Historic Replicas

In the rough and tumble days of the frontier West, lawmen and outlaws alike were only as good as the guns they carried. Slowly but surely, word would spread about the great men and women of the day, and over time, they became legends.  People on both sides of the law were known by their firearms, and in many cases, their weapons became priceless collector’s items (the one Robert Ford used to kill Jesse James was sold at auction for $350,000!).  One gun stands out from the rest, though, and that’s the Colt. 

Founder Samuel Colt had a simple yet unprecedented design: the automatic revolving chamber, which for the first time allowed gunfighters to fire up to six rounds without reloading.  It became the most famous of all Wild West guns, and won many a famous battle.  Billy the Kid favored the .41 Colt Thunderer, a double-action revolver that could fire without having to pull the hammer before each shot (another Colt innovation).  It gave him a distinct advantage over opponents with less advanced firearms.  Famous lawman Bat Masterson used a Colt .45, and did much to enhance the weapon’s reputation.  Outlaws Frank and Jesse James used them too; they are among the greatest figures of the Old West, and for a time, the Colt was synonymous with their names.  It’s no wonder that the Colt western revolver is the most famous weapon of our frontier past. 

There are a certain number of people who love collecting ancient and antique Roman weaponry.  One of the things that they always look forward to having is Roman armour.  The craftsmanship that was worked on these pieces makes you think that you are seeing the real thing.
 
It is almost impossible to find the original pieces of Roman armor so replicas are the next best things these collectors will get.  But with a lot of research done in making the replicas, they really look like the real ones.  A lot of people use them for recreation battles because of their authenticity.  And they get matching swords, daggers and helmets as well.  You can also find authentic Roman apparel too.

Writing about the Civil War weapons and the Civil War replicas on our site has gotten me thinking about slavery and the larger role it’s played in human history.  Slavery is nearly as old as humanity itself. It is the ownership of one human being by another, the antithesis of the basic human rights guaranteed by the United States and other modern nations.  It is one of the most oppressive, horrific institutions ever devised, and, tragically, one that appears frequently in our history books.  Slavery was not invented in one place and imported elsewhere, to be foisted upon innocent native peoples like alcohol on the American Indians.  Nor was slavery a fluke, a detestable byproduct of one people’s excessive cruelty or pride.  Rather, the subjugation of others appears to have been a basic human impulse indulged all over the world, and one that’s only recently been curbed by compassion and collective reason.  Today, of course, individual freedom and the equality of all people are central to our culture, and the idea of slavery often fills us with disgust.  But different times had different ideals, and when slavery was the norm, many otherwise decent people probably thought it was the natural order of things, and never questioned it.  We’re all products of our environment, and as such, it’s important not to judge past generations too harshly.  Slavery has been justified in a variety of ways, and taken many forms over the course of history.  Let’s explore some of them and try to understand it a little better. 

…Many scholars believe that the birthday cake took shape in Germany in the heart of Renaissance Europe.  The Germans baked sweet round cakes in the shape of baby Jesus to celebrate his birthday, and eventually the birthdays of their young children dressed in what we would consider Renaissance costumes.  The Germans were also the first people to consistently light birthday candles, which probably grew out of candles placed on Christmas trees (another German first!).  Candles, of course, have a VERY long history in celebrations, back to the Ancient Greek costumes and beyond.  So when your birthday comes around, have a happy one, and remember that yours is a party thousands of years in the making.  

Today’s my birthday, and it occurred to me that I’d hardly ever thought about birthdays and the origin of cakes, candles, and singing off-key;)  Birthdays are a special time for practically every culture, a time to honor a person’s life and remind them how special they are to us.  Like many modern holidays, people were celebrating birthdays a long time before any of us ever had one.  Once again, the mighty Roman Empire is largely responsible for spreading the idea in Western Europe, and the nations that came after them spread it to the New World.  In fact, the Roman naming day, or dies lustricus, was originally a lot more important.  Birthdays were first celebrated in Rome by the cult of Mithraism, a mystical religion that worshipped the Persian Sun God Mithra. It was popular among Roman soldiers, who traveled far and wide and spread their beliefs.  When Christianity became popular, the custom remained, and the Romans adapted customs from and other holidays, wearing Roman costumes, feasting, and giving gifts. 

