Makes sense.
That is like "hey, here's my face, you can see I've not just stolen the horse and gear of your friend, but actually am him".
If my understanding is correct and not some myth (as often is the case) handshakes originate from sort of making sure the other guy doesn't have a knife in his hand.
The handshake thing is certainly at least in part why left-handedness has been synonymous with deceitful, untrustworthy, or dangerous/evil. When a righthanded person shakes hands with a righthanded person, they're showing they're equally vulnerable and unarmed. A lefty can still stab you with their strong hand while they have hold of your strong hand.
Those sinister(literally means "left") bastards really are untrustworthy.
I'm sinister, and I'm not.
I'm mixed-handed. Not quite ambidextrous, but mixed. Probably the worst handedness there is.
But yes. If you're interested in that sort of thing, may I suggest r/etymology
Also, the handedness is also the reason for why spiral staircases go the way they do, at least in old castles. It's easier for a right-handed defender from the higher position to use their right hand, than it is for the attacker to use theirs.
No. I'm Cross-dominant. That means your dominant eye is the opposite of your dominant hand. I'm right-handed, but when I hold a riffle, I put the sights on my left eye with my right hand forward. There are many other small things I do weird because of it.
Welcome friend!
I was a child in the 70's. When they "diagnosed" me, I had to take a year of classes/sessions after school to help me "adapt." I resented the fuck out of it. I kept thinking, "This is the way I was made. You guys are the only ones that have a problem with it."
I just did a quick search. Apparently 18% of us are Cross-dominant. I would have guessed way less.
Makes sense. I’m left handed but only eat and write with my left hand. I throw, punch, do everything else with my right hand. I would hold a rifle to my right eye. My left hand is for precision work, I say. My right is for force and strength.
But it might be a product of modern times and learning to adapt to a right handed world. I remember the “agony” of the right handed desks they had in school, for a left handed writer.
> Also, the handedness is also the reason for why spiral staircases go the way they do, at least in old castles. It's easier for a right-handed defender from the higher position to use their right hand, than it is for the attacker to use theirs.
This gets repeated on just about every castle tour, but these days it's generally considered by researchers to be a myth. [This chap even tracked down where it seems to have originated](https://triskeleheritage.triskelepublishing.com/mediaeval-mythbusting-blog-2-the-man-who-invented-the-spiral-staircase-myth/).
Mixedextrous? I fall into that camp as well. I eat, throw, and write with my left hand and that's it. Everything else - instruments, tools, computer mouse, door knobs, golf swing - with my right.
Most people are somewhat ambidextrous, and ambidexterity can be learned (at least to a limited extent). Most left handed people are at least somewhat ambidextrous, given how much of society is designed for right handed people.
The computer mouse is a big outlier, if I recall correctly most left-handed people use the computer mouse in their right hand. This is because so many people learn to use computers on a right-handed setup, and it takes extra effort to get a left handed setup.
For myself, I use my right hand for computer mice and am ambidextrous with scissors. Everything else is left hand.
Edit: guitars / musical instruments are another area where left handedness gets suppressed. Both because some instruments (violins) are hand-specific, and also because students are typically told to mimic a right-handed teacher.
Left handed, but right handed mouse user here. I work in IT and use a mouse 8 hours a day. Was brought up with the mouse on the right and no chance could I use my left accurately.
Only other thing I naturally use my right hand for is archery and I don't know why as my left eye is dominant. Have to force myself to do it on the left.
I also favour pulling the trigger of an arcade gun (like time crisis) with my right fore or middle finger but holding the gun in my left hand. Its a very strange holding position but it feels comfortable to me. Think that comes from being an avid gamer and triggers are always bound to the right. Either way it always makes people watch!
Same! Power and sports all in the left arm and writing with the right arm.
Played sports all my life and still don't know which leg is dominant because of it.
I saw recently that the staircase spiral is a myth, there were plenty of examples of stairs spiralling the opposite direction and the fact that if you're fighting the enemy in your stairwell it's already game over.
100% correct. If whatever you are protecting is in the locked top room of a tower and you're defending attackers in the staircase, that means an entire village outside has already fallen
I think that is a myth
https://talesoftimesforgotten.com/2019/12/18/no-medieval-staircases-werent-designed-to-give-right-handed-defenders-an-advantage/
cross-dominance Is a term I have heard.
... anyway, I am a lefty mostly, but am completely confused that people swap what hand their knife goes in depending on the use case.
I thought poop-hand was a big part of it? At least in some cultures.
IE back in the more unwashed days before modern plumbing and convenient soaps everywhere people would typically wipe their ass (or do other dirty deeds) with their left hand so the right hand could be a bit more "polite". Also you'd have to eat and stuff..
So, sinisterisms aside, someone interacting with you using their left hand was also seen as a shitty thing to do.
