From penteconter to trireme

wiki commons, 5th century relief of an Athenian trireme with unprotected rowers

wind independent propulsion - paddles and oars
In an environment of sailing ships, paddles and oars offered the opportunity to translate numbers of humans on a watercraft into motive power. This motive power allows for approaches that can not be made under sail and was a usual procedure for maneuvering into harbour for all kinds of ships. The approach  vectors allowed for beaching to trade or raid on many beaches of the Mediterranean with ships, the penteconter for example, that had not yet split into war and merchant ships. The threat of raids from the sea explains the location of a number of Greek poleis away from the sea. Athens is one such example that needed several kilometers/miles of long walls to connect their city with one of their harbours (there were several more harbours available). A ship that carries more men than goods has usually less peaceful intentions and is more likely to catch under oars a ship with more goods and less men. Piracy in the Mediterranean used suitable known ambush positions that offered favourable conditions of wind and visibility for approaching and boarding.

armed men on the ships - marines

Boarding was the essence of naval power expression that allowed to seize ship with goods and surviving crews. The ability to successfully board was dependent on the training and numbers of marines in comparison to defenders in close quarters combat.

Missiles were not yet capable to destroy other ships, but thin the ranks of defenders and rowers of naval vessels. Bows, javelins and early crossbows (gastraphetes and oxybeles) or ballistae had different ranges, penetration power and rate of shot. Positioning for shots was possible and does make a major difference in missile warfare, because human capability to defend against all these visible (slow and deflectable in comparison to modern gunpowder weapons) missiles was much better than against surprise missiles from unseen angles.

Boarding marines had an advantage from supporting missile platforms and boarding could be conducted from several angles by teaming up on ships, all kinds of flanking maneuvers. Add to this temporary or permanent mobility gains made via breaking oars and masts or ripping sails, with the skillful use of hooks and claws or flooded hulls after ramming damage and you have a way of fighting with increasing inequality. Weaponizing the ship gave one side more options at putting the other at a disadvantage.

wiki commons, Assyrian representation of a direme warship in 700 BC with an elevated platform for marines

a ram suitable for damaging ships
The damage did not make ships sink to the bottom of the sea, but foremost increased displacement to the level of immobility. Ships were full with humans, tools and wood, who could provide a number of stop gap measures against the kind of damage incurred by a naval ram. Impressive as it may look, it could not punch a hole, but only break materials with resulting cracks for water to enter. planks were quite thick and joined by mortise and tenon.

wiki commons, Atlit ram found on the Levantine coast, radiocarbon dated to 530-270BC, the construction of the ram is for maximized fracture of the mortise and tenon timber joints and minimized friction during extraction.

Ideas for speedier standard design production did exist, with ships built around design templates for the interior in the usual way with outer hull first. After finishing the outer construction, the templates were removed and interior could be fitted to the result. The weight of a heavily manned ramming vessel with low dead weight and sleek lines for speed posed a major stability problem due to hogging. That was solved with cables running from stern to bow. Like in modern ships, structural failures could lead to a ship breaking apart under its own weight. As for the naval ram, with an understanding of ship construction and handling critical damage could be delivered that compromised stability to the degree of collapse of the hull, but not with one limited blow. Sea battles between such fleets usually take note of the degree of mutually delivered damage to ships without sinking each other.
Not only hulls were damaged, but oars, rudders and sails as well. The oars could be broken by the sheer momentum of passing hulls, while rudders were a prime targets for grappling with small maneuverable vessels usually employed in defensive encounters. Sails time and again fall prey to missiles that create holes in them.
Pirates used to chase sailing ships with their oared ships having a limited sprint time under oars to close within the range of sight of a sailing transport vessel. Longest ranged missiles suitable against the sail propulsion were of great benefit for the chances of success at capturing these sailing vessels and their content. In numbers and ship height the merchantmen were not yet capable of withstanding such attacks. The large and sophisticated merchantmen of later ages, who could beat off the timeless pirate threat, were not capable of beaching everywhere and could thus only use few suitable harbours with a network of smaller vessels always providing the regional connections from these centers. As of this age, the merchantmen were severely undermanned and had little hope to prevail in close combat.

