History,glorious history

[Eretz Yisrael]

Well, i guess i a newbie as a member of this forum, but I have enjoyed Civ since the my days as a teenager, and out of my own interest(I know only history) I wish to make a history thread on civfanatics.

First a little self-introduction:
South Korean, lived in US, China,and South Korea. Most interested historical topic: why koreans got stuck in a hellhole called the korean peninsula; the tungistic,altaic,turkic,khitan,manchu, Israeli,japanese, korean and mongol histories interest me greatly.

A sign of support would be great.

 

[holy king]

welcome.

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=268106

 

[Tee Kay]

why koreans got stuck in a hellhole called the korean peninsula

Why is it a hellhole? I would prefer to live in South Korea than, say, Mozambique.

 

[aronnax]

Well maybe he is refering to the history of the Korean People... I mean
2 Serious attempts by Chinese Dynasties to conquer them, 3 invasions by Japan, the last one which ended in lost of Korean people's freedom, King and indepedence. 40 years of horrid slave labour which ends in the country being spilt in half in peace and war and its capital assaulted 4 times and reduced by 70% in size.

Of course, whats a little history without trouble? Its still way better than others.

 

[Eretz Yisrael]

Why is it a hellhole? I would prefer to live in South Korea than, say, Mozambique.

Well when I said hellhole, I did not a literal hellhole(South Korea is a paradaise for me ), but i mean the location of our civilization.
Stuck right between Russia, Mongolia, Chinese, and the Japanese. When the HUns were defeated by the Han Chinese in war, they managed to escape/immigrate to Eastern Europe, where Attila the Hun settled in what is today's Hungary.
But the Koreans have nowhere to go; its all sea.
And due to our location Koreans became too protective and we never had a chance to really spread our culture and present ourselves as a strong nation.
I know a lot of people that do NOT like Koreans for their xenophobia(Koreans have a unifying strength though).

 

[Orange Seeds]

I know a lot of people that do NOT like Koreans for their xenophobia(Koreans have a unifying strength though).

i went to a high school that was about 40% Caucasian and then split about 15/15/15/15 between Mandarin, Cantonese, Vietnamese and Korean. Anecdotally it was always the Koreans that were the most exclusive.

Here's an idea: make a thread that tries to explain, in a historical context, why this is so(or reject it!). Someone once tried to explain to me that the Koreans are culturally similar to Germans in regards to the way they see themselves.

 

[Dachs]

When the HUns were defeated by the Han Chinese in war, they managed to escape/immigrate to Eastern Europe, where Attila the Hun settled in what is today's Hungary.

Hey kids, Hsiung-nu were probably not the same thing as the Huns. Just an FYI there.

 

[aronnax]

Crosspost....

 

[Agent327]

Hm, another thread heading nowhere fast... Shouldn't this be OT?

Hey kids, Hsiung-nu were probably not the same thing as the Huns. Just an FYI there.

While it's true they haven't been positively identified, there's a remarkable coincidence between the Xiong-nu/Hsiung-nu disappearing from Asian history and the appearance of the Huns in Far Eastern Europe. (Hey, I just invented a new geographical term.)

 

[Sharwood]

You can't call it Far Eastern Europe unless they grow rice, wear funny bamboo hats and are extremely bad drives yet good at maths. Stereotyping ftw.

The Hsiung-nu are absolutely the same people as the Huns. Look. Hsiung-nu. Huns. Clearly the same people.

 

[Dachs]

While it's true they haven't been positively identified, there's a remarkable coincidence between the Xiong-nu/Hsiung-nu disappearing from Asian history and the appearance of the Huns in Far Eastern Europe. (Hey, I just invented a new geographical term.)

Coincidence schmoicendence. It doesn't take 300 years to cross a few thousand miles of steppe, especially when the basic pattern of nomadic life doesn't really work that way. It also doesn't make sense to head directly west from China instead of southwest, towards Persia and the Hindu Kush, cause that stuff is richer. Besides, the Huns, unlike the Xiongnu (sorry, I forgot which transliteration was crappy for a post there), had a system of ranked kings (the Xiongnu were more centralized under a single shanyu). The Xiongnu had ponytails; the Huns usually didn't. What's usually agreed upon is that the Huns had ancestors that were among the Xiongnu confederation, but were ethnically dissimilar and to all intents and purposes a comparison or identification of the two would be useless.

