This is a man's world..... but it wouldn't be nothing without a woman or a girl

[Azathoth]

I can't prove anything, and neither can you. We don't actually have samples ancient plants to study.

My reasoning is that after thousands of years of breeding crops to be more nutritious and give higher yields, they are going to show some improvement in those areas.

[Ludens]

I can't prove anything, and neither can you. We don't actually have samples ancient plants to study.

My reasoning is that after thousands of years of breeding crops to be more nutritious and give higher yields, they are going to show some improvement in those areas.

Higher yield means more pounds per acre, but not necessarily more vitamins per fruit, so it depends on how you define nutritious. Modern food is certainly richer in energy, although given the rise in obesity this is probably a downside.

On women fighting on the steppes: my impression is a few female heads on horse archers would be OK, and I hope they make it in. There are female warrior traditions around the world but they tend to range from extremely rare to plain mythical IIRC.

Its generally bad demographics to put your baby-makers in the battle line (although in a desperate last-ditch-struggle or street battle they'd sometimes pitch in, then as now). Maybe it was a social mechanism to thin out available noblewomen who might otherrwise marry below their station? Like nuns in medieval society.

There's a couple of other reasons why women are generally not warriors: check out this old TWC thread.

[antisocialmunky]

In certain mounted warfare based cultures, you do have cases of women rising up in the ranks because as long as they can shoot well they are better suited for the role. They have a smaller profile, are lighter, lower center of gravity, and more padding.

You have reports of this happening in Scythia and a few instances in Japan. While the ratio isn't known, it would have been a fairly noticable and regular amount for Heroditus to record people claiming what they claimed about the women of Scythia - militarily and socially.

Even the whole Griffin thing he wrote about in his Scythian Book has a grounding in fact with all those protoceratops fossils eroding out of the ground in those areas.

You have a similar thing with modern fighter pilots. Women are smaller so their circulitory system can handle extreme G's better.

[WinsingtonIII]

You have reports of this happening in Scythia and a few instances in Japan. While the ratio isn't known, it would have been a fairly noticable and regular amount for Heroditus to record people claiming what they claimed about the women of Scythia - militarily and socially.

Would the ratio really have to be all that high though? Remember that most of Herodotus' sources were simply average people, and to the average Hellene, wouldn't any participation of women in the military be considered strange enough to report to him?

I'm not trying to claim that his account is wrong, we have little else (except scant archaeological evidence) to prove it either way. However, Herodotus has been known to exaggerate on occasion, and if his source is another Hellene, who would almost certainly be astounded by any female military participation whatsoever, it would make sense that the situation might be exaggerated. To someone whose culture finds the idea of women fighting in the military absurd, a culture where this is an uncommon practice looks like a culture where it is a common practice, if you get what I'm saying. People tend to notice and exaggerate the exceptions, especially when it is an exception that is incomprehensible to them.

Of course it may be true. All I'm saying is that I don't think the fact that it was noticeable enough to report is reason enough to claim that it was a common practice. People tend to latch onto and focus on the exceptions in cultures different from theirs in order to differentiate that culture from their own, even if the practices in question are not that common.

[antisocialmunky]

Would the ratio really have to be all that high though? Remember that most of Herodotus' sources were simply average people, and to the average Hellene, wouldn't any participation of women in the military be considered strange enough to report to him?

I'm not trying to claim that his account is wrong, we have little else (except scant archaeological evidence) to prove it either way. However, Herodotus has been known to exaggerate on occasion, and if his source is another Hellene, who would almost certainly be astounded by any female military participation whatsoever, it would make sense that the situation might be exaggerated. To someone whose culture finds the idea of women fighting in the military absurd, a culture where this is an uncommon practice looks like a culture where it is a common practice, if you get what I'm saying. People tend to notice and exaggerate the exceptions, especially when it is an exception that is incomprehensible to them.

Of course it may be true. All I'm saying is that I don't think the fact that it was noticeable enough to report is reason enough to claim that it was a common practice. People tend to latch onto and focus on the exceptions in cultures different from theirs in order to differentiate that culture from their own, even if the practices in question are not that common.

However if you compare those accounts to the accounts of the women of other peoples fighting. They are more or less descriptions of one off events like the Cimbri women fighting to the death, women leading rebellions, women rallying the troops, the women of SPARTA!!!! etc. They considered it an oddity.

However when Heroditus interviewed the locals that routinely had contact with the Scythians, they refered to it like a common thing. And its not just the military. Heroditus wrote of a certain Scythian tribe where the women were counted equally as the men were. Even today in parts of the steppe the woman is regarded as the boss of the house while hte man is the boss of the outside. If the men were out campaigning the women would have to keep down the fort, feed themselves by hunting, herd the animals, be able to ride to keep up with the herds etc.

On the archaelogical front, you then have the rich burials of females with weapons that make up a noticable amount of the total burials attributed to Scythians derived tribes(25% so says wikipedia).