development history
The development was from the penteconter, as a multi tool for voyages that were trade and raid in foreign lands, beyond own legal regulations with a corresponding multi-purpose crew of warrior, rower and seaman as the job description for every participant. The penteconter remained a trade vessel, but was eclipsed both in war and trade by different designs. For trade more specialized round ships developed that approached the mathematical ideal of a sphere that had most content in comparison to least surface. Hydrodynamics were not optimal for speed that was about five knots with and two knots against the wind, using square rigged sails. In warfare the penteconter received more rowers and a second deck level that elevated the warriors. You could not board a ship with a towering deck full of warriors from below. This gave the new type of penteconter a decisive advantage that enabled them to focus on rowing and damaging other ships. The top level rowers were still warriors. Against a foe in low decked ships they could rather use their superior rowing power to create damage to his ships and use the results in timing to pick the fights of their attacking marines. Picking fights leads to increased success, while a higher position enables fewer men to fend off more.
The milestone in this development of successful ship to ship engagements was the trireme that could smash into the hulls of enemy ships on a degree not possible with the older biremes. For this purpose another level of rowers was added, either slightly elevated from the second level, as in Phoenician designs, or next to the second level with an outrigger, as in Greek designs. Both increasingly aimed at damage of ships and fought more defensive in boarding action with Athens taking the lead in this direction by a massive build-up of very light rowing ships with a small select force of hoplites (The strategos Cimon probably temporarily reverted that Athenian trend). Other navies were more convinced of strong hulls with more marines that maintained ramming as a tactic, but boarding as the decisive element that could be conducted with an enemy not as crippled by ship damage as Athenian marines needed for such a success. Ramming could be used to inflict damage beyond the structural limits of ships that would make them break and submerge as floating wood.

humans on board
Fighting for one or the other advantage was tiring for rowers and marines, while chasing another ship or fleet  tired the pursuer a lot. The pursuer needed a speed advantage that required an more than square energy input increase. Rowing all night to the naval Battle of Salamis in order to catch the allied Greek fleet in the Persian War was criticized as a folly by the Phoenician nobles (who lost their heads for insubordination after the battle was lost). These tolls on each crew made warfare of rowed ships one of the few examples of naval warfare suitable for the use of fresh reserves that could turn the tables.
Manning as well didn't require exact fulfillment of certain figures and likely was understrength with some overmanning by compensating rowers. These rowers increasingly served in a non-close combat role, but should not discounted as light infantry with shields, javelins, clubs and knives. As for close quarters against heavily armed marines they were no match, allowing to board and conquer enemy ships, although on land they could wreak havoc on unexpected and unarmed people. Warfare with these oared ships should be seen in an economic context of enabling to extract valuables from the coasts, where most people settle and wealth is accumulated due to transport. Like each and every robbery, the get-away vehicle was a problem and a highly capable warship that only required a few heavily armed marines nicely solved this issue. As for Athens, the increasing reliance on ship on ship warfare through maneuver reduced the risk to the lives of the people involved in this kind of combat, making naval&amphibious warfare a low risk high gain affair. Such a constellation likely induces to follow down that route of profits with ever increasing naval armament and emphasis on shipborne capability that paid off in the raids on land.
Not only Athens followed that route in combination with island conquests and cleruchies, but Carthage as well, although the Punic had less of these tiny islands and rather more control over low density populated lands except for their North African homeland. From a very similar population and economic base they split their conquest into land and naval at the same time with reduced risk to their population base in the naval&amphibious component. That does not mean that these were outstanding rowers, but that were enticed and served them for easy gains that did not require as much previous capital to invest than conquests on land. After they made their voyage, a safe investment on land might have been envisioned that offered less profit, but lower chances of misery due to weather misfortunes.

Sea lines of communication in transformation

Introduction:
Sea lines of communication are not only ships doing almost all global transport of tonnage/mile since millennia cheaper than land transport (by a factor of 20-25 over bodies of water like lakes and seas and a factor of 4-5 along running water such as rivers). They include the transmission of messages via underwater cables. Laying these underwater cables was one of the most important endeavours for centralized control of the late colonial empires. It created a world of information exchange, an unequal exchange of improved control and exploitation by the developed and civilized world, but nonetheless.

http://www.atlantic-cable.com/ is an informative webpage on submarine cables and source for the maps.

http://www.subtelforum.com/articles/magazine/subscriptions/ is an online magazine with extensive information on submarine cables.