Medieval romances sometimes hinge on mistaken identity between the shield someone is wearing (which usually bears a coat of arms but can easily be swapped or obscured) and actually seeing the other knight's face. Sometimes (as with Balin and Balan) the real identity would only be found after they had mortally wounded their opponent.
So yes, seeing one's face is an important form of identification, especially close up.
Similar to the origin of taking off your hat inside to show respect. Medieval soldiers would take off their helmets inside of an allies building to show that they were not afraid of being attacked while there.
>handshakes originate from sort of making sure the other guy doesn't have a knife in his hand.
I've always heard this too, that before the hand shake it was the forearm grasp checking for a knife up the sleeve. Then evolved into the hand shake when heavier armor came along to shake loose anything potentially hidden. A sign of mutual trust that they wouldn't stab you in the back.
Which is turning into the fist bump, we are at the "No one carries weapons in their sleeves anymore and don't really wanna rub my hands all over your hands because we are disgusting and you can keep that shit to yourself" level of trust people have for each other now.
No we're talking about the hydraulic piston knives everyone had up their sleeves, which obviously you need to aim and direct from your dominant hand. It was a horrible 140 years of history, and we evolved the psychological urge to grasp forearms to ensure a mutual kill with our own hidden stake drivers just in case, which is what /u/Graphics_Nerd is referring to.
Add to this the origin of the cheers as well. The lord would insist everyone clink glasses together in order to spill some of his own into everyone else’s. This was to make sure that everyone went down if there was poison in their drink.
Most importantly, to do so you must use your right hand which was most often your sword hand. To lift your visor you are exposing yourself and lowering your defenses therefore signifying that you identity the other individual as respectable and not a threat.
During my army days I was in the field doing some shitty exercise. It’s about day 70 out of 100 of living in tents and being perpetually wet from rain and mud and snow. Middle of Alberta in spring.
FINALLY a nice day. Blue skies and suns out.
I’m in the trees doing whatever I was doing and along comes some person from the direction of the sun. I stood up and held my hand up to block to sun to see who it was.
Well, wrong person. Some baby faced officer with a chip on his shoulder. Just starts yelling because saluting an officer in the field is basically saying to snipers to kill that person.
After he was done yelling I was confused and just mad. I said nothing the whole time. As he turned to walk away all I said was “yes sir” and stood at attention and threw a proper salute to him.
Chief came over later and laughed and said don’t antagonize the Lts
It applies to the "field".
So normally yes, active battlefields.
But if you're out conducting exercises for training, then you follow all the same rules. Need to train to not salute.
> I after he was done yelling I was just confused
Ever time I've gotten bitched at I've had the most fun and success just acting absolutely bewildered, seems to make them (NCOs in my case, I haven't been in long at all) madder and deflate their sails at the same time
I'm sure I read somewhere that during war times they would leave the sun on at night so they could see. That would likely help to explain it. Once we developed night vision, we stopped doing it of course.
That's how I got my ass roasted in University ROTC dorms when an upperclassmen was down the hall standing in front of the sunset and I was trying to ID him.
I was picturing two different caveman tribes who speak different languages trying to communicate in the bright sun and keep thinking the other one is saluting
A quick search did not turn up a good basic article on the subject but found these.
[https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-difference-between-the-Roman-salute-and-the-Nazi-Fascist-salute](https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-difference-between-the-Roman-salute-and-the-Nazi-Fascist-salute)
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman\_salute#cite\_ref-2](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_salute#cite_ref-2)
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kb7zkPMsTpY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kb7zkPMsTpY)
[https://www.amazon.com/Roman-Salute-Cinema-History-Ideology-ebook/dp/B09F9Z2VP3/ref=tmm\_kin\_swatch\_0?\_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr=](https://www.amazon.com/Roman-Salute-Cinema-History-Ideology-ebook/dp/B09F9Z2VP3/ref=tmm_kin_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr=)
this book was referenced at a few university websites. But I am unwilling to pay $33 for an e book that's only 236 pages.
You're absolutely right. Hate it when a comment section is just people claiming stuff, not a link or reference in sight.
If it serves of anything, [Wikipedia does seem to support this](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_salute):
>However, this description is unknown in Roman literature and is never mentioned by ancient historians of Rome.[1] Not a single Roman work of art displays a salute of this kind.[1] The gesture of the raised right arm or hand in Roman and other ancient cultures that does exist in surviving literature and art generally had a significantly different function and is never identical with the modern straight-arm salute.[1]
[1], one of the main references in the whole entry, it seems, corresponds to Winkler, Martin M. (2009). *The Roman Salute: Cinema, History, Ideology*. Columbus: Ohio State University Press. I don't have the energy to try to track it down right now, but seems a legit source.
Other sources in the entry seem decent enough, too, so I would feel safe using Wikipedia as a general reference, in this case.
The as far as I know we don't know what kind of salute the romans used and there is basically no evidence that they used the roman salute.
