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 Kroem wrote:

Not Online!!! wrote:

ehh, not really, gunpoweder makes a lot of noise, and has for the uninitiated a huge morale impact, not to mention the smoke and light a volley can produce. Morale at the times was more important then shere killing power, since loss of morale meant loss of formation and chaos and that is when cavallery swoops in and wins the battle.

That can be a factor certainly, but the the effect wears off through repeated exposure. There are pre-industrial societies that had success fighting muskets with traditional weapons.
What I was getting at is that guns are an advantage, but not an insurmountable one in this period. To quote a famous author, we need to consider guns, germs and steel!

quite true.

Gunpowder has shock value, but as mentioned it was the steel, disease, and horses that really won the day. And even if the Europeans had come in peace, the diseases would still have annhilated these civilizations. There was even a civilization in the central US which was wiped out by disease and only recently rediscovered. They never had any direct contact with Europeans. The settlers then just moved into the void.

The same would have happened in mesoamerica eventually as well.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
You need only look at how the rich and powerful today treat the poor and the needy.

Compassion it would seem is not a universal trait.

This here, tribalism was and still is massively prevalent in human society. It takes stunningly little for a person to disregard the personhood of someone else.

I mean gak, I've seen people get into fights over american football team preferences. Give them a lack of law enforcement and I'd expect soccer fans to be flaying their players alive if they lost or fans of the opposition if they won, I mean bloodbowl got those jokes from somewhere.

Barb Ehrenrich (IIRC) wrote an interesting book on this subject that I read called "Blood Rites".

https://www.amazon.com/Blood-Rites-Barbara-Ehrenreich/dp/1455543705

I read it a long time ago, but if I recall the idea was that people were so much closer to bloodshed and gore for daily survival (i.e. butchering animals, hunting, religious practices, etc) that it provided them a bit more psychological protection against the gore and bloodshed between fellow humans on the battlefield.

Of course, their were other special ceremonies, rituals, and state-sponsored propoganda that provide other psychological protection.

However, despite these elements we can see ancient soldiers suffered from PTSD type mental trauma from various ancients works ranging from poetry, Epics, plays, etc. The exact citations elude me at the moment.

Therefore, they were like us; but their cultural and environmental constructs were more robust in helping them deal with killing and butchering things personally.

Meh. Our 'cultural aversions' go out the window quick when social order goes out of whack due to disasters or wars. This has been demonstrated over and over again.

A 'thin veneer' is all modern culture brings.

Voss wrote:
Meh. Our 'cultural aversions' go out the window quick when social order goes out of whack due to disasters or wars. This has been demonstrated over and over again.

A 'thin veneer' is all modern culture brings.

Really, I think most of use would claim the opposite, people tend to band together to help each other; and not go all "Lord of the Flies". That seems to be more of a convention of modern Zombie fiction than of actual disaster zone behaviors.

Sure, you get some looting early on, but soon tent cities and other communal relief experiences rise very quickly. People tend to band together to look for and rescue survivors early on as well.

However, I am no expert on the topic. I just think the "Thin Veneer" argument is a modern myth born from "Pioneer Exceptionalism" and the "Self-Made Man" ethos more than a reality of human behavior.

 Easy E wrote:

Voss wrote:
Meh. Our 'cultural aversions' go out the window quick when social order goes out of whack due to disasters or wars. This has been demonstrated over and over again.

A 'thin veneer' is all modern culture brings.

Really, I think most of use would claim the opposite, people tend to band together to help each other; and not go all "Lord of the Flies". That seems to be more of a convention of modern Zombie fiction than of actual disaster zone behaviors.

Sure, you get some looting early on, but soon tent cities and other communal relief experiences rise very quickly. People tend to band together to look for and rescue survivors early on as well.

However, I am no expert on the topic. I just think the "Thin Veneer" argument is a modern myth born from "Pioneer Exceptionalism" and the "Self-Made Man" ethos more than a reality of human behavior.

Personally, I think the "thin veneer" argument is not new, and we can find plenty of evidence of it. I've read of/studied a little bit of the Thirty Years' War, and it is rather astonishing how quickly things devolved and aspects of humanity/society broke down. . . However, I do agree with you in saying that there are still also plenty of instances of community banding together for the communal good. To me, they aren't mutually exclusive happenings.

Humans are extremely social animals and we have strong evolutionary pressures to work together in groups. If a breakdown in society were to occur, people would form cohesive groups rather quickly as opposed to just going "every man for himself". However, those groups would then be extremely likely to war with one another in the stead of anarchic individual violence.