1http://www.atlantic-cable.com/ : 1902 British All Red Line map, from Johnson's The All Red Line - The Annals and Aims of the Pacific Cable Project

http://www.atlantic-cable.com/ :Carte générale des grandes communications télégraphiques du monde, 1901/03
International Telegraph Bureau (Berne, Switzerland)

Map images courtesy of the
Norman B. Leventhal Map Center at the Boston Public Library

Even our internet today makes use of the same approach of underwater cables for global connections. Half the readership of this blog must use underwater data transfer and the other half will be rooted this way from time to time despite geographic proximity because the underwater fibre optic cables are the information highways between different data processing clusters. Older systems transmitting electric impulses had quite a struggle with the Baud rate because of the electromagnetic field in such a high-density long distance environment.

All sea lines of communication enter specific hubs, harbours. The smaller a vessel is, the more hubs it can use. this has been used for trade networking as well as warfare. Viking long ships or military hovercrafts are designs for beaching at every possible location for what is termed amphibious warfare. Trading boats, barges can beach in a lot more places than sea-going ships and use the water-earth intersection for cargo transfers. The usual transport is to installations on solid ground, harbours, and rarely to floating installations that are usually ships of war or few barge carrier ships. Size and corresponding access to a selection of harbours restrict all kinds of ships. At the same time size enables to stay at sea for longer time and thus cover longer distances at less energy requirements. A ship grows cubic in load carrying capacity while energy requirements grow approximately square and the very cheap substances burned for modern ship transport are still a very significant fraction of the total floating mass.

Such exchange advantages enhance disposable income (economic Ricardo-model) and for this reason human settlement patterns do follow choices of environmental resources and exchange capabilities for personal benefits. You'll find harbours associated with rivers from the hinterland and people traditionally settling with highest density at places with running or standing bodies of water that enable(d) mass-transport of goods on boats or ships. The land-sea intersection is the place where most humans live(d).

Aspirations of the archetypes

Archetypes of three different economic systems:

networking (in 1913 the British Empire)

know-how (in 1913 the French Republic)

means of production (in 1913 the Russian Empire)

Land is associated with resources and infrastructure that both together enable to operate the means of production. Know-how is bonded to human individuals and utilized as organized human groups to work with available means of production.

Humans with their know-how and ability to learn can transfer from one land to another, but require integration in an infrastructure and organized human group in order to utilize their capabilities.

Networking uses the uneven distribution of means of production to organize exchange for mutual benefit of all three sides and does have their own know-how on how to handle these human interactions. Ships and boats have for most of human history been the most economic tools for exchange in goods and information.

Power on land is about control of physical structures such as infrastructure and natural resources. Enforced know-how control does not work well, because it operates within an organized human group and diminished voluntary participation decreases group efficiency.

Sea power starts as a protection from network access via the sea lines of communication and can evolve into a capability to interdict and protect sea lines of communication on a global scale. Since the early 20th century the split between information and material goods transfer through sea lines of communication has become most evident. The numerous underwater cables are constant communication lines across the sea utilized to do the information part of human exchange, including business communication. Today ships are not the exclusive communication tool over sea, but just one part for intermittent transfer of goods, while pipelines serve for constant transfer of a limited range of goods. Assessing sea power by looking at ship numbers and production is misleading in an environment with increasingly important maritime data transfer. For example a lot of (by now traditional) maritime traffic is the information transfer between the London and New York stock exchange.

Know-how is personal; means of production are (mostly) territorial. People with know-how do live on land in localized groups and the direction of land power was to acquire both in an as autarkic combination as possible. The longing for autarky would have changed the negotiation capability via networking sea powers that played a most important role in keeping uneven distributions of know-how and means of production connected for triple mutual benefits. The networking effort to create working human interactions can be underestimated and is in my opinion the key reason, why Germany failed in two world wars and still has to struggle with the toxic memory fallout in mind bombs with decreasing substance. The first of these wars was about German network aspirations, while the second one was meant to maximize means of production. Each case would have created a broader triangle and thus a more robust self-reliant structure, suitable for their European hegemonic dream.

Concepts
From a security perspective the bodies of water have been (US-)classified in a three tier system:
blue water - the open ocean without nearby land
green water - maritime body of water with nearby land that allows force projection from the land
brown water - non-salt water such as rivers and lakes with a very strong force projection from the very nearby land
anti-access/area-denial (a2/ad) is the attempt to keep out unwanted visitors. It’s nowadays most often discussed as hostile measures and threats directed against the US navy in green waters.

