Dalael posted:

Most of the evidence presented by Jim Allen is circumstantial.

LingcodKilla posted:

So... Has anyone tried using olive oil as lube? I couldnt help but notice while making dinner tonight that it is really hard to get off your hands. I wonder if the ancients had a term for catching you while being guilty of rubbing one off like "I caught you greasy handed".

Dalael posted:

Quift posted:

I need to hear about that knee myth. How on earth do you interpret that?

Dalael posted:

I've said it often already. Most of the evidence presented by Jim Allen is circumstantial. And that is very sad because it proves absolutely nothing.

Quift posted:

Speaking of myths. Let us all talk about them. Favourite myth and favourite interpretation.

PittTheElder posted:

Is there a consensus on whether Cinncinatus was a real person or just a parable?

And not to hard on Judeo-Christians, but the Genesis myth really is hilarious when you think about it. As explained by David Cross: God makes this huge, massive planet; then he decides 'I'm gonna put one dude in there'.

BravestOfTheLamps posted:

The virgin spirit of the air is impregnated by the air, then a duck lays an egg on her knee, then she moves and the egg drops and shatters into the earth, the sky, the stars, and the sun.

After a few centuries she gives birth to the eternal bard. At some points other humans show up?

Waci posted:

Invention sounds a bit more original than combining multiple myths together (isn't the Kalevala version basically the forging myth with imported eggs worked in?), but yea, much of Kalevala diverges a lot from the source material. If you know more about the topic, I'd be very interested.

Quift posted:

I dont care if you are trolling or not. The story is so brilliant I will walk you through it anyway.

This story is quite foundational for not only my thought but also our society (being our foundational myth). This being my first post in this thread that is not phone posted I will try to articulate things a bit more step by step instead of leaping wildly within my own context. It is also absolutely vital to get this myth before going to the other one. The one about Adam and Eve and a garden.

The princess Europa (name not by chance, this myth talks about the beginning of our culture) walks on the beaches of the Phonecian City of Tyrus .The sky god Zeus turns into a white bulld kidnaps her, brings her to Crete and Rapes her. Her first son is King Minos (The king of the Minoans) who married the Titan Pasiphae who was an ancient Moon Godess (titan).

The White Bull is a symbol not only of virility but also of wealth and fertility. it is one of the most commonly used symbols for wealth. Agricultural wealth. So far we have learned that the first kings of Crete came from the Pheonecian city of Tyrus and that they brought agriculture to Europe and founded the Ciy of Knossos.This is the beginning of Agriculture in Europe and the beginning of a long transformation of the European continent and the spread of agriculture in the Mediterranean Basin. It also talks about the marriage between the Phoenician culture and the local Cretan one to create the uniquely Minoan Culture. The Titans are older gods than the Olympians very much like the differences between the Jotun, the Vanir and the Aesir in Norse mythology. They are primordial meaning that they descend directly from Gaia and Uranus (the earth and the Sky ). So the Titans are from an era before agriculture and represent more ancient concepts. The Olympians arrive to Crete with agriculture and represent concepts that are important in an agricultural context. All this has taken place in the ancient depths of time even in the myth. This is a myth within the myth.

Back to the events. The Rule of Minos was not uncontroversial at the time and his brothers (might be read as either his actual brothers or his subjects.) challenged his rule. King Minos asked the divider of Power, Poseidon to give a sign of his kingship. Poseidon created a beautiful white Bull (again) that walked ashore the island of Crete and everyone saw that Minos was indeed the true King. Minos then refused to sacrifice this Bull back to Poseidon and instead sacrificed a lesser Bull. This sin of royal greed angered the Gods and Poseidon cursed Minos wife Pasiphae and kindled a passionate love in her for the Bull. To mate with the Bull she asked the famous engineer Daedalus (Literally meaning Craftsman) to build her a wooden cow within which she could mate with the bull in secrecy. The result of this unholy union was Minotaur.