So that's why I'm saying that it was a regular and noticable occurance. The evidence seems to indicate against a society that relegated women to a purely secondary position. Instead it does not indicate against a society that gave women a fair degree of social mobility. In this context the idea of a society that produces of a noticeable amount of female warriors is not particularly unlikely. Afterall, military make up reflects the society its based on.

You also have to take into account that the Scythians did a fair amount of trading so they had regular commercial contact with the city dwellers around. You also have to take into account that Heroditus didn't just talk to Pentheus, dirt farmer of Armenia - he would have visited cities and talked to people who knew something about the geography.

Of course things are exaggerated and Heroditus wrote down whatever he heard, but people aren't going to describe the presence of one woman in battle the only time they see them as 'Scythian women were important in their society.' People always get enamored by the idea of 'female warrior' that they ignore the context of a 'female run society.'

[WinsingtonIII]

However if you compare those accounts to the accounts of the women of other peoples fighting. They are more or less descriptions of one off events like the Cimbri women fighting to the death, women leading rebellions, women rallying the troops, the women of SPARTA!!!! etc. They considered it an oddity.

However when Heroditus interviewed the locals that routinely had contact with the Scythians, they refered to it like a common thing. And its not just the military. Heroditus wrote of a certain Scythian tribe where the women were counted equally as the men were. Even today in parts of the steppe the woman is regarded as the boss of the house while hte man is the boss of the outside. If the men were out campaigning the women would have to keep down the fort, feed themselves by hunting, herd the animals, be able to ride to keep up with the herds etc.

On the archaelogical front, you then have the rich burials of females with weapons that make up a noticable amount of the total burials attributed to Scythians derived tribes(25% so says wikipedia).

So that's why I'm saying that it was a regular and noticable occurance. The evidence seems to indicate against a society that relegated women to a purely secondary position. Instead it does not indicate against a society that gave women a fair degree of social mobility. In this context the idea of a society that produces of a noticeable amount of female warriors is not particularly unlikely. Afterall, military make up reflects the society its based on.

You also have to take into account that the Scythians did a fair amount of trading so they had regular commercial contact with the city dwellers around. You also have to take into account that Heroditus didn't just talk to Pentheus, dirt farmer of Armenia - he would have visited cities and talked to people who knew something about the geography.

Of course things are exaggerated and Heroditus wrote down whatever he heard, but people aren't going to describe the presence of one woman in battle the only time they see them as 'Scythian women were important in their society.' People always get enamored by the idea of 'female warrior' that they ignore the context of a 'female run society.'

Good points, you know more about this than I do, I was just trying to conjure up what I had learned about Herodotus years ago and thought I remembered him being somewhat prone to exaggeration. I wasn't really implying that it was an exception in Scythian society (I agree the evidence points against that), I was just saying it may have been more uncommon than we have come to believe, due to the process of exaggeration throughout history and in Herodotus' lifetime as well. There's a whole spectrum of "regular and noticeable" occurrences. All I'm saying is that even though evidence implies it was regular activity, it may not have been as overwhelmingly common as we think. That wasn't the clearest way of putting that but I hope you get what I mean.

Additionally, the fact that the burials of females were rich implies that these can only tell us something about the life of female nobility. Perhaps the nobility was fairly egalitarian towards women, but the amount of gender inequality grew as one descended the social ladder. In fact, I really wouldn't be surprised at all if this were true. Scythian women almost certainly had it many times better in terms of equality than the women of many other ancient societies, that's clear. However, I think that applying the term "female-run society" is pretty idealistic. At the top we seem to see hard evidence (archaeology) that females were regarded as somewhat equal to men, but the patriarchal household may still have dominated at the lower levels.

Who knows? Maybe I'm just skeptical because I don't want to believe that ancient societies may have been more egalitarian than modern western society. That's a pretty sad commentary on "progress."

[antisocialmunky]

'Progress' is a modern construct about how newer is better which is BS. Things just change with time, it can go either way.

Yeah, I said something to the same effect above that EB should only include some women in the Noble units. They would be the ones that could afford to goto war. The regular women would be watching things back home. I don't know though... the campaigns of Genghis Khan, he's said to have had the wives and other women of his troops ride into battle to padd his numbers and break the enemy morale. However Mongols and Western Steppe peoples are quite different and the Scythians never went on campaign quite THAT long.

[mountaingoat]

gah , i hate getting into these type of arguing points across things .. i keep saying ill leave it at one thing because the scope for this argument is beyond what some might think and i do suck at getting my point across sometimes .. but i am passionate about this , so maybe this can be my last point? haha , i will not go into hugeeee detail ,so if anyone disagrees compeltly with me after this than we can consider my non reply to accepting that we have different point of views in the topic. (fine with me).

well this goes to anyone else out there watching.


will give you some points to think on.