Sovereignty in maritime terms
The area access area-denial approach is the next logical step in shifting from brown water (end of colonialism) to green water control as in green water runs the highest density of most important traffic, traditionally represented by an own class of coastal non-high sea ships.
Historic examples are Alfred the Great's fleet or Charlemagne's defence program, both directed by Christian monarchs against heathen Viking raids. It's discussed whether their notorious attacks were in part a response to the Frankish raids against Denmark after the bloody conquest and Christianisation of Saxony and other neighbours.

Ever since the entry of the Portuguese into the Indian Ocean, the nations of the Indo-Pacific have (with few exceptions) suffered from the inferiority of the naval armament they could muster in comparison to the powers from the shores of the Atlantic. During the Age of Sail, the Atlantic sea powers were still quite impressed by the Indo-Pacific Oceans craftsmen's capability to copy their own designs and even deliver good quality at lower prices. The reasons for the fundamental shifts in power have more causes than guns and ships that were both copied. Arming the periphery by Emrys Chew is a study on how the weapons from the Atlantic shores changed the (extended) Indian Ocean coasts. While the Indo-Pacific early on was capable of producing similar items, they did not have the same mass-production development that made the Atlantic centres of Europe and America the main suppliers of armament. The limits to European dominance can be seen with a naval lens, the price for permanent brown water control became too high.
Next step to maintain the original economic trade advantages without the economic burden of administration and “civilization” were local banana republics with differing degrees of independence.

Most people resent unequal contracts and try to improve their chances in live. This happens on individual as well as in networked group levels (the latest example is the Arab Spring that had long been prepared and pushed for by the regions educated younger generations). Herein lies a core problem, the cooperation with the local cleptocracy that makes the still world-dominating Atlantic powers bad boy imperialists of exploitation and oppression. From theory to practice, how else do you run stable contracts that serve your interest in such an environment? It's a blame game.
The German High Sea Fleet (of rather coastal hull design) is an example of a politically charged "green water" navy meant to be blue. It not only served military, but more important political purposes of self-perception within the concert of European powers. The naming and design highlight the delusional character of these ambitions.
China’s green water navy's defeats triggered a long 19th/20th century with most profound impact. It even did away with the Son of Heaven, for millennia the pillar of Chinese states. While losing her many battles during these times, China was no way unaware or unable to acquire Western military technology. It's not the weapon, but the human that makes the difference and that human operates within an organization as part of a society. Nowadays, improving green water control against three of the most powerful navies of the world in direct proximity, the US navy, the Japanese navy and Republic of Korea navy is a dead sure giveaway for world domination dreams and can no way be sold as national security measures to their populace (any irony?).

US-today

The rise and current position of the USA can be attributed to means of production in a lucrative infrastructure for humans with know-how and ability to learn to emigrate to and rise quickly. Not every immigrant stayed in the US despite the positive economic network feedback it could provide. An own distribution network developed for the high local productivity that in turn created increasing US interest in foreign affairs. United Fruit and the First Barbary War are keywords for research on this complex field. Switching to a dominant naval power position during WWII came along with growing financial power utilized over the Atlantic underwater communication cables.

Today, the US has a tiny merchant fleet in comparison to Panama (due to legal loopholes). Comparing the underwater cable information traffic to the US naval investments makes them proportional to their role as the maritime connected global information exchange hub. The shipping of old is becoming a growing, but secondary maritime traffic business. (http://worldoceanreview.com/en/transport/global-shipping/). The output of the high numbers of educated academics is information that can be sent over these underwater cables. The academics are on average paid much higher per working hour than the local factory workers that produce the material goods that travel by ship. I have yet not found a study on the values of maritime traffic that includes and compares the underwater cables with shipping and pipelines, although the necessity for these investments to pay off speaks volumes.

Credit: TeleGeography Research   www.news.com/2300-1033_3-6035611-1.html

The global US (-Navy)
Currently, there's only one un-opposable power with a very significant capability for global control of blue water sea lines of communication via large and small carriers - the US navy. They do have giant aircraft carriers and double that with amphibious warfare ships that can serve in a sea control role. None so far claims to have found a solution that outclasses the ship fighting capabilities of these large super carriers with their manned fixed wing fighter bombers. In summary there's none capable of challenging US aspirations of blue water control anywhere on the globe. Global traffic can hardly avoid not using blue water shipping lines. While the capability to interdict each and every use of the sea is impossible, the pirates of the African coast highlight that, shipping through openly hostile waters with well-armed interdicting navy force drive up the prices to hardly affordable levels. Iran's games around the Strait of Hormuz pale in comparison.
This known capability at exchange control can be applied without open declaration of hostilities or recognizable boots on the ground. Constant network-manipulation, due to sea power and lesser capabilities for uncheckable impact on the core (sea) lines of communication is the essence of naval power exercise. If your game is network manipulation it's most logical to enhance this standing by synergetic cross-effects with other fields like critical resource access and financial networks. Altogether it creates a cluster with highest profits from all human exchanges and a corresponding disposable income that can be invested into the assets for that status.

