Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

washingtonpost.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

101–110 of 149 posts

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

#101

Post by senior_james »

kaitai wrote: post #67
senior_james wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 abort…

"Killing abortion providers or bombing a clinic explicitly in the name of some version of Christianity are examples of Christian terrorism"

I can think of this happening once or twice in the last 5 years. The volume of Muslim attacks is much higher. Both are wrong.

"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."

Abortion is legal in the United states and murders of clinic workers aren't really common. Try being a vocal Trump supporter in the US. You will get death threats too. However, people aren't actually carrying it out.

"bitter at life, esp. the military or women"

As I said, statistically, the United states has a large percentage of Christians (and people that are white), which means a large percentage of any murders are going to be white and Christian. However, they were not screaming "Jesus is great" during the murders nor trying to create a Christian state where anyone practicing another religion us murdered.

"I do not feel threatened by Sharia."

You don't feel threatened because you don't have to live under the rule of it. If we were under Sharia law, I don't think we would even be having this conversation. The people against it are trying to save everyone else from a terrible life.

"it wasn't Muslims forcing me to make that choice."

I think you need to learn more about Islam. Abortion is completely illegal in all Muslim countries and if you actually talk to someone that is not even that much of a fundamentalist, they are against abortion.

Regardless of the religion, I don't want to be ruled by a mythical person that lived 2000 years ago with little regard to science.

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

#102

Post by vram22 »

gglitch wrote: post #94
gnicholasgreen wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've heard this oft repeated over the decades. I wonder if there is a legitimate historical source for it.

"from Greek barbaros 'foreign, strange, ignorant,' from PIE root *barbar- echoic of unintelligible speech of foreigners (compare Sanskrit barbara- 'stammering,' also 'non-Aryan,' Latin balbus 'stammering,' Czech blblati 'to stammer')." I don't know if the source I'm quoting is reliable, but I find the same reference to Sanskrit in a variety of sources.

>compare Sanskrit barbara- "stammering,"

Interesting. Though I knew Sanskrit (well in school), didn't know or remember that word - but still know Hindi well, and in Hindi, bad-bad (pronounced like bud-bud) means blabbing, as in:

Kya bad-bad kar rahe ho - What are you blabbing.

And to close the loop, in Hindi, the sounds r and d are closely related and sometimes substituted for one another - at least while talking.

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

#103

Post by Spooky23 »

dpark wrote: post #91
Spooky23 wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's the human condition. If you think that we're any better, you're wrong. If any nation today had the ability to slaughter their enemies, they would. When the United States had that ability in the 1940s, we planned on doing so and reengineered the entire military complex to do so. When the Germans had the ability to do so in Angola in the early 1900s, they did.

> If any nation today had the ability to slaughter their enemies, they would. This is untrue. Most citizens don't have the stomach for total war or civilian massacre. It's not considered acceptable or moral by most people. There was no lack of ability constraining the US from carpet bombing everything habitable in Afghanistan after 9/11, but relatively few people were advocating for that.

They don't need to. Ancient people were no more or less moral than we are today.

Only the people running the tribe matter, whether that be a bronze age war band or a modern army. The fact that only a few people advocated the bombing you described doesn't change the fact that bombs were dropped.

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

#104

Post by remind_me_again »

dpark wrote: post #69
qordoba wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

You're only making Geert Widers and his ilk happy.

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

#105

Post by [deleted] »

Spooky23 wrote: post #28
mjfl wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But their primary defense was offense. The Roman response to true enemy was always "kill them all, man woman and child". That's why they genocided Carthage, the Gauls, destroyed Israel, massacred rebelling slaves in Sicily and lined the roads from Campania to Rome with crucified rebels. To bring in a modern political analogy is stupid. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appian_Way#The_crucifixion_of_...

That's the human condition. If you think that we're any better, you're wrong. If any nation today had the ability to slaughter their enemies, they would. When the United States had that ability in the 1940s, we planned on doing so and reengineered the entire military complex to do so. When the Germans had the ability to do so in Angola in the early 1900s, they did.

[deleted]

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

#106

Post by dghughes »

I've seen forensics shows where the person was identified using oxygen isotopes in the water the person drank.

I wonder how mixed up we are now with bottled water from Fiji, strontium in toothpaste and other weird non-local molecules.

Cops talking "Hey Frank He's from Fiji but seems to have lived in Siberia too."

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

#107

Post by pkd »

jacquesm wrote: post #82
literallycancer wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, look at them evil Muslims.[1] Fundamentalists, every single one, right? Islam has issues, of course, just like any other ideology. Too bad the Wahhabis are largely successful in exporting their flavor of Islam.. but I guess that's what happens when you prop up oppressive regimes in the name of stability (and preferential access to natural resources). [1] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ZIqdrFeFBk

The thing that really rams this home for me is pictures of Teheran before the revolution: http://www.vintag.es/2014/09/pictures-of-tehran-iran-ca-1960... The problem with all this is if it achieves escape velocity then it can take a long long time to undo the damage. We're almost four decades into Iran being an Islamic state and I wonder how that would have all ended if there had not been so much meddling in Iran and…

Indeed. Alse Afghanistan before Taliban[1]

Very appropriate that the US had a huge hand to play in dislodging the normalcy of life in both of these places.

[1] http://www.dailymail.co.uk/travel/travel_news/article-340480...

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

#108

Post by dang »

67726e wrote: post #21

.

Would you please stop doing this on HN? This is a site for thoughtful conversation, not political or ideological venting. Deleting the comments after the damage is done doesn't help.

We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13939333 and marked it off-topic.

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

#109

Post by hinkley »

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…

I was astonished to learn that the biggest Celtic megalith structures are in northern France. Easy to forget how certain empires spread and collapsed in different directions.

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

#110

Post by dang »

mason240 wrote: post #83
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.

A common refrain hurled by those completely ignorant of how historiography works.

Please don't post snarky dismissals to HN. It sounds like you know a lot about history. If someone is wrong, explain why, so we all learn something. Putting other people down because they don't know as much as you doesn't belong in thoughtful conversation.

This applies to https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13940423 too.

Post reply on HN