|
Grand Fromage posted:And thus, how bullshit traditional medicine works. "Take these herbs, they can take up to two months to be effective!" One of my favorite quotes.
|
#
?
Sep 18, 2014 13:26
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 15, 2024 09:11 |
|
|
Yeah the Black Egypt thing was one of many ideas created by the Black Power movement in the US. It has no validity. Egypt was multiethnic and there were most likely people in it that we would consider black, but they were a small minority.
|
|
#
?
Sep 18, 2014 14:56
|
|
|
Going through the "Black Egypt" tag on Tumblr was certainly an experience, I'm glad they use the exact same writing style and social strategies when it comes to discussing the ethnography of the ancient world. But the Medieval tag ked me to reading about the Banu Sasan, so it was worth it.
|
|
#
?
Sep 18, 2014 15:12
|
|
|
The Black Cleopatra thing confuses me, given that she was Greek. From a Greek family notorious for inbreeding. Unless you're proposing Black Macedonia.
|
|
#
?
Sep 18, 2014 15:36
|
|
|
You'd think the Egyptians portrayal of themselves as lighter skinned than the Nubians would be determinative.
|
|
#
?
Sep 18, 2014 15:42
|
|
|
Y'know, "Black Egypt" is incorrect, and shades into the crazy when you start following it into Nation of Islam beliefs that are basically science fiction. But I find that Afrocentric stuff a lot more on the "silly" end of the spectrum than the "hateful and harmful" end as compared to stuff like white supremacists who insist that white people built the pyramids.
|
|
#
?
Sep 18, 2014 17:03
|
|
|
Octy posted:I came across this website once which claimed that up until the 1600s or something Europe was ruled by black people. Julius Caesar was black. Attila the Hun was black. Elizabeth I was black. White people eventually rose up, took over and have since whitewashed (heh) history, but that it's only a matter of time before the truth comes out. The site may have been satire, but someone had put an awful lot of effort into it. 
|
|
#
?
Sep 18, 2014 17:04
|
|
|
Freudian posted:Unless you're proposing Black Macedonia. Someone actually did. Back in the late 1980s a book came out called "Black Athena", which was a not-terrible re-evaluation of Greek culture as coming from Africa. When I say "not terrible", I mean that I recall it being written by a fairly rational person who treated the subject somewhat objectively. It was still all the rage when I was an undergraduate in the mid-90s, but of course it intersected with the Black Power and 90s multicultural frenzy and the result seems to be otherwise normal people picketing museums and howling that CLEOPATRA WAS BLACK. Today, we can classify Black Athena a couple of different ways: 1) A possibility worth investigating, 2) An amusing "what if" scenario, and/or 3) An example of one academic getting overly-cloistered and going scholastically batshit. Most people tend towards 3. But if the subject interests you at all, it might be worth reading.
|
|
#
?
Sep 18, 2014 17:06
|
|
|
Halloween Jack posted:Y'know, "Black Egypt" is incorrect, and shades into the crazy when you start following it into Nation of Islam beliefs that are basically science fiction. But I find that Afrocentric stuff a lot more on the "silly" end of the spectrum than the "hateful and harmful" end as compared to stuff like white supremacists who insist that white people built the pyramids. No, it really is harmful, and precisely because most of the people who indulge in it are African Americans searching for some kind of ancient culture to call their own. Not as harmful as white supremacist bullshit, but harmful none the less, if only because it distracts people from the actual and very interesting ancient history of sub-saharan africa. The real goddamned pity is that if you are that hypothetical Nation of Islam member looking for some kind of cultural heritage in the ancient world there are amazing examples of no-bullshit sub-Saharan African empires all over the place in the pre-colonial era. There are all sorts of difficulties in studying them, but there's a real heritage there, a set of distant ancestors that you can point to and say "you want African emperors and kings and art and monumental buildings and all that other stuff? Well here you are"
|
|
#
?
