History & Archaeology Thread

Discussion in 'Taylor's Tittle-Tattle - General Banter' started by StuBoy, Sep 22, 2020.

  1. hornmeister

    hornmeister Tired

    Not true I lent them to Greece.
     
  2. Lloyd

    Lloyd Squad Player

    Finders keepers, losers weepers. The Elgin Marbles are ours. Got that Greece?
     
  3. Robert Peel

    Robert Peel Squad Player

    Wonder if they can keep some of the tanked up Brits that descend on the Greek islands every summer in return.
     
  4. Lloyd

    Lloyd Squad Player

    That really wouldn't be fair on them
     
  5. Diamond

    Diamond First Team

    Having visited the Acropolis museum in Athens a few years back, it was quite obvious that if the Elgin Mables had been left in place that pollution would have eroded them to flat stones by now. Give them back and get them inside that fantastic museum.
     
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  6. Smudger

    Smudger Messi's Mad Coach Staff Member

  7. StuBoy

    StuBoy Forum Cad and Bounder

  8. Bwood_Horn

    Bwood_Horn Squad Player

    'kin ARRSE, throwing up history I've never heard of:

    Never Greater Slaughter: Brunanburh and the Birth of England, Michael Livingston

     
  9. Since63

    Since63 Squad Player

    Taking into account the centres of power of the main protagonists allied against Aethalstan, I think the weight of likelihood tends towards the site on the Wirral. It was only about 35 years earlier that Aetheflaed Lady of Mercia had granted the north-western part of the Wirral to the Viking Ingismund after his expulsion from Dublin and had then reinforced Chester as a major burh with defensive duties against Ingismund's force and also the Welsh of North Wales. There was probably a strong remaining 'pro-Dublin-Viking' element on the Wirral, whilst it would be a logical meet-up point with the forces of the King of Strathclyde, whose territory at this time extended quite a way south of the Lake District. And there's really little obvious logic for Aethelstan to be campaigning in force beyond the Mersey.

    The talk in the excerpt you quoted about the 'Anglo-Saxon State' being dismembered by this alliance is somewhat over the top. No doubt had Aethelstan been defeated, Edgar's reign would not have been quite as it was, but there's no evidence the alliance would have long survived any such victory, nor that the constituent parts of the alliance had sufficient resources to effect serious long term damage to the embryonic 'AS State'. The alliance was more a defensive response to the increasingly aggressive expansionist approach of Aethelstan. At that time, the major expression of 'political overlordship' was couched in receiving payment (in kind & bullion) from the lesser entities who had felt constrained to accept that superior position. Basically, a form of 'protection payments' guaranteed by oaths & hostages, but an arrangement that died along with the death of the overlord, or at least the destruction of their military power. The alliance was probably aimed at removing the need to make (expensive) payments to Aethelstan,whilst giving Olaf the chance to recover control over York, which had been lost to Aethelstan in 927. Even had he recovered York, the history of the Dublin-York Viking axis does not suggest it would have long resisted the pressure of the increasingly wealthy and well-structured 'Wessex-Mercia' union that had developed.

    There is an Old English poem 'The Battle of Brunanburh', from which the 'never greater slaughter' comes.
     
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  10. Bwood_Horn

    Bwood_Horn Squad Player

    We visited a 'rammed' RNOH in Stanmore today and the visitors car park was full so we had to drive deep into the massive site to get to the overflow car park. Running for our appointment (12h20 seen at 15h05 due to massive delays with X-Rays) we ran past this:

    monument2.jpg

    The notice next to it said this:

    notice2.jpg
     

    Attached Files:

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  11. Smudger

    Smudger Messi's Mad Coach Staff Member

    They've been field walking, using LIDAR, landscape interpreters and detectorists in this area and it all points to this being the site of the battle. There is Bromborough nearby as well although in the past many historians dismissed the causal link between the names as being too easy and that includes Michael Wood. They've found scrapes and elevated positions which woud have been an advanbtage to Aethelstans army against the Vikings, Celts of Strathclyde and Alba. It's perfect as a spot for the Irish Vikings to have placed their ships as they have also reconstructed the historical coastline.

    The whole event is depicted in The Last Kingdoms's season six which is condensed into Seven Kings Must Die. Shame they had to cram it all in and several characters disappear or are played by other actors instead of those from the previous series:

     
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  12. Bwood_Horn

    Bwood_Horn Squad Player

    That's the first time I've seen something about where "Watling" comes from.
     
  13. Since63

    Since63 Squad Player

    One problem with identifying the location is that even in the 10th century the battle site was called different things: Brunandun, Bruneswerc, Brunanwerc, Dun Brunde, Weondune for example. It is not surprising there is no discernible modern name that can be clearly shown to derive from that list, especially as that region was linguistically a bit of a melting pot with (North) Mercian English, Irish-influenced Old Norse, North Old Welsh, Strathclyde Cumbric, Gaelic, remnants of Northumbrian English all being spoken in a milieu of limited political stability or continuity.
    The strongest evidence for the Wirral is really political and strategic, but nothing has yet been proven.
     