Concerning the green water, this dominant blue water power also has significant assets to make an imprint in the highest traffic density environment. The usual modern combination for amphibious warfare, not expecting to be provided harbour access by the inhabitants of a region under attack, is a large long endurance vessel (LDP, LHA, LHD and some LST) with much smaller boats (hovercrafts and catamarans) or aircrafts (helicopters and tilt rotors) for landing at as many spots as possible and thus remain unpredictable raiders (the essence of amphibious warfare since ancient times). Because people live near the places they work and most people on earth live and work near the sea shore, this is the place where destruction can be wrought by these raids and always has been. Constant destruction does have economic long-term impacts and destabilizes any opponent with a higher degree of willingness for confrontation by the leadership than by the suffering population. If highest traffic density regions are not safe, the resulting exclusion from exchange network benefits provides one sided economic advantage that expensive attempts at autarky can hardly compensate.

Napoleonic France and Nazi Germany both fell into a complete autarky delusion, while Revolutionary France and the German Empire both managed to survive by obtainable autarky in manufacture of chemical oxidizers for explosives. By contrast, the German synthetic fuel production during WWII, situated near rivers and coasts, was bombed to inefficiency by the Western allies

This is not about the strategic blunders that hindered world aspirations by clever people acting according to their mindset. It’s about doomed attempts to achieve objectives without mutual agreements with wars serving as extreme negotiation measure. The multiple levels of resistance and cooperation people can express beyond organized, uniformed and armed violence are no trivial problem. Networking is a mindset and not a technology approach to this problem and it was never devoid of differing levels at coercion that are enacted with less friction via the naval domain.

Expeditionary Strike Group 3 http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/agency/navy/images/lhd-4-arg2.jpg

Conjuring Adolf Hitler and the narrative of German guilt

"Conjuring Hitler" by Guido Giacomo Preparata is a difficult, but interesting read (excerpt with the content of "Conjuring Hitler"). Mr Preparata does follow a lead on understanding the Nazis that a number of economists uncovered. The problem during reading much of the book is that the author has chosen a compelling story over more grounded analyses that puts things in place at the conclusion of the book. This is no slight conspiracy narrative as it might seem before reaching the final verdicts.

The German narrative on guilt from the Nazi-era is heavily shaped by finding a comfortable solution in forming a specific narrative of guilt and excuse. I know few humans, who would not shape their feelings of guilt likewise, even more so if you consider the massive media impact of bad Nazi-portrayal film imports that are very entertaining. Kudos in this part to "Inglorious Bastards" by Quentin Tarantino for waging a battle on the Nazi-film concepts and to German! actor Bruno Ganz in "Der Untergang"/"Downfall" for highlighting the human being Adolf Hitler, who ruthlessly shaped himself into an impersonification.

Hitler and the NSDAP
There's little that is not known about Hitler and the NSDAP, like "Woyzeck" by Georg Büchner, the compilation can make a difference in perception.
The NSDAP was a movement that wanted to be a party and the jobless Reichswehr snitch Adolf Hitler did see the opportunity to become someone if he joined them. He was not the only person to gain influence in this heterogeneous agglomeration with political and other goals. Much like the state of the state, this party was not united by one clear-cut ideology. Hitler created both, the final Nazi ideology and the unification of the state under one official ideology. In both cases, he had to bring ideas expressed by him into the mindset of others, lots of others. This task was helped by money, science and technology. From earliest times this was a massive field test of all kinds of manipulation techniques the new science of psychology had without any bonds. Amassing humans and exposing them to an expression of ideas was just one of the ways to garner acceptance from people, who would be rather unconvinced individually. The speech patterns were part of a show at human gatherings and consequently lose their appeal out of context. All this required money, lots of money and the NSDAP was intent on winning big one time and having elections never afterwards. They gambled and their opponents tried to conduct a war of attrition by holding successive elections. When NSDAP votes went down, they were integrated into the Reichs government, although it was a legal somersault to make the stateless manipulator Hitler a German citizen. During all this time Hitler not only defeated his opponents by better capability at psychological warfare against the Strasser brothers, but via his connections to big industry to finance the rise of the NSDAP. It's not known how stable this NSDAP would have been as an elected party because the votes were specifically accumulated to end all voting and all accountability. As usual people vote for a party, but not necessarily share all their goals with them, rather they want to push goals that are important to them.