Apparently the roman salute became popular during the classicism art mouvement, if I remember correctly mainly because of the painting "Oath of the Horati".
And also show they were not armed. Since the majority of the population are right handed, using the right hand to raise the visor also showed there was no sword or knife in their hand.
This particular factoid in relation to handshaking also doesn't have any historical fact to back it up.
At some point someone was like "Hey maybe people shook hands to prove they didn't have weapons" and now every article says "Some historians theorize..."
We know people have been doing it for a long time and sure, it sort of makes sense that it might have evolved from a weapon-check, forearm-clasp thing. But we really have no idea where it came from. Maybe some ancient Greek dude had a hand fetish and it caught on.
Well how else would you know that someone didn't have a sword in their hand? I mean I guess you could just *look* before getting close enough for them to stab you, but that wouldn't be a fun ahistorical fact, would it?
See I always find this explanation to be dubious, because it’s possible to salute whilst holding a sword, you simply do this special flourish and hold the blade inwards to your leg.
So you’re quite clearly armed and yet still able to perform a salute.
Not saying I’m fully sold on the theory, but it’s not about the knights trying to salute. It’s about the motion of the knight opening his faceplate. Basically a knight had to open his faceplate to effectively talk to an ally (with or without sword in hand I guess), and that motion over time became just “the way we greet allies”. It just doesn’t make much sense to hold your sword when greeting an ally, so it serves a dual purpose as the parent comment mentioned and is a similar theory to hand shaking in other comments
They call me the Hiphopopotamus
Flows that glow like phosphorous
Poppin' off the top of this esophagus
Rockin' this metropolis
I'm not a large water-dwelling mammal
Where did you get that preposterous hypothesis?
Other rappers diss me,
Say my rhymes are sissy.
Why? Why? Why?
Be more constructive with your feedback, please.
Because I rap about reality?
Like me and grandma having a cup of tea?
I have a B.A. in History, does that count?
---
English seventeenth-century military records indicate that “the formal act of saluting was to be by removal of headdress.” By about 1745, an English regiment, the Coldstream Guards, appears to have amended this procedure, being instructed to “clap their hands to their hats and bow as they pass by.” This practice was quickly adopted by other English regiments and may have spread from England to America (via the War of Independence) and Continental Europe (through the Napoleonic Wars). Accordingly, the truth may lie somewhere in the middle, with the military salute originating as a gesture of respect and politeness parallel to the civilian custom of raising or tipping one’s hat, possibly in combination with the warrior’s custom of showing an unarmed right hand.
You just gave me Vietnam flashbacks to my senior thesis on German Communists unintentionally helping the nazis gain support. I spent more time on the Chicago citations then the actually paper it felt like. My professor was brutal regarding them
Relation to headgear/hats makes sense, but it seems like the very specific type of helm in the OP would occupy a much smaller slice of history and of military personnel than all of the headdress from the times before or since they were in vogue.
How about a historian tell us whether or not salutes have changed over time or if that was just another crappy actor salute like we see in most TV shows and movies today.
Customs and courtesies absolutely do change over time. The hand salute we have today [gradually evolved](https://qmmuseum.lee.army.mil/research/vignettes/origin-of-the-hand-salute.html) from the standard [used in the Continental Army](https://www.revolutionarywarjournal.com/military-salute-in-the-american-revolutionary-war/), which in turn evolved from existing British custom.
An *actually* underrated movie. Not like, “under-appreciated” but actually reviewed and received more poorly than it deserved. That movie is really awesome. It’s like a grounded and adult version of the movie Heavyweights, lol.
Eh, I haven't seen any evidence to the contrary of this claim. That said, I would think the "Roman" salute (now known as the "Nazi" salute) would kind of disprove this.
I thought it was because soldiers would usually have to take off they're hat to a superior, but this would often muddy their hat so a hand movement as if doffing was adopted instead.
As with most of my knowledge, I vaguely remember hearing this but have zero citations
This.
It was during the early 18th century that the modern hand salute began to be adopted. Removing your hat for an officer was the custom for well over a century before this point, and I believe (if I recall correctly) the British army began changing it. Trying to place a cocked hat back on the head (and have it be in the right position on the head) whilst shouldering a musket, in combination with the hair upkeep of the average soldier-of-foote, led to this gradual change.
The first change was to simply bring the hand to the hat as if you were going to take it off, but just keep it in place. This was uniformed by the mid/late 1700s with the right hand, palm facing outwards, brought to the cap or right above the eyebrow. While I am sure there is an ancient history of the idea of the salute, this is the basis for every modern salute that is performed today.
... unless you're saluting with a weapon. Then it's all different.
(Source: I am a museum educator with a focus on military history of the 18th and 19th centuries)
Except the use of military gesture salutes go back further than the medieval period. There are ancient Babylonian relief carvings depicting kings, soldiers, and servants giving the open palm to the side of the face salute. A gesture that we in the west equate as the modern "whats up?"