Sep 18, 2014 18:05
|
|
|
Things I learned today: The Sassanid Shah Khusrau I sacked Antioch in 540, took the cities measurements, carried off the local population, and settled them into a new town in Mesopotamia named Veh-az-Andiv-Khusrau, or "Khusrau's Better-Than-Antioch."
|
|
#
?
Sep 18, 2014 18:25
|
|
|
Race is a social construct overlayed onto superficial differences. Whatever people's skin color was over a thousand years ago, it wouldn't mean the same thing as it does today. And unless there's a way to detect skin melanin levels from ancient skulls, there's not really that much evidence to overturn popular opinion.
|
|
#
?
Sep 18, 2014 18:27
|
|
|
SlothfulCobra posted:Race is a social construct overlayed onto superficial differences. Whatever people's skin color was over a thousand years ago, it wouldn't mean the same thing as it does today. But there is SOME evidence, so peoples' theories need to account for it. Stuff like: 
|
|
#
?
Sep 18, 2014 18:31
|
|
|
SlothfulCobra posted:Race is a social construct overlayed onto superficial differences. Whatever people's skin color was over a thousand years ago, it wouldn't mean the same thing as it does today. Race is a construct but regional ancestry isn't and there's some pretty good research that gives us a pretty good idea what parts of africa the ancestors of today's African Americans were taken from. Links to ancient cultures, perceived or real, make people feel good. I just think it's a damned pity to obscure the very real and very impressive kingdoms that existed in exactly the areas that the forefathers of most modern African Americans were taken from in favor of arguing over whether Cleopatra was black or Greek looking. edit: Plus we have plenty of examples of ancient remains, and as long as there is some salvageable DNA in there you can probably get some kind of idea what color skin they had. The specific genes responsible for those variations are pretty well known at this point. Cyrano4747 fucked around with this message at 18:38 on Sep 18, 2014 |
|
#
?
Sep 18, 2014 18:35
|
|
|
Cyrano4747 posted:I just think it's a damned pity to obscure the very real and very impressive kingdoms that existed in exactly the areas that the forefathers of most modern African Americans were taken from in favor of arguing over whether Cleopatra was black or Greek looking. Oh man yes. It's a drat shame we don't know more (both academically and in a pop-history sense) about sub-Saharan Africa. I think it's great that pre-Columbian America has gotten some attention in the last few decades, it'd be awesome to see S-S Africa join that club as well.
|
|
#
?
Sep 18, 2014 18:44
|
|
Yes, it's like a lava lamp.
|
Tunicate posted:Yeah we had to read a book in English class written by one of those guys. White people were made by a black mad scientist as pure evil supersoldiers or something. The version I read, the scientist also made white penises smaller as a safety measure, so that if the whites ran amok they would gradually be cucked out of existence by peaceful black dong.
|
|
#
?
Sep 18, 2014 19:18
|
|
|
It's a lot more modern but this work is still being done and worth checking out. There's a lot on the intersection that starts happening in the Atlantic post 1500's. Who doesn't love a black guerilla commander telling the revolutionaries to gently caress off because he's an avowed royalist? History is great.
|
|
#
?
Sep 18, 2014 19:35
|
|
|
I'm surprised nobody pointed out this part yet: "Ancient Egypt was PITCHED BLACK until the 7th century AD, when Indo Aryans called Arabs invaded from Central Asia." Tumblrites are so loving bad at history. There is also a blog called medievalpoc which basically posts medieval art that appears to include darker-skinned people in them (and let's not get even get into symbolic depictions in such material here) and presents that as proof "poc" existed in medieval Europe and if you are not including them as the token minority in your medieval epic you are white-washing history. Because of course, every society, ever, is basically 21st century USA now. But getting away from that and getting back to something two pages ago: Scythians. What do we know about them? And how come they were so loving good at goldsmithing? Check these out:   
|
|
#
?
Sep 18, 2014 19:35
|
|
|
Those are actually weak examples. Their goldsmithing is really something to behold. Does anyone know more about them?
|
|
#
?