 

[Eretz Yisrael]

Hey kids, Hsiung-nu were probably not the same thing as the Huns. Just an FYI there.

Now I am talking from East Asian historical perspecive, for our scholars pretty much agree(of course not all agree)
that the Hsiung-Nu（匈奴 in chinese; i Speak Five languages )are the Huns.

 

[Eretz Yisrael]

Coincidence schmoicendence. It doesn't take 300 years to cross a few thousand miles of steppe, especially when the basic pattern of nomadic life doesn't really work that way. It also doesn't make sense to head directly west from China instead of southwest, towards Persia and the Hindu Kush, cause that stuff is richer. Besides, the Huns, unlike the Xiongnu (sorry, I forgot which transliteration was crappy for a post there), had a system of ranked kings (the Xiongnu were more centralized under a single shanyu). The Xiongnu had ponytails; the Huns usually didn't. What's usually agreed upon is that the Huns had ancestors that were among the Xiongnu confederation, but were ethnically dissimilar and to all intents and purposes a comparison or identification of the two would be useless.

Check Wwikipedia on this. While Wwikipedia is not always right, it does have good a good Chinese part of the view.

 

[Tee Kay]

Xiongnu didn't exactly "disappear" rather the Xiongnu state fell apart in the 2nd century AD, and the different tribes went their own way. So it may be that the "Huns" who appear in Europe (and perhaps the Hephtalites in Persia) were one of the subject peoples of the Xiongnu (though not directly related) that migrated west during this time.

Peoples on the steppes usually tended to get lumped together by historians under an umbrella term representing which ever tribe/nation was dominant at the time. So "Huns" came to refer to all the tribes in the steppes, though in reality a steppe confederation maybe consist of different tribes. (same with the "Mongol" confederation in the 1200s, which also consists of Naimans, Tatars, etc)

 

[Agent327]

Well, actually there were 2 Xiongnu states, but other than that the previous posts (other than Sharwood's) pretty much sum up the whole Xiongnu-Huns discussion. (And yeah, you can google for all of this.)

 

[Sharwood]

Well, actually there were 2 Xiongnu states, but other than that the previous posts (other than Sharwood's) pretty much sum up the whole Xiongnu-Huns discussion. (And yeah, you can google for all of this.)

Hey, my post is 100% historically accurate. Makes as much sense as many other historical claims I've come across lately.

Sumerians are from Peru.

 

[Dachs]

Check Wwikipedia on this. While Wwikipedia is not always right, it does have good a good Chinese part of the view.

Your earlier statement, combined with directing me to a Wikipedia article (and since Wikipedia really cannot be referred to as anything other than contempt with regards to history, especially before 1800 or so), has led me to believe that you really don't know what you're talking about.

I care about what actually happened, and the current consensus with regard to the Huns of Attila and Bleda that formed an ephemeral empire on the Pannonian plain off of the twin prongs of pillage and absorbing - but not assimilating - other tribal confederacies...well, the current consensus is that they were not the same thing as the Xiongnu. I fail to see an explanation of the manifold differences between Hun and Xiongnu on the Wikipedia page, which mostly makes reference to philological evidence (which is not proof in and of itself, elseways we would have solved the Tocharian mystery a century ago; that of historical linguistics is a notoriously treacherous pathway, as one can glean from even a brief scan of the Wikipedia section on the issue) as it is.

Having said that, my objection to this particular point of yours really has no bearing on the actual meat of what you said; the Xiongnu still had "space to leave" (though I seriously doubt that there is or has ever been any question of the settled people, especially that of Korea, desiring to abandon their former homes for any reason, even conquest; the ties between a man of the soil and his land go very deep indeed), even if it was not a space that extends to the Catalaunian Fields, northern Italy, and finally to the Nedao.