> The land was previously covered in tiny iron meteorites

Interesting. Source for that?

It's simple. They had as many soldiers as they had swords. Or man. Whichever is less.

No it was two Pila, one was lighter and the other was heavier. So they threw the lighter one first, then followed up with the heavier one at close range.

As for the pike question. Well maybe. There are references to Roman Army units called Phalangarii and Lanciarii, which may have used longer spears. But the evidence for them is sketchy at best. Cassius Dio flat out says that the Emperor Marcus Aurelius Antonius (Caracalla) had a 15,000 man Macedonian Phalanx in imitation of Alexander the Great. But take it with a pitch of salt. Although there is the possibility it was true, considering how useful a long spear would be against Persian horsemen.

Man that is a loaded question. It’s the whole butterfly effect when regarded to history.

You can always ask these questions, but at a point it is too much. It’s like asking “What would have happened if World War One didn’t occur?” Well perhaps World War Two wouldn’t have occurred, but could a different war had occurred? We wouldn’t know and we could argue for days and get nowhere.

Every single event in history made the world today. The better question to ask is how did each event lead to new technologies and how did they lead to new events, rather than asking what would have happened if something didn’t occur. If William the Conqueror had not conquered Britain would the Anglo-Saxons be in power? We could continue to ask the questions but we wouldn’t know because more events would occur after that which would continue to reshape the world.

So yes, you can ask them, but the question is, should you?

The founding fathers were split on their views. Thomas Jefferson replaced Franklin as ambassador of France in 1785 and remained there until two months after Bastille Day (1789). He was in favor of a monarchy falling and even helped Lafayette with drafting a new constitution for France.

Washington and Adams, on the other hand, thought it was economic suicide to aid the French. America was is incredible debt at the time. In addition, entering or aiding in the war would make America vulnerable to attack. Only six years had passed since Great Britain recognized America as independent. GB could’ve used the alliance as an excuse to start up another war.

Lastly, the revolution in France turned ugly quickly. The beheadings of any and all aristocrats turned many founding fathers off to the idea of lending a hand.

There’s a book ‘Lost City Of the Monkey God’ that dealt with some of these LiDAR techniques down in that region so it’s definitely not a new revelation

There’s places like that even in the US. But they are on land that people don’t want seized or whatever by the govt so they don’t tell anyone about it.

Although this is a different region, you're right about that area. Its amazing to me that near such a populated city, there are sights that have only been discovered recently. Xcambo for example was only discovered in the 90s I believe. Discovered is a strange term to use though. There are still many Mayan people living near there that continue the languages, traditions, and skills such as maintaing the walls along the roads. The route to Motul is a great example of the stone work that continues today. The locals always knew of these sights, but it really hits you though when you venture into the jungle and realize just how truly dense it can be. There is a vast network in that area from the pink salt lakes that they still harvest today in Meya'h Ta'ab, Xcambó, Dzibilchaltún, Mayapan and so many more. Many of the more modern towns are built from the dismantled building of the Mayans. It's mind blowing to think of what it must have been like before the Spanish turn the best ones into churches and other buildings. So little is left of what was so much

Swords were particularly rare and expensive in the early middle ages. There were only certain parts of Europe known for their swordsmithing, and they were all controlled by different feudal powers; Frankish swords were high quality and prized by the Norse, for instance. It was also more difficult to learn to use a sword effectively as compared to a spear or an axe.

This kind of specialized training, along with mounted combat, the use of the lance and horsemanship in general, gradually became the province of the knightly and noble classes. Swords became a status symbol and, in some cultures of the medieval period, only knights and noblemen were allowed to carry them (especially during peacetime).

As the middle ages progressed, swords become more and more commonplace, just as the province of warfare begins to expand from the nobility to include professional men-at-arms of lower social rank.

Comparatively, the Roman Republic/Principate/Dominate is a completely different beast. Not only is it a massive polity stretching over the entire Mediterranean basin, it is also a military juggernaut that relies on its legions to continuously conquer new territories. Prior to the Nerva-Antonine dynasty, the idea of 'fixed borders' would have been not only ridiculous but sacreligious as well; the Romans believed they had been granted infinite imperium by the gods. Each victory brings more land, more minerals, more slaves; these resources are exploited and become fuel for the furnace of conquest.

