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 Welcome to the C-SPAM Ancient History thread! This thread was born out of a massive derail in the Epstein thread that lead to pages of discussion about the ancient Roman pantheon, the Bronze Age Collapse, the Minoans, and a bunch of other stuff. C-SPAM seems to have a lot to say about this, so now you can do that here. Feel free to argue about the identity of the Sea Peoples or whatever other niche you have wondered into and want to talk about. Feel free to post documentaries and podcasts and links to articles, or just engage in pleasant friendly debate about minutia that nobody else knows or cares about anymore. The Mayans were right and the world is ending, but we still don't know how they built the pyramids, so here's your last chance to figure it out!  Edit: this is the pre-modern history thread now twoday has issued a correction as of 22:10 on Apr 27, 2021 |
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Aug 18, 2019 01:26
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i will be judging the latin itt harshly but i have stickers for anyone who deserves them. bonam fortunam!
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Aug 18, 2019 01:30
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Real hurthling! posted:i will be judging the latin itt harshly but i have stickers for anyone who deserves them. bonam fortunam! same, but Linear A
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Aug 18, 2019 01:31
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twoday posted:one sec yeah post the crazy guys latin hate mail you mentioned in the other thread, im down
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Aug 18, 2019 01:34
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That was someone else I think, my Latin is terrible
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Aug 18, 2019 01:36
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I only caught some of the Epstein stuff but in that big post you mentioned an option being some Carthaginians surviving the destruction and infiltrating roman society, is there any chance of that being a real option or was it just a joke? I have no idea
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Aug 18, 2019 01:36
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No I don't think they survived in any meaningful way, but they may have had colonies in unexpected places, so their cultural impact may have lived on in some ways. To explain it will take a while and I will post my ideas here eventually, I just want to post some other stuff first before I forget
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Aug 18, 2019 01:41
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uh look u philistine, minoan what we know now, the sea peoples were just phoenician the job happy 2 be here thx
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Aug 18, 2019 01:49
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twoday posted:No I don't think they survived in any meaningful way, but they may have had colonies in unexpected places, so their cultural impact may have lived on in some ways. To explain it will take a while and I will post my ideas here eventually, I just want to post some other stuff first before I forget i saw a bad pbs show once that took footage from a german crackpot's movie about incans being white dudes descended from Carthaginian refugees and recut it into a less insane rambling screed and more of a what if scenario. it was part of their series "secrets of the dead" and it was really stupid. incans had genes for red hair you see so naturally its cause of carthaginian blood.
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Aug 18, 2019 01:50
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Real hurthling! posted:i saw a bad pbs show once that took footage from a german crackpot's movie about incans being white dudes descended from Carthaginian refugees and recut it into a less insane rambling screed and more of a what if scenario. it was part of their series "secrets of the dead" and it was really stupid. incans had genes for red hair you see so naturally its cause of carthaginian blood. If they had been Carthaginian refugees I would expect them to survive a smallpox outbreak a lot better.
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Aug 18, 2019 01:54
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The History of Exploration Podcast https://historyofexploration.net/ I just wanted to recommend this to people because it's honestly one of the most interesting podcasts I ever heard. It's about stories of discovery from the ancient world. They are usually pretty short.The guy who did it seems to have stopped and there are only a handful of episodes up. They're not all good, but when they're good they are fantastic. He has a pleasant way of speaking and telling stories that really captures the imagination and makes you visualize the reality of the hosed up situations that ancient people often found themselves in, and I think he does a pretty good job of explaining his stories in such a way that you don't really need to know anything about ancient history to understand or appreciate it. Highlights: Ep. 2 - Hanno the Navigator - This one is my favorite. It's about the destruction of Carthage and how the Romans learned of one of the ancient secrets of the Carthaginians, about how they explored the western shore of Africa. I was going to post more links, but really they are all pretty good. Episode one is also about the Phoenicians and really interesting, and one that is important to my own personal theories about the Phoenicians, if you care about that. Episode 3 (A & B) is about Pythius, the ancient Greek who traveled to Britain and probably even Iceland. A bunch of it is about Alexander the Great invading Asia.
