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Ancient Romans depicted Huns as barbarians – their bones tell a different story

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Re: Ancient Romans depicted Huns as barbarians – their bones tell a different story

#61

Post by tacomonstrous »

arethuza wrote: post #40
empath75 wrote: post #25

The Fall of Rome podcast had a really interesting episode on The Huns: https://m.soundcloud.com/fallofromepodcast/fall-of-rome-epis... He makes the argument that in the later Roman Empire, the Huns treated the Roman Empire as either a vassal or a buffer state to their own empire. They demanded tribute from them and even forced the romans to chase down and return refugees. It's really interesting to look at the Roman…

Speaking of Scythia - somewhat bizarrely Scottish legends claim that the Scots were originally from there! "They journeyed from Greater Scythia by way of the Tyrrhenian Sea and the Pillars of Hercules, and dwelt for a long course of time in Spain among the most savage tribes, but nowhere could they be subdued by any race, however barbarous. Thence they came, twelve hundred years after the people of Israel crossed the…

It's not an unreasonable legend. Conventional wisdom is that all Indo-Europeans sprang from the steppes of Central Asia. Having it mentioned in a 14th century declaration is pretty fascinating!

Re: Ancient Romans depicted Huns as barbarians – their bones tell a different story

#62

Post by [deleted] »

arethuza wrote: post #40
empath75 wrote: post #25

The Fall of Rome podcast had a really interesting episode on The Huns: https://m.soundcloud.com/fallofromepodcast/fall-of-rome-epis... He makes the argument that in the later Roman Empire, the Huns treated the Roman Empire as either a vassal or a buffer state to their own empire. They demanded tribute from them and even forced the romans to chase down and return refugees. It's really interesting to look at the Roman…

Speaking of Scythia - somewhat bizarrely Scottish legends claim that the Scots were originally from there! "They journeyed from Greater Scythia by way of the Tyrrhenian Sea and the Pillars of Hercules, and dwelt for a long course of time in Spain among the most savage tribes, but nowhere could they be subdued by any race, however barbarous. Thence they came, twelve hundred years after the people of Israel crossed the…

[deleted]

Re: Ancient Romans depicted Huns as barbarians – their bones tell a different story

#63

Post by empath75 »

tacomonstrous wrote: post #61
arethuza wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Speaking of Scythia - somewhat bizarrely Scottish legends claim that the Scots were originally from there! "They journeyed from Greater Scythia by way of the Tyrrhenian Sea and the Pillars of Hercules, and dwelt for a long course of time in Spain among the most savage tribes, but nowhere could they be subdued by any race, however barbarous. Thence they came, twelve hundred years after the people of Israel crossed the…

It's not an unreasonable legend. Conventional wisdom is that all Indo-Europeans sprang from the steppes of Central Asia. Having it mentioned in a 14th century declaration is pretty fascinating!

Sort of. The languages did. But there were people in Scotland before any indo Europeans got there.

Re: Ancient Romans depicted Huns as barbarians – their bones tell a different story

#64

Post by amk_ »

There are a couple of good books on the Hun-Roman relationship if you want to learn more about that era:

The End of Empire is a more casual read: https://www.amazon.com/End-Empire-Attila-Fall-Rome/dp/039333...

The Huns by EA Thompson is older but as far as I know one of the canonical works: https://www.amazon.com/Huns-Thompson/dp/0631214437%3FSubscri...

Another fun fact: Attila (aka King Etzel) assists the protagonist Kriemhild, widow of Siegfried, in the medieval saga "The Song of the Niebelungs"

Re: Ancient Romans depicted Huns as barbarians – their bones tell a different story

#65

Post by arethuza »

tacomonstrous wrote: post #61
arethuza wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Speaking of Scythia - somewhat bizarrely Scottish legends claim that the Scots were originally from there! "They journeyed from Greater Scythia by way of the Tyrrhenian Sea and the Pillars of Hercules, and dwelt for a long course of time in Spain among the most savage tribes, but nowhere could they be subdued by any race, however barbarous. Thence they came, twelve hundred years after the people of Israel crossed the…

It's not an unreasonable legend. Conventional wisdom is that all Indo-Europeans sprang from the steppes of Central Asia. Having it mentioned in a 14th century declaration is pretty fascinating!

