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It's said that "the past is a foreign country". It's also an incredibly violent one. There's been this undercurrent in archaeology and historiography since the

It's said that "the past is a foreign country". It's also an incredibly violent one. There's been this undercurrent in archaeology and historiography since the 1960s that interprets the past as a successful of peaceful cultural, technological, and linguistic diffusions and that downplays evidence of conquest, force, and violence. For example, an archaeological belonging to this school that chanced across a layer of an ancient fortress festooned with skulls, arrowheads, and soot would present that layer as evidence of some kind of funerary ceremony instead of applying Occam's razor and suspecting a conquest and sack. It's infuriating. Reading recent papers on ancient Rome (a personal interest of mine), I find myself stopping, sighing, and saying almost out loud, "Those Germans just moved into the empire as good neighbors? The name 'Vandal' got its connotation for no reason at all? The contemporary historians were just lying propagandists and we can dismiss everything they wrote? Really, dude?". Or, "Indo-European languages replaced almost all indigenous European languages because... cultural diffusion? Before writing? Okay dude." I could go on and on on. These "[migration of] pots not people" people apply the same lens to _everything_, and it's super annoying: what they claim runs counter to what everyone knows deep down is true about human nature. Fortunately, this "[migration of] pots not people" is no longer tenable. Ancient DNA has opened up a world of new evidence --- see [1] and [2]. As it turns out, As it turns out, intuitions of the early anthropologists like Gordon Childe --- whom these 1960s-era "pots not people" have not rested from attempting it discredit --- were right after all. Conan the Barbarian is a pretty fair depiction. What you see in the genetic record is wave after wave after wave of conquest and slaughter. Some Y chromosome lineages disappear entirely, while the X chromosome ones survive --- indicating that conquerors (as everyone suspected) basically killed off all the men and took all the women. This pattern is attested in historical times in Asian steppe cultures [3], and there's no reason to suspect that pre-historic cultures operated any differently. Turns out, they didn't. The reason Europe speaks Indo-European languages isn't that the ancient inhabitants thought that Proto-Indo-European was neat and adopted it --- it's that the PIE-speaking Yamnaya swept in from the caucuses and slaughtered mostly everyone (especially men) except the Basques. It's not pretty, but that's the way it was. Moreover, it's important to realize that we all have the latent potential for barbarism inside us. We've been at peace for so long --- almost 75 years --- that we've forgotten that man's natural state is "war of all against all" and that peace is incredibly fragile. Downplaying ancient violence encourages present complacency and endangers our present peace. [1] https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-018-03773-6 https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-018-03773-6 [2] https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-43701630 https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-43701630 [3] https://www.amazon.com/Genghis-Khan-Making-Modern-World-ebook/dp/B000FCK206/ https://www.amazon.com/Genghis-Khan-Making-Modern-World-eboo...

pushpop 7y ago
> There's been this undercurrent in archaeology and historiography since the 1960s that interprets the past as a successful of peaceful cultural, technological, and linguistic diffusions and that downplays evidence of conquest, force, and violence. For example, an archaeological belonging to this school that chanced across a layer of an ancient fortress festooned with skulls, arrowheads, and soot would present that layer as evidence of some kind of funerary ceremony instead of applying Occam's razor and suspecting a conquest and sack. It's infuriating. I think we’ve been watching different documentaries, reading different books and growing up in different educational environments because everything I’ve been taught about history was that it was hard, violent and often unjust. I mean castles weren’t exactly built and designed purely as aesthetic stately homes. The Bayeux Tapestry‘s most iconic scene is a presumed king with an arrow in his eye. Kids are taught about the beheadings of Henry the 8ths wives (was it two that were killed?) at school. The violence of our ancestors has anything but been brushed under the carpet. But let’s also not forget that you don’t have to travel that far into our history to see how violent we can be.
- xyzzyz 7y ago
  That school does believe in violent past, just not far one. They believe it’s the emergence of states and modernity that brought out the violence, and the state of pre-state society was peace and bliss.
  - goto11 7y ago
    You are attacking a strawman. No serious historian is claiming that.
    - thrower123 7y ago
      Historians, not so much. They would have to believe all their primary sources were lying. Archaeologists, quite often still have the Noble Savage archetype lurking underneath their theories, despite the massive evidence of violence among current-day hunter gatherer societies, and the extensive evidence of trauma to the remains of ancient skeletons. My aunt and uncle are archaeologists. I hear this claptrap about Native Americans living in harmony every family reunion.

pushpop 7y ago

> There's been this undercurrent in archaeology and historiography since the 1960s that interprets the past as a successful of peaceful cultural, technological, and linguistic diffusions and that downplays evidence of conquest, force, and violence. For example, an archaeological belonging to this school that chanced across a layer of an ancient fortress festooned with skulls, arrowheads, and soot would present that layer as evidence of some kind of funerary ceremony instead of applying Occam's razor and suspecting a conquest and sack. It's infuriating. I think we’ve been watching different documentaries, reading different books and growing up in different educational environments because everything I’ve been taught about history was that it was hard, violent and often unjust. I mean castles weren’t exactly built and designed purely as aesthetic stately homes. The Bayeux Tapestry‘s most iconic scene is a presumed king with