Money money money
As soon as the NSDAP was in power, they went about to organize a giant burglary. It started with all kinds of Germans they wanted disowned and dead and was meant to end with similar measures applied to the Eastern Europeans. The benefits should be invested into arms and armour that would make it impossible to take away the loot and make the Anglo-Saxon sea powers negotiate peace with the new über-power of Eurasia.
It started with all kinds of Germans. Despite much research and theorizing, the Aryan-type research could not explain to the population a convincing and verifiable way to tell Jews apart from Aryans. Due to this obvious failure of the whole science, the big yellow stickers were needed. Even today, someone with similar intent has no other solution available. Jewish identity was established by ancestry of Jewish confession with no idea about ancient conversions to Judaism. It didn't matter, it was not about "genetic purity", it was a religious war against fellow Germans. The goal was to get money to finance armaments which should bring in more money by taking away possessions outside of Germany.
The awful lot of money gained through the Aryanization served as benefits for the propertied unaffected Germans to keep quiet about the strange Mefo-bills that financed a massive armament push with an impressive backing on paper that was thin air in reality.
One can see the pretty exhaustive thought control from arts to introducing the "Volksempfänger" radio for propaganda as one big push to keep the immoral nature of the government hidden within plain sight by reality denial. The reality denial was constructed around material gains and social control.

Central Europe and Central Africa - not far apart
It will be easier to understand the Reich and their deeds if you look at the Rwanda genocide, the strategically important mineral Coltan and the resulting Congo Wars that have been ravaging for decades. These are human errors repeated again and again with a very similar blueprint of greed trumping moral feelings in an environment of indoctrinated righteousness with soldering and violence as economic chances to better one's life at the expense of others.
It's a failure of being capable to improve as part of a cooperating human network. Role models do have quite an impact by developed countries showing high levels of consumption. But visiting these places shows the astonished foreigner that they have less inclination towards extreme forms of visible conspicious consumption such as mobile electronics, cars and clothing in order to be something with disregard for own their well-being in the living space for example. Expressed social stratification by show-off consumption patterns becomes less significant, the more the cooperation value of a human network goes up and the more people do contribute of their income to collective efforts (grudgingly wherever you go, but to differing degrees of becoming illegal at certain levels).

To be continued.

Judgement of Paris, a German painting from 1939

NS-Kunst und Kultur is an informative German homepage (in German) about the different arts in the Third Reich. They use Ivo Saliger's painting "Judgement of Paris" to highlight the Nazis' ideal of painting female human bodies. This image of Saliger really got me going, with some background knowledge, you notice a timeless message. The digital copy of the image under discussion is from http://www.dhm.de/lemo/objekte/pict/98005505/index.html

http://schikelgruber.net/saliger.html provides a good overview on the biography of Ivo Saliger and some of his works. This man was capable of creating art and their statement on this image neatly sums it up:
"The breathtakingly absurd Judgement
of Paris (1939), which shows Paris as
a Hitler Youth in shorts, choosing
between three strapping specimens of
Aryan womanhood."

The depicted Paris looks astonishingly like Josef Goebbels. The very propaganda minister, who decided on the future of German artists. The depicted women are not Greek Goddesses competing for beauty and bribing a mortal human in order to gain an unfair advantage. They are typification of Aryan womanhood sexually offering themselves to the propaganda minister. Josef Goebbels liked his job, there were lots of wannabe (film-)starlets, who tried to sleep with him in order to gain promotion.
Today, the ever-adapting Josef Goebbels would probably also have a satisfying job, perhaps even in the media&arts business.

War chariots: human relays and car-borne infantry

It is a widespread perception that the so-called battle taxis were war chariots used to transport one heavily armed warrior to the fight and retrieve him again with the same vehicle. The warrior was not necessarily the owner of this device, but selected by the owner. Queen Boudicca's revolt or the Trojan war are memorable stories with such chariots that seem to differ from Egyptian ranged combat use of chariots.

