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And when Rome fell, what nations were the citizens absorbed into?
Were Italy, France, and other meditaranian Euro-states once apart of the Roman Empire?
Well the empire ''fell'' (476 A.D.) it wasn't like it happened all at once as it was a slow methodical decline i'd say starting even before Constantine built his new capitol city in the eastern province of Thracia. In fact the last 150 to 200 years it was defended by mainly non Italian soldiers and so as the empire receeded the citizens became part of the new Germanic kingdoms.
Ok, here's what I mean...the continents use to fit together like a puzzle...you would think while together, the animals would have spread into what is now North America...ever wonder why the rhinos or hippoes or giraffs or zebras never crossed into America while the lands were connected?
Seems wolves did though...and maybe certain birds...and alligators...
And buffalo herds...
But like why didn't the monkeys cross over, or like the great apes? or Orangatangs?
You would think when the settlers first arrived that they would of encountered all these animals in the tropics of America, which would have been Florida, louisiana Alabama....unless the indians, who were already here, hunted them to extinction....guess well never know...unless fossils are recoverd...and or bones...
Hmm ... Well since that was so long ago when the continents were supposedly together maybe at that time era there were little to no mammals alive yet with the exception being birds??
There were Sabre Tooth Tigers and Mastodons in North America.. and various large wolves...through the ages, some became extinct and others evolved into what we see today. Mastodon - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
I am fasinated that people consistantly make the same mistake and learn nothing from it. For example the series of financial bubbles from the early eighties in the US. Its an example of, on many levels, idealogy and culture interfering with logical processes. More generally I am fasinated at how mental models can guide the search and interpretation of facts - changing fundamentally our understanding of history in the process.
The way the US west is viewed is a classical example of this. Depending on when you lived understanding of it was fundamentally different. Obviously the reality did not change, but perceptions of it did and that dominated behavior not any physical reality.
Human perception is reality, in history most of all.
I am fasinated that people consistantly make the same mistake and learn nothing from it. For example the series of financial bubbles from the early eighties in the US. Its an example of, on many levels, idealogy and culture interfering with logical processes. More generally I am fasinated at how mental models can guide the search and interpretation of facts - changing fundamentally our understanding of history in the process.
The way the US west is viewed is a classical example of this. Depending on when you lived understanding of it was fundamentally different. Obviously the reality did not change, but perceptions of it did and that dominated behavior not any physical reality.
Human perception is reality, in history most of all.
That has always bothered me,too. It all depends in which era the history of a certain event was written about. Gibbon wrote about the fall of Rome from his perspective and the political times in which he lived. A book about the same subject written today would be entirely different. It is something to be aware of when reading about history.
It would probably have taken the continents millions of years to drift apart. They're drifting even now. Eventually California may bump into China.
The separation took place before there were mammals and other species that we know today. Which is why you can find skeletons of the same species of dinosaurs on far flung continents.
Interesting thing, I learned that Maine was a chunk of Africa that broke off and bumped into the North American continent, which is why there are no bones of large dinosaurs in Maine. Maine is comparatively new land, which is why its soil is so poor. That's what I heard or read somewhere, anyway.
Getting back to animals, different species wandered into new grazing lands wherever they could, looking for food, just like human animals did. If animals couldn't get over to someplace, they stayed where they were. Humans learned to build a boat.
On the subject of a painting of Alexander someone mentioned. There may have been a couple of fellows painted with a swirling cape on a turning, rearing horse, but the one I'm seeing in my mind's eye is Napoleon Bonaparte.
Speaking of which, Adolf didn't study Napoleon's invasion of Russia and its aftermath very well, did he? Of course, Adolf didn't study much military history at all, only the bits and pieces he found interesting, I wager, like invade and conquer. Personally, I could never understand why the Nazis felt they needed all that land. In the old days land meant power, but things were changing quickly by the 1930's.
