Lost city discovered beneath Egypt's desert with ancient church • Hacker News Board

Re: Lost city discovered beneath Egypt's desert with ancient church

#201

Post by senderista » Sat, Jul 11, 2026, 6:58 PM UTC

gaiagraphia wrote: post #111

senderista wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Try reading about Kafiristan, where primitive Hinduism (think Rig Veda) survived for 3500 years before being wiped out in the 1890s by a British-appointed Islamic despot.

Always amazed me how the Kalash in Chitral Valley have managed to peacefully get on with things. I guess the terrain helps. I always like to think how the region would've looked if all these remnants of peoples had thriving nations.

The Kalash are very similar genetically and culturally and are also facing cultural genocide by Islamists. Truly one of the most fascinating ethnic minorities extant.

Re: Lost city discovered beneath Egypt's desert with ancient church

#202

Post by brendanmc6 » Sat, Jul 11, 2026, 7:54 PM UTC

Towaway69 wrote: post #118

WalterBright wrote: post #81

The older I get, the closer in time these ancient civilizations become. It's really not that many lifetimes away. It's stunning the progress humans have made since then.

What progress are you referring to? The shiny blinky things that scroll across our screens while the poor stay poor, war rages everywhere and the internet is overwhelmed with fake AI generated content. The more I look back into history, the more I realise that besides the sparkling blinky-blinky gadgets, we have made no progress at all - on a species level. We’re still living in caves, we’re still believe in God myth…

Progress is a fiction? What an enraging and awful take. You are living in a world that is so extraordinarily safe, comfortable, populous, peaceful, free and entertaining your ancestors literally would not believe you if you told them. Most of your ancestors worked ten times as hard to access a tiny fraction of the material wealth and health and knowledge most people have today. Touch grass.

Re: Lost city discovered beneath Egypt's desert with ancient church

#203

Post by wqaatwt » Sat, Jul 11, 2026, 8:20 PM UTC

ekianjo wrote: post #157

ghostDancer wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And they burned quite people for defending the science that went against their beliefs. They only stopped when they thought it would be good for their economic profits. Exactly the same when they stopped protecting slavery, when they thought it would be good as they would get a lot of new followers and all the money and influence that would come with them.And all the fights that gave birth to the other Christian chur…

> nd they burned quite people for defending the science that went against their beliefs much less than the alternatives. muslims killed anyone who did not convert in case you did not know

That varied wildly. Generally more of an exception that the rule but in the worst cases like under the Almohad’s you did have Jewish or even less extremist Muslim refugees fleeing to the more tolerant (at the time) Christian kingdoms.

Re: Lost city discovered beneath Egypt's desert with ancient church

#204

Post by wqaatwt » Sat, Jul 11, 2026, 8:25 PM UTC

Hikikomori wrote: post #159

wqaatwt wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Crusades Many of the regions they invaded were still (or until quite recently) majority Christian. After all initially it was a defensive relief expedition organized by the pope and the Byzantine emperor to free the territories the empire lost in Anatolia very recently. Of course it was massively more successful than anyone anticipated and they just kept on going and then the whole thing got “slightly” out of hand.…

Very peaceful when you convienently ignore all the violence. Northern crusades were extremely bloody and defeated people would accept baptism or be executed. Charlemange was more of the same deal. Catholic church left pagans to their own devices? Christian history is littered with these examples, it has not been a peaceful religion since it merged with Roman society. The only real good examples you could have are mis…

As I said, in relative terms..

> Catholic church left pagans to their own devices?

It varied, although generally the Catholic church was fairly open at integrating or even occasionally tolerating pagan practices or providing alternative options to people used to more polytheistic religions. Like the whole saint worshipping (“venerating”) thing. Often (with some exceptions) pagans found conversion fairly easy since they could just map their gods to equivalent Christian saints continue worshipping them. Basically every converted pagan society had a multi-generationa transition period.

Then you had stuff lime praying to magical corpses or body parts, so their previous owners could perform miracles. With some exceptions it has generally been a highly flexible religion before the reformation.

Islam is much more rigid about following the rules and stuff like idol worship (as a consequence they brought back visual arts back to the stone ages..)

Re: Lost city discovered beneath Egypt's desert with ancient church

#205

Post by WalterBright » Sat, Jul 11, 2026, 9:39 PM UTC

Towaway69 wrote: post #118

WalterBright wrote: post #81

The older I get, the closer in time these ancient civilizations become. It's really not that many lifetimes away. It's stunning the progress humans have made since then.

What progress are you referring to? The shiny blinky things that scroll across our screens while the poor stay poor, war rages everywhere and the internet is overwhelmed with fake AI generated content. The more I look back into history, the more I realise that besides the sparkling blinky-blinky gadgets, we have made no progress at all - on a species level. We’re still living in caves, we’re still believe in God myth…

Maybe watch the TV series "Alone" and see if you want to do that. But even they have excellent clothing, high tech knives, saws, and axes, and so on.

> while the poor stay poor

America's poor are the wealthiest poor people in history.

Re: Lost city discovered beneath Egypt's desert with ancient church

#206

Post by defrost » Sun, Jul 12, 2026, 3:44 AM UTC

ekianjo wrote: post #155

defrost wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Again, Christians have been just as appalling as any other religion. They've killed, enslaved, done their best to eliminate cultures, railed against miscegenation, etc. Not sure why you're working so hard to pretend o/wise.

> Again, Christians have been just as appalling as any other religion that is an opinion devoid of good arguments. humans under christianity have fared much better than any other kind of religion

And they've been enslaved, killed, and had their cultures erased, in the name of Christianity and by Christians (many citations).

Why pretend not?

Nobody is, well at least I'm not, denying the good that has been done by Muslims, Christians, Jews, Hindu's, etc.

Re: Lost city discovered beneath Egypt's desert with ancient church

#207

Post by wqaatwt » Sun, Jul 12, 2026, 6:51 PM UTC

hammock wrote: post #195

swasheck wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

i’m no apologist for christian history but you are both dancing around the nuances to make your own respective points. both things can be true but they require a lot of words: the roman republic, and subsequent empire were happy to allow conquered peoples to maintain their own ways of life as long as a few basic (in their estimation) requirements were met (taxes, fealty, etc). it was ripe for corruption to the conque…

> islam arises primarily as a repudiation of polytheism and what is perceived as loose monotheism I doubt that “repudiation” of said things was the main driver. I’m pretty sure by 600ad Rome was pretty solidly Christian (or at elite levels, perhaps secular), what other gods did exist were folk/syncretistic practices, which also existed in Islam (sufis, Zoroastrian stuff, gnostic stuff etc) and which still existed tod…

It was kind of problem that by the time Romans really got into suppressing all kinds of “heresies” and imposing Orthodoxy across the empire. Since most in their Middle Eastern provinces and Egypt weren’t Orthodox Catholic most locals didn’t really bother that much fighting for them since the Muslims at the time just seemed like another Christian sect just with a more hands off attitude to government and possibly lower taxes.

Re: Lost city discovered beneath Egypt's desert with ancient church

#208

Post by wqaatwt » Sun, Jul 12, 2026, 6:57 PM UTC

alfiedotwtf wrote: post #191

wqaatwt wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be fair for the most part Christianity didn’t spread top down through violent conquest (obviously with some huge exceptions) at least in the Middle East and surrounding regions. Also it’s historically better at integrating local cultural practices and languages. Unlike Islam which which usually wiped out local cultural and linguistic identities (during the periods of Arab conquests, that shifted quite a but later…

Did you just hand wave off the crusades? And when you say “historically better at integrating local cultural practices”, India, China and Australia, would like a word with you. Holy shit you should just delete your account right now

No, why would you say I did that? Also if everyone ever referencing any historical event ever would have to explicitly list and condemn every single thing they think was wrong it would become rather verbose and boring to read. Overall the crusaders were worse than some violent conquerors and better than others.

Re: Lost city discovered beneath Egypt's desert with ancient church

#209

Post by 205guy » Mon, Jul 13, 2026, 3:37 AM UTC

honeycrispy wrote: post #7

I wish I could go back in time and visit to see what it was like.

Just like planting trees, the second best time is now. Travel (with sensitivity and understanding) to see cultures and places that are at risk: glaciers, savanna, wildlife parks, minority cultures, and dare I add Western democracies.

Edited to add: maybe the computer history museum as well.

Re: Lost city discovered beneath Egypt's desert with ancient church

#210

Post by disgruntledphd2 » Mon, Jul 13, 2026, 8:26 AM UTC

wqaatwt wrote: post #121

disgruntledphd2 wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And without the Muslims maintaining the Greek and Roman texts, that would've taken far longer. Even algebra and algorithm come from Muslim names.

The Roman/Byzantine empire was pretty much destroyed by Muslims, though. Its a but like thanking the Franks/Goths/etc. for preserving Roman cultural identity in Western Europe by preserving some of their texts..

> The Roman/Byzantine empire was pretty much destroyed by Muslims, though

This is hilariously untrue, if one is talking about the Western Roman empire. An islamic state did conquer Constantinople, which I presume is what you mean.

The Roman empire (western) basically fell apart due to infighting more than anything else.