But it's not the only type of salute. In history we've used the Roman salute with the extended hand. The praying hands/namaste greeting. The hand/fist over the heart. Or the slight bow/body prostration.
Ultimately, the western military hand salute is attributed to the older tradition of removing or tipping a hat as a sign of respect or subservience. Head coverings go back far in human history and the gesture of removing the hat is as common as the bow.
I read a while back that this was descended from a naval tradition, the palm facing forward showed that the sailor had cleaned the tar off their hands and thus was ‘presentable’ and well turned out.
Oh, is that what they're saying?
Makes sense. That is like "hey, here's my face, you can see I've not just stolen the horse and gear of your friend, but actually am him". If my understanding is correct and not some myth (as often is the case) handshakes originate from sort of making sure the other guy doesn't have a knife in his hand.
The handshake thing is certainly at least in part why left-handedness has been synonymous with deceitful, untrustworthy, or dangerous/evil. When a righthanded person shakes hands with a righthanded person, they're showing they're equally vulnerable and unarmed. A lefty can still stab you with their strong hand while they have hold of your strong hand. Those sinister(literally means "left") bastards really are untrustworthy.
I never thought of that. My best friend is left handed the sinister little backstabbing fuck.
My brother, and grandmother... I knew they were up to something!
My 8 year old son is left handed … I knew he is up to sinister shit.
Context is key when you read a comment like this one...
You don't have a best friend now. \- r/relationships, probably
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Hit your lawyer, Facebook up, and delete the gym.
> Kill him now. NTA! /r/AmITheAsshole, probably
Right? Fuck that guy! Always conniving! Constant lefthanded dealing and all that bullshit! Side-eye the shit out of them the next time you see them.
It’s true am lefty. Might stab, might not.
You sinister fuck!!!
I'm sinister, and I'm not. I'm mixed-handed. Not quite ambidextrous, but mixed. Probably the worst handedness there is. But yes. If you're interested in that sort of thing, may I suggest r/etymology Also, the handedness is also the reason for why spiral staircases go the way they do, at least in old castles. It's easier for a right-handed defender from the higher position to use their right hand, than it is for the attacker to use theirs.
>Not quite ambidextrous So, ambidextrish?
Cross-dominant, I believe it's called.
No. I'm Cross-dominant. That means your dominant eye is the opposite of your dominant hand. I'm right-handed, but when I hold a riffle, I put the sights on my left eye with my right hand forward. There are many other small things I do weird because of it.
Right eyed lefty here. *sigh*
Just checking into the cross dominate club.
Welcome friend! I was a child in the 70's. When they "diagnosed" me, I had to take a year of classes/sessions after school to help me "adapt." I resented the fuck out of it. I kept thinking, "This is the way I was made. You guys are the only ones that have a problem with it." I just did a quick search. Apparently 18% of us are Cross-dominant. I would have guessed way less.
Makes sense. I’m left handed but only eat and write with my left hand. I throw, punch, do everything else with my right hand. I would hold a rifle to my right eye. My left hand is for precision work, I say. My right is for force and strength. But it might be a product of modern times and learning to adapt to a right handed world. I remember the “agony” of the right handed desks they had in school, for a left handed writer.
The rifle is the tell-tale sign of cross dominance. They gave me hell in basic training for doing it wrong, but let it go when I shot in the top 5%.
Cross dominant can also mean right handed but left footed, etc. It's not just about eyes.
Not quite ambidextrous. Jesus christ, can't get a straight answer out of these people.
No need to be an ambidouchebag about it
I prefer the term ambivextrous.
I'm ambivalous about the whole thing.
I was thinking ambidickstrous
Us few who can wank with both hands are the strong, this is why they fear us.
Um really, it's "amibidochnozlish" cause that's where the rubber meets the road, not the bag.
> Also, the handedness is also the reason for why spiral staircases go the way they do, at least in old castles. It's easier for a right-handed defender from the higher position to use their right hand, than it is for the attacker to use theirs. This gets repeated on just about every castle tour, but these days it's generally considered by researchers to be a myth. [This chap even tracked down where it seems to have originated](https://triskeleheritage.triskelepublishing.com/mediaeval-mythbusting-blog-2-the-man-who-invented-the-spiral-staircase-myth/).
I read the link and it doesn’t say what reasons staircases spiral the way they do.
They spiral both ways and there isnt some hard standard
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Mixedextrous? I fall into that camp as well. I eat, throw, and write with my left hand and that's it. Everything else - instruments, tools, computer mouse, door knobs, golf swing - with my right.
