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We adopted the term "gorilla" to mean, well, actual gorillas in the past few hundred years, once actual gorillas were found by european scientists. The original term gorilla means something we're not quite sure of, but probably like "violent" or whatever. The creatures they encountered are now thought to have probably been chimpanzees.
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Apr 19, 2015 19:13
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Slim Jim Pickens posted:The Carthaginians claim to have skinned a couple of gorillas during their voyages South, but I'm puzzled by how they describe gorillas as furry, ill-tempered humans. Come to think of it, I just realized that if the Carthaginians did in fact think those gorillas were human, it's just a little bit horrifying that their first contact policy is "Skin 'em." I assume we know enough about Carthaginian culture to know that, at the very least, they didn't tend to open diplomatic relations by skinning people?
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Apr 19, 2015 19:56
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Tomn posted:Come to think of it, I just realized that if the Carthaginians did in fact think those gorillas were human, it's just a little bit horrifying that their first contact policy is "Skin 'em." They practiced child sacrifice so it wouldn't be too shocking, really.
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Apr 19, 2015 20:02
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Tomn posted:Come to think of it, I just realized that if the Carthaginians did in fact think those gorillas were human, it's just a little bit horrifying that their first contact policy is "Skin 'em." If I remember correctly we're told that they tried to capture apes alive but were unable to, due to the animals' fierceness, and ended up skinning a few dead ones instead to prove they'd encountered them.
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Apr 19, 2015 20:09
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Slim Jim Pickens posted:In the text, they claim to have kidnapped and skinned 3 "women", of the "gorillae" tribe. It may be just a translation goof, because upon first sighting of a gorilla or a chimp, it seems a bit of a jump to start referring to them in human terms. This is actually pretty common. The Malay word "orangutan" means "man of the forest." Ancient people generally had no problem seeing the human connection with the great apes. They encountered many human tribes with strange dress and unintelligible language, so assuming a hairy humanoid creature that made strange noises was some variant of human wasn't all that much of a leap.
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Apr 19, 2015 20:26
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At least they weren't dog headed or headless.
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Apr 19, 2015 20:35
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ALL-PRO SEXMAN posted:They practiced child sacrifice so it wouldn't be too shocking, really. Well.... this is a really suspect claim based mostly on Roman (who of course hated their guts and had every reason to claim they practiced something as terrible as child sacrifice), and Greek sources. The important distinction is that they claimed the Carthaginians did it for religious purposes, which was of course completely different from 'exposing unwanted children to the elements' like proper Greeks and Romans did. Or how the Romans might have buried a Vestal Virgin alive if she ever lost her virginity, which is a way of appeasing the gods, but of course totally not a religious sacrifice because technically she wasnt condemned to death.  However, the sources we have that claim the Carthaginians did it are all suspect for one reason or another. Diodorus Siculus claimed a Carthaginian army sacrificed prisoners, instead of their own children, to the flames, only to have their own camp go up in flames as a suitable punishment, which makes it more of an moral tale than a reliable report. Tertullian is a Christian who claimed that child sacrifices continued on in secret, which he of course would say to talk poo poo about competing religions. Not only that, he was also fully enveloped in Greco-Roman culture and child sacrifice is the perfect way to make a distinction between civilization and barbarism. Plutarchus mentioned it to, but he disagrees with other writes by saying that before offering the children were killed, instead of burned alive. Other writes mention the sacrifices of adults instead of children. So what we got is a bunch of reports who all contradict each other and are all written by people with agenda's. And then there is Polybius, who was at Carthage during the third Punic war and gave an eyewitness description of it, but made not a single mention of child sacrifices. Which you would expect as it would have stood out to the Romans, especially as a way to make the Carthaginians even more deserving of their defeat. The best 'proof' there is, is archeological, but even that is kinda iffy, because it can also be interpreted as the cremation of babies who died in infancy. Yes, there is an increase in bodies found when the city fell on hard times, but increased child mortality isnt that strange when the city was under siege or lacking food or any such things.
