History Questions Not Worth Their Own Thread VIII

[r16]

wait for guy to arrive to criticize Athens as a village in 1829 . And ethnic cleansing is new only as a phrase in newspaper reports .

 

[Bonyduck Campersang]

a room is enough . If not an open area . And possibly some traders .

I was thinking that too, that it may be a mosque built by merchants. But besides this throwaway sentence on Wiki is there any evidence of it?

If the sentence is true, it implies that the prayer area was significant and large enough that both the Byzantine Despot and the ruler of Iraq knew about it, and that the Despot was somehow able to influence the Friday sermon?

 

[Bonyduck Campersang]

Found this on the Wikipedia page of Athens:

The city was threatened by Saracen raids in the 8th–9th centuries—in 896, Athens was raided and possibly occupied for a short period, an event which left some archaeological remains and elements of Arabic ornamentation in contemporary buildings—but there is also evidence of a mosque existing in the city at the time.

I really want to read a good history on the low-level interactions between the Greeks and the Muslims

 

[r16]

let me beat the guy first .

Tzistarakis Mosque - Wikipedia

en.m.wikipedia.org

naturally open only for oil sheiks .

as for mentioning a ruler by name in a Friday sermon (if the word is acceptable) , your case indicates the East Roman Emperor as it was the case until 1453 accepts the Arabian ruler as his superior and stuff . Declares himself as a vassal to say . It depends on which one has more soldiers . Two Muslims , one the imam , other as the faithful attending prayers would be enough for it .

edit: Have to correct it to Persian ruler

 

[Plotinus]

There was a mosque in Constantinople at least as early as the 710s. Have a look here.

 

[r16]

except it still wouldn't fit in with today's norms . Each and every example in the (not particularly long but ı had to randomly check due to time constraints) article involves the city somehow forced to accept or making a show of acceptance . Not an argument per se but there is some edge ı need to keep sharp for things .

yet truly beats my arguments too . At least 2 or 3 examples where the daily call to prayers was on .

 

[Comrade Ceasefire]

When Yamnaya herders moved into Western Europe circa 4800ya, the ratio of men to women was about 7:1.
There are no signs of any conflicts, no mass graves, so war doesn't seem to be the cause.

Those herders replaced the Y chromosomes in Great Britain within 100 years, and in Iberia within 150 years, a staggeringly short time.

And nobody knows why.

The latest hypothesis is that there was a pneumonic plague in Western Europe that preceded the huge incursion and consequent massive cultural change.

 

[Birdjaguar]

That video was 90 minutes well spent.Even the very last question about lLithuanians.

 

[Comrade Ceasefire]

That video was 90 minutes well spent.Even the very last question about lLithuanians.

It is definitely one of the best I have seen lately. There are several more that are equally fascinating, especially ones from two branches of the Institute I like to look up every month or so.

Department of Archaeogenetics (Johannes Krause's dept.)

Home - Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology

www.eva.mpg.de

and
Department of Evolutionary Genetics (Nobel prize winner Svante Pääbo's dept.)

Home - Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology

www.eva.mpg.de

One "Lithuanian" aspect that was not mentioned by Krause directly was the so-called Kurgan Hypothesis by Maria Gimbutas (extending earlier work by Schrader and Childe). IMO she pushed some cultural aspects a steppe (nyuk, nyuk) too far. But after coming under close (and very deserved!) scrutiny, the latest genetic evidence is definitely supporting many of her ideas about language, culture and the shift to agriculture. The wave of people from the north who came into the culture on the Pontic Steppe were quickly absorbed, rather than conquering what was there. Maybe the sedentary life was more appealing than the nomadic raiding style.

Anyway, I'm glad you sat through the entire lecture.

 

[Chuma]

Don't know why this got recommended to me? All I can think of is "Would you defend our cities with haystacks my lord? Build city walls first and other improvements later!"

 

[caketastydelish]

Going from the conversation from a few pages ago: speaking as an Iranian American my problem with the movie 300 isn't simply that the Persians were portrayed as the bad guys. They were, in fact, the invaders on someone else's land and the Greeks were defending their homeland. Movies have been portraying the Germans and Japanese in World War 2 as the bad guys which weren't necessarily racist.