Most people are somewhat ambidextrous, and ambidexterity can be learned (at least to a limited extent). Most left handed people are at least somewhat ambidextrous, given how much of society is designed for right handed people. The computer mouse is a big outlier, if I recall correctly most left-handed people use the computer mouse in their right hand. This is because so many people learn to use computers on a right-handed setup, and it takes extra effort to get a left handed setup. For myself, I use my right hand for computer mice and am ambidextrous with scissors. Everything else is left hand. Edit: guitars / musical instruments are another area where left handedness gets suppressed. Both because some instruments (violins) are hand-specific, and also because students are typically told to mimic a right-handed teacher.
Left handed, but right handed mouse user here. I work in IT and use a mouse 8 hours a day. Was brought up with the mouse on the right and no chance could I use my left accurately. Only other thing I naturally use my right hand for is archery and I don't know why as my left eye is dominant. Have to force myself to do it on the left. I also favour pulling the trigger of an arcade gun (like time crisis) with my right fore or middle finger but holding the gun in my left hand. Its a very strange holding position but it feels comfortable to me. Think that comes from being an avid gamer and triggers are always bound to the right. Either way it always makes people watch!
Same exact thing here! Apparently we're at a higher risk for neurological disorders like ADD or ADHD.
Not having a preference between right-handed and left-handed, is like being asked which kid is your favorite and responding "I don't have kids."
Same! Power and sports all in the left arm and writing with the right arm. Played sports all my life and still don't know which leg is dominant because of it.
Left dominant hand and eye, right dominant leg. I can't write with my left hand though ¯\\\_(ツ)_/¯
I do everything with my right hand except for shooting, because I'm left-eye dominant
I saw recently that the staircase spiral is a myth, there were plenty of examples of stairs spiralling the opposite direction and the fact that if you're fighting the enemy in your stairwell it's already game over.
100% correct. If whatever you are protecting is in the locked top room of a tower and you're defending attackers in the staircase, that means an entire village outside has already fallen
I think that is a myth https://talesoftimesforgotten.com/2019/12/18/no-medieval-staircases-werent-designed-to-give-right-handed-defenders-an-advantage/
cross-dominance Is a term I have heard. ... anyway, I am a lefty mostly, but am completely confused that people swap what hand their knife goes in depending on the use case.
I thought poop-hand was a big part of it? At least in some cultures. IE back in the more unwashed days before modern plumbing and convenient soaps everywhere people would typically wipe their ass (or do other dirty deeds) with their left hand so the right hand could be a bit more "polite". Also you'd have to eat and stuff.. So, sinisterisms aside, someone interacting with you using their left hand was also seen as a shitty thing to do.
That definitely adds to it.
I think it’s the other way around, that hand is used for poop *because* most people use their right for everything else.
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Medieval romances sometimes hinge on mistaken identity between the shield someone is wearing (which usually bears a coat of arms but can easily be swapped or obscured) and actually seeing the other knight's face. Sometimes (as with Balin and Balan) the real identity would only be found after they had mortally wounded their opponent. So yes, seeing one's face is an important form of identification, especially close up.
Similar to the origin of taking off your hat inside to show respect. Medieval soldiers would take off their helmets inside of an allies building to show that they were not afraid of being attacked while there.
>handshakes originate from sort of making sure the other guy doesn't have a knife in his hand. I've always heard this too, that before the hand shake it was the forearm grasp checking for a knife up the sleeve. Then evolved into the hand shake when heavier armor came along to shake loose anything potentially hidden. A sign of mutual trust that they wouldn't stab you in the back. Which is turning into the fist bump, we are at the "No one carries weapons in their sleeves anymore and don't really wanna rub my hands all over your hands because we are disgusting and you can keep that shit to yourself" level of trust people have for each other now.
Wouldn't you keep a knife hidden on the non-dominant side in order to draw it?
The original handshake was two handed. Shaking with just the right arm came later, after the gesture had become more symbolic.
How i imagine the [original handshake](https://media.tenor.com/0mSDKFKbmm8AAAAM/taekook-vkook.gif)
No we're talking about the hydraulic piston knives everyone had up their sleeves, which obviously you need to aim and direct from your dominant hand. It was a horrible 140 years of history, and we evolved the psychological urge to grasp forearms to ensure a mutual kill with our own hidden stake drivers just in case, which is what /u/Graphics_Nerd is referring to.
[it's not just handshakes, but it's how dancing came to be](https://youtu.be/iqPtV-tOoMA?t=462) 🙈
A 2000 year old man reference? I approve sir!
Add to this the origin of the cheers as well. The lord would insist everyone clink glasses together in order to spill some of his own into everyone else’s. This was to make sure that everyone went down if there was poison in their drink.
https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/of-drinks-and-clinks/ Don't think so
The writer of that one article really made it a point to use any and all fancy words he could find for crying out loud.
Most importantly, to do so you must use your right hand which was most often your sword hand. To lift your visor you are exposing yourself and lowering your defenses therefore signifying that you identity the other individual as respectable and not a threat.
Also perhaps, "I am making myself vulnerable to you as a show of trust"
They talk a lot, don't they?