I see no compelling reason in the ancient sources to negate the option of using such a chariot to drive in sequence more than one warrior to a battle scene. A tandem of two warriors would work much better than one due to an optional delivery of a replacement to protect the retrieval of a tired, endangered or wounded warrior. There is neither any convincing support in the primary sources for such a common sense approach.
Switching chariot warriors might have been common in various chariot fighting systems. These men performed demanding physical tasks, including ranged combat. If performing at their utmost, they would tire sooner than the horses, rendering a very expensive technical system much less effective without comparatively cheap human relays.

The difference between riding and chariotry, both known since the early days of horse domestication, is the better capability of pulling a load on wheels than carrying one on the back.Chariots give heavier loads or better endurance per horse with a technology intense solution. Many communities mastered the step from donkey cart to horse chariot with much communality of parts. The position for riding on horseback is different from the one taken above the hindquarters of a donkey, but the donkey seat is still depicted on Assyrian reliefs. The horse was probably seen as a war donkey that had quite extraordinary fodder requirements and was no economic solution for anything except warfare and fast transport.

Heavily armoured combatants with more training and increased mobility by riding/pulling animals were often used to reinforce lighter armoured infantry formations as required. Anglo-Saxon huscarls are such an example. The chariot is one means to cover such distances. Density of heavily armoured men necessary and available per area of combat would influence the degree of benefits provided by a fast transport. The effort spent on the vehicle can be used to increase the number of heavily armoured warriors instead.
Owning a chariot and equipping outstanding warriors seems like a typical approach of highlighting prestige by an aristocracy. A war fighting system can be entrenched not only in cost calculations, but in political system calculations of visible euergetism for a community.
That is certainly not the only option to use such troops, but it offers a heterodox view to reread the maryannu-stories, Iliad and the Irish sagas.

The chariot was dropped from the inventory in favour of heavy cavalry that was more versatile and less expensive. The reports of riders dismounting for combat should not be overemphasized. There is a tradition of recognizing specific military advantages throughout the ages. Mounted men could again and again find themselves in a more perilous position on horseback than on foot.

Switching sides (Left or right handed or something else? Part 2)

In "Left- or right handed or something else?", I highlighted the problem of finding skills and their lateralization in order to know how to use them.
Switching hands is concerned with the problems of people who have forever irreplaceable lost a limb, more specifically the hand with or without the whole arm, and now have to adjust.
Person with some degree of cross-laterality can confirm that using an object with both limbs enables them to have a kind of skill flow that feels to enable a very complete cooperation of skills lateralized on different sides. They may still feel more comfortable with specific stances that require a certain laterality to perform more within one skill field and are less capable if switching these positions. Ice hockey has left and right sided sticks with corresponding advantages in wing positions with players often being suited more for one or the other side. The skill flow can nevertheless be utilized by mentally using the non-existent limb in an imagined auxiliary grip to enhance performance.
This can result in mental stress if the condition of a forever irreplaceable lost a limb is not given. Humans can handle stress, drummers can temporarily switch their dominant hand, but an overdose of mental stress can induce critical system failures in every human.

What happens to skills that are not used on that side?
It seems to depend.
Very unequal capability of eyes to provide the brain with usable images can lead to a loss of function by the eye that does provide information of limited to no use in comparison to the better eye. The loss of function goes along with a grab of ocular dominance on all kinds of skill by the over performing eye. In order to maintain bi-ocular sight, temporary eye patches that reduce visual recognition ability of the better eye get prescribed.
Persons who were forced/convinced to use their non-preferred hand for writing, and often for every other possible task, can use their original preference under new settings or when they figured out their own mental construct for acting like that. There are claims that they do have some kinds of confusion problem due to this set up.
I presume, the difference is what the brain decides to do about these situations. The reported confusions can be attempts to tackle issues in a way the biological brain still sees as opportune that a cultural adaption of the mind tries to overrule.

Laterality - asymmetry for organization and its effect on the ability to switch
A perfectly symmetric human looks perfect and - scary. One of the first art lessons.
Humans with malnutrition tend to have more tendency for asymmetry.
A high degree of symmetry is perceived as attractive.
Current left-handers have more symmetric arms than right-handers.