 Ensis Ferrae wrote:

 Easy E wrote:

Voss wrote:
Meh. Our 'cultural aversions' go out the window quick when social order goes out of whack due to disasters or wars. This has been demonstrated over and over again.

A 'thin veneer' is all modern culture brings.

Really, I think most of use would claim the opposite, people tend to band together to help each other; and not go all "Lord of the Flies". That seems to be more of a convention of modern Zombie fiction than of actual disaster zone behaviors.

Sure, you get some looting early on, but soon tent cities and other communal relief experiences rise very quickly. People tend to band together to look for and rescue survivors early on as well.

However, I am no expert on the topic. I just think the "Thin Veneer" argument is a modern myth born from "Pioneer Exceptionalism" and the "Self-Made Man" ethos more than a reality of human behavior.

Personally, I think the "thin veneer" argument is not new, and we can find plenty of evidence of it. I've read of/studied a little bit of the Thirty Years' War, and it is rather astonishing how quickly things devolved and aspects of humanity/society broke down. . . However, I do agree with you in saying that there are still also plenty of instances of community banding together for the communal good. To me, they aren't mutually exclusive happenings.

Wait what?

Society did not breakdown, what did break down was the capability of armies to supply themselve "aus dem land", all over the HRE aswell as the economy, that is however not societal breakdown, if you want societal breakdown the only real exemple in europe would be during the plague years were whole cities suddendly were inhabited by less then 1 or 2 families and subsiquently abbandoned.
Infact there are a lot of stories of villages beeing so fed up with the war that they dug out whole underground supply systems in order to hide food and themselves from the Soldateska.
Basically it had become physically impossible to supply the armies and the debt was huge in many cases

On a slightly related topic, last month I got done watching a rather interesting multi-part documentary about long-range travel in the ancient world. There is a lot of compelling evidence to show that ancient people were much more mobile than we thought.


For example, people from southern Japan may have immigrated to the western side of South America a couple thousand years ago. Pottery creation methods that didn't exist in South America suddenly flourished and advanced rapidly, while being VERY close to techniques only seen in Japan. Combine this with words in the languages that are similar, the fact that certain populations in SA have Asian facial features, and that there is a rare genetic disorder that only appears in two places on the planet (Okinawa, and Western SA) and it starts to add up.

 Easy E wrote:

Voss wrote:
Meh. Our 'cultural aversions' go out the window quick when social order goes out of whack due to disasters or wars. This has been demonstrated over and over again.

A 'thin veneer' is all modern culture brings.

Really, I think most of use would claim the opposite, people tend to band together to help each other; and not go all "Lord of the Flies". That seems to be more of a convention of modern Zombie fiction than of actual disaster zone behaviors.

Sure, you get some looting early on, but soon tent cities and other communal relief experiences rise very quickly. People tend to band together to look for and rescue survivors early on as well.

However, I am no expert on the topic. I just think the "Thin Veneer" argument is a modern myth born from "Pioneer Exceptionalism" and the "Self-Made Man" ethos more than a reality of human behavior.

Nothing to do with either. I'm honestly a little baffled that you'd bring them up, as they're pretty US centric (and 19th/20th century centric at that) and not particularly applicable to humanity as a whole.

It's worth noting that the relief expeditions and structure comes from outside the areas that have broken down. Some of that is obvious, since the disaster area will have limited resources. But when rescue efforts happen, it's generally the exact same outside groups providing aid, even if they're further away than other groups that could provide aid.

Survivor rescue is obvious, people are looking for their friends and families in the remains of their own homes. That's an easy ask, a part of the group behavior Luciferian is talking about. But you can see the dark side of that group behavior is several of the hot spots currently around the world, and in most history. Scapegoating and victimization are common.

 cuda1179 wrote:
On a slightly related topic, last month I got done watching a rather interesting multi-part documentary about long-range travel in the ancient world. There is a lot of compelling evidence to show that ancient people were much more mobile than we thought.


For example, people from southern Japan may have immigrated to the western side of South America a couple thousand years ago. Pottery creation methods that didn't exist in South America suddenly flourished and advanced rapidly, while being VERY close to techniques only seen in Japan. Combine this with words in the languages that are similar, the fact that certain populations in SA have Asian facial features, and that there is a rare genetic disorder that only appears in two places on the planet (Okinawa, and Western SA) and it starts to add up.

I study history, recently one of my professors has released a book about the migration history of switzerland, in the medieval ages and renaissance (400-700 years ago) there is solid data of Swiss people beeing found over nearly all of europe, the americas, heck even some were building coffee houses in russia later on. And whilest mobility was slower, it was by no means over smaller distances for that matter.