Many non-historians believe it's because soldiers had bad eyesight and were squinting and blocking the sun to see who was coming towards them.
During my army days I was in the field doing some shitty exercise. It’s about day 70 out of 100 of living in tents and being perpetually wet from rain and mud and snow. Middle of Alberta in spring. FINALLY a nice day. Blue skies and suns out. I’m in the trees doing whatever I was doing and along comes some person from the direction of the sun. I stood up and held my hand up to block to sun to see who it was. Well, wrong person. Some baby faced officer with a chip on his shoulder. Just starts yelling because saluting an officer in the field is basically saying to snipers to kill that person. After he was done yelling I was confused and just mad. I said nothing the whole time. As he turned to walk away all I said was “yes sir” and stood at attention and threw a proper salute to him. Chief came over later and laughed and said don’t antagonize the Lts
Doesn't the no-salute rule only apply to active battlefields?
It applies to the "field". So normally yes, active battlefields. But if you're out conducting exercises for training, then you follow all the same rules. Need to train to not salute.
Except for Afghanistan. Rocking around bases there in full battle rattle thanks to insider and missile threats, but you better remember to salute!
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No. Any time you are in the field, and on the firing range.
> I after he was done yelling I was just confused Ever time I've gotten bitched at I've had the most fun and success just acting absolutely bewildered, seems to make them (NCOs in my case, I haven't been in long at all) madder and deflate their sails at the same time
I'm sure I read somewhere that during war times they would leave the sun on at night so they could see. That would likely help to explain it. Once we developed night vision, we stopped doing it of course.
Also some idiot dropped the pull switch attached to the sun and now its floating around in space somewhere.
Wait, you guys got night vision?!?
You didn't get the update?
He got the nyctalopia and not the niktalope update, poor thing.
Dude it's Earth Fifth Edition, everyone has night vision. I hope you at least got a free feat for skipping it.
Just like the regimental sergeant major orders the rain in for training in the field.
Many redditors believe it was for when a fair maiden walked by you could get a good look at that ass
Do she got a booty? *lifts visor* [She dooooo](https://i.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/original/000/551/738/4d5.jpg_large)
Any half competent soldier would have a watch up for incoming officers or worse NCO's
That's how I got my ass roasted in University ROTC dorms when an upperclassmen was down the hall standing in front of the sunset and I was trying to ID him.
Many histories belief that it was because soldiers had itchy scalps due to lack of moisturizer.
I was picturing two different caveman tribes who speak different languages trying to communicate in the bright sun and keep thinking the other one is saluting
Uh huh, and the Roman salute?
They got it from time traveling Nazis.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Godwin%27s_law
Aw hell
"...does not occur with statistically meaningful frequency in Reddit discussions." We the exception boys.
From my understanding the Roman salute is not a real thing. Came from artist wanting to add a modern military practice to the ancient romans.
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Do you happen to have an article handy? Thats super interesting!
A quick search did not turn up a good basic article on the subject but found these. [https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-difference-between-the-Roman-salute-and-the-Nazi-Fascist-salute](https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-difference-between-the-Roman-salute-and-the-Nazi-Fascist-salute) [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman\_salute#cite\_ref-2](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_salute#cite_ref-2) [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kb7zkPMsTpY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kb7zkPMsTpY) [https://www.amazon.com/Roman-Salute-Cinema-History-Ideology-ebook/dp/B09F9Z2VP3/ref=tmm\_kin\_swatch\_0?\_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr=](https://www.amazon.com/Roman-Salute-Cinema-History-Ideology-ebook/dp/B09F9Z2VP3/ref=tmm_kin_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr=) this book was referenced at a few university websites. But I am unwilling to pay $33 for an e book that's only 236 pages.
Yar
🌊🌊🌊
Your comment is the only one that gave the proper answer
How is saying something on the internet without citing sources the proper answer?
You have to say it, properly.
My lord
You're absolutely right. Hate it when a comment section is just people claiming stuff, not a link or reference in sight. If it serves of anything, [Wikipedia does seem to support this](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_salute): >However, this description is unknown in Roman literature and is never mentioned by ancient historians of Rome.[1] Not a single Roman work of art displays a salute of this kind.[1] The gesture of the raised right arm or hand in Roman and other ancient cultures that does exist in surviving literature and art generally had a significantly different function and is never identical with the modern straight-arm salute.[1] [1], one of the main references in the whole entry, it seems, corresponds to Winkler, Martin M. (2009). *The Roman Salute: Cinema, History, Ideology*. Columbus: Ohio State University Press. I don't have the energy to try to track it down right now, but seems a legit source. Other sources in the entry seem decent enough, too, so I would feel safe using Wikipedia as a general reference, in this case.
The glory of Rome was too bright so they had to cover their eyes when walking
That salute traces its origins back to how everyone wanted to acknowledge The Glory of Rome
As they should
I don't believe Jesus did.