Given the context of the Declaration (i.e. The First Scottish War of Independence) it sounds to me like propaganda trying to claim an ancient and separate lineage for the Scots.

Mind you the Declaration is a great document - proclaiming Scottish freedom and saying that while Robert the Bruce is a cool guy if he doesn't turn out to be a good king then he'll be sacked and another one found from somewhere. Which is a fairly novel idea for kings.

Re: Ancient Romans depicted Huns as barbarians – their bones tell a different story

#66

Post by gkya »

redsummer wrote: post #11
hugh4life wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

About as ironic as the Romans taking Visigoth refugees kicked out of the Black Sea area by the Huns... and that the Visigoths ended up sacking Rome within a few generations. http://www.ancient.eu/visigoth/

On the same day London is attacked, Turkey says that Europe 'will not walk safely on the streets': http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/turkey-erdoga...

> Turkey says

Please imagine 70million people saying something.

Re: Ancient Romans depicted Huns as barbarians – their bones tell a different story

#67

Post by kaitai »

senior_james wrote: post #55
koverstreet wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most terrorist acts in the U.S. are committed by white people, and the people pushing to make their religion the basis of law are also Christians, not Muslims. Your statements have no basis in facts or data, which leads me to suspect plain old racism.

Islam is not a race. Also, an act of terror by someone that just happens to be Christian is completely different than an act by someone doing it in the name of a religion, like Islam. "plain old racism" It's not racist to recognize patterns. You can't even draw Muhammad without getting death threats or even killed. The same can't be said about Jesus. The majority of the major terror attacks in the last 10 years have…

Killing abortion providers or bombing a clinic explicitly in the name of some version of Christianity are examples of Christian terrorism, though, which have happened in the US recently. These are not acts that are incidental to the religious beliefs of the individuals perpetrating them.

It's not anti-Christian to recognize patterns. You can't be a clinic that provides reproductive health services (even without abortions!) without getting threats, and you definitely can't provide abortions without getting death threats or even getting killed.

If you look at mass killings in the US, the majority of major attacks in the US have been done by men who are white and nominally Christian, falling into the broad categories of "Christianity-motivated" or "bitter at life, esp. the military or women". Check out a list of US shootings at http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2012/12/mass-shootings-m... for instance.

Full disclosure: I'm some version of Christian too, but I feel quite threatened by other Christians who want to enforce their versions of morality upon me by law. I do not feel threatened by Sharia. When I got some testing done on my fetus at 20 weeks and was faced with a possible, but thankfully irrelevant, choice of being forced to carry a terminally ill or dead kid to term or not, it wasn't Muslims forcing me to make that choice.

Re: Ancient Romans depicted Huns as barbarians – their bones tell a different story

#68

Post by slang800 »

qordoba wrote: post #49
yawz wrote: post #15

History is written by the... victors. It's not surprising to get a single-sided story when the other side didn't care much about leaving written detailed records.

History is written by other side as well. Unfortunately layman does not bother to read/listen alternatives.

Historians have no problem incorporating reliable documents written by the "other side". You just have to understand the context that it was written in.

However, all the "alternative" history I've looked at has ended up being fan fiction, with no real supporting evidence.

Re: Ancient Romans depicted Huns as barbarians – their bones tell a different story

#69

Post by dpark »

qordoba wrote: post #52
qordoba wrote: post #48

Looks like racism in Europe haven't evolved much. Europeans are human rest is animal.

The number of downvotes will reveal how many are disconnected from the fact that racism raising (once again) in Europe.

The number of downvotes will reveal that your initial comment adds little to the conversation and your second comment is basically a downvote complaint.

Re: Ancient Romans depicted Huns as barbarians – their bones tell a different story

#70

Post by digi_owl »

qordoba wrote: post #48

Looks like racism in Europe haven't evolved much. Europeans are human rest is animal.

Humanity as a whole has not evolved much once one start scrubbing of the layers of verbal coating we have applied over generations.

In the end we are wired to be tribal apes.

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