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Aug 18, 2019 01:55
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I also highly recommend Mike Duncan's History of Rome, its a little rougher around the edges than his work on Revolutions but it lays out pretty much everything from the founding to the fall.
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Aug 18, 2019 02:03
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Real hurthling! posted:i saw a bad pbs show once that took footage from a german crackpot's movie about incans being white dudes descended from Carthaginian refugees and recut it into a less insane rambling screed and more of a what if scenario. it was part of their series "secrets of the dead" and it was really stupid. incans had genes for red hair you see so naturally its cause of carthaginian blood. This reminds me ofThor Heyerdahl, who is most famous for the Kon-Tiki expedition. In 1947 he built a Polynesian raft and sailed from Peru to Polynesia, which was a milestone in proving that ancient people were capable of massive trans-oceanic voyages, and helped lay the groundwork for people to believe that things such as the vikings reaching america were possible. They made a documentary about it which is pretty famous and worth watching: https://vimeo.com/49401742 Anyway, later in life he became obsessed with the idea of pyramids in America, Egypt, Asia, and other places in the world all resembling each other, as well as other similarities that existed among these cultures such as sun worship, and high-level understanding of astronomy. He suspected that there may have been some ancient connection between these cultures, and tried to come up with a theory about it, and it has largely since been picked up by crackpots and ancient aliens people and such. He wrote a bunch of interesting books. In something of his I remember him discussing some Mayan (I think, maybe Aztec) artwork that showed them sacrificing someone with a beard and white skin, and he was using this to argue his theory, though it seemed to me like the victim was white because of blood loss
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Aug 18, 2019 02:08
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I was wondering if anyone could tell me what really happened regarding the Jewish diaspora across Europe. And then if someone could tell me if Ashkenazi Jews really aren't genetically related to actual Semitic people I'd really appreciate it. There's a lot of bad info out there and was wondering if anyone knew what the real (or most likely, anyway) deal was.
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Aug 18, 2019 02:12
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Thor Heyerdahl was pretty cool, yeah. Kon-Tiki was trying to prove that the islands of the south pacific were settled by sailors from South America. The Kon-Tiki was successful, but later evidence shows that the migration was from the other way' Southeast Asian peoples settled most of those islands. And Madagascar as well. The other two voyages he did was trying to prove that West Africans could have sailed across the Atlantic and that the Sumerians could have sailed around the Arabian peninsula to Egypt and/or India. IIRC, the first attempt to sail across the Atlantic failed and they had to be rescued, and the second was blown off course and they ended up in North America. So in theory the voyage was possible. The attempt to sail from Iraq was moderately successful, but they ended up aborting it because they got caught in a war-zone. The theory that the Sumerians were sailing to the Indus valley and southern Arabia is pretty conclusively accepted now.
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Aug 18, 2019 02:17
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Christoph posted:I was wondering if anyone could tell me what really happened regarding the Jewish diaspora across Europe. And then if someone could tell me if Ashkenazi Jews really aren't genetically related to actual Semitic people I'd really appreciate it. There is a lot of bullshit out there indeed, dubious stories about the Khazars and whatnot. IIRC the Y-lineages of many Ashkenazi and Sephardic Jews can be pretty clearly traced back to the Middle East/Levant, and that it seemed to indicate that a bunch of Jewish guys arrived in the Balkans around the 5th century and then dispersed throughout Europe, intermarrying with people along the way. The DNA from the female side seems to be harder to make sense of, but I think that they were able to come to some more definitive conclusions based on the male side. Jews are one of the most closely studied genetic groups, and especially the Ashkenazi because their DNA is much more homogeneous than that of Sephardic Jews and others. Here is a painfully long and well sourced wiki article about it. Genetics is not something I know much about, and what little I know about it I know is mostly about other groups so I can't help you more than that.
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Aug 18, 2019 02:39
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Thank you, will read. It's been eons (2008) since I read anything on it but I had an anthro teacher who was pretty convinced the Jewish religion was passed to Europeans but the genetic material wasn't there. When they removed the Ashkenazi category from that DNA sequencing company my curiosity was piqued.