To recap. To prove his kingship over his fellow men Minos brought riches and wealth to Crete from across the Mediterranean. Sea power is the divider of powers regal and divine, and brings wealth from across the sea. This is probably both tribute from the rest of Greece and more importantly the Minoan trade networks. The early Kings used their wealth to get power and then betrayed the gods and kept the wealth and power to themselves. Something which was an affront to the Gods. The ancient Cretan culture being so blinded by the riches that they were seduced and slept with a bull (again, wealth). This was done with the help of the craftsman and engineers who dressed the Queen/Moon godess into a cow made our of wood and leather. The result of this corruption was the Minotaur.

Minos now orders Daedalus to build a labyrinth around the offspring of this union. The Labyrinth of the Minotaur. The Minotaur is half human half bull. He is neither a real human (real humans do not live as agriculturalists, nora bull). Every year 7 your men and 7 young women from Athens must be sacrificed to the labyrinth (among other offerings, but the Athenians are important later). This to satisfy the greed of Kings.

Now, remember that this myth talks about the beginning of agriculture in a Greek context. The labyrinth is one of my favorite metaphors. It stands for the City of Knossos and the workings of the social order. So the labyrinth is the economic system of agriculture which supports cities and also kings.The latest incarnation of the symbol is the Matrix. It's basically the same thing.

The architect of the labyrinth (Daedalus) is locked on the roof of the Labyrinth (Which symbolizes the mind of those within it). He builds wings to escape and leaves together with his son. His son believes himself to be a God since he is free but instead dies and falls into the Icarian sea (His actions are forgotten and he doesn't get an actual burial. Which is extremly important to the Greeks). Daedalus then arrives in Athens and gives his knowledge to Athena, the goddess of wisdom. The wisdom of Athena is the forbidden knowledge of the labyrinth. Which is why she is the headache of her father Zeus who represent the world order that requires humans to live in labyrinths. She later gives the solution to the labyrinth to the Athenian youngster Theseus uses this forbidden knowledge to slay the Minotaur and razes the labyrinth. Ie, the agricultural society built by the Minoans and the tribute system they had built over the rest of Greece. Also referred to as the Collapse of the Minoan Civilization.The collapse of the Minoan culture is strongly tied to the [URL=)https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Late_Bronze_Age_collapse]Bronze age collaspe[/URL]

Eventually after the Dark ages of Greece the Minoan Culture is replaced by the Greek culture.

So the Myth is about the Birth of European (contra Asian) Culture and society. It is NOT about a god raping princesses. These stories were made to maintain knowledge in a very condensed form in a vocal tradition. The stories were told and retold over centuries and then interpreted and discussed around the fire at night. Every night. To write down the discussion once writing arrived was probably viewed as meaningless. Somewhere the stories are true. They are not only true on a historical level (They talk about actual historical events), but also about the future and the present since history tends to repeat itself. Later iterations contain additions from the later historical events from which new insights could be drawn.

These myths are warnings, history, sociology, philosophy and religion all wrapped into one. They can all be interpreted on several levels and were generally viewed as LITERALLY true by the Greeks who told them. But truth here is defined very differently than in our culture. It is all true, but should not be taken at face value. Our systems of thinking are VERY different from the context in which these stories were meant to be interpreted and all of them are open to plenty of interpretations. The one interpretation above is only one of many possible stories hidden within the myth. There are also a few parallels between this myth and the myth of Ragnarök in a norse context. But that is a separate post.

The ability to read myths becomes important when we are discussing the existance of our current God. The supplantment of the Titans by the Olympians mirrors the latters supplantment by the entity we call God. He exists in the context of the myths that we try to interpret about him but is still subject to change only instead of having a single pantheon changing, merging over time you get the same entity that changes meaning over time. Thus the God of Abraham is not the same as the God of Moses who in turn is not the same as the God of Jesus. All while they are all the same god.

Tomn posted:

... and that Chinese treasure fleets kickstarted the European Renaissance.

Nebakenezzer posted:

Is there a good book on the history of the Roman empire for somebody who doesn't really know the history and is looking for a starting point?

Nebakenezzer posted:

Is there a good book on the history of the Roman empire for somebody who doesn't really know the history and is looking for a starting point?

Quift posted:

I wrote this for the existance of god debate thread.