My problem with the movie 300 is that it is completely historically inaccurate. The Persians did not have a moral high ground invading someone else's land, and the defenders did, and this I can accept.

My problem with 300 is not the premise that "people defending their country from invasion are more righeous than unprovoked invaders." My problem is (for example) that in the movie they say and depict that the Persian invading army had literally MILLIONS of soldiers. Not thousands. Not even hundreds of thousands. Millions. Even with much, much better technology than what existed in ancient times, D-Day was logistically very difficult to pull off. D-Day had less than 200,000 soldiers (far less than millions) with much better technology than what existed in ancient Greece/Persia and it was still very difficult to accomplish. Getting millions of soldiers or people into ships and sailing them across in those times would have been beyond a fool's errand.

There have been movies where the moral is "foreign invaders who attack peaceful unprovoked people is wrong" and I can accept that. Movies have been made like that making the Japanese, Germans, Mongolians, the movie Troy, etc etc look like they were the bad guys, none of which I would call racist. The movie 300 is not only completely inaccurate but also flat-out unbelievable. For the point of reference Lord of the Rings which is not even based in our world, with magic and nonhuman soldiers, etc. Even in LOTR millions of orcs crossing on ships never happened because that would be considered bad writing and unbelievable... even in a fictional, magical fantasy world. 300 is supposed to depict an actual historical event.

I'm not saying my ancestors were totally innocent or didn't have blood on their hands but if you are going to criticize them, at least make it realistic and believable.

tl;dr given the persians were invading someone else's land in an unprovoked attack, it is reasonable and realistic to portray them as "the bad guys" without being racist. The problem, however, is the depiction is not accurate, or even remotely believable. South Park and Saturday Night Live sketches are unbelievable, but that's because satire/parody or shock value humor is the intent. I don't think 300 was supposed to be funny or to make people laugh, however, which makes it fundamentally bad writing. "so absurd it's unbelievable." is acceptable if it was intended to be a joke, but the problem is I think they intended for the movie 300 to be taken seriously.

 

[caketastydelish]

My understanding is he did make some insane decisions. One example is the Battle of Stalingrad.

From what I read, Stalingrad itself didn't have much strategical importance but he wanted for purely symbolic reasons as Hitler personally didn't like Stalin himself.

Then on top of that, he had forces divided between South Soviet Union land near oil fields and the Stalingrad invasion force.

It was bad because

1) Stalingrad itself was not strategically important
2) he had his army divided when they should have been on just one or other. Or that you typically need to outnumber enemy by at least 3 to 1 when trying to capture their city or fort, which they did not have that numerical superiority.

I mean that is just example, but it appears he did make decisions that were not rational.

I asked this before but want to emphasize much more this time specifically about the causcus oil fields. A significant amount of the german army at the time had horses obviously not because they lacked better technology, but they used lots of horses due to a shortage of oil. Lacking oil for their war machine, from my understanding, is a large part of why they invaded the soviet union in the first place. Strategically speaking, prioritizing securing soviet oil fields is a double win. 1) it gives your army the fuel is desperately needs to mechanized and operate much more effectively and 2) securing soviet oil fields ALSO means you are keeping it out of soviet hands. Ignoring Stalingrad until you have enough fuel to fully mechanize your army seems to have been a much better choice. Stalingrad could wait, securing oil could not.

 

[Hygro]

Going from the conversation from a few pages ago: speaking as an Iranian American my problem with the movie 300 isn't simply that the Persians were portrayed as the bad guys. They were, in fact, the invaders on someone else's land and the Greeks were defending their homeland. Movies have been portraying the Germans and Japanese in World War 2 as the bad guys which weren't necessarily racist.

My problem with the movie 300 is that it is completely historically inaccurate. The Persians did not have a moral high ground invading someone else's land, and the defenders did, and this I can accept.

My problem with 300 is not the premise that "people defending their country from invasion are more righeous than unprovoked invaders." My problem is (for example) that in the movie they say and depict that the Persian invading army had literally MILLIONS of soldiers. Not thousands. Not even hundreds of thousands. Millions. Even with much, much better technology than what existed in ancient times, D-Day was logistically very difficult to pull off. D-Day had less than 200,000 soldiers (far less than millions) with much better technology than what existed in ancient Greece/Persia and it was still very difficult to accomplish. Getting millions of soldiers or people into ships and sailing them across in those times would have been beyond a fool's errand.