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Aug 18, 2019 02:45
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I saw a brand of corned beef at the grocery store called Phoenician today and thought of you
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Aug 18, 2019 02:52
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Christoph posted:Thank you, will read. This is the Khazar Hypothesis. It centers on a political entity known as the Khazar Khanate which was a polity of semi-nomadic Turkic people which existed in Eastern Europe. At some point the nobility of the Khazar Khanate ending up being Jewish. According to this theory, a few Jews seized power among the Khazars, and because the upper class was Jewish, the lower classes and peasants all followed along and converted to Judaism too (in name only, without actually practicing the religion), resulting in a bunch of people with Slavic/Turkic genetics suddenly claiming to be Jews while having no actual lineage from the Israelites. It goes on to say that these people became the Ashkenazi and migrated to Eastern Europe. This hypothesis doesn't match with a lot of other data and has pretty much been discredited, but it still comes up sometimes. It was historically one of the mainstays of anti-Semites, used to argue points such as - Jews are a parasitic minority and will seize control of a society if they are given the chance - European Jews aren't even the same Jews you read about in the bible, but a barbaric Mongoloid race - Jews are genetically predisposed to be nomads and have no sense of homeland - Jews don't practice racial hygiene, being a mongrel race made up of an impure mix of Asiatic sub-humans - Jews do not belong in Europe, and pose an existential threat to it akin to that posed by the Golden Horde of Ghengis Khan, and they are pushing westward and we must stop them before they seize control and make everyone else into Jews too - etc. However, this doesn't necessarily mean your teacher was a nazi if they believed this theory; it used to be quite common and accepted, even fairly recently. But they should probably read some more recent research about the history of Jews in Europe. here's the wiki article about it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khazar_hypothesis_of_Ashkenazi_ancestry edit: sorry, was confused twoday has issued a correction as of 03:38 on Aug 18, 2019 |
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Aug 18, 2019 03:15
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angerbeet posted:I saw a brand of corned beef at the grocery store called Phoenician today and thought of you cool, I would try it if I saw it
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Aug 18, 2019 03:16
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Some weirdo Jewish libertarian went on a rant about how the Palestinians are actually descended from the Samaritans and as such completely unrelated to the Jews who lived there in the first century. Because I guess there was no mixing ever.
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Aug 18, 2019 03:32
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twoday posted:This is the Khazar Hypothesis. It centers on a political entity known as the Khazar Khaganate which existed in Eastern Europe in the middle ages, after the Mongol Empire collapsed and devolved into various Khaganates. The Mongol Empire and it's successors were fairly religiously tolerant and diverse, and at some point the nobility of the Khazar Khaganate ending up being Jewish. According to this theory, a few Jews seized power among the Khazars, and because the upper class was Jewish, the lower classes and peasants all followed along and converted to Judaism too (in name only, without actually practicing the religion), resulting in a bunch of people with Slavic/Mongol genetics suddenly claiming to be Jews while having no actual lineage from the Israelites. It goes on to say that these people became the Ashkenazi The Khazars were at their peak around 500 years before the rise of the Mongol empire. They were contemporaries with the Byzantine empire and the Arabian Caliphate. Anyways, the degree of their "Jewishness" has been called into question since it was common for steppe peoples to be fairly religiously tolerant and have a wide range of religious views in their khanates (indeed, most steppe khanates were a mishmash of ethnicities undergoing a near-constant process of ethnogenesis as various clans and tribes would rise and fall in power within the steppe confederations, and populations of horse-riding nomads would often migrate vast distances and form new alliances/societies in faraway places if they were lucky, or just get enslaved if they weren't etc). Anyways this is all to say that at some point there was likely an elite faction of Jewish faith within the Khazar khaganate, including ruling it for a time, but we really don't know that much about it and it is extremely unlikely that their society was even majority Jewish. As for the crazy nazi poo poo about the Khazar connection being an origin of Jewish perfidy or whatever, the fluid nature of steppe society over thousands of years and its tendency to scare the pants off of settled peoples means there are numerous bonkers theories about the origins and connections between various ethnic groups all over Eurasia, and if you keep looking you will almost certainly find some lunatic claiming that their little patch of dirt was once the heart of the greatest empire the world has ever seen.