Rome had centralized administration, tax collection, heavy industry, vast natural resources, a state-subsidized, professional standing army and labor that was extremely cost-effective (to put it mildly). States with all of that, on the level of efficiency that the Romans had achieved, would not be seen again in Western Europe until the early modern period. Those are all contributing factors to why Rome was able and willing to equip their legions as they did.

The swords also sucked. Their effectiveness came from the training of the soldiers and allowed them to make what are, essentially, the original Pakistani steel. Because they did have a military industrial complex they were big into recycling broken weapons, further reducing the need for high quality products. The standard issue Chinese Jian style sword was the same kind of thing. All about volume production.There were weapons for the wealthy and powerful of much high quality than the Legionaries (and Chinese) infantry used, but they were not the standard.

Popular history gets things kind of muddled because the price of steel weapons skyrocketed as the Western Roman Empire crumbled. During the Middle Ages steel weapons were quite uncommon and served as a mark of wealth that often passed through multiple generations of a family, sometimes reaching near legendary status. That concept was retroactively, and incorrectly, applied to Roman weapons.

Slave labor helped fun most of their infrastructure, including their military

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The Roman Empire was the pinnacle military and economic power of its day. By the 1st-2nd century CE, the Roman Empire were producing an estimated 50,000 tonnes of iron a year - a rate that won't be seen again by a single nation state until Great Britain in the 1700s. If they could afford to outfit a large portion of their force with metal armour, swords are a pretty trivial matter.

A sword can be expensive, but it can be cheap to produce as well. It just depends on the quality you wanted. The short Roman gladii as others have mentioned required less metal to make and process - it being short also means it could be made with lesser quality iron/steel, as a longer sword experiences more stress in use. From metal analysis, we know Roman gladius varied a lot in iron/steel composition, they were probably mass produced with somewhat minimum quality standards (not much different from milspec items today).

What does Nubia has to do Zimbabwe or Haiti even u don’t mind me asking ?? Unless u believe all people with darker skin are from the race or even related 🤦🏾‍♂️

I read Smiths biography of "John Marshall " also excellently researched and written book , but all Smith books are magisterial.

After reading it watch Warren Beatty's film " Reds"

Two books I'm familiar with are David Halberstam "The Coldest Winter" ,and Max Hastings "The Korean War "

That selective fire also includes 3 round burst rather than full auto, which is what most of the US Army’s M4s and M16s have.

But…we don’t use the 7.62 in small arms.

Exactly. I spent 8 years in the US Army. Not once did I see an automatic variant of the M4 or M16. They would be mostly useless for anything other than indirect suppressing fire. The M4s and M16s have a 3 round burst selector but it is also pretty much useless and the only time I’ve ever seen someone use it or used it myself was to expend ammo quickly at the end of a range day so that we didn’t have to turn it in (because it’s a lot of paperwork to turn in live ammo rather than just spent brass).

I’ve never shot an AK so I can’t speak to their accuracy but as far as my experience goes, any light personal rifle would be worse off with an automatic fire option because everyone would want to use it and become less accurate, and they would burn through their personal ammo load incredibly quickly. Semi automatic with placed shots works far better. If we need to send some rounds down range, that’s what we have SAWs and crew served weapons for. Our training doesn’t really revolve around automatic weapon fire either, even when training specifically on automatic fire weapons (SAWs, 240Bs, M2s) we were trained to fire in short 3-5 round bursts, anything past that and you’re wildly inaccurate (and that’s on a weapon with a bipod/mount).

So I guess my best answer would be, if we don’t arm your average infantryman with an automatic weapon now, that’s probably why they didn’t want to back then either.

You can be pretty sure it never reached the levels we have today. It's a matter of population.

Believe me, you should feel bad. The worst thing is that it's not even just the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. There's acid rain, plastic pollution, agrotoxics and a probably a hundred other negative ways in which our lifestyle impacts the environment that we haven't even discovered yet.

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The Romans did have indoor plumbing which wasn't too dissimilar from our own, so you definitely have a point.

those "standing" forces were citicen called to the eagles with their own kit