The late 1800's and early 1900's were a time of ferment and revolution. There were the anarchists, whose movement really took off in the mid 1800's, who felt government of any kind only put down working people and was therefore wrong. Nationalism was popular. My grandfather was a fierce nationalist who fought both the Germans and the Russians to get them out of his country, when he was in his late teens and early 20's. This would have been around the time of WW1, the Russian Revolution, and the Armenian genocide. BTW, did you know that the Germans had a socialist government during the time of the Kaiser. Kaiser Wilhelm of WW1 felt himself an ardent socialist.
Americans were very nationalistic, by the way. You can tell that by just reading popular books and periodicals of the era.
Millions of years?
hmm...maybe...I don't know...but I do know what I have observed while being alive...
And that is...when geographically changing things happen in nature...they happen suddenly and violently...like earthquakes...or floods...and it's the tremendious force of water or ground shifting, that leaves canyons or creates new lakes or levees almost over night...
Like a mud slid...they happen suddenly and violently when the soil becomes saturated with water...and then all at once, mega tons of mud shifts...
Or avalanges...all at once, the snow cracks and shifts, and a mega ton of snow is displaced....this occurs in moments, not decades...
And so if I use that same observed reality and apply it to other events...I would imagine the continental drift probablly occured rather quickly...do to some massive tectonic collapse beneath the earth...
To me, it would take a force that violent and strong, and full of pressure for that to occur...and maybe while that was happening, great mountain ranges were formed in less than weeks, rather than millions of years...
Can you kind of see what I'm saying?
Last edited by Time and Space; 03-04-2010 at 12:35 PM..
Pangea was not the first supercontinent, there were several others before that.
Scientists calculate that Pangea started breaking up 1bout 175 million years ago. Phase 2 of the break up was about 150 million years ago, with phase 3 occuring about 60 million years ago.
India has been colliding and drifting into Asia for the past 35 million years, which is why the Himalayas keep getting bigger.
MrMarbles ... thanks for the info as i knew it was related to the Slav family but i admit i just haven't studied much about Russia like i should have.
Also i know that a band of Vikings called the Rus founded Novgorod as i believe their Rus name is the basis for the word Russian or people of the Rus ... correct or not?
I see. You use the out-of-date information. No Vikings based this city. The city settlement has more than 4000 years. Holmgrad - Slovensk - Noovgorod.
Pangea was not the first supercontinent, there were several others before that.
Scientists calculate that Pangea started breaking up 1bout 175 million years ago. Phase 2 of the break up was about 150 million years ago, with phase 3 occuring about 60 million years ago.
India has been colliding and drifting into Asia for the past 35 million years, which is why the Himalayas keep getting bigger.
I agree with what your saying, just not the time table...just like it doesnt take a tree millions of years to fall...
Or when building collapse, it doesnt take millions of years...they collapse all at once...and the force of that crash changes the landscape beneith the building...
I apply that same logic to nature...I personally think mountain rangers were created rather quickly..due to a sudden tremendious shift in tectonic plate activity...it would take a lot of massive force for that to occur....
I don't see, nor have ever observed in nature...a force that powerful taking place over millions of years...
Like gun powder exploding...it's the initial force that generates enough energy for change?
When I grew up in WA state...I lived behind a wheatfield...and in the spring...the rains would come...and flood...and over night, canyons were created from the flood water...it didn't take millions of years...all the force came at once...
I believe in order for mountain ranges like this to be formed, the rock would have almost had to be in a liquid state...(friction creates heat, and heat melt's or softens matter) and I believe while in this semi molten state...these great mountain ranges were created, and then they cooled and hardened...and now we're witnessing the erosion of, rather than the building up of...
I mean just think about how physics works in the things you observe in your daily life...and what I'm saying will make more sense...
Edited note:If you look at the cut away from mountain ranges...as in the above illustration...they almost look like waves in the ocean, or ripples, which again tells me that they were probablly in a semi-molten state when formed...and then simply hardend when the intial force subsided...
I know if I had a phd in rock science, what i'm saying would be published and seriously thought out...but I'm just using my brain and what I observe in nature...
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