Infact one of the belives of the people in my Kanton was that they migrated down from sweden, no joke. Which is nowadays disproven, however even the "Helveti" a supposedly celtic tribe which lifed first in switzerland is now suspected to be 3-4 celtic local tribes and 1-2 germanic tribes in a confederation that were under common leadership. So atleast one or two tribes have had to migrate down from northern germany /denmark down into the southern german region.




Automatically Appended Next Post:

Survivor rescue is obvious, people are looking for their friends and families in the remains of their own homes. That's an easy ask, a part of the group behavior Luciferian is talking about. But you can see the dark side of that group behavior is several of the hot spots currently around the world, and in most history. Scapegoating and victimization are common.

In my opinion it is easier to scapegoat in a bigger society rather then in small groups, thanks to anonimity.

 cuda1179 wrote:
On a slightly related topic, last month I got done watching a rather interesting multi-part documentary about long-range travel in the ancient world. There is a lot of compelling evidence to show that ancient people were much more mobile than we thought.


For example, people from southern Japan may have immigrated to the western side of South America a couple thousand years ago. Pottery creation methods that didn't exist in South America suddenly flourished and advanced rapidly, while being VERY close to techniques only seen in Japan. Combine this with words in the languages that are similar, the fact that certain populations in SA have Asian facial features, and that there is a rare genetic disorder that only appears in two places on the planet (Okinawa, and Western SA) and it starts to add up.

People forget that during the hunter-gatherer period of human life mobility was key. One might migrate up to the north during the summer and then migrate far to the south come winter - even with furs humans are not best built for the cold and if they are able and mobile they will move with the seasons and the herds.

Another aspect is trade. Ideas and devices can travel far and wide as people trade and interact with each other over huge areas. In fact look at most wide roaming species and considerable distances are possible; wolves are famous for having huge territories over which they will roam (if allowed to move freely).


I think its something we find harder to grasp now because we've built a very sedentary lifestyle and social structure. We have objects and possessions and houses and land and land rights and land ownership and many environments are not easy to live-off-the-land on because many of the natural resources are just gone (or if they are there many of us have total ignorance of them). So its harder to imagine ancient people travelling so far when we today would find it a major challenge. Thing is if you're not tied to a single living place and can carry your entire world on your back and you can live off the land; then mobility is relatively easy so long as your'e healthy

Not Online!!! wrote:

 Ensis Ferrae wrote:

 Easy E wrote:

Voss wrote:
Meh. Our 'cultural aversions' go out the window quick when social order goes out of whack due to disasters or wars. This has been demonstrated over and over again.

A 'thin veneer' is all modern culture brings.

Really, I think most of use would claim the opposite, people tend to band together to help each other; and not go all "Lord of the Flies". That seems to be more of a convention of modern Zombie fiction than of actual disaster zone behaviors.

Sure, you get some looting early on, but soon tent cities and other communal relief experiences rise very quickly. People tend to band together to look for and rescue survivors early on as well.

However, I am no expert on the topic. I just think the "Thin Veneer" argument is a modern myth born from "Pioneer Exceptionalism" and the "Self-Made Man" ethos more than a reality of human behavior.

Personally, I think the "thin veneer" argument is not new, and we can find plenty of evidence of it. I've read of/studied a little bit of the Thirty Years' War, and it is rather astonishing how quickly things devolved and aspects of humanity/society broke down. . . However, I do agree with you in saying that there are still also plenty of instances of community banding together for the communal good. To me, they aren't mutually exclusive happenings.

Wait what?

Society did not breakdown, what did break down was the capability of armies to supply themselve "aus dem land", all over the HRE aswell as the economy, that is however not societal breakdown, if you want societal breakdown the only real exemple in europe would be during the plague years were whole cities suddendly were inhabited by less then 1 or 2 families and subsiquently abbandoned.
Infact there are a lot of stories of villages beeing so fed up with the war that they dug out whole underground supply systems in order to hide food and themselves from the Soldateska.
Basically it had become physically impossible to supply the armies and the debt was huge in many cases

So. . . you're saying its normal to just rape, loot, plunder and pillage at whim??


Yes, I recognize that it was a wartime period. . . However, in many wars prior to this, and even afterward, entire armies were fed and maintained without human atrocity. Maybe I did a poor job of explaining what I am meaning. . . I was merely pushing back on the idea that "thin veneer" of society is a recent thing, because I don't think it is.