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Aug 18, 2019 03:36
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Fuzzy McDoom posted:The Khazars were at their peak around 500 years before the rise of the Mongol empire. They were contemporaries with the Byzantine empire and the Arabian Caliphate. Anyways, the degree of their "Jewishness" has been called into question since it was common for steppe peoples to be fairly religiously tolerant and have a wide range of religious views in their khanates (indeed, most steppe khanates were a mishmash of ethnicities undergoing a near-constant process of ethnogenesis as various clans and tribes would rise and fall in power within the steppe confederations, and populations of horse-riding nomads would often migrate vast distances and form new alliances/societies in faraway places if they were lucky, or just get enslaved if they weren't etc). Anyways this is all to say that at some point there was likely an elite faction of Jewish faith within the Khazar khaganate, including ruling it for a time, but we really don't know that much about it and it is extremely unlikely that their society was even majority Jewish. As for the crazy nazi poo poo about the Khazar connection being an origin of Jewish perfidy or whatever, the fluid nature of steppe society over thousands of years and its tendency to scare the pants off of settled peoples means there are numerous bonkers theories about the origins and connections between various ethnic groups all over Eurasia, and if you keep looking you will almost certainly find some lunatic claiming that their little patch of dirt was once the heart of the greatest empire the world has ever seen. first of all, I mixed up the timeline, and it was before the mongol invasion, which I just corrected before reading this. second, I admire your knowledge of the steppe peoples and yes, for the rest
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Aug 18, 2019 03:42
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Fun fact, there were, at various times, Jewish rulers of Ethiopia, Yemen, parts of Arabia and pieces of Spain.
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Aug 18, 2019 03:45
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YES: Your Emperor Sucks
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Aug 18, 2019 03:45
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twoday posted:cool, I would try it if I saw it I do not have the magical narrative that seems to drive your life but I can send you a trapezoid of it if you like (it comes in trapezoids)
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Aug 18, 2019 03:46
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The steppe nomads fascinate me. They would seem to be inelegant barbarians that could never stand up to an imperial civilization like Rome, Persia or China but due to a quirk of their culture, their expert horsemanship and continuous development of the bow and arrow they were able to annihilate the armies of large settle nations on a regular basis. Plus when they did rule over the settled peoples they were incredibly tolerant of different religious faiths and minority ethnic groups provided they did not attempt to resist their rule. Also they were definitely they greatest warriors of premodern society despite what nazis and weaboos say.
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Aug 18, 2019 03:47
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*vestimentum cursi romanum induens* quae, O Iuppiter, est res publica identitatis?
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Aug 18, 2019 03:48
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angerbeet posted:I do not have the magical narrative that seems to drive your life but I can send you a trapezoid of it if you like (it comes in trapezoids) yeah cool, let's do it
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Aug 18, 2019 03:48
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What do you think of the out of Africa theory and the anthropological concept of pre-agrarian man basically being egalitarian or at least non hierarchical within their own nomadic tribes? also are there any other ancient egalitarian societies we know about? I'm familiar with the somewhat limited matrilineal societies of some mountain/ranchers but I'm not sure if that really qualifies as ancient
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Aug 18, 2019 04:02
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I quite like the Tunnels of Baiae, on the Phlegræan Fields. It's maybe a mystery cult initiation, or maybe the world's first haunted house ride. https://mikedashhistory.com/2012/10/01/a-visit-to-the-underworld-the-unsolved-mystery-of-the-tunnels-at-baiae/ Baiae was basically a resort so I kind of look at it as going to Niagara Falls and riding the confusing Haunted Mansion ride but I guess it may also have represented a trip to a powerful oracle since I'm pretty sure Delphi was just a lady high on volcano gas as well.