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Apr 20, 2015 09:25
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Deteriorata posted:This is actually pretty common. The Malay word "orangutan" means "man of the forest." Ancient people generally had no problem seeing the human connection with the great apes. They encountered many human tribes with strange dress and unintelligible language, so assuming a hairy humanoid creature that made strange noises was some variant of human wasn't all that much of a leap. Common enough that, based on the reports he'd heard, Carl Linnaeus grouped Orangutans as either a subspecies of human or at least as another species of the homo genus in various versions of his taxonomy. (There's also a lot of stories in Borneo of female orangutans 'seducing' men - humans will gently caress anything, and then will try and convince everyone else that nuh-uh, the ape came on to me, it's not me that's the pervert!)
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Apr 20, 2015 11:21
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Coracinus, you are an orangutan-pussy-licker
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Apr 20, 2015 11:56
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If sea cows are the root of mermaid stories, suddenly everything makes sense.
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Apr 20, 2015 12:32
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Tomn posted:I assume we know enough about Carthaginian culture to know that, at the very least, they didn't tend to open diplomatic relations by skinning people? Sea trade was Carthage's lifeblood. It's pretty safe to assume that they didn't attack potential trading partners for no reason, yeah.
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Apr 20, 2015 13:06
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Angry Salami posted:Common enough that, based on the reports he'd heard, Carl Linnaeus grouped Orangutans as either a subspecies of human or at least as another species of the homo genus in various versions of his taxonomy.
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Apr 20, 2015 14:05
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Halloween Jack posted:Aren't orangutans strong enough to literally rip humans to pieces?I don't see that going well. Perhaps that makes it more exciting.
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Apr 20, 2015 14:10
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It's a whole different level of don't stick your dick in crazy.
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Apr 20, 2015 14:35
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Ask / Tell › Ask me about Roman/Greek/other ancient history: ITT it always comes back to sex
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Apr 20, 2015 15:11
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Ask / Tell › Ask me about Roman/Greek/other ancient history: Ancient Athenian Apefucking Atheists
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Apr 20, 2015 15:52
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Grand Fromage posted:Ask / Tell › Ask me about Roman/Greek/other ancient history: Ancient Athenian Apefucking Atheists  If you're a hyper-pedantic person who's read some Gould and Dawkins (as your average goon/redditor Atheist would have), you would know that with a taxonomically correct monophyletic definition of "ape," humans are apes and therefore we are all apefuckers.Also fishfuckers, technically, and reptile fuckers. Although, I suppose that that kind of person is usually not loving humans.
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Apr 20, 2015 16:04
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Lewd Mangabey posted:"What sort of ape?" asked Stephen. This thread takes some great turns.
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Apr 20, 2015 17:19
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Grand Fromage posted:Ask / Tell › Ask me about Roman/Greek/other ancient history: Ancient Athenian Apefucking Atheists Do it.
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Apr 20, 2015 17:21
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Yes, it's like a lava lamp.
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Halloween Jack posted:Aren't orangutans strong enough to literally rip humans to pieces?I don't see that going well. If the ape is willing you better be drilling. Or else. Ooh Ooh!
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Apr 20, 2015 18:37
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Grand Fromage posted:Ask / Tell > Ask me about Roman/Greek/other ancient history: Ancient Athenian Apefucking Atheists I don't suppose there's room for 'Atlantean' and 'Alien' in there?
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Apr 20, 2015 20:10
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hailthefish posted:I don't suppose there's room for 'Atlantean' and 'Alien' in there? And Agesilaus  ?
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Apr 20, 2015 20:15
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Angry Salami posted:Common enough that, based on the reports he'd heard, Carl Linnaeus grouped Orangutans as either a subspecies of human or at least as another species of the homo genus in various versions of his taxonomy. There is also at least one reliable record of a wild male orangutan committing forced sexual intercourse with a human, although that was in the context of long-term observation which may have reduced the orangutan's natural aversion towards humans.
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Apr 20, 2015 20:36
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hailthefish posted:I don't suppose there's room for 'Atlantean' and 'Alien' in there? Ancient Athenian Agesilaus Apefucking Alien Atlantean Atheists
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Apr 20, 2015 21:15
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The reason we don't see the lost race of Carthaginian man-apes is because they were from Atlantis.
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Apr 20, 2015 21:17
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Squalid posted:There is also at least one reliable record of a wild male orangutan committing forced sexual intercourse with a human, although that was in the context of long-term observation which may have reduced the orangutan's natural aversion towards humans. I personally saw a 40lb porcupine jump on his keepers head, piss on her then madly humping her skull. Animals get weird with their keepers. For the record I was too busy laughing to help out with the porcupine extraction. Didn't like the person anyways and nobody ever died from getting their face raped by a porcupine. Well.... I guess. (She didnt even get quilled).