Medieval armies did tend to loot and pillage places that were "on their side" as much as enemy villages. Perhaps there might be less killing and raping if it was a friendly village, but food would be taken at spear point and the more ill-disciplined on the fringes would do whatever they wanted. Just look at the 1st Crusade. The peasant contingent did a LOT of looting and pillaging and attacking while they were still in Europe.

The few professional soldiers(Knights and Men at Arms) might behave, but the mercenaries and the drafted peasantry have far fewer scruples.

Its "normal" in the sense that it has always occurred, and isn't unexpected. And its certainly viewed as acceptable in enemy territory, except among the most Chivalrous company. But that was a rarity.

 Overread wrote:

 cuda1179 wrote:
On a slightly related topic, last month I got done watching a rather interesting multi-part documentary about long-range travel in the ancient world. There is a lot of compelling evidence to show that ancient people were much more mobile than we thought.


For example, people from southern Japan may have immigrated to the western side of South America a couple thousand years ago. Pottery creation methods that didn't exist in South America suddenly flourished and advanced rapidly, while being VERY close to techniques only seen in Japan. Combine this with words in the languages that are similar, the fact that certain populations in SA have Asian facial features, and that there is a rare genetic disorder that only appears in two places on the planet (Okinawa, and Western SA) and it starts to add up.

People forget that during the hunter-gatherer period of human life mobility was key. One might migrate up to the north during the summer and then migrate far to the south come winter - even with furs humans are not best built for the cold and if they are able and mobile they will move with the seasons and the herds.

Another aspect is trade. Ideas and devices can travel far and wide as people trade and interact with each other over huge areas. In fact look at most wide roaming species and considerable distances are possible; wolves are famous for having huge territories over which they will roam (if allowed to move freely).


I think its something we find harder to grasp now because we've built a very sedentary lifestyle and social structure. We have objects and possessions and houses and land and land rights and land ownership and many environments are not easy to live-off-the-land on because many of the natural resources are just gone (or if they are there many of us have total ignorance of them). So its harder to imagine ancient people travelling so far when we today would find it a major challenge. Thing is if you're not tied to a single living place and can carry your entire world on your back and you can live off the land; then mobility is relatively easy so long as your'e healthy

Some other interesting things that popped up in that documentary were genetic markers that show common ancestry with peoples from Easter Island and South America, and immigration out of African into certain parts of what is now south-west Russia.

So. . . you're saying its normal to just rape, loot, plunder and pillage at whim??


Yes, I recognize that it was a wartime period. . . However, in many wars prior to this, and even afterward, entire armies were fed and maintained without human atrocity. Maybe I did a poor job of explaining what I am meaning. . . I was merely pushing back on the idea that "thin veneer" of society is a recent thing, because I don't think it is.

Medieval armies did tend to loot and pillage places that were "on their side" as much as enemy villages. Perhaps there might be less killing and raping if it was a friendly village, but food would be taken at spear point and the more ill-disciplined on the fringes would do whatever they wanted. Just look at the 1st Crusade. The peasant contingent did a LOT of looting and pillaging and attacking while they were still in Europe.

The few professional soldiers(Knights and Men at Arms) might behave, but the mercenaries and the drafted peasantry have far fewer scruples.

Its "normal" in the sense that it has always occurred, and isn't unexpected. And its certainly viewed as acceptable in enemy territory, except among the most Chivalrous company. But that was a rarity

Ok few missconceptions: Medieval ages =/= thirty years war.

Secondly: Armies in medieval ages were mostly levvied with some knights and if lucky some men at arms. Thirty years wars army were made up of Mercenaries.

Thirdly: Looting occured when pay was out, regardless if knights were involved or just peasant folk, infact the aquisition of food that you describe is not looting but to be expected, since in feudalism the peasant class is expected to give it to any noble. (hint, it was still a better society to live in then Antique germanic tribal societies.) This is for medieval armies.

Fourth: Now to the thirty years war exemple. If your army is made up out of privat companies (in both meaning of the words literally) what is their goal? MONEY.
How do they make money? If you answer, mostly through looting you are wrong. Infact there is a swiss saying that stems from "reisläufer" (mercenaries) that goes as following: "Kei Gäld , kei Schwiizer" --> for those that don't speak the holly tongue of swiss german: "No Money, No Swiss" This plays into a practice that swiss mercenaries demanded, like other mercenaries regular pay, however unlike other mercenaries that went on a looting spree if not payed, swiss mercenaries tended to go to the enemy, work for half the money but demanded a first pick right after the battle. IT was imperative to pay on time, more beneficial for all involved and you didn't have to replace broken stuff.