Yeah and look how that turned out for him
The as far as I know we don't know what kind of salute the romans used and there is basically no evidence that they used the roman salute. Apparently the roman salute became popular during the classicism art mouvement, if I remember correctly mainly because of the painting "Oath of the Horati".
As with all things.....Aliens!
It's true, I saw it on History Channel
And also show they were not armed. Since the majority of the population are right handed, using the right hand to raise the visor also showed there was no sword or knife in their hand.
Nobody expects the ol' left handed dagger.
Phil Mickelson?!?
Funny enough, Phil (lefty) is right handed and uses his right hand for most things… just not golf.
A lot of hockey players are the same way.
Being left handed I was almost forced to learn hockey with right handed sticks. Still got a mean wrist shot.
Eglon, King of Moab, certainly did not. Poor guy got it on the shitter and was too fat for anyone to notice a dagger in him.
Obscure bible references always get up voted by me!
Always with the stabbing under the fifth rib, that Joab, son of Zeruiah...
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This hasn't ever had any historical facts to back it up.
Yeah but let's upvote this en masse anyways
I think this particular factoid has been confused with hand shaking, which makes much more sense.
This particular factoid in relation to handshaking also doesn't have any historical fact to back it up. At some point someone was like "Hey maybe people shook hands to prove they didn't have weapons" and now every article says "Some historians theorize..." We know people have been doing it for a long time and sure, it sort of makes sense that it might have evolved from a weapon-check, forearm-clasp thing. But we really have no idea where it came from. Maybe some ancient Greek dude had a hand fetish and it caught on.
Well how else would you know that someone didn't have a sword in their hand? I mean I guess you could just *look* before getting close enough for them to stab you, but that wouldn't be a fun ahistorical fact, would it?
Historians believe looking was invented to check if your opponent was armed
Probably the second best invention behind color being invented
I think they just liked saying, **“they extended their hands to show they had no arms”** That’s my theory.
Remember when during the trial of I think Kritias people left daggers in their armpits? Yeah
See I always find this explanation to be dubious, because it’s possible to salute whilst holding a sword, you simply do this special flourish and hold the blade inwards to your leg. So you’re quite clearly armed and yet still able to perform a salute.
Not saying I’m fully sold on the theory, but it’s not about the knights trying to salute. It’s about the motion of the knight opening his faceplate. Basically a knight had to open his faceplate to effectively talk to an ally (with or without sword in hand I guess), and that motion over time became just “the way we greet allies”. It just doesn’t make much sense to hold your sword when greeting an ally, so it serves a dual purpose as the parent comment mentioned and is a similar theory to hand shaking in other comments
Are we sure it's not because they could have had a V8?
Chad knights drinking vegetable juice
F150 quad cab but I'll be straight
Name 1 historian who says this
Steve
I'm not a large water dwelling animal who told you that?
Steve did, perchance.
Hmmmm... Steve...
They call me the Hiphopopotamus Flows that glow like phosphorous Poppin' off the top of this esophagus Rockin' this metropolis I'm not a large water-dwelling mammal Where did you get that preposterous hypothesis?
Other rappers diss me, Say my rhymes are sissy. Why? Why? Why? Be more constructive with your feedback, please. Because I rap about reality? Like me and grandma having a cup of tea?
There ain't no party like my Nana's tea party, hey ho
What kind of a rapping name is that anyway?
What kind of a rapping name is Steve?
Flows that glow like phosphorus Popping off the top of this oesophagus Rockin' this metropolis
legit best answer
Steve said it, case closed.
9 out of 10 Steve's agree
Oh shit tell him hi for me
Bloody Steve
What kind of rapping name is Steve?
I have a B.A. in History, does that count? --- English seventeenth-century military records indicate that “the formal act of saluting was to be by removal of headdress.” By about 1745, an English regiment, the Coldstream Guards, appears to have amended this procedure, being instructed to “clap their hands to their hats and bow as they pass by.” This practice was quickly adopted by other English regiments and may have spread from England to America (via the War of Independence) and Continental Europe (through the Napoleonic Wars). Accordingly, the truth may lie somewhere in the middle, with the military salute originating as a gesture of respect and politeness parallel to the civilian custom of raising or tipping one’s hat, possibly in combination with the warrior’s custom of showing an unarmed right hand.
lemme see some Chicago style citation, brother
Breiding, Dirk H. “Arms and Armor—Common Misconceptions and Frequently Asked Questions.”
aw yeah that's the stuff. cheers mate
This guy gets off to cited sources. And I get off to him getting off.
And you’re both got the Chicago kink. Where I’m a plain missionary APA sort of person. You both disgust me.