Ras Het posted:

This is nonsense. Even putting aside the problem of trying to interpret myths as mangled symbols for real events, the timeframes don't come close to adding up, the symbolism is absurdly convoluted, and you cut through an insane amount of corners. And I don't really understand what point you were trying to make? Did you just want to show off your pet theory?

Quift posted:

I wrote this for the existance of god debate thread.

LingcodKilla posted:

So... Has anyone tried using olive oil as lube? I couldnt help but notice while making dinner tonight that it is really hard to get off your hands. I wonder if the ancients had a term for catching you while being guilty of rubbing one off like "I caught you greasy handed".

Synnr posted:

Last page but this tidbit of conspiracy theory stuff:


caught my attention, as I haven't ever heard it before. I guess this is the zheng he fleet and they went all over the place getting goodies and what not, but I hadn't ever heard anyone say they got any farther than what, the eastern african coast? Nothing is jumping out at wikipedia, whats the gist there with the renaissance stuff?

uninverted posted:

Is it weird that the first problem I thought of is that olive oil is too expensive?

Tomn posted:

I'm talking about this guy. He made a big splash with a book that claimed that Zheng He's treasure fleet got to America before Colombus did, even managing to make it to the Caribbean, but his evidence was basically roundly derided as nonsense, despite the book being pretty popular. He followed this up with another book suggesting that same treasure fleets made their way to Italy and the magnificence of it all was what started the Renaissance. And looking at Wikipedia, apparently he capped things off by throwing his hat into the Atlantis ring, too, which is nicely circular.

He's not so much a conspiracy theorist as he is a pseudo-scholar, mind you - less about cover-ups and more about "SHOCKING new revelations!"

Nebakenezzer posted:

Is there a good book on the history of the Roman empire for somebody who doesn't really know the history and is looking for a starting point?

Nebakenezzer posted:

Is there a good book on the history of the Roman empire for somebody who doesn't really know the history and is looking for a starting point?

A Strange Aeon posted:

Speaking of mythology, I read this passage the other night and it gave me chills for some reason. It's from Herodotus, Book 2:


"Thus far went the record given by the Egyptians and their priests; and they showed me that the time from the first king to that priest of Hephaestus, who was the last, covered three hundred and forty-one generations, and that in this time this also had been the number of their kings, and of their high priests. Now three hundred generations are ten thousand years, three generations being equal to a hundred. And over and above the three hundred, the remaining forty-one cover thirteen hundred and forty years. Thus the whole period is eleven thousand three hundred and forty years; in all of which time (they said) they had had no king who was a god in human form, nor had there been any such either before or after those years among the rest of the kings of Egypt. Four times in this period (so they told me) the sun rose contrary to experience; twice he came up where he now goes down, and twice went down where he now comes up; yet Egypt at these times underwent no change, either in the produce of the river and the land, or in the matter of sickness and death."

In my head, I always assumed at some point back in the dawns of time, people actually had a basis for thinking the gods walked among men and inspired all those stories. Not, of course, that there were actual gods wandering around, but I just thought there'd have been some powerful dude who through trickery or deliberate illusion convinced people of his divinity, and that passed down through the generations led to the gods of myth. But here's someone saying that in 11,000 years, there's never been a god in human form. Of course, I'm pretty sure the sun never went backwards either, and maybe it's just my ignorance of the origin of myths, but it seems like the time when gods walked as men would have to be before 11,000 years before Herodotus was writing, which makes the myths and the gods way older than I thought they were.

What's our earliest collection of Greek myths, for instance? 500 BC? We don't have anything from thousands of years before that, right?

Ras Het posted:

This is nonsense. Even putting aside the problem of trying to interpret myths as mangled symbols for real events, the timeframes don't come close to adding up, the symbolism is absurdly convoluted, and you cut through an insane amount of corners. And I don't really understand what point you were trying to make? Did you just want to show off your pet theory?

Quift posted:

What I'm trying to show is an example of how a myth can be read. The symbols on the myth are not random but exist in a context which helps us understand the meaning of the symbols. While the symbolism might feel convoluted to you it might have been heavy handed in context. It is difficult to know.

In this case a bit of mangled history.