal structures studying language.
Then you attempt to match this with archeological and genetic evidence.

[crazy canuck]

Okay, it was you.  Thanks.  I think large shields existed in 8th century.  They certainly did after.  Romans were keen on large body shields.  I suspect that Ajax's shield is large because Ajax as large.  It's sort of a reflection of him.  Like the finely made shield of Achilles or the Bow of Odysseus.

There are some things indicative of Mycenaean times that are described by Homer, such as the helmet of Odysseus.  I don't think this means that Homer is giving an accurate account of a battle.  For instance, I doubt there was a man named Achilles who got in a fight with a river.

I'm not saying Homer should be taken literally.

Much of the poems was added along the way, during several hundred years. But some stuff is clearly older. That shield or the helmet are just examples. Another is the mere presence of chariots themselves, which were common in Bronze Age warfare, but not at all during the Dark Ages.

In addition the descriptions of the armour worn has been confirmed through archeological finds.  the Iliad didnt get everything historically accurate of course.  But the bits about the arms and armour and how the chariots were used (to get back on topic) appear to have been memories of warefare passed down in the oral tradition.

[Razgovory]

Have your read about the work that Milman Parry did with Serbian oral poets?  They don't memorize a story but thousands or formalistic expressions that fit the meter.  The poet has a general idea of the story he wants to tell and combines two or three of these expressions together to get the line.  In this way the poem sort of writes itself and the poet can think about the next line before he finishes uttering the expression of the previous line.  It's thought that Homer worked the same way.  These expressions may be in the catalog of poets for hundreds of years.  So an expression from several hundred years ago my be combined with one the poet made up himself or has only been in the poetic community for fifty years.  The result is that the poems are very flexible, and change quite a bit.  For instance a poem was told an incident in WWII (which wasn't very long ago when it was recorded), but didn't resemble much the actual incident.  The poet filled it mostly with standard stock characters.  This is probably how most pre-literate oral poetry was conceived.  For example the Song of Roland which was composed in a much shorter period of time after the actual battle it lionizes and misidentifies one of the sides.  Christian Basques are replaced by idol worshiping Muslims.

[Razgovory]

Languages are very closely related to culture in this period.  Most of the oldest Indo-Europeans ethnoyms are based on the ability to perform the correct sacrifices to the various Gods, and maintaining the classic Indo-European class structure.  The Proto-Indo-Europeans would franchise out across the steppe, taking on traits of conquered peoples along the way. 

What was that? And how do we know?

By burial it is possible to acknowledge a warrior caste, and the sheer complexity of the sacrifices and religious rights required a priest caste, with a likely office of king.  If it sounds like Dark Age Europe, that's because it is pretty close at least in the outline.

I don't think professional priests are unique to Indo-Europeans.

[Queequeg]

Languages are very closely related to culture in this period.  Most of the oldest Indo-Europeans ethnoyms are based on the ability to perform the correct sacrifices to the various Gods, and maintaining the classic Indo-European class structure.  The Proto-Indo-Europeans would franchise out across the steppe, taking on traits of conquered peoples along the way. 

What was that? And how do we know?

By burial it is possible to acknowledge a warrior caste, and the sheer complexity of the sacrifices and religious rights required a priest caste, with a likely office of king.  If it sounds like Dark Age Europe, that's because it is pretty close at least in the outline.

I don't think professional priests are unique to Indo-Europeans.

Obviously not.

[Razgovory]

Well neither are warriors, so I'm not sure what distinguishs this class structure from any other one.

[Viking]

An example is the description of Ajax's shield. While Homer usually describes weaponry as it would have been during his own time, he mentions that this particular shield was huge, made like a tower. This indeed fits archeological evidence of the Mycenean period when such devices where commonly used.

This is quite possibly due to that particular phrase being particularly evocative in the oral tradition wen homer recieves it from traidition and codifies it. The memorable favorite phrases tend to remain unchanged in the oral transmission, while much of the rest gets changed and modified. The meter, rhyme and alliteration are used as memory aids and the skald or poet's main skill is memory and presentation. The poet might forget a phrase here or there and make up something which has the same content and that is the change. A particularly evocative phrase, however, will be remembered both by the poet and audience e.g. "once more into the breach" and "it was the best of times it was the worst of times".

The icelandic tradition represents a similar gap (850 AD to 1250 AD) and there is quite alot of fidelity in the transmission, but there is quite a bit of invention each generation as well, especially in the "boring bits".

[Malthus]

My understanding is that Homer's depiction of battles set during the Mycenaen period was somewhat anachronistic - much like medieval depictions of Romans fighting like medieval knights.

I've heard claims to the contrary that certain aspects of Mycenaean warfare or equipment were accurately reported in Homer despite not being extent during the time period of Homer.  Which is then used to make claims about the possible level of accuracy of transmission in the oral tradition that is reflected in the Homeric tales.

I am in no position to evaluate this either way.

My favorite class in Turkey was a Hittite Archaeology course.  I wrote my final paper on domestic correspondence between the Hittite court and Ahhiyawa, a foreign power of equal status, who was apparently in control of Miletus.  There is even a reference to an 'unfortunate episode' at the site of  Wilusa (Wilion-Ilion episode), which I found fascinating.    I left the class more or less convinced that the Iliad was likely more accurate than most scholars assumed in the 20th Century, which I think is an increasingly influential opinion.

The issue here is not whether the large-scale events had some truth to them, but whether the blow-by-blow tactics used during the fighting were accurately described.

The former is more likely to be transmitted than the latter.

Again, the example of how Europeans remembered Roman events hundreds of years later is instructive. They had of course written accounts to go by (which the dark ages Greeks did not), but nonetheless there was a definite tendency, prior to the rise of historical scholarship, to see Romans as basically fighting like contemporary europeans fought. Hell, European accounts of Biblical battles were often similar.

The problem here is that ancient Mycenae was a very different culture and had different social and political organization than dark ages Greece. The chances that the Mycenaens were (1) able to conduct large-scale siege operations hundreds of miles from their homelands and yet (2) fought battles as basically individual duels of champions (which was more a 'barbaric' or rather 'low level of social and political organization' trait) is, on its face, somewhat unlikely.

It is sort of as if an Irish Bard of the 8th centurty wrote a poem in which Julius Caesar beat up Pompey Magnus in hand-to-hand fighting during a massive cattle raid into Greece.

[PDH]

Have your read about the work that Milman Parry did with Serbian oral poets? 

To argue the other side, Raz...have you read the studies done on oral poets in Central Africa or the Northwest Coast?  There, many thousands of details are passes with great accuracy about heritage, actions, and events.  The point I am making is that one oral tradition might well be story influenced (with changing details) or detail oriented (with long lists using mnemonics) - they are for different purposes.

Do not hit on one or the other as all inclusive of "oral tradition" as that category is quite broad.