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Topic: Catch All History Thread  (Read 15906 times)

crow

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Catch All History Thread
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.

Runic

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Catch All History Thread #1
Eh, the Spanish weren't really any better. They also sacrificed people to their god, the only difference is that their god was gold.

crow

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Catch All History Thread #2
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.
« Last Edit: March 06, 2014, 11:34:31 pm by Smoking Crow »

Lemon

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Catch All History Thread #3
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.

Acierocolotl

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Catch All History Thread #4
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.
Lemon chai tea latte slandersonn

Yossarian

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Catch All History Thread #5
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.

montrith

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Catch All History Thread #6
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.

Runic

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Catch All History Thread #7
Here's a wikipedia article on that time that Michigan and Ohio almost went to war. That's always been one of my favorite obscure history facts.

cyclopeantrash

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Catch All History Thread #8
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.

Runic

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Catch All History Thread #9
Yeah, but it's obscure outside of Ohio because who gives a shit about Ohio?

crow

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Catch All History Thread #10
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.

Bobalay

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Catch All History Thread #11
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.

Tiny Prancer

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Catch All History Thread #12
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.

A Meat

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Catch All History Thread #13
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
Operation Wooden Leg
Operation Grapes of Wrath
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.

cyclopeantrash

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Catch All History Thread #14
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.