The Viking replicas on our site are detailed reproductions of the weapons of an ancient and intriguing culture. Today I thought I’d take a look at one of my favorite stories from middle school social studies class:  Leif Ericson, the famous Viking explorer.  Ericson’s story is one for the history books, and it’s not surprising that school children still know his name and his famous Viking helmet.  He was the first known European to cross the Atlantic and make land in North America, approximately 490 years before Columbus made his famous voyage. 
 Leif Ericson was born in Iceland around 970 AD. His father was Erik the Red, who discovered and settled Greenland after being exiled from Iceland when he killed two of his neighbors in a dispute.  It was probably a good thing he left; after being exiled, anyone in the Iceland colony was legally allowed to kill him.  When he returned three years later, he convinced hundreds of Vikings to resettle with him in the newly discovered land.

While I was researching Latin and the Roman contributions to Romance languages, I turned up a huge amount of information about Roman technology and inventions.  As it turns out, the Romans were responsible for an incredible number of scientific discoveries and techniques.  Some are very well known; the Romans are famous for their Roman costumes, the Coliseum (the ancient stadium of the gladiators that still stands in present-day Rome), their aqueducts, and architecture in general.  The segmented Roman armor of the centurions has been made famous in movies like I am Spartacus and Julius Caesar.  Other Roman technology may surprise you, though.  They used lighthouses to guide their ships, one of which stands to this day, the Tower of Hercules in Spain.  They mastered glassblowing and produced windows, lamps, even mirrors. Roman doctors used a wide variety of surgical tools, and some citizens wore false teeth made of iron.  Businessmen and mathematicians carried a portable abacus, in effect the world’s first pocket calculator, and many people had portable sundials, the world’s first pocket watches.  They even had indoor plumbing!  During a chapter of human history that’s often associated with disease and unsanitary living conditions, the Romans were using public baths and flush toilets.  How’s that for being ahead of your time?  Of course, the fall of the Roman Empire hit the reset button on human understanding; many of the secrets of Roman technology were lost and had to be rediscovered by later civilizations.  But when you consider how organized and sophisticated Rome was, it’s mind-boggling to think what they would have achieved if the empire had survived into modern times.

The Romans were the supreme rulers of Europe for hundreds of years, and few cultures have had as much influence on the cultures that succeeded it.  The art and science of Ancient Rome continue to shape the modern world, 1600 years after the fall of the Empire itself. If you’re new to history, you may wonder how exactly the Romans affected a world so distant from their own. 
 Consider our language.  The Romans spoke Latin, a long-dead tongue that one only hears in church and college classrooms. Latin itself was divided into high, or classical, and “Vulgar” Latin.  Classical Latin was the language of poetry and literature, while Vulgar Latin was the everyday tongue, used to trade goods in the marketplace and direct Roman shields on the battlefield.  Vulgar Latin was the truly universal language of Rome spoken in every corner of the Empire.  Now think about America.  It’s a big country, yet we all speak the same kind of English, more or less, and it will probably stay that way.   Thanks to TV and the Internet, the world isn’t quite so big anymore, and we’re all exposed to the same words and phrases.  But in Ancient Rome, there was no mass communication, and people in far-off provinces might not hear from each other for years! Latin was everywhere, but over time, it began to change in different places; certain words fell out of use, new ones were invented, and Latin began to blend with native tongues.  In time, Latin in different parts of the empire would evolve into English, Spanish, Portuguese, French, Italian, and a score of other languages and dialects.

…continued

Meriwether Lewis was born in 1774 in Virginia, and moved with his family to the Broad River Valley in Georgia in 1780.  He expressed and early interest in natural history and received daily instruction in herbal and frontier medicine from his mother.  He also learned diplomacy in Georgia through his dealings with the neighboring Cherokee, who he apparently treated with respect and spoke well of among his own people.  He was well read and trained in historical weapons.  He returned to Virginia at 13 for private tutoring, and befriended Thomas Jefferson during his time there. Jefferson appointed Lewis as his personal aide in 1801, after six years in the U.S. Army weapons. He lived in the White House for two years, but through it all, he maintained a passion for travel and exploration, and Jefferson found him ideally suited to the immense task ahead.

Today I thought I’d write about one of my favorite adventures from early American colonial history:  the Lewis and Clark expedition of 1803.  Meriwether Lewis and William Clark were the first Americans to make a land-based expedition to the Pacific Ocean, a journey that spanned three years and 8,000 miles!  Now America is a big place; the first time I traveled coast to coast, I was monumentally impressed by just how far one can travel within our borders, and I was driving, and you can’t go more than 60 or 70 miles without finding safety and civilization.  Picture, then, the sheer magnitude of a cross-country journey on foot, through what was then forbidding wilderness. What kind of men were these, who ventured so bravely into an uncharted landscape, teeming with wild animals and a potentially hostile native population?  What historical weapons did they carry? (to be continued…)