Lateralization is the development of sidedness, mammals and other animals have all degrees of asymmetry spreed over all features of their bodies. For humans, this asymmetry gets always most pronounced by a stronger development of the right side and there is hardly any measurably more pronounced development on the left side. Situs inversus is the rare case of the opposite. There is a correlation between left lateralization and symmetry and right lateralization and asymmetry. The lateralization program itself seems to be an organization function that gives different symmetry or asymmetry values to everything throughout body and brain. These differences do not necessarily lead to any kind of cross-dominance.
They are presumably helpful for organizing self-perception. The skills that are derived from these kinds of asymmetries are not located somewhere left or right or in between. Under the influence of the lateralization program, the pronunciation of features is pulled from the default setting on the extreme left to the right with accompanying increase in asymmetry. In the default setting left with its high degree of symmetry, the skill values for the right side are less likely to reach a level that makes use of a range of specific skills impossible.
All kinds of cultures have been able to reach very low levels of reported left-handers, none has been able to achieve similar low levels of right-handers.Prior left hand dominance provides an adaptive advantage if being compelled to switch.

Left- or right handed or something else?

Let's start with the things we don't know:
We have no idea how many left handed people there would "naturally" be in a population as no scientist is able to make a claim to have discovered a population that is not under some cultural influence on handedness with differing and evolving numbers.
Current handedness "tests" produce the statistics of the culturally influenced numbers of left- and right-handers. Often this numbers are equated with something biological for further research.

There's one profession that is knowledgeable about getting the use of left and right hand in accordance with disposition. - drummers
Drummers know a lot about using the correct lead hand when drumming, because violating that rule gives everyone, except the lucky few true ambidexters, a considerable headache and mental exhaustion.
The dominant drumming hand is not necessarily the most comfortable writing hand.
There are drummers who feel comfortable using different lead hands for different kinds of beating techniques like forehand and backhand beats or with big instead of small drumsticks.
Laterally cross-dominant is the term used for this configuration. A lot of people know that they are to some degree cross dominant because they know a specific ability that is better developed on their non-dominant arm or hand. Often they find out just after having the other one temporarily immobilized. Cross-dominance has not yet been understood as there are people around who jump for height with one leg and for width with another.
Baseball is one of the few sports with attention to cross-dominance that provides advantages.

A number of people commonly list this incomplete list of specific lateraly superior skills for their arm or hand: Testing can be a lot about internal perception of better capabilities.

strength
endurance
throwing (speedy muscle contraction)
3-dimensional control
finger motoric control

Other than the hand or arm, everything has lateral dominance with no correlation being established between the lateralization of one kind of organ and another.
There's a simple test on some kinds of ocular dominance:
Point with your finger at a target with both eyes open. Afterwards you close each eye in succession and check for which eye the finger is closer aligned to the target. Next step is checking with targets at different distances.

It's normal for all children to have a phase when they try to figure out their constitution of specific skill lateralization. A long phase of such testing is often referred to as "insecure handedness" (the organ under most cultural pressure for conformity). It is possible to solve the same task with recourse to different kinds of skills that can be developed on one side or another. Cooperation between attributes on the same side is usually quicker to learn. It is not known to what degree concepts like being left- or right handed can influence a person on understanding themselves and reduce the employment of attributes situated on the non-namesake laterality. Generally, writing from left to right looks better when done with the right hand, but it helps to learn a few tricks from Arabic calligraphy that has a lot of right handed artists writing from right to left. There are two different writing styles of left-handers, over- and underliner. Both develop natural with rather different calligraphic looks. They can depend on different unknown combinations of opportune skill sets.
Knowing a configuration of skill lateralization does not determine the laterality employed because well-known skills can often be used to solve the same task under different mental approaches. For this reason cross-laterality is often listed among ambidexterity with consequent scrutiny because obvious differences in capability could be detected.That did not fit the definition of ambidexterity as developed from ancient sources.
Ambidexterity was one of the educational goals of Renaissance men. The enforced approach of teaching absolute skill equality of both hands irrespective of any disposition seems to have been retarding for mental development of children.

"I was left handed and was forced to become right handed" is a frequently reappearing topic throughout the world. Often it will result in surprising difficulties to use the old envisioned natural hand. In order to not use a hand, that would be preferred because of an inherent skill set initially considered suitable, you need a mental construct that helps to learn a different approach with corresponding other existing skills. The task has mentally been connected with a specific skill set approach and the formerly more convenient approach of skills is not activated. With the capability to figure out and activate specific skills flexibility in approach can be obtained.

An inherent skill set considered suitable should be remembered when a child starts writing as there might be a misunderstanding about this new kind of task.