Historical Argument That Was In the Wrong Forum

When Constantine and Licinius co-ruled, Constantine ruled the western empire, not the eastern.

Also, Constantine was not the first Roman emperor to officially tolerate Christianity. That was Galerius, in 311.
 
A bit of a bad coincidence, then, that Galerius was the last to conquer Ctesiphon - where later Julian failed and died.
His arch in this city was built to commemorate that victory, by the way :)
 
A bit of a bad coincidence, then, that Galerius was the last to conquer Ctesiphon - where later Julian failed and died.
His arch in this city was built to commemorate that victory, by the way :)

Wait, didn't the last great roman emperor, Heraclius, also conquer it? His onlyu problem was being too old at the time the arahs showed up, I thing he would have trashed them also if he was commanding personally.
 
Yeah, no. Anatomically and behaviorally modern humans clearly emerged in Africa.

The late "out of Africa" theory is currently losing credibility - and acceptance.

There is very solid evidence that populations of humans spread throughout the old world hundreds of thousands of years ago mixed to produce the current modern humans, both with later migrations coming from africa and with each other. There was no total replacement with an out of Africa migration. Therefore a claim that "modern humans" emerged here or there can't be proven, shouldn't be made. Not even anatomically, much less behaviorally. Why do people still speak with certainty about theories that lack evidence (late ooa) and mock those who disbelieve them?

We know next to zero about very ancient pre-historic human behavior, we can only speculate from sparse evidence - a camping ground here, burials there, some decorated rocks... what is modern human? Neanderthals created necropolises and wore ornaments, I have a still undug cave full of neanderthal bones nearby to prove it, and know of more. Just because there's no haste in researching and publishing more of this doesn't mean it isn't here. Don't worry, it will get published eventually. But genetic studies have already been demolishing the ooa theory. Another wrong "scientific consensus" build without good evidence and that took too long to get rid of.

Most likely modern humans indeed emerged gradually, everywhere. Tens of thousands of years allow for lots of mixing.
 
Wait, didn't the last great roman emperor, Heraclius, also conquer it? His onlyu problem was being too old at the time the arahs showed up, I thing he would have trashed them also if he was commanding personally.
I read that it was taken with a token force (6000 men), by a Sassanian pretender, helped by Heraklios ^^
A 30-year massive (sometimes termed "the first world war") conflict between Byzantine Empire and Persia, only benefited the arabs.
 
When Constantine and Licinius co-ruled, Constantine ruled the western empire, not the eastern.

Also, Constantine was not the first Roman emperor to officially tolerate Christianity. That was Galerius, in 311.
Are you sure about this information? Because I will have an exam about medieval history and don't want to say nothing wrong...
 
On the homo sapiens out-of-africa theory - I lost sight if that has anything to do with this thread but it got mentioned - I'm happy to see that rotten "scientific consensus" shattered. Mankind has been mixing for a long, long time. And human culture started much before that late migration of what is taken to be one of the subspecies. The previous migrations had already originated populations that developed and didn't just succumb and got replaced. There is nothing surprising in finding that modern population shave genes coming from several branches. It had been simply assumed - based purely on the morphology of a few scattered finds of bones - that there was a wholesale population replacement. That's like assuming all people must be white skinned before getting to another town and finding evidence to the contrary. The idea of "race war" probably had something to do with wanting to believe that.

How the late ooa theory achieved "consensus" for a while is another indictment to arguments based on "scientific consensus". Groups proclaiming "the truth" that everyone else must follow, without actually having solid evidence, and attempting to shut up people who dissent and are wanting to present contrary evidence. Let them present it! I'm saying this because I know how not many years ago it was a fight to get published with some of that contrary evidence - "peer reviewers" wouldn't have it. But this was actually a mild and fast fight as these things go.
 
Scientific "fights" over prehistorical events of every kind are nothing new. Folks battle for and against the status quo until one side is overcome.