There have been movies where the moral is "foreign invaders who attack peaceful unprovoked people is wrong" and I can accept that. Movies have been made like that making the Japanese, Germans, Mongolians, the movie Troy, etc etc look like they were the bad guys, none of which I would call racist. The movie 300 is not only completely inaccurate but also flat-out unbelievable. For the point of reference Lord of the Rings which is not even based in our world, with magic and nonhuman soldiers, etc. Even in LOTR millions of orcs crossing on ships never happened because that would be considered bad writing and unbelievable... even in a fictional, magical fantasy world. 300 is supposed to depict an actual historical event.

I'm not saying my ancestors were totally innocent or didn't have blood on their hands but if you are going to criticize them, at least make it realistic and believable.

tl;dr given the persians were invading someone else's land in an unprovoked attack, it is reasonable and realistic to portray them as "the bad guys" without being racist. The problem, however, is the depiction is not accurate, or even remotely believable. South Park and Saturday Night Live sketches are unbelievable, but that's because satire/parody or shock value humor is the intent. I don't think 300 was supposed to be funny or to make people laugh, however, which makes it fundamentally bad writing. "so absurd it's unbelievable." is acceptable if it was intended to be a joke, but the problem is I think they intended for the movie 300 to be taken seriously.

300 was a movie meant to depict the way the story was told as a tale. That’s why like the moon is so epically big and the bad guys are all ugly and there’s monsters and it’s millions against a literal 300 super sexy etc. The movie is the story of the guy who survived as he tells it, not the event he survived.

 

[caketastydelish]

There is a difference between exaggeration and so absurd it’s unbelievable

 

[Birdjaguar]

We see similar myth building in “Remember the Alamo”. A few Heroic Texans fighting off the hordes of Santa Ana’s Mexicans. The older the myth building, the more extravagant the story. Have you ever seen the Seven Samurai? Or the cowboy version: the magnificent seven?

 

[Hygro]

there’s a lot to unpack. 300 was an Ancient Greek number to mean “a million” in the way we say “uncountable many”. So the story was both honest in that it was actually many Greeks, while still mythologizing and teaching the value of a few well trained troops at a choke point.

Meanwhile these same people believed they had recent heroes killing fire breathing hydras and literal gods interfering with daily life.

There’s some extra post modern brilliance. The Spartans are of course Red, brash, strong, lying in their stories but for a greater truth, and definitely Republicans. 300 2: Navy Boogaloo were the Athenians. Blue, strategists, technology users, literal and honest, stronger in numbers but not as valorous, and most important, Democrats.

And in that movie the craziest most fantastical stuff is like, things that actually happened.

 

[Takhisis]

The movie is the story of the guy who survived as he tells it, not the event he survived.

Which, if he were a Spartan according to myth, would've marked him not as a hero but as a craven coward.

there’s a lot to unpack. 300 was an Ancient Greek number to mean “a million” in the way we say “uncountable many”.

Actually, that's a myriad, and it means 10,000.

 

[JohannaK]

there’s a lot to unpack. 300 was an Ancient Greek number to mean “a million” in the way we say “uncountable many”. So the story was both honest in that it was actually many Greeks, while still mythologizing and teaching the value of a few well trained troops at a choke point.

I actually don't think that's true at all. If they meant 300 as a million they would have used it to number the Persians. That's nonsense.

 

[Hygro]

I actually don't think that's true at all. If they meant 300 as a million they would have used it to number the Persians. That's nonsense.

Still need to show scale. If I told you there’s a thousand ways I’m right (and there’s like maybe 2 or 10 but it feels like too many to list) but a million you’re right, I’m using two metaphor numbers with the same meaning alone but show scale together.

I did some diving on the topic of their use of that number after takhisis said otherwise, and you’re both right there isn’t much justification for it. So now I must find where I got that in a thousand page book to see if it was tongue in cheek and I missed it, or if there’s a there there and I want to double down. I suspect I won’t.

 

[Takhisis]

So, have you found it yet?