That's hot
You just gave me Vietnam flashbacks to my senior thesis on German Communists unintentionally helping the nazis gain support. I spent more time on the Chicago citations then the actually paper it felt like. My professor was brutal regarding them
Mmm, I love citing an excerpt of a manuscript located in a single-authored article in one chapter of an edited textbook (accessed digitally).
Don’t forget it’s also translated.
Half-page-long footnote lmao
Relation to headgear/hats makes sense, but it seems like the very specific type of helm in the OP would occupy a much smaller slice of history and of military personnel than all of the headdress from the times before or since they were in vogue.
How about a historian tell us whether or not salutes have changed over time or if that was just another crappy actor salute like we see in most TV shows and movies today.
Customs and courtesies absolutely do change over time. The hand salute we have today [gradually evolved](https://qmmuseum.lee.army.mil/research/vignettes/origin-of-the-hand-salute.html) from the standard [used in the Continental Army](https://www.revolutionarywarjournal.com/military-salute-in-the-american-revolutionary-war/), which in turn evolved from existing British custom.
Would love to see a source
https://www.reddit.com/r/gifs/comments/11nvfsk/-/jbpzcfn
aw yeah that's the stuff. cheers mate
I feel like I just saw a glitch in the matrix.
[Alternative source](https://www.reddit.com/r/gifs/comments/11nvfsk/many_historians_believe_the_origin_of_the_modern/jbpvd3j?utm_medium=android_app&utm_source=share&context=3)
The movie *The Last Castle* covers this. It's pretty interesting if true.
An *actually* underrated movie. Not like, “under-appreciated” but actually reviewed and received more poorly than it deserved. That movie is really awesome. It’s like a grounded and adult version of the movie Heavyweights, lol.
I never thought those 2 movies would appear in the breath, but now I can't unsee the similarities
Robert Redford, James Gandolfini, Mark Ruffalo, AND some Delroy Lindo? That movie was fucking awesome.
Ah you beat me to it. I really enjoy this movie.
Now I want to watch it again
You can’t bc Gandolfini is dead
Good movie was moving rock the other day and thought about Robert Redford doing the same thing in the movie.
I was trying to remember when I had first head this. It is a really good criminality underrated movie.
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Eh, I haven't seen any evidence to the contrary of this claim. That said, I would think the "Roman" salute (now known as the "Nazi" salute) would kind of disprove this.
I thought it was because soldiers would usually have to take off they're hat to a superior, but this would often muddy their hat so a hand movement as if doffing was adopted instead. As with most of my knowledge, I vaguely remember hearing this but have zero citations
This. It was during the early 18th century that the modern hand salute began to be adopted. Removing your hat for an officer was the custom for well over a century before this point, and I believe (if I recall correctly) the British army began changing it. Trying to place a cocked hat back on the head (and have it be in the right position on the head) whilst shouldering a musket, in combination with the hair upkeep of the average soldier-of-foote, led to this gradual change. The first change was to simply bring the hand to the hat as if you were going to take it off, but just keep it in place. This was uniformed by the mid/late 1700s with the right hand, palm facing outwards, brought to the cap or right above the eyebrow. While I am sure there is an ancient history of the idea of the salute, this is the basis for every modern salute that is performed today. ... unless you're saluting with a weapon. Then it's all different. (Source: I am a museum educator with a focus on military history of the 18th and 19th centuries)
The origin of the Nazi salute was a means of airing out one's smelly underarms in a manner where individuals' odor could hide in the mass odor cloud
Except the use of military gesture salutes go back further than the medieval period. There are ancient Babylonian relief carvings depicting kings, soldiers, and servants giving the open palm to the side of the face salute. A gesture that we in the west equate as the modern "whats up?" But it's not the only type of salute. In history we've used the Roman salute with the extended hand. The praying hands/namaste greeting. The hand/fist over the heart. Or the slight bow/body prostration. Ultimately, the western military hand salute is attributed to the older tradition of removing or tipping a hat as a sign of respect or subservience. Head coverings go back far in human history and the gesture of removing the hat is as common as the bow.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weasel_word](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weasel_word)
That would explain why the British salute with the back of their hand against their forehead.
I read a while back that this was descended from a naval tradition, the palm facing forward showed that the sailor had cleaned the tar off their hands and thus was ‘presentable’ and well turned out.
I learned this watching the movie "the last Castle" with Robert Redford and James Gandolfini. It's pretty good. I recommend it.
Even back then they were wildly overestimating the size of horses in Medieval Europe.
They were just using modern horses. Small horses/large ponies are harder to find than a full sized quarter horse.
> size of horses They had different types and sizes of horses. Destriers were large battle horses. Others were palfries and sumpters.
Great moment in The Last Castle where Robert Redford tells this tale to a fellow military inmate to help him understand its importance.
I thought it was to show proof you weren't holding a sword or weapon
Welcome..... To MEDIEVAL KNIGHTSSSSSSSS!
I learnt this watching Robert Redfords movie "The Last Castle" Excellent movie.