Two recent ones:
  • Warm blooded dinosaurs
  • Birds are dinosaurs
 
On the homo sapiens out-of-africa theory - I lost sight if that has anything to do with this thread but it got mentioned - I'm happy to see that rotten "scientific consensus" shattered. Mankind has been mixing for a long, long time. And human culture started much before that late migration of what is taken to be one of the subspecies. The previous migrations had already originated populations that developed and didn't just succumb and got replaced. There is nothing surprising in finding that modern population shave genes coming from several branches. It had been simply assumed - based purely on the morphology of a few scattered finds of bones - that there was a wholesale population replacement. That's like assuming all people must be white skinned before getting to another town and finding evidence to the contrary. The idea of "race war" probably had something to do with wanting to believe that.

How the late ooa theory achieved "consensus" for a while is another indictment to arguments based on "scientific consensus". Groups proclaiming "the truth" that everyone else must follow, without actually having solid evidence, and attempting to shut up people who dissent and are wanting to present contrary evidence. Let them present it! I'm saying this because I know how not many years ago it was a fight to get published with some of that contrary evidence - "peer reviewers" wouldn't have it. But this was actually a mild and fast fight as these things go.

First of all, this link contains absolutely nothing that indicates the out-of-Africa theory ("late" or otherwise) has been "shattered." In fact, multiple lines of evidence demonstrate that the species of which you and I are members comes from Africa, most notably the fact that Africa contains by far the most genetically diverse human populations.

What is unclear is the details, and what you are describing is not a "scientific consensus" being "shattered" but best guesses based on incomplete evidence being overturned and replaced with new ones as new evidence emerges.

Like, the idea that there is some kind of conspiracy to enforce a particular "out-of-Africa theory" on the various disciplines that bear on the question (not only archaeology but genetics) is very strange. If anyone had evidence disproving the out-of-Africa theory they could become famous overnight; no such evidence is likely to be presented because all the evidence indicates that the out-of-Africa theory is correct, though of course details have changed and will continue to change in light of new evidence.

Your point about wholesale replacement of populations probably not occurring is almost certainly correct, but this has been known since the sequencing of the human genome and the discovery of DNA originating from other hominid groups, with the discovery of Neanderthal DNA in the modern human genome taking place over a decade ago. Since then the mainstream idea has been that of modern humans outbreeding and outcompeting other hominids (not simply hunting them to extinction or whatever) with some interbreeding on the margins accounting for the "alien" DNA in the modern human genome.
 
Your point about wholesale replacement of populations probably not occurring is almost certainly correct, but this has been known since the sequencing of the human genome and the discovery of DNA originating from other hominid groups, with the discovery of Neanderthal DNA in the modern human genome taking place over a decade ago. Since then the mainstream idea has been that of modern humans outbreeding and outcompeting other hominids (not simply hunting them to extinction or whatever) with some interbreeding on the margins accounting for the "alien" DNA in the modern human genome.
And obviously I am talking about what happened before one decade ago. About the several decades that people were submitting archeological evidence of population mixing and being shunned, told it couldn't possibly be true. Because it went against scientific consensus in the field. A consensus built on no evidence, a dogmatic and unfounded attachment to a theory of population replacement because obviously neanderthals, denovisians and others were inferior species that must have been wiped out as inferior species are supposed to be.

In case you're missing the also obvious picture, a projection of 19th and 20th century "scientific racism" into the per-history. The superior species extinguishes the inferior one. They must not mix - oh the horror, inferior traits being mixed into a superior species, unthinkable! That and that alone was the "evidence" for the late out-of-Africa (or just "out of Africa" as it was known then) theory: wherever "modern humans" oldest fossiles were found, they must have spread from there and killed off all others.

It should not have taken DNA evidence to topple that false theory. It should never have been a "consensus" in the first place. Where there is not enough evidence one must admit there isn't. And be open to alternative hypothesis.
 
But the multi-region hypothesis was the orthodoxy until the 1970s or 80s. And *that* hypothesis was based, in part, on the eighteenth-century racist theory that different human races were fundamentally different species, having evolved separately. The out-of-Africa hypothesis, at least in its simpler earlier form, portrays all modern humans, no matter what race, as belonging to a single genetic line. So on this view the distinctions between different modern races are far less meaningful than on the multi-region hypothesis.