Sep 18, 2014 19:46
|
|
|
fspades posted:What do we know about them? Airs, Waters and Places 22: For the reasons I've already gone over, they are the most impotent men in the world, and also because they habitually wear trousers and spend most of their time on horseback, which means they don't masturbate. (I wanted to translate 'most impotent' properly as 'the most eunuch-y' but it just sounds too silly.) Sleep of Bronze fucked around with this message at 20:16 on Sep 18, 2014 |
|
#
?
Sep 18, 2014 19:53
|
|
|
What the... I always knew horses were a bad thing.
|
|
#
?
Sep 18, 2014 20:21
|
|
|
JaucheCharly posted:Those are actually weak examples. Their goldsmithing is really something to behold. Does anyone know more about them? they had pointy hats    I've heard some people write it off as Scythians having captured Greek goldsmiths, but in my head that doesn't sound right; did Greece have a strong tradition of goldsmithing? I've had to trawl through the rest of their poo poo plenty of times in art history but I have no strong recollection of amazing Greek jewelry. I do just want to believe in super-Scythians though. 
|
|
#
?
Sep 18, 2014 20:47
|
|
|
From the symptoms of 'what I've already gone over', we actually identify the cause as the Scythian population having difficulty with iron overload, whether from a significant occurence of the mutations causing haemochromatosis, or from some dietary cause. The Scythians' remedy was bleeding. For nonlovely tumblr posts, my girlfriend translated a fuller slice of the passage. It talks about other symptoms and how the Scythians saw the impotent men - they were basically thought to have been made into pseudowomen as a curse by the gods and were therefore treated simultaneously with holy reverence and holy fear. It also has a funny little admonition directed at (presumably) people who keep decrying such and such a disease as a special curse by the gods because of whatever societal ill they don't like today. I still like the idea that the Hippocratic treatment for ED would be, "stop riding horses, wear dresses, and have a good wank."
|
|
#
?
Sep 18, 2014 20:48
|
|
|
Suben posted:So I came across this on Tumblr (surprise surprise) earlier and, uh, this doesn't seem right? Also, uh, Indo-Aryan Arabs, what? Arabic is a Semitic language. Near as we can determine ancient Egyptian is related to it - they've both got the consonant-root, mutate-the-vowels thing going on. Indo-Aryan at its widest is basically most European languages plus the Sanskrit-descendent languages of India.
|
|
#
?
Sep 18, 2014 20:49
|
|
|
Koramei posted:I have no strong recollection of amazing Greek jewelry. I do just want to believe in super-Scythians though. Me neither. There's a few things in the museum in Thessaloniki that I saw, the only thing that stuck was the Derveni Krater.
|
|
#
?
Sep 18, 2014 21:11
|
|
|
Reading Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire for the first time and my god, this guy really hates the Turks.
|
|
#
?
Sep 19, 2014 03:36
|
|
|
I wish I hadn't bought the copy of Gibbon I got. It was crammed full of footnotes, counter-arguments, counter-counter-arguments and incredible sperging on minute details that constantly got in the way of what Gibbon had actually written. It was also put together in such a way that it was difficult to pick up where the notes/counters began and ended, so sometimes I'd be reading and think Gibbon had gone off on a weird tangent only to realize it was some English guy having a go at some French dude's translation of a German's critique of the placement of a Latin phrase or something. 
|
|
#
?
Sep 19, 2014 03:58
|
|
|
Jerusalem posted:I wish I hadn't bought the copy of Gibbon I got. It was crammed full of footnotes, counter-arguments, counter-counter-arguments and incredible sperging on minute details that constantly got in the way of what Gibbon had actually written. It was also put together in such a way that it was difficult to pick up where the notes/counters began and ended, so sometimes I'd be reading and think Gibbon had gone off on a weird tangent only to realize it was some English guy having a go at some French dude's translation of a German's critique of the placement of a Latin phrase or something. That's pretty much half the fun of Gibbon IIRC.
|
|
#
?
