When the great pyramids were being built there was still woolly mammoths walking the earth.

  • sakphul@discuss.tchncs.de
    0·
    22 days ago

    During the medieval period there was no currency used throughout the whole of Germany. Most used the Silver Penny (Pfennig) but there were different types with a different value (amount of silver in them) that also changed over time (some were more stable, some changed every year). People were obligated to exchange old coins for the new ones and part of the exchange was held back by the people in charge (the so called Schlagschatz). Also people coming from a different location were obligated to exchange their coins or silver bars to the local currency at the time. The exchange rates were quite different.

    It was a complete mess. But somehow it worked.

    • MonkderVierte@lemmy.zip
      0·
      22 days ago

      I think Spice and Wolf paints a pretty good depiction of the market (and world) of the early middle age’ europe.

      • sakphul@discuss.tchncs.de
        0·
        22 days ago

        To not offend anyone: please don’t get me wrong.

        It is not the goal of the series to give a historical correct impression. But to create a nice and engaging story. Which is totally fine. But historical accuracy is not part of it.

        I watched the first episode and have to say: it is not even close to give a proper impression of the medieval (especially early medieval) ages in europe.

        • clothing completely wrong
        • How villages and cities look like
        • How trade is organized
        • local law enforcement is completely missing
        • how a village and social life was organized and the embedding into the local administration is missing

        It is a nice show to watch. But a "… pretty good depiction of the market… "? Definetly no.

        I do 13th century living history for museums. The show has more in common with a Hollywood movie then anything with history.

        • wolframhydroxide@sh.itjust.works
          0·
          22 days ago

          While their claim about the world is certainly off:

          1. 13th century is not what was being depicted in spice and wolf. It was a depiction of renaissance-era to age-of-reason mercantile trade.
          2. the point to which they were specifically referring was the gigantic plot arc that specifically focused on the debasement of currency and speculation thereupon, the markets for which were almost exactly as described, you seem to be taking their word “market” to mean “physical space and event”, when S&W examines basic market theory in a mercantile environment. Its depiction of economic speculation, debasement of currency, etc. Are nearly impeccable, aside from random bits like “make the fur smell like apples” (though I shouldn’t put it past some random merchant to try such a ploy, even if i think it unlikely to avail them), even down to the “money changers clinking coins together to try to hear differing purities of silver”, which you can do yourself with silver coins. While there are certainly many aspects which did not accurately reflect renaissance Europe, pretending that something has no historical basis because the costumes in a fantasy setting based on both Europe and Japan aren’t period appropriate to a period several hundred years off of the period it’s actually based on is absolutely ludicrous.

          As far as organisation of the communities, you’re absolutely right. Though, I can’t think of a single work of fiction, ever, which accurately depicts the sheer level of societal interconnection in any period, so I think the criticism unfair, given how perfectly it nails the economic principles it tries to tackle.

          As far as the local policing force, I’d like to see a source on the presence, efficacy and integration of local police forces in continental Europe during the renaissance. I am only familiar with London, but I distinctly remember that, at the time period roughly equivalent to that being depicted in S&W, London was barely into its “thief-taker” phase of policing.

          Anyway, if you’re judging Spice and wolf off of the first episode, then you’re missing the entire first arc that the commenter is referring to, in which the show explores, in exacting detail, precisely the phenomena to which your original comment was referring

    • MrEff@lemmy.world
      0·
      23 days ago

      Depends on what you mean by that. The creator’s last name was German. So really, they are German. Just not the way you are thinking.

      It’s the same with Ceasar salad. It’s not the Caesar you are thinking of, but it is still Ceasar. The guy Ceasar from Mexico.

  • scrodumb@lemmy.ca
    0·
    23 days ago

    The Moon is 384,400 km away from Earth. If you took every elephant on Earth and stacked them one atop another most of them would die.

  • gedaliyah@lemmy.world
    0·
    23 days ago

    As long as we’re doing pyramids, Cleopatra lived closer to the moon landing than the construction of the Great pyramid of Giza.