In fact of course there’s plenty of evidence for the out-of-Africa hypothesis, not just ideology, whether good or bad. I’m not sure which elements of the article you link to are supposed to disprove this hypothesis. Rather, the hypothesis is more nuanced now, as we know that there was interbreeding between modern humans and Neanderthals and Denisovans, at least. However, we also know that this interbreeding was quite limited, accounting for only a couple of per cent of most people’s DNA. So while this complicates the out-of-Africa hypothesis it certainly doesn’t overthrow it!
 
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My (admittedly limited) understanding is that the conventional "out of Africa" hypothesis is still well supported as the origin of modern non-African homo sapiens.

What's changed in recent years from DNA analysis is that there is increasing amounts of evidence that there were some migrations of homo sapiens out of Africa earlier than we previously thought.

Basically, there are a few homo sapien genes in the neanderthal genome earlier than would be possible if "our" migration was the only one. (and when I say a few, I mean potentially as low as two incidents of interbreeding - one with male HS and female neanderthal, and one with the opposite. This was not widespread interbreeding creating a new long term hybrid species, instead the few hybrids rapidly had their HS genes almost wholely subsumed as they reproduced with neanderthals and not further HS, leaving only a handful of HS genes that managed to become dominant).

The best explanation is that there were earlier migrations of small numbers of homo sapiens out of Africa, who had some contact with neanderthals. However, there is no evidence of modern humans direct descending from these early migratory population(s) and thus its likely they died out, leaving only tiny traces in our cousins genomes.
 
We indeed have to take into account that the African origin of humanity only became accepted after the mid-20th century. Very old (the australopithecus) fossils started being found in the mid-1920s in context with tools, and were only collected in quantity by Leakey in the mid-50s. So the "tree of evolution", including also very old fossils of Homo Sapiens, that would lead to the out of Africa hypothesis is relatively recent. Homo Sapiens fossils dated as older than 100000 years were being argued about in the late 1960s. No surprise then that the out-of-Africa theory to "settle" the question of the origins of humanity only got its roots in the 70s.

What I am complaining is that, given this new evidence of even older evolution and broader diversity of humanity collected through the preceding 50 years, most researchers in this field in the 70s and after could not do anything better that then posit a linear evolution with a species replacing others! If there are older fossils in Africa, then a "great replacement" must have started from there. So that there is a neat evolution tree. They still lived within that limited mental framework that saw mixing as inconceivable. That still regarded morphological distinct fossils as different races of man (or rather, its ancestors) unable to mix. So this "out-of-Africa" theory of global replacement of populations was created and quickly became hegemonic after the 1970s. Even as other people, like , were denying the existence of current distinct "human races" and saying that we are all genetically mixed wihy each other now (and of course can mix).

Back in the 1970s we long knew of Homo Erectus fossils with an accepted age of one and a half million years from east Asia. Clear evidence of a previous spread of mankind through the largest two linked continental masses. We knew that these ancestors had developed cultures, deliberate burials, tool use, layers of occupation in several places through Eurasia with other species (just as had also been found in Africa). So why even make up a theory that the old were wiped out by a new species?
But the current theories get worse. If you are willing to look at the circumstances with a critical mind, they beg a question: "if early humans (homo erectus) spread nearly two million years ago and reached as far as Oceania - we have fossils there indicating an interval of perhaps 100000 years for that spread, possibly less - then why should modern humans evolve in a single place and then spread from there?" What was blocking the (literal) intercourse of populations in the one and half million years between the initial spread and homo sapiens? If early hominids could spread, and if hominids could mix, then how can there be a single place of origin and a single later migration event to spread the "new race"?

The late out-of-Africa theory does not make sense. It never made sense. If there was mixing, that mixing must have gone on for all the time these hominids were evolving, not after some momentous single event of migration. Because migrations and mixing must have been going on all the while. There was nothing stopping that. The red sea didn't magically part Africa from Eurasia without us noticing in the geological record during that time. And early humans managed to cross the sea anyway - they got to Java. Imo if there are no bones showing ongoing migrations and mixing during that nearly one million years in other places, it's because they haven't been found yet. Not because magically homo sapiens evolved alone in some hidden valley in Africa and then took the world in a rampage. Geological and climate conditions and not conductive to the preservation of fossils in many regions.