Sep 19, 2014 06:50
|
|
|
Cyrano4747 posted:No, it really is harmful, and precisely because most of the people who indulge in it are African Americans searching for some kind of ancient culture to call their own. Not as harmful as white supremacist bullshit, but harmful none the less, if only because it distracts people from the actual and very interesting ancient history of sub-saharan africa. I'm always surprised that Black nationalist haven't latched on more to Ethiopia as it's pretty much the easiest culture to trace of all pre-colonial Black societies and it's the only one that could claim equity to Europeans. Of course the face that Haile Selassie had no time for that crazy bullshit is why they don't pay attention to that. PittTheElder posted:Oh man yes. It's a drat shame we don't know more (both academically and in a pop-history sense) about sub-Saharan Africa. I think it's great that pre-Columbian America has gotten some attention in the last few decades, it'd be awesome to see S-S Africa join that club as well. There are some super interesting articles recently about the libraries of Chinguettie and an international effort to preserve them against the Sahara.
|
|
#
?
Sep 19, 2014 16:48
|
|
|
sbaldrick posted:I'm always surprised that Black nationalist haven't latched on more to Ethiopia as it's pretty much the easiest culture to trace of all pre-colonial Black societies and it's the only one that could claim equity to Europeans. Egypt has a massive hold on the popular consciousness. Ethiopia is mostly known for starvation and a bit of political ugliness or two.
|
|
#
?
Sep 19, 2014 16:53
|
|
|
BravestOfTheLamps posted:Egypt has a massive hold on the popular consciousness. Ethiopia is mostly known for starvation and a bit of political ugliness or two. Ethiopia was way overestimated to legendary proportions by medieval/early modern Europeans though. It was sometimes identified as the kingdom of the Prester John.  You would think some would conclude Europeans got it right the first time and this was the true extent and power of Ethiopia. It's easier than to claim Egypt was black until the Arab conquest.
|
|
#
?
Sep 19, 2014 17:14
|
|
|
I don't think that line of argument is entirely about a search for any random "black" civilization in antiquity. I've always read it as wanting there to be a black civilization that was an influence on the cultures that formed the beginnings of dead-white-guy Western civilization, which is why places like Ethiopia or Kush aren't as exciting as a theory that maybe the Egyptians, or Socrates, or Philip of Macedon, or whoever, was black. (Perhaps I'm being uncharitable; I really don't know, since I've never met anyone who holds these kinds of views.)
|
|
#
?
Sep 20, 2014 03:12
|
|
|
Frankly, I think you're all wrong. If not, how do you explain this? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LeiFF0gvqcc 
|
|
#
?
Sep 20, 2014 03:56
|
|
|
Guys we all know the Egyptians couldn't have been black because they were Koreans.
|
|
#
?
Sep 20, 2014 04:04
|
|
|
Impressive how they managed to go from China to Turkey/the Middle east without influencing ANYTHING inbetween. Those steppe people must have been too barbaric to even consider teaching them about the glorious Korean culture. It reminds me of some of the things I've heard my oldest relatives claim, like how  invented things like the printing press, silk, tofu, shoes etc. Feels good to be the only people to ever invent anything 
|
|
#
?
Sep 20, 2014 04:32
|
|
|
That's particularly ironic 'cause steppe people had pretty strong links to historical Korea. Subpar map.
|
|
#
?
Sep 20, 2014 04:50
|
|
|
What were they doing in Somerset?
|
|
#
?
Sep 20, 2014 06:33
|
|
|
What's with the blue on Turkey and central and eastern europe?What does the writing say? Did the Koreans also invent Kebab?
|
|
#
?
Sep 20, 2014 07:12
|
|
|
Sleep of Bronze posted:What were they doing in Somerset? gotta be Stonehenge
|
|
#
?
Sep 20, 2014 07:44
|
|
|
Grand Fromage posted:Guys we all know the Egyptians couldn't have been black because they were Koreans. What... Exactly am I looking at here? Is this thing literally claiming Chinese migration into Estonia?
|
|
#
?
Sep 20, 2014 11:04
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 15, 2024 09:11 |
|
|
Paxicon posted:What... Exactly am I looking at here? Is this thing literally claiming Chinese migration into Estonia? No. Korean migration into Estonia.
|
|
#
?
Sep 20, 2014 11:18
|
|