Snakes In The Ball Pit => Yay, I get to talk about me! => Topic started by: crow on March 06, 2014, 11:00:13 pm
Title: Catch All History Thread
Post by: crow on March 06, 2014, 11:00:13 pm
This is a thread about history. That thing you just did? History. What you had for lunch? History. History is so pervasive that many philosophers, including St. Augustine and Parmenides posited that history is the only thing that exists—the history that will happen becomes the history that has already happened.
Ask questions about history here! I'll start by talking about something I learned today. We all know that the Aztecs were brutal, but I'm not sure that we know just how brutal they were. One of their main worship rites was to skin a man and have a priest dance a jig while wearing his skin, Silence of the Lambs style. Another thing they would do is when a soldier was captured in battle, they would cut his heart out and then give his body to the man that captured him. His family would then cook a stew with his liver and eat it. Finally, a common ritual for the main mother goddess was to take a young girl and have her dance all the way to a noble's house. There, a male noble would have sex with her (the girl's were on average around 10), dispersing her virginity into the community. From there, she would be taken to the mother goddess's temple where she would be flayed. A boy would then wear her skin and retrace the route she took so he could dance in front of her parent's while wearing the girl's skin.
I'm usually anti-imperialist in all manners, but Jesus Christ, the Aztecs needed to go.
Title: Catch All History Thread
Post by: Runic on March 06, 2014, 11:07:32 pm
Eh, the Spanish weren't really any better. They also sacrificed people to their god, the only difference is that their god was gold.
Title: Catch All History Thread
Post by: crow on March 06, 2014, 11:30:27 pm
Eh, the Spanish weren't really any better. They also sacrificed people to their god, the only difference is that their god was gold. Runic, March 06, 2014, 11:07:32 pm
To be fair, most of the people the Spanish killed were killed by smallpox. While they did kill a whole lot of people by working them to death in their mines, smallpox and influenza killed the most Native Americans.
That said, the Spanish were probably the worst people to make first contact with Native Americans, since they just got done with a holy war to drive the Muslims and Jews out of Spain. A country that just got done with the Spanish Inquisition was not the best choice to convert a large group of people to Christianity.
Title: Catch All History Thread
Post by: Lemon on March 07, 2014, 01:15:11 am
Finally, a common ritual for the main mother goddess was to take a young girl and have her dance all the way to a noble's house [etc etc Human Centipede] Smoking Crow, March 06, 2014, 11:00:13 pm
I really do doubt the veracity of some of those Aztec stories. There's not a lot of literature from those guys and deciphering the pictographs is pretty spotty. Are you fairly certain that stories like these aren't PCP-addled justifications of expunging a civilization?
I mean, some of this stuff requires a level of consent that seems difficult to obtain.
Title: Catch All History Thread
Post by: Acierocolotl on March 07, 2014, 01:25:31 am
I was going to write pretty much that.
There's historical precedent for some of the atrocities ascribed to the Mexica (the people were Mexica, the empire was Aztec), but in broad strokes, no different than the contemporary Maya.
Moctezuma boasted that 20,000 people were sacrificed in the inauguration of Templo Mayor, but that's just as likely to have been propaganda to cow rival states. The Spanish were certainly also anxious to paint the Mexica in a negative light to justify their sacking of Tenochtitlan.
This isn't to say that atrocious things didn't happen, but we need to question the magnitude of them, and the exact details. Most of what information we know is primarily from Cortez himself, the monk Sahagun, and a handful of Aztec codices the majority of which are in private hands.
You can also spend some time comparing and contrasting with the excesses of Nuño de Guzmán.
Title: Catch All History Thread
Post by: Yossarian on March 07, 2014, 10:00:12 am
Gotta put a hold on judging the other cultures by today's standards, that's historiography rule number one (but yeah a lot of the story is possibly distortion). Fun story about the wearing the skin bit. If I remember my courses on Mexican history that particular ritual didn't go over so well when they were merging with the other tribes who lived in what would become the central area of their empire. Also the Spanish in the new world were more interested with silver and mercury than gold really. Once the real exploitation began they found Potosi and went to town over that. The Spanish were pretty terrible overall though by any sort of moral standard.