Likewise about believing that what is called Denovisians only existed in a small region in central Asia just because fossils that we classified as such were only found there. Or that Neanderthals only existed in western Europe because fossils were only found there - is absurd when the regions there existed in were not physically separated for the hundred of thousands of years they existed. People claiming that enduring separation happened cannot say so based on only having found fossils in those places: absence of evidence is not proof of absence of it happening. People claiming it didn't happen must explain why would these populations not migrate and mix with others.

Then we "discover" that Neanderthals and Denovisians did in fact interbred - hail genetics. And that Neanderthals lived south of the Mediterranean. And so on. Those people who saw lack of evidence as evidence of their theory were wrong. The big mix has been on since the first large migration millions of years ago from Africa.

@PhroX Interbreeding between early humans as we classify them now in "species" is like virginity: you wither have it or you don't! If you do then there was nothing stopping it going on continuously, which negates the whole late big "out of Africa" migration with a single origin for modern humans. That even earlier humans had spread across the land long before the era proves beyond any doubt that these ancestor were not mobility-constrained. That they did interbred proves they could interbreed. Put the two together and the theory of homo sapiens being a one-off coming up in some isolated region and spreading like wildfire from there becomes unsustainable.

Saying that "there's only x% of genes" is like putting epicycles into the geocentric theory to pretend it could still explain reality as well as the heliocentric one. "Bad bad geneticists have undermined my beloved theory - I will just say that most of the genes of modern humans come from these fossils I promote as earliest modern" - pick and choose to do that.
No - the whole model is bankrupt. Evolution could not avoid being widespread at that stage of human pre-history.

That most of human evolution happened in Africa is unsurprising - it's the best continent for it in the old world: the second largest after eurasia and one with lots of different regional climates and options to move north-south, so across climate regions, in response to stuff like global warming and cooling, or to flee diseases. But to pretend that this evolution happened in some small region there without constantly leaking from it and mixing about cross the world was always absurd. There was no "dam" preventing it from being a much larger affair across the wold world.
 
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About Egypt,
I read it in the Unesco book, General History of Africa.
https://en.unesco.org/general-history-africa
Brazilian governement put all this book in Portuguese for free download, I don't know where you can Download it for free in your language.


As this Book teach me in the old old kingdom the Egyptian was black and call they self Khmer, who means coal. White scholars said Egypt call him self Khmer because have too many coal, black historians will say Egypt call him self Khmer because they are black in old old kingdom.

I will read it again just to remember better this book argues.




At the time of Ceaser lifes the Egyptians as already more white
The old old kingdom was around 2686 BC – circa 2181 BC. This is the time when the Egyptians was black, after came some invasions from Middle East and start to mix race born.
Yeah its one of the interesting book. The book "General History of Africa" by UNESCO mentions that in the ancient Kingdom of Egypt, the Egyptians referred to themselves as "Khmer," which means "coal." There is a debate among historians on the meaning of this term, with some white scholars claiming that it referred to the abundance of coal in the region, while black historians argue that it referred to the skin color of the Egyptians in the ancient kingdom. I recently read really good historical articles on curiosspot. It is suggested that you re-read the book to better understand its arguments.
 
Please, though, let’s not revisit the endless argument about what colour skins the ancient Egyptians had. It never goes well.
Indeed, and it is not practically relevant to the modern day, even in terms of meaningful historical academia, anymore than it seemed to be overly relevant to them, at the time.
 
Please, though, let’s not revisit the endless argument about what colour skins the ancient Egyptians had. It never goes well.
Despite I love the thema of what race was the egyptians, I don't have nothing new to add in this thema.
I like to believe before 3200 ac the egyptian are mostly black, but since early on they have flux of migration of middle east to Egypt, making they not so that black.
Also is possible to see on paintings the Egyptians are more kind of "pardos".

But still, some leaders as Ramsés II could be made a little bit darker, since it's also unknown if they are so white as it is portraited in civ games.
 
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