Further the officers of such mercenary regiments, wanted to win before they took massive casualities, since recruiting new people and reequipping them is hugely expensive. Now how do you win a fight before you start one? You scare your enemy and show him that if he gives up peacefully he will profit from it. ----> looting mostly occured after sieges or was ordered by officers, in that case it is named "Schleiffen" . In italy, most wars tended to escalate into economic wars for the mercenary leaders, because if you have an army of 75000 mercenaries and the enemy only has 35'000 the other side won't get more mercenaries since they are afraid to fight against armies that outnumber them, because infact it is not beneficial to fight for mercenary companies.

However in the thirty years war you don't fight from person to person but from Holly mission to Heretical monstrosity. Little thing called the printing press saw wide use as a propaganda. So you have to add in a army that has a very low frustration level, add in porpaganda that dehumanizes them, and force them over the same ways towards their enemies, (which lead to low food supplies since supplying out of the land after 10+ years of the same ways is simply put impossible, even if you go through bavaria) and have modern fortification works that can withstand sieges for a long time.

On the topic of Sieges, the most gruesome siege warfare ever got in all of history is probably during the time of the thirty years war. Not only were trenchlines dug like in WW1 but artilery was close as hell, bombardments were possible, supply was even worse then WW1 and you were there to make money, not siege out stuff. Not to mention that medical conditions were in non siege situations allready bad, now imagine what that meant when you are besieging a city.

Not Online!!! wrote:

 Ensis Ferrae wrote:

 Easy E wrote:

Voss wrote:
Meh. Our 'cultural aversions' go out the window quick when social order goes out of whack due to disasters or wars. This has been demonstrated over and over again.

A 'thin veneer' is all modern culture brings.

Really, I think most of use would claim the opposite, people tend to band together to help each other; and not go all "Lord of the Flies". That seems to be more of a convention of modern Zombie fiction than of actual disaster zone behaviors.

Sure, you get some looting early on, but soon tent cities and other communal relief experiences rise very quickly. People tend to band together to look for and rescue survivors early on as well.

However, I am no expert on the topic. I just think the "Thin Veneer" argument is a modern myth born from "Pioneer Exceptionalism" and the "Self-Made Man" ethos more than a reality of human behavior.

Personally, I think the "thin veneer" argument is not new, and we can find plenty of evidence of it. I've read of/studied a little bit of the Thirty Years' War, and it is rather astonishing how quickly things devolved and aspects of humanity/society broke down. . . However, I do agree with you in saying that there are still also plenty of instances of community banding together for the communal good. To me, they aren't mutually exclusive happenings.

Wait what?

Society did not breakdown, what did break down was the capability of armies to supply themselve "aus dem land", all over the HRE aswell as the economy, that is however not societal breakdown, if you want societal breakdown the only real exemple in europe would be during the plague years were whole cities suddendly were inhabited by less then 1 or 2 families and subsiquently abbandoned.
Infact there are a lot of stories of villages beeing so fed up with the war that they dug out whole underground supply systems in order to hide food and themselves from the Soldateska.
Basically it had become physically impossible to supply the armies and the debt was huge in many cases

Yes, the "Pioneer Exceptionalism" and "Self-Made Man" ethos is a very American view. I was suggesting these cultural elements are impacting you (as in Voss) and coloring our (as in fellow Americans) perceptions about "Thin Veneer" as Americans. I have this same bias myself. I find the US culture (Self-reliance and Competition) influences how we think "Human" behavior is and that this cultural bias impacts our ability to decide if the rest of humanity is impacted by "Thin Veneer" or not.

Sorry I was not super clear on this point initially. Heck, I still may not be super clear on the point I am trying to make.

 Easy E wrote:


Yes, the "Pioneer Exceptionalism" and "Self-Made Man" ethos is a very American view. I was suggesting these cultural elements are impacting you (as in Voss) and coloring our (as in fellow Americans) perceptions about "Thin Veneer" as Americans. I have this same bias myself. I find the US culture (Self-reliance and Competition) influences how we think "Human" behavior is and that this cultural bias impacts our ability to decide if the rest of humanity is impacted by "Thin Veneer" or not.

Sorry I was not super clear on this point initially. Heck, I still may not be super clear on the point I am trying to make.

I get what you're saying better. . . hell, this comment reminds me of a current textbook in my MBA class where the first thing that popped into my head after reading some of the end of chapter "discussion questions" was just how pro-west/pro-USA the questions were from the start.