291–300 of 330 posts
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It's important that we learn about this so we don't repeat it. Sadly, we are repeating it. Perhaps it's impossible to prevent the cycle because it can only be prevented by those who benefit from it.
The elites and ones in power were the ones most decimated by the bronze age collapse, so this reasoning feels flawed.
I'm a bit puzzled by one thing. Author writes that the Greek alphabet is based on Linear B script, and also that it is based on Phoenician alphabet. So was it a mix of both?
A very interesting read. I'm a bit puzzled by one thing. Author writes that the Greek alphabet is based on Linear B script, and also that it is based on Phoenician alphabet. So was it a mix of both?
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> We have artifacts and historical texts talking about them, so we at least know that Romulus and Remus are figures that ancient humans talked about. Well, yeah, but you seem to be confusing the authenticity of the writings as ancient artifacts with the historical accuracy of the contents of the writings. I don’t think anyone disputes that the Torah contains stories that had been widely spread and believed among the…
Growing up, in popular media and my school textbooks, we learned certain foundational myths about the United States, the Founding Fathers, and other key figures around Colonial times and the American Revolution. Come to find out that so many of these myths were not actually true: that they were legends built through the centuries to fluff up the importance and gravity of the United States in the eyes of naïve schoolc…
I think "Collapse" is a strange word because we talk here about several hundred, if not thousand of years. A good example is the old roman empire - it expanded, it grew - until it no longer did and then it whittled away or lost out to e. g. northern tribes. Collapse as a word is just weird here really. Even the old roman empire did not "collapse" per se, if we ignore big single final battles such as 1453: https://en.…
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Growing up, in popular media and my school textbooks, we learned certain foundational myths about the United States, the Founding Fathers, and other key figures around Colonial times and the American Revolution. Come to find out that so many of these myths were not actually true: that they were legends built through the centuries to fluff up the importance and gravity of the United States in the eyes of naïve schoolc…
What, specifically, are you talking about?
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As far as I know we have no Persian sources for the batte of Thermopylæ. Historians also agree that Xerxes couldnt possibly have had a million man strong army. Does this mean the war is entirely fictional? Ancient sources tend to be strongly mythologized, but “entirely fictional” is a very strong claim.
One thing the author mentions in passing is the settlement which is "almost certainly the historical Troy". The "serious" opinion used to be that the city was fictional. The same with Ur. I think the Babylonian captivity used to be considered as fictional too. Of course ancient written sources embellish things, but they don't generally make things up out of whole cloth. Especially not things which are kind of embarra…
This of course doesn't mean that there cannot be a trace of truth in the story! It just has to have been morphed substantially over time. For example, it was common in the time to kidnap and move foreign nobility and artisans, while no-one much cared about the identity of the average farmer or goatsherd. It could well be that "the people of Israel" who were kidnapped meant the people who actually mattered, ie, a fairly small upper class group, who could move from the Nile valley to the levant without leaving much trace in either society.
I'm still personally partial to the observation that the story seems to originate during the Babylonian captivity, and the situation of the story greatly mirrors the conditions they were living under, but while complaining about their Babylonian overlords was probably not allowed, writing stories about the plucky underdogs outwitting the horrible Egyptian overlords with divine assistance was fine, even if it contained themes of returning home and of liberation from foreign rule. (Note that Egypt was the main rival of Babylon in this period, and the Kingdom of Judah was on-again off-again vassal of the Egyptians. The captivity was party imposed to prevent this relationship from continuing.)
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The elites and ones in power were the ones most decimated by the bronze age collapse, so this reasoning feels flawed.
The descendants of bronze-age kings are surely more likely to be today's elite politicians than today's homeless people.