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Aug 18, 2019 04:12
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Uranium posted:*vestimentum cursi romanum induens* quae, O Iuppiter, est res publica identitatis? i like the use of the participle induens there in "putting on my roman clothing" though formal latin might want it to be ablative in an absolute, i understand the form of the meme you are going for cursi however is the perfect passive participle of the word for run. nominative plural cant work there so we assume genitive singular and so its "of having hastened." perhaps you were going for quickly or its just a typo. your question and vocative are well formed but the cases of the nouns are perplexing, you've written "what, oh jupiter, is the republic of identity" but i assume you wanted "identity of the republic (identitas rei publicae)" i'll give you a B+ and thank you for not using google translate cause that fucker knows less latin than anybody and i hate correcting it.
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Aug 18, 2019 04:27
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 Alright, everyone has been avoiding this topic for a long time, both scholars and laypeople alike. We all feel uncomfortable when it comes up and try to make sure that it is never mentioned at the dinner table during Thanksgiving, but I think it's finally time that we had a chat about the pre-colonial history of Mauritius. Mauritius is an island in the Indian ocean off of Madagascar.  In 1598 a Dutch ship was sailing from South Africa towards Indonesia and spotted the island, which was unknown to them, and uninhabited. It looked nice so they decided to stop for fresh water and other supplies. In the journal of the captain, Wybrand van Warwyck, we find this interesting story:  quote:Among others there were there some certain birds, as large as our swans, with big heads, and on the head a feather, with no wings. We called these birds Walgh-Vogels (Nasty-birds) because their meat stayed hard and tough no matter how long we boiled them, except the breast, which tasted very good. These birds would be later known as the dodos.  Besides the dodos, they found coconut trees and other strange types of vegetation, and other curious things. Reading further into the journal we find this mysterious passage: quote:
So, what kind of wax was this? What kind of letters? Where did the ship come from? How did the birds get there? To answer all this we will need to go back to some ancient sources, which I will do tomorrow. But feel free to wildly speculate in the meantime. twoday has issued a correction as of 04:45 on Aug 18, 2019 |
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Aug 18, 2019 04:34
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Lol ok I will enjoy it if you can find some ancient Greek references to dodos
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Aug 18, 2019 04:41
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Lawman 0 posted:YES: Your Emperor Sucks YESPOS: Your Emperor'S A Piece of poo poo
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Aug 18, 2019 04:43
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Real hurthling! posted:i like the use of the participle induens there in "putting on my roman clothing" though formal latin might want it to be ablative in an absolute, i understand the form of the meme you are going for “vestimentum cursi” was intended to be “track suit”, I’ll have to learn more about constructions to properly tackle “full body Italian flag track suit.” “res publica identitatis” for “identity polatics [sic]”. thanks you for you comments. the mysterious figure who runs @dril_ln uses “meherc(u)le” in the spirit of “the gently caress”, which is good to know, although it would be better to find a more faithful Latin curseword.
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Aug 18, 2019 04:47
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Since the man got named in the OP, time for my favorite Diogenes anecdote. Among his many other admirable traits, he would from time to time stand outside brothels and scream at the top of his lungs, "a beautiful whore is like poisoned fruit!" at patrons as they entered. Annoyed by this, and presumably his smell as well, said patrons would fling small coins at Diogenes to shut him up. Once he'd scrounged up enough money, he would of course go into the brothel himself.
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Aug 18, 2019 04:47
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Captain_Maclaine posted:Since the man got named in the OP, time for my favorite Diogenes anecdote. Among his many other admirable traits, he would from time to time stand outside brothels and scream at the top of his lungs, "a beautiful whore is like poisoned fruit!" at patrons as they entered. Annoyed by this, and presumably his smell as well, said patrons would fling small coins at Diogenes to shut him up. Once he'd scrounged up enough money, he would of course go into the brothel himself. God drat Diogenes was such a shitbird.
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Aug 18, 2019 04:53
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Diogenes also once said, after leaving the privacy of his tub, that he wished he could also satiate his hunger by rubbing his belly.
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Aug 18, 2019 04:54
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Uranium posted:https://mobile.twitter.com/nycguidovoice/status/802982411474636800 so track is cursus, cursus a 4th decl noun so -i is not a proper ending in that declension u want cursui
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Aug 18, 2019 05:04
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