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Ancient Carthaginians did sacrifice their children (2014)

ox.ac.uk

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Re: Ancient Carthaginians did sacrifice their children (2014)

#81

Post by AllegedAlec »

ffgjgf1 wrote: post #72
AllegedAlec wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> No, Cato was not right. He was a racist, war criminal and very corrupt politician. Even if he was all of that, which I'd dispute or at least question, that doesn't mean he wasn't right

> which I'd dispute or at least question, He wanted to destroy and almost exterminate/enslave a massive city for much more practical reasons than stopping child sacrifice (which was a side note at best..). How could you question that?

He's accused of being three things and give evidence of one of his policies as a reason. For which of those, and how that policy make him that?

Re: Ancient Carthaginians did sacrifice their children (2014)

#82

Post by easytiger »

Veen wrote: post #47
easytiger wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

It's usually to promote the academics, their paper, and their institutions. Is there a goal I am missing here?

The author credited is Josephine Quinn, a subscriber to intersectionality who wishes to provide an assumption for easy consumption that it wasn't just Africans and Aborigines who subscribed to barbarism (her assumption). Her assertion is that as the western world is based on the ancient Greek and Roman world (again her assumption) and that they were barbaric and that therefore we in the west are not better than them (again her assumption, not mine).

Re: Ancient Carthaginians did sacrifice their children (2014)

#83

Post by easytiger »

Xylakant wrote: post #50
easytiger wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Science? That would be my first guess unless there's reason to suspect otherwise. The underlying paper was published in an academic journal with at least some history, so that speaks for the authors intend. The fact that there's a press release about it stems from the need for marketing on the university side and it's correct to be skeptical, but I can't see any indication that they misrepresent the papers findings.

I replied elsewhere https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36225919

And reinterpretation of history is not remotely "science"

Re: Ancient Carthaginians did sacrifice their children (2014)

#84

Post by easytiger »

mjburgess wrote: post #22
gettodachoppa wrote: post #15

[flagged]

Well you're not a historian right? So you can always opt to have no judgement. But, in any given field, the job is to sort the probable propositions from the improbable. The dialectic, the article establishes, amongst historians has been: Yes, there was sacrifice, the greeks/etc. said so No, there wasn't, we believe propaganda too readily Yes, there was, multiple sources (incl. archeology) now corroborate I agree wit…

> But, in any given field, the job is to sort the probable propositions from the improbable.

The job is also to assert no conclusion when appropriate. That has not happened here.

Re: Ancient Carthaginians did sacrifice their children (2014)

#85

Post by tomohawk »

fastball wrote: post #80
ffgjgf1 wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In this case you have multiple societies independently telling the same thing about the same society. Seems about as credible as it gets in a situation like this. Also it’s not like killing infants was a big deal for the Greeks. There were even a bit shocked by their perceived lack of female infanticide in the Etruscan society.

I don't think it is entirely clear that the accounts are independent.

It's pretty clear.

There was no love lost between the Jews and Romans. The civilizations developed independently, and the survival of Judaism required rejection of the Roman world view in most things.

Re: Ancient Carthaginians did sacrifice their children (2014)

#86

Post by ffgjgf1 »

AmericanChopper wrote: post #77
ffgjgf1 wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> was destroyed as thoroughly as possible, and the only proper accounts of it are Roman and Greek. Physical destruction/genocide wasn’t really necessarily for that. Texts written on papyrus just don’t last very long. Nothing survives from the Etruscans either and the Roman never actively suppressed their culture as far as we know. People just stopped speaking the language and texts were no longer copied. We know so m…

I'm pretty sure that the total destruction of their cities, and all institutions of their society is one of the main reasons nobody was around to preserve their language or history. There are almost no primary sources of Carthaginian history, the only real close-to-contemporary sources are an incomplete account from Polybius (a Greek, who lived as a Roman slave), and Livy (a Roman aristocrat born 100 years after the…

Yes, but that more or less applies to every civilization besides Greeks and Romans regardless of what happened to them (and even the amount of Greek/Romans text that have survived is tiny). Maybe Egypt is an exception.