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Apr 21, 2015 00:04
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LingcodKilla posted:Animals get weird with their keepers. Let's not forget the filthy porn the BBC likes to air!
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Apr 21, 2015 00:55
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I have browsed SA during lunch at work for ten years, and last week the IT department finally blocked the forums. Based on the timing and what I was reading, I am 90% certain it was this thread's most recent title that caused it. I can't tell you how amused I am that after all the crap I've read on the forums, it was a bit of an ancient Roman letter that did it.
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Apr 21, 2015 04:39
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Jerusalem posted:Let's not forget the filthy porn the BBC likes to air! I...uh...thank you?
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Apr 21, 2015 04:57
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In my past life I was a numibian jew rapist in Cyrenaica
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Apr 23, 2015 16:45
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Did the Spartans actually force teenage boys to go naked all day, every day for years until they came of age? I know the Greeks were big on  but that seems extreme even for Greek standards.
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Apr 24, 2015 04:11
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Being uptight about (and invariably sexualising) nudity is a very modern western Christian attitude. I'm sure that it was as much (possibly more) about hardening the youth against the elements, as anything sexual (though presumably sexuality and sexual activity was influenced by constant nudity)
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Apr 24, 2015 13:07
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Greek nudity was seriously weird and highly bound up in their sexual values even by ancient standards, and they knew that their neighbors considered it disturbing and deviant. Even hunter-gatherer cultures where young children go naked require them to stop doing so when they reach puberty, where Sparta mandated the reverse--they don't go naked before or after puberty, but during, at the same time that ancient Greek society made adolescent boys into sex objects.
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Apr 24, 2015 15:46
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Woolie Wool posted:Greek nudity was seriously weird and highly bound up in their sexual values even by ancient standards, and they knew that their neighbors considered it disturbing and deviant. Even hunter-gatherer cultures where young children go naked require them to stop doing so when they reach puberty, where Sparta mandated the reverse--they don't go naked before or after puberty, but during, at the same time that ancient Greek society made adolescent boys into sex objects. I think you might be overselling it a little bit. Male nudity also had a lot of connotations that weren't overtly sexual. There's also ideas of purity and strength there (e.g. at the Olympics or other games, which wasn't about sex) and idea about the rejection of material luxuries that the Spartans loved and other Greeks at least admired. Xenophon, for instance, describes a few times Persian nobles being lily-white because they're always swaddled in fine clothes or chilling in big tents. For the Spartans I think that titillation was probably secondary to the general dick waving about how hardcore they were, even if they recognized that kids would freeze to death without clothing (and god know they didn't need more attrition in the upper crust) but that as adults they did get to enjoy some of the benefits of being tremendous slave owning fascist assholes, like clothing. That said, yeah, man-to-young-teen sex was much more okay then than it is now.
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Apr 24, 2015 20:30
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Ask me about Roman/Greek/other ancient history: Yeah, man-to-young-teen sex was much more okay then than it is now.
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Apr 24, 2015 20:47
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Lewd Mangabey posted:Ask me about Roman/Greek/other ancient history: Yeah, man-to-young-teen sex was much more okay then than it is now. I guess by "now" I mean "the modern West, for the most part. Ish." Other possible caveats- "hey, at least it wasn't gendered!" (Aka equal opportunity sexual exploitation.)
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Apr 24, 2015 21:19
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Well it sort of was, an adult free man was a fucker, any other sort of human was something to be hosed. The Romans IIRC decided that this was a bit too much and decided that the male children of free citizens were also inviolable. Sucks for everyone else though!
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Apr 24, 2015 22:08
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What other people thought that was hosed up? The Persians? The Romans? and when did they stop doing this stuff?
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Apr 24, 2015 22:11
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The Persians and Jews at the very least thought Greek sexual conduct was bizarre. And as for when it stopped, I have no idea but I'd guess when they converted to Christianity.
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Apr 24, 2015 22:58
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Kurtofan posted:What other people thought that was hosed up? The Persians? The Romans? and when did they stop doing this stuff? The Catholic Church preserved tons of Roman traditions and rituals. So, never
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Apr 24, 2015 22:58
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