I was watching a History Channel rerun recently about ancient and medieval weapons. And at one point someone -- presumably a historian, but at that point the name caption was long gone, so, dunno, maybe they were asking the museum janitor -- drops the canard in the thread title. About the invention of the katana in the 13'th century. (So, considering that they do get the century wrong, hmm, indeed maybe they WERE asking the museum janitor instead of a historian.) Apparently with all our modern technology, we couldn't make a katana as sharp and awesome as in the 13'th century. Go figure.
This is not a rehash of the aliens thread, but seems to me the polar opposite. Whereas the alien "theory" gives ancient humans too little credit, this version gives them so much credit that they were smarter and could do better things than modern people with a Ph.D. in engineering or metallurgy. It's like nostalgia turned to such a monumental scale, that you can probably see it from space.
And that really gets me wondering: why do some people believe THAT crap? Exactly why would one want to believe, against quite trivial evidence, that some backwater medieval smith could make such swords that modern experts in metallurgy couldn't do better?
I mean, for katanas it's trivial to see that we can do better steel for machine tools, and that when we want a sharp and hard edge, we can do better than the martensitic edge on a katana. We can for example coat it in titanium nitride, which not only actually cuts through steel (we use it on industrial drills which actually have to cut through steel; whereas a katana, contrary the claims about it, it doesn't), but doesn't risk chipping on impact (or even scratching), needs less care, etc. So, anyway, not only we could do something sharper and with a harder edge than any 13'th century katana, but it would be lighter, more durable, etc, than any katana ever made. And one only needs to have heard of machine tools to know that.
So why do some people feel a need to think that some dude from long ago -- be it a smith or a "noble brute" hunter-gatherer or whatever -- was that much more awesome and knowledgeable than modern experts with decades of experience and training? What's the attraction of that kind of anti-modernism?
This is not a rehash of the aliens thread, but seems to me the polar opposite. Whereas the alien "theory" gives ancient humans too little credit, this version gives them so much credit that they were smarter and could do better things than modern people with a Ph.D. in engineering or metallurgy. It's like nostalgia turned to such a monumental scale, that you can probably see it from space.
And that really gets me wondering: why do some people believe THAT crap? Exactly why would one want to believe, against quite trivial evidence, that some backwater medieval smith could make such swords that modern experts in metallurgy couldn't do better?
I mean, for katanas it's trivial to see that we can do better steel for machine tools, and that when we want a sharp and hard edge, we can do better than the martensitic edge on a katana. We can for example coat it in titanium nitride, which not only actually cuts through steel (we use it on industrial drills which actually have to cut through steel; whereas a katana, contrary the claims about it, it doesn't), but doesn't risk chipping on impact (or even scratching), needs less care, etc. So, anyway, not only we could do something sharper and with a harder edge than any 13'th century katana, but it would be lighter, more durable, etc, than any katana ever made. And one only needs to have heard of machine tools to know that.
So why do some people feel a need to think that some dude from long ago -- be it a smith or a "noble brute" hunter-gatherer or whatever -- was that much more awesome and knowledgeable than modern experts with decades of experience and training? What's the attraction of that kind of anti-modernism?
via JREF Forum http://forums.randi.org/showthread.php?t=270691&goto=newpost
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