"modern" storage devices such as refrigeration , sterilization and storage ( plastics , metals , pesticides ). have produced many harmful affects , and some good.

nearly all "food grade" plastics are leaking phytoestrogens (as well as other goodies) into whatever is stored in them. and we get a nice dose of things like aluminum and other heavy metals in our water and metal cooking devices/ containers. ceramic and clay are best suited or wood .. steel , copper would be ok IMO. though some say that steel is not good.

refrigeration replaced the storage pits and storage houses , while a fridge is useful for a person you might want to consider that all food should be eaten fresh . with refrigeration, companies can afford to keep old produce out for even longer .. meanwhile once the produce has been picked it begins to decrease in nutritional value over time. So by the time you get that nice (gassed and chemically sprayed) spinach ( so it still holds its colour) from your local supermarket (or green grocer) . It most likely has been sitting on a shelf for a long time(depending on the demographic of your town) and is very depleted in minerals. AND THEN you store it in the fridge for longer.

before refrigeration , people used to naturally preserve foods for the winter , they would eat sprouted and fermented foods which are activated and thus increasing their nutrient content significantly.

pasteurization kills off all beneficial properties of dairy .. and most dairy products come from unhealthy hormone fed (or GM soy fed) livestock. (unhealthy livestock create unhealthy meat). Just look it up if you want.

plants have a natural defense system ( when they are in a healthy environment ) and do not need to be sprayed with harmful chemicals that we in turn must ingest.

it may be difficult sometimes to think that with our "innovative" technology , the standards handed down to us by those in the higher up can end up being harmful to us.


now for the selective breeding.

you can take a plant growing in the wild and compare nutritional values to your average farm , the one growing in nature will beat it hands down , majority(if not all) of the time. so a wild plant might be in its original state for thousands of years untouched .. i have not come across any findings that says that they lack anything at all!

as stated previously , with modern farming methods our soils are depleted of key nutrients(not going into detail with this just google it) , so our food is no longer getting much of what it needs. The nutritional quality of our plants are not the "best in 3000 years" just because they are still around today. (many excellent foods are almost non existent , but read on)

Food does not change it's DNA structure (unless we alter it) so each type of food typically has x amount nutrients / calories etc at its healthiest .We can always add an exception in a rare case, but in general, would you not agree with that?

Also we have to consider that when selectively breeding with modern farming methods , we would use many nutrients in the soil . so if i were to selectively breed some fine watermelons the soil is going to be depleted quite quick . i might have some fine looking watermelons , but this has nothing to do with their nutrient density for the most part. Their weight , water content does not= nutrient density.

there are some seed savers use heirloom seeds , some of them dating back a long time , and if you encounter any you will find that most of our food is manipulated onto our shelves and that many "super healthy" foods no longer exist , to name a few ... blue lettuce , purple carrots , blue potatoes , red and blue corn (colour shows rich iron , copper and other nutrient content).


i am not going to get into GM , but will state that i am against it.

i will end with saying that the opportunity for good health and physical condition would of been presented to people (pretty much shoved in their faces) with little work back in times gone by(actually not even that far back) , if you understood food availability / had access to a steady supply of balanced food.(though this does not mean everyone choose to do so). Where as now we have to fight just to get to good health , which is IMO our birthright.

phew


edit: ahh yes ,ludens good point on your previous post

[antisocialmunky]

The simplist way of arguing that is that Humans over the course of 5000 years of civilization have damaged the ecosystem and degraded the quality of the soils by deforestation and over exploiting. From Mesopotamia to Palestine to the Nile, the fertility has gone down and desertification has gone up.

[bobbin]

The simplist way of arguing that is that Humans over the course of 5000 years of civilization have damaged the ecosystem and degraded the quality of the soils by deforestation and over exploiting. From Mesopotamia to Palestine to the Nile, the fertility has gone down and desertification has gone up.

Depends where you are though, where good farming methods (crop rotation, letting feilds lie fallow for a season, correct use of fertillisers etc) are practiced the soil fertility is stable. the places that have seen major drops in fertility are sub saharan africa, the middle east, parts of asia, south america and the great plains in north america.

[antisocialmunky]

Yes, but many places that were the centers of the great civilizations of antiquity are pretty jacked up compared to back then.

[Poka]

@Ludens: Actually one could have female bodies and female heads together by merging head and body into one.
(Milkshape: Select the group of the head and the group of the body and use the "regroup" function.
This has to be done with the men, too. Doing a lot of duplicating, variety of head-body combination would also be granted.

(hoping that my english is ok)

[miotas]

It wouldn't really matter if female heads were placed on male bodies, since a woman with the physical ability to fight in a battle would not be very slender and "feminine" so if she was wearing thick clothes or armour the only distinction would be in the face. I'm sure we've all seen women where you have to take a second(or third) look to see what gender she is (also vice versa), that is the type of woman who would be in a battle.