Title: Catch All History Thread
Post by: montrith on March 07, 2014, 11:19:03 am
Hey, here's some Finnish history! Did you know that we had a war called The Big Hate and another one called The Long Hate. There's also the lesser known Little Hate, Old Hate and my personal favorite, War of Hats.
I'm just posting this because I have nothing new to say about the Aztecs.
Title: Catch All History Thread
Post by: Runic on March 07, 2014, 11:23:01 am
Here's a wikipedia article on that time that Michigan and Ohio almost went to war. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toledo_Strip) That's always been one of my favorite obscure history facts.
Title: Catch All History Thread
Post by: cyclopeantrash on March 07, 2014, 11:35:24 am
As a native Ohioan that is common knowledge. Because we have nothing else going for us. Though to be fair to this awful state it is also the only instance of two states having more than just a sports rivalry.
Title: Catch All History Thread
Post by: Runic on March 07, 2014, 11:47:54 am
Yeah, but it's obscure outside of Ohio because who gives a shit about Ohio?
Title: Catch All History Thread
Post by: crow on March 07, 2014, 12:24:24 pm
Gotta put a hold on judging the other cultures by today's standards, that's historiography rule number one (but yeah a lot of the story is possibly distortion). Fun story about the wearing the skin bit. If I remember my courses on Mexican history that particular ritual didn't go over so well when they were merging with the other tribes who lived in what would become the central area of their empire. Also the Spanish in the new world were more interested with silver and mercury than gold really. Once the real exploitation began they found Potosi and went to town over that. The Spanish were pretty terrible overall though by any sort of moral standard. Yossarian, March 07, 2014, 10:00:12 am
My historiography class taught me that objectivity is a lie and that every reading of history is an exercise in judgement. We're also pretty postmodern so I don't know.
Yeah, but it's obscure outside of Ohio because who gives a shit about Ohio? Runic, March 07, 2014, 11:47:54 am
I go to Ohio State and want to say that Ohio is one of the better places I've lived. Growing up in the rural south, I'm not used to seeing so many people with so much money.
Title: Catch All History Thread
Post by: Bobalay on March 07, 2014, 12:56:36 pm
Hey, here's some Finnish history! Did you know that we had a war called The Big Hate and another one called The Long Hate. There's also the lesser known Little Hate, Old Hate and my personal favorite, War of Hats.
I'm just posting this because I have nothing new to say about the Aztecs. montrith, March 07, 2014, 11:19:03 am
They missed a huge opportunity by not having a war called The Hat Hate.
Title: Catch All History Thread
Post by: Tiny Prancer on March 07, 2014, 01:25:21 pm
Yeah, but it's obscure outside of Ohio because who gives a shit about Ohio? Runic, March 07, 2014, 11:47:54 am
I'm from Ohio and I actually didn't know about this, but then again I'm from Cincinnati (which is on the opposite end of the state) and mostly what people care about there is talking about Cincinnati's involvement in the underground railroad and the fact that president Taft was born there, if they really want to talk about history.
Ohio's got some cool stuff going for it, but also suffers from severe midwestern apathy. When you live in Ohio, you hate everything.
Title: Catch All History Thread
Post by: A Meat on March 07, 2014, 01:49:59 pm
I don't know much about Aztec history besides the fact that Montezuma isn't a bad leader in Civ V. On the other hand, I know nothing about Ohio's history. What I do know a bit about is my local history.
Israel had a three year long war with Egypt literally called the "War of Attrition", and there have been some oddly named IDF and Mossad operations along the years such as:
Operation Wrath of God (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Wrath_of_God) Operation Wooden Leg (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Wooden_Leg) Operation Grapes of Wrath (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Grapes_of_Wrath) Operation Bringing Home the Goods (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Bringing_Home_the_Goods)
Don't actually know that much about my local history either, but I could try and blab some more if someone cares to know about something specific in Israel's history.