    Edit: someone beat me to it. Here’s another one. If you take the timeline of the Bible literally, the Israelites did not build a single pyramid. They would have been hundreds of years too late (and the Bible never references pyramids, just that the Israelite slaves built cities).

    • Mirshe@lemmy.world
      0·
      22 days ago

      Also we literally can trace, at least with some pyramids, people who built them. They weren’t slaves, they were masons and craftspeople and levied labor - and from graffiti we’ve found, it was considered a pretty great honor to work on one. Even just from a religious angle, do you want heathens who you’ve forced into slavery to build your vehicle for ascension into the afterlife?

      • Lumisal@lemmy.world
        0·
        22 days ago

        It’s the blood that seems to matter more than the organs, and not all organs follow this rule. Kidneys for example don’t really change much.

  • zout@fedia.io
    0·
    23 days ago

    The eyes are the most sensitive part of the body. If they pull a hair from your ass, tears will come to your eyes.

    • nightofmichelinstars@sopuli.xyz
      0·
      23 days ago

      Pythagoras advised followers to “abstain from beans because they are flatulent and partake most of the breath of life; and besides, it is better for the stomach if they are not taken, and this again will make our dreams in sleep smooth and untroubled” (Diogenes Laertius, Lives of Eminent Philosophers, 8.1.24).

      Later, in a passage insinuating that the problem with the beans potentially resided in mystic ritual purification issues, Diogenes Laertius wrote that Pythagoras called for, “abstaining from meat and flesh of animals that have died, mullets, gurnards, eggs and egg‑sprung animals, beans, and the other abstinences prescribed by those who perform mystic rites in the temples” (Lives of Eminent Philosophers, 8.1.33).

      Finally, in terms of potential symbolic reasons for the bean ban, Diogenes wrote, “According to Aristotle in his work On the Pythagoreans, Pythagoras counselled abstinence from beans either because they are like the genitals, or because they are like the gates of Hades . . . as being alone unjointed, or because they are injurious, or because they are like the form of the universe, or because they belong to oligarchy, since they are used in election by lot” (Lives of Eminent Philosophers, 8.1.34).

      (Paragraph breaks mine)

      This is “God Impregnated me” level unhinged, but with lower stakes. I infer he may have farted once with an attractive partner and it scarred him.

      • LavaPlanet@sh.itjust.works
        0·
        23 days ago

        I dunno sounds like a flowery way of saying they made his stomach bloat painfully and any time he asked someone else who was similarly afflicted, they confirmed the same, therefore his reverse survivorship bias caused him to believe beans were the devil.

  • Zachariah@lemmy.world
    0·
    23 days ago

    We live on Earth v2.0

    There was a body in our orbit and then another large body (neither were planets, I guess, since they hadn’t test cleared their solar orbits of other bodies) crashed into it. The heavier parts stayed in what became the Earth we know. The lighter parts coalesced into what is now the Moon. The Moon is slowly leaving us because it has enough leftover motion to do so.

    • meat@lemmy.blahaj.zone
      0·
      23 days ago

      Significantly more aluminum, calcium, titanium, magnesium, and silicon. My understanding is that a large percentage of the moon was the earth’s former crust.

    • ChickenLadyLovesLife@lemmy.worldEnglish
      0·
      22 days ago

      I had this idea for a sci-fi short story that involved a long-lived alien that has been watching the earth since the solar system formed. It finally decides to speak to humanity and starts telling the story about how the earth formed from the collision of two bodies, and the humans are all “yeah yeah we know. Here’s a movie we made of it” and the alien is all “WTF? How do they know that?”

  • Berttheduck@lemmy.ml
    0·
    23 days ago

    Sharks are older than trees.

    The appendix isn’t useless it helps repopulate your gut bacteria after you’ve been ill.

    Some people have their heart on the right side of their chest. Some people have all their organs swapped round - really confuses surgeons.

  • translucent_tube@lemmy.world
    0·
    23 days ago

    Our ability to feel social judgment and shame reuses the same neural circuits as physical disgust or nausea. This effectively makes it so you can take anti-nausea medication to temporarily make you less judgy of other people’s life choices.