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  14. Since63

    Since63 Squad Player

    I’m a bit circumspect about the derivation being a Latin garbling of a Brythonic term; there were plenty of native speakers to keep the original name on its etymological path. Even the term ‘Weatlinga’ sounds most unlikely as a plausible Latin mispronunciation. That word itself sounds very Anglo-Saxon with a putative origin in ‘Waeclingas’, being ‘Waecla’s people’. The term ‘street’ was habitually applied in early Old English to any paved/metalled route.
     
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  15. Clive_ofthe_Kremlin

    Clive_ofthe_Kremlin Squad Player

    Military Coup in Australia!

    The rum rebellion!

    Just been reading a little about this. It was in 1808.

    The New South Wales Corps - the military - had a nice little number going. They ran the place. Most especially the rum imports and setting up distilleries. They were the kingpins.

    Various governors were sent from England but nobody could sort out these troopers and their rich and powerful friends.

    So in the end they sent Cap'n Bligh. Yes him! Of the mutiny on the bounty! They knew he wasn't a man to be messed with. He sorted them out right away. Gave relief and loans to the farmers who were on the brink of starvation from natural disasters, took control of the granting of land allocation - putting a stop to the NSW Corps and the rich and powerful gobbling up land like they had been doing - and worst of all for them, and with orders from London too, he took full control of the import and distribution of booze too!

    They didn't even like him helping the poor farmers, because that's who they'd been exploiting so heavily before Bligh got there.

    Anyway, they siezed him and had a military coup. They declared themselves governers and bosses and so on. They went to catch him, the full brigade with banners flying and brass band playing, but when they got there, they encountered fierce resistance from Bligh's daughter with a parasol. Awwww.

    When they got him, he was in full dress uniform and hiding under a bed. They said he was a coward, but he reckoned he was trying to escape to link up with the poor farmers and fight back. Historians are undecided.

    They kept him under house arrest for just over a year. He refused to be returned to England until ordered to do so. Quite right.

    In the end, they sent the army down to sort it out. The coup plotters got court martialled. Bligh got put back on the throne for 24 hours symbolically like, then they took him back to England. They decided not to have sea captains being governors any more and just let the army senior officer be in charge.

    Good old Bligh got promoted to my very favourite naval position -Rear Admiral- but then pegged it from cancer a few years later.

    So that was the rum rebellion.

    Parp! Fin.
     
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  16. I Blame Pozzo

    I Blame Pozzo First Team

    I'm reading a fabulous new book on Homer's Iliad by Robin Lane Fox.

    Radovan Karadzic was an oral poet before he became the 'Butcher of Bosnia ' indeed he was performing when he was arrested in '08.
     
  17. Bwood_Horn

    Bwood_Horn Squad Player

    That's the problem with talking about 'how' ancient peoples used to speak - we have no idea. I speak 'reasonable' Lithuania (which could be seen as the 'vulgate' form of Sanskrit and the original Indo-European colonisers probably spoke something very, very close to Lithuanian), as such, I can 'muddle' my way through a number of written Slavic tongues - but when I look at written 'Celtic' (Welsh, Gaelic, Cornish and Breton) languages I'm surprised at the lack of anything recognisable.

    You can also hear it with Latin. Stephen Fry, in full flow, often remarks that he was taught the Latin 'V' pronunciation as our modern 'W' (which I have my doubts about judging by the difficulties, the Latinate speaking, Italians and Romanians have pronouncing the 'W' sound). Take my son's, old Litho, name 'Kajus' (meaning 'of the people') - I read something about in Latin the letter 'G' was pronounced as our letter 'K' the so Latin name/honorific 'GAIUS' would be pronounced much like my son's name. A better example of how weird it gets it the most, famous Latin word/name, still in use 'CAESAR' - all Slavic and Baltic languages pronounce 'C' as 'TS' (or have the letter 'TS' in their Cyrillic alphabets) so 'CAESAR' is pronounced much like the modern English pronunciation (and lives on the Russian/Slavic Czar/Tsar). But perhaps the 'C' was pronounced as 'K' which meant of pronunciation of 'CAESAR' was much like the German 'Kaiser'...
     
  18. Since63

    Since63 Squad Player

    I was also taught the ‘w’ pronunciation of Latin ‘V’ and that Latin ‘C’ was always as in ‘k’ no matter what followed it. This would suggest that if Latin ‘G’ was not pronounced as English ‘g’ then it may have been halfway between ‘g’ and ‘k’ to our ears.
    The fact that written Celtic seems to have no obvious similarities to Lithuanian may be down to the fact that the Indo-European language group split into many different branches long, long ago. However, some phonetics may still be recognisably similar.
    Even within the ‘Celtic’ languages there was a distinction between ‘P-Goidelic’ (Welsh, Cornish, Breton, Cumbric and probably Pictish) and ‘Q-Goidelic’ (Irish and Highland Gaelic). There’s even differences between modern North and South Cymraeg!
     

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