For instance most of what we know about ancient Persia comes from Greek sources. As far as we know more the Greek/Romans had preserved much more information about Achaemenids than their Sassanian successors.

Even if Carthage was somehow semi peacefully annexed into the Roman empire and and their upper classes were assimilated into the Roman society over time more or less the same thing would have happen (just that we’d have had a longer window during which Punic texts could’ve been translated to Greek/Roman). This happened all the time after all.

Re: Ancient Carthaginians did sacrifice their children (2014)

#87

Post by ffgjgf1 »

AllegedAlec wrote: post #81
ffgjgf1 wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> which I'd dispute or at least question, He wanted to destroy and almost exterminate/enslave a massive city for much more practical reasons than stopping child sacrifice (which was a side note at best..). How could you question that?

He's accused of being three things and give evidence of one of his policies as a reason. For which of those, and how that policy make him that?

Im sorry?

For instance Plutarch and Livy described one of the campaigns he lead in Spain.

Every successful military commander in ancient Rome was a war criminal by modern standards. That not a particularly interesting statement considering how obvious it is but it’s not like anyone could disagree with it.

To be fair Cato might have been excessively cruel even by Roman standards since because he did coin this phrase https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bellum_se_ipsum_alet

But let’s not go that far…

Re: Ancient Carthaginians did sacrifice their children (2014)

#88

Post by dumpsterdiver »

hef19898 wrote: post #79
dumpsterdiver wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When a parent "sacrifices" a child after it is born, they have indeed aborted that particular mission. This article is referring to events that happened 2500 years ago. What do you think abortion looked like 2500 years ago? Was it any less barbaric?

Child sacrifices are, by modern standards, babaric. But then again a lot things 2,500 years ago were. Applying modern morality get's you nowhere. I don't have the slightest idea what is babaric about abortion, if done properly that is.

To be clear, I do not object to the concept of abortion. I welcome it, in fact, because I don't generally like other people and I don't expect them to get better. That being said, I still consider the practice to be barbaric. The very same practice that I support, yes. Does that make me a barbarian? I think it actually does. If that is what I am, then I have accepted it.

Re: Ancient Carthaginians did sacrifice their children (2014)

#89

Post by Veen »

easytiger wrote: post #82
Veen wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's usually to promote the academics, their paper, and their institutions. Is there a goal I am missing here?

The author credited is Josephine Quinn, a subscriber to intersectionality who wishes to provide an assumption for easy consumption that it wasn't just Africans and Aborigines who subscribed to barbarism (her assumption). Her assertion is that as the western world is based on the ancient Greek and Roman world (again her assumption) and that they were barbaric and that therefore we in the west are not better than them…

That may well be true, but it doesn't absolve us of the need to look at her evidence and arguments in the context of the wider scholarship. If she's right, then she's right, regardless of her political motivations.

Anyway, if that is what she's up to, it's less irritating than the usual approach of pretending non-Western ancient societies were enlightened communitarian paradises.

Re: Ancient Carthaginians did sacrifice their children (2014)

#90

Post by easytiger »

Veen wrote: post #89
easytiger wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The author credited is Josephine Quinn, a subscriber to intersectionality who wishes to provide an assumption for easy consumption that it wasn't just Africans and Aborigines who subscribed to barbarism (her assumption). Her assertion is that as the western world is based on the ancient Greek and Roman world (again her assumption) and that they were barbaric and that therefore we in the west are not better than them…

That may well be true, but it doesn't absolve us of the need to look at her evidence and arguments in the context of the wider scholarship. If she's right, then she's right, regardless of her political motivations. Anyway, if that is what she's up to, it's less irritating than the usual approach of pretending non-Western ancient societies were enlightened communitarian paradises.

[flagged]
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