Title: Catch All History Thread
Post by: cyclopeantrash on March 07, 2014, 04:20:03 pm
Tiny summed up Ohio pretty well. Ohio does have some cool stuff. Not being sarcastic here, it has some really cool stuff. It's a pretty great state for urban exploration, its universities are pretty well lauded. But man midwestern apathy is more intense here than any state I can think of. Even more than in Missouri.
Title: Catch All History Thread
Post by: Acierocolotl on March 07, 2014, 05:06:14 pm
Iiiiiif you haven't figured out (my user name might be a bit of a clue) I have more than a passing interest in the Aztec empire. It's a hobby, no more; I can't speak the language anywhere near as well as I'd like and it's not exactly an employable skill unless I wanted to go into history anyway. So I'll leave you a bit of history instead:
The Aztec empire had a very well-developed military, with a peasant levy and three orders of knighthood, with the Arrow Knights being a lesser order, and the Jaguar and Eagle Knights being the upper orders. Eagle Knights were very prestigious and served as heavy infantry, and the Jaguar Knights were more "spec ops", primarily concerned with solo combat, stealth, and the live capture of enemy targets of value.
While Jaguar Knight captures were probably used as sacrifices (one of them being a year-long cosplay as the god Tezcatlipoca), most of the wartime sacrifices were from war exercises called Xochiyaoyaotl ("Flower War"), where the goal was capture, not death. The Triple Alliance (the core of the Aztec Empire, based on the city-states of Tenochtitlan, Texcoco and Tlacopan) used these to deplete the manpower of rival city states over the course of some years, to be able to conquer them better.
Oh, and a trivial tidbit: The language of the Mexica, Nahuatl, is syncretic, a trait it shares with German. You can make up new words by jamming together smaller words that, together, describe the concept you wish to express. Also the pronunciation key is phonetic Spanish, since written classical Nahautl is pictographic.
Title: Catch All History Thread
Post by: Bobalay on March 07, 2014, 05:44:41 pm
Are you interested in other pre-Columbian empires, Acier? Because the Inca were pretty great. Taking advantage of the massive mountains around them and the temperature differences at higher elevations, they discovered a preindustrial form of freeze-drying that let them keep dehydrated potatoes for a full year. They also set up food stations around their empire to make sure people would stay fed in case of a famine. Their infrastructure had more miles of roads than the Roman empire at its height, made without beasts of burden, going through the freaking Andes mountains. The Inca were pretty great.
They also had human sacrifices, but were generally a lot more low-key about it, reserving it for major events like famines or the death of an emperor.
Title: Catch All History Thread
Post by: Yossarian on March 07, 2014, 06:01:10 pm
My historiography class taught me that objectivity is a lie and that every reading of history is an exercise in judgement. We're also pretty postmodern so I don't know. Smoking Crow, March 07, 2014, 12:24:24 pm
Wow, what. As historians we are supposed to try to be objective. Granted that I, nor any other historian, can never be truly objective, but we must try. Taking that idea and chucking it out the window is how you get bullshit judgments and monster cockyses. You cannot judge the past based on today's values and knowledge. They simply did not have the same perspective and knowledge that we have today and for that they cannot be faulted. For the most part I find its best to keep a firm grasp of their perspective and my perspective on each event and consider both carefully.
In addition, I also find that most answers to historiography questions come with a huge footnote because its never a straight answer.
Final edit - That all being said Fuck you David Irving
Title: Catch All History Thread
Post by: Runic on March 07, 2014, 06:08:16 pm
Can you recommend any good books about the Aztecs or any of the other great Mesoamerican civilizations? I'd love to know more about them.
Title: Catch All History Thread
Post by: Acierocolotl on March 07, 2014, 07:59:33 pm
I am very interested in the rival empires, but didn't find much that piqued my interest at the time. I have some knowledge of the Maya (who also liked their sacrifices) and some of their mythology and culture (esp. the Ball Game) bled into Mexica culture as well, but I wouldn't ever pretend to be a subject expert. It's reputed that the Mexica had medicine that was more advanced than the Spaniards at the time but I take that with a grain of salt the size of a large car. That said, they were pretty advanced in agriculture, having tamed the swamps around Tenochtitlan into enormously fertile land and figured out how to make corn edible--through a process we call nixtamalization. (There's an interesting tangent here for a different post maybe, maybe.)
What got me interested in it was blundering across a nice translation of the Codex Chimalpopoca, which is one of the very few public codices. I'd found a version that tried to keep the flow of the language, though this was quite some years ago and I haven't retained the name of the author in the budget of my memory. Finding more is really hard, though you could try to find translations of Sahagun's writings--otherwise you're restricted to scholarly texts and the occasional tidbit online. Quite a lot of the Aztec history was intentionally obliterated by the Spanish.
Title: Catch All History Thread
Post by: EYE OF ZA on March 07, 2014, 09:01:28 pm
It's not quite history as much as it is folklore, but I recently read a Nigerian folk tale. It goes a little bit like this.
"Every year on New Yam Day, we sacrifice fifty slaves. No one eats yams before we do this, or else the yams would be poison. We kill the slaves, then dump them in a pot and boil them up and eat them."
"Unrelated to New Yam Day, we found out that bodies were getting dug out of their graves. We followed the trail and found out that a couple of people liked eating the New Yam slaves so much that they started digging up bodies to eat them."
"So we killed them all, and now we leave our relatives' bodies out to rot before we bury them, so that they're gross so no one eats them."
"Happy New Yam Day! Try the stew."
Title: Catch All History Thread
Post by: crow on March 07, 2014, 10:03:26 pm
Can you recommend any good books about the Aztecs or any of the other great Mesoamerican civilizations? I'd love to know more about them. Runic, March 07, 2014, 06:08:16 pm
Broken Spears by Miguel Leon-Portilla for the Aztecs and Ambivalent Conquest by Inga Clendinnen for the Maya. Those are the books I was assigned for my Mesoamerican Civ class this year (where I heard about the flaying which was reported as true.)
My historiography class taught me that objectivity is a lie and that every reading of history is an exercise in judgement. We're also pretty postmodern so I don't know. Smoking Crow, March 07, 2014, 12:24:24 pm
Wow, what. As historians we are supposed to try to be objective. Granted that I, nor any other historian, can never be truly objective, but we must try. Taking that idea and chucking it out the window is how you get bullshit judgments and monster cockyses. You cannot judge the past based on today's values and knowledge. They simply did not have the same perspective and knowledge that we have today and for that they cannot be faulted. For the most part I find its best to keep a firm grasp of their perspective and my perspective on each event and consider both carefully.
In addition, I also find that most answers to historiography questions come with a huge footnote because its never a straight answer.
I was taught that you are allowed to critique the institutions but not the people within them. On the one hand, this allows you to take slave owners as ok, but it also doesn't allow you to say that Hitler was bad. I'm not sure.
I come from a background in anthropology and the ethos there is not to judge anything. You are supposed to be a true moral relativist with no judgement anywhere. That's one of the reasons why I left, and I think I might be correcting too much in history.
Title: Catch All History Thread
Post by: Tiny Prancer on March 07, 2014, 11:00:05 pm
Unrelated to the current discussion, but something interesting I learned a while back: Apparently American settlers, when they first discovered Indian mounds, refused to believe that Native Americans were capable of building anything complex, and a running theory was that they were made by a lost civilization of highly advanced (and obviously white) people. When a formal excavation was finally done and it was proved without a doubt that they were made by native Americans (because of the artifacts that were dug up) everyone lost interest in them.
Similarly, when Victorian archeologists discovered evidence of ancient civilizations having existed in Africa when Europeans were still fucking around in caves, one of the running theories about where they came from, since they obviously refused to believe Africans were capable of anything, was that it was proof of the existence of Atlantis or some other lost (white) civilization, and the African tribes only had "civilized" elements because they were learned from the "original" civilizations.
Title: Catch All History Thread
Post by: crow on March 07, 2014, 11:05:53 pm
That's still a thing. You can see shows on the history channel about how a race of giants built the mounds. The idea that there is no civilization in Africa is still around. Most people when they hear Africa, they think of tribal societies controlled by witch doctors.
Title: Catch All History Thread
Post by: Tiny Prancer on March 08, 2014, 11:29:46 pm
well yeah, but most of the time now it's regarded as bullcrap psuedoscience, unless you're someone who insists ancient aliens did everything or you actually believe the shit that history channel churns our for ratings. Except for the "africans are all savages living in grass huts who believe in witch doctors" bullshit, which sadly has stuck around as part of the casual racism of our modern age.
Something else interesting: you can actually trace the modern ancient aliens "movement" back to french writer Robert Charroux blatantly ripping off large parts of H. P. Lovecraft's work for his ideas about aliens in his new age spiritualist book The Morning of the Magicians. Erich von Däniken then blatantly ripped off large parts of that book for Chariots of the Gods? and the rest is history. The only REAL history involved with that mess.
Title: Catch All History Thread
Post by: crow on March 28, 2014, 01:17:30 pm
Here's some cool footage of a Soviet parade circa 1939. It's a great look into the post-17th Party Congress USSR, with its focus on Soviet patriotism and cult of personality. Also, it's the only color footage of Stalinist Russia (it was shot in color, not colorized). Have a look!
Footage starts at 55 seconds.
About the 17th Party Congress. Before the Congress, there were a great series of purges throughout the Soviet Union. Stalin had gotten rid of his three biggest rivals in the party, Leon Trotsky (escaped Russia but was eventually assassinated in Mexico by a Soviet agent), Mikhail Kalinin (Stalin had his wife tortured and sent to a GULAG as a threat. He relinquished all power and became a puppet.) and Nikolai Ezhov. (last head of the NKVD, the organization that would become the KGB. He was shot in Siberia and "erased." This meant he officially never existed and all references to him including mentions in newspapers, official Soviet documents and photos of him were either edited or destroyed.) This along with the forced collectivization of Russian agriculture meant that Stalin had succeeded in his plans. Thus, at the 17th Party Congress, Stalin finally declared that at long last, the Soviets had created a perfect, classless society where everyone was equal and bourgeois influences did not exist. He then rounded up every one of the delegates that disagreed with him (around a third) and had them shot.
Title: Catch All History Thread
Post by: Horza on March 28, 2014, 09:53:11 pm
The 17th Party Congress took place in 1934 and the Great Purges began shortly afterwards. This footage is from the 18th Party Congress of March 1939.
Trotsky didn't escape, he was exiled.
Yezhov wasn't the last head of the NKVD, he was succeeded in that role by Beria in December 1938 and eliminated in late 1939, after the 18th Party Congress.
Kalinin wasn't a major rival of Stalin's, he was a loyalist who depended on him for his nominal authority. Unlike Trotsky and the Old Bolsheviks purged in the 1936-38 show trials, Zinoviev, Kamenev and Bukharin he hadn't served on the Politburo under Lenin and lacked a power base inside the party organisation. Ditto Yezhov, the "poison dwarf", who was brought in to do a job and discarded when Stalin realised that killing a huge swathe of elite party, state and army leadership wasn't leading to improved administrative competence.
At this point inter-party debate had been totally stifled and no one in the party publicly disagreed with with Stalin about anything, much less the position of the Soviet Union on the road to socialism. Executions and exiles at the final stages were being carried out out of factional infighting, hysteria and Stalin's wild paranoia so a cite for another third of the delegates being 1) active dissenters and 2) executed after the 18th Congress would be nice.
Title: Catch All History Thread
Post by: crow on March 28, 2014, 10:23:59 pm
Ah, sorry, guess I wasn't clear enough with what I meant. I meant that the parade demonstrated the Soviet patriotism that came about after the Victor's Congress, which was a reaction to the Cultural Revolution of the 20s.
I fucked up with Trotsky, I genuinely hope you forgive me for messing that up.
Ezhov was the last head of the NKVD that had complete free reign over purging, since Beria was Stalin's friend and crony.
Once again, I fucked up and I'm sorry. I confused Kalinin with Nikolai Bukharin and I can't believe I fucked it up.
I'm not kidding about the a shit ton of people died from the 17th Party Congress, even if I did lowball the amount.
Whatever the case, the Congress of Victors turned out to be a congress of victims. Over the next four years, 1108 of the 1966 delegates were arrested and either disappeared into the gulag or were executed. The Seventeenth Congress, then, was the last at which those with pre-revolutionary and civil war experience in the party predominated. Quote from
Title: Catch All History Thread
Post by: Horza on March 28, 2014, 11:06:12 pm
Ah, sorry, guess I wasn't clear enough with what I meant. I meant that the parade demonstrated the Soviet patriotism that came about after the Victor's Congress, which was a reaction to the Cultural Revolution of the 20s. Smoking Crow, March 28, 2014, 10:23:59 pm
Yeah, I went in studs up on the details but this stuff is all good and cool and I should have thanked you for sharing it.
I fucked up with Trotsky, I genuinely hope you forgive me for messing that up.
No worries, we all screw up with history like that.
In a sense you're right: lying around in Frida Kahlo's bed reading your old foes in Izvestiya pitifully admitting to Vyshinsky that yes, all along they had been plotting with you, Hitler and Lord Beaverbrook to sabotage the worker's state and begging for Stalin's mercy must have made getting kicked out in 1929 look pretty good.
Ezhov was the last head of the NKVD that had complete free reign over purging, since Beria was Stalin's friend and crony.
Both guys depended on Stalin for their power, they did what he wanted. The purges weren't strictly controlled by Stalin but he was the guy who hired and fired. When he wanted a massive purge to wipe out the Old Bolsheviks he got rid of Yagoda and brought in Ezhov. When he wanted to scale it back he got rid of Ezhov for Beria. When he finally pegged it, Beria was a dead man walking because Stalin was the source of his power.
Once again, I fucked up and I'm sorry. I confused Kalinin with Nikolai Bukharin and I can't believe I fucked it up.
Yeah, I figured wires were crossed there, that's the kind of mistake you make from knowledge, not ignorance.
I'm not kidding about the a shit ton of people died from the 17th Party Congress, even if I did lowball the amount.
Whatever the case, the Congress of Victors turned out to be a congress of victims. Over the next four years, 1108 of the 1966 delegates were arrested and either disappeared into the gulag or were executed. The Seventeenth Congress, then, was the last at which those with pre-revolutionary and civil war experience in the party predominated. Quote from
Ah, here's the confusion: your initial post fuses the 17th and 18th Congresses. You say the Great Purges happen in the lead up to the 17th and more afterwards, when the purges begin shortly after the 17th in December 1934 before winding down ahead of the 18th Congress in March 1939.
Title: Catch All History Thread
Post by: Runic on March 28, 2014, 11:10:47 pm
Yes, it's amazing how splendid a utopian workers state you can create when everyone who might be inclined to complain is chipping away at Siberian tundra. Splendid and utopian to you, of course. After all, who is going to argue that it isn't?
Title: Catch All History Thread
Post by: crow on March 28, 2014, 11:14:35 pm
Actually, fun fact regarding GULAGs, most of the GULAGs were not in Siberia. A lot of them were in Northern Russia. Some of the GULAGs were in even in non-Russian Soviet states like Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan.
Here's a fun map of where the Gulags were. (http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c9/Gulag_Location_Map.svg)
Pictured: Map of the Soviet Union. Note how most of them are in what we call "ethnic Russia" on the Western edge of Russia. If you notice, there are some GULAGs in Georgia, Estonia and even near St. Petersburg and Moscow.
Title: Catch All History Thread
Post by: Horza on March 28, 2014, 11:28:33 pm
and here's Trotsky talking about the economic crisis on Fox News (https://https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kBLnTNL5ZPQ)
Title: Catch All History Thread
Post by: nilvoid on May 27, 2014, 12:34:28 pm
If anyone wants to know anything about social work and/or social welfare history in America from the 1890's to now, ask away because I had to research a fuck-ton of it for a final project.
Title: Catch All History Thread
Post by: Victor Laszlo on May 28, 2014, 01:27:44 pm
Whatever the case, the Congress of Victors turned out to be a congress of victims. Over the next four years, 1108 of the 1966 delegates were arrested and either disappeared into the gulag or were executed. The Seventeenth Congress, then, was the last at which those with pre-revolutionary and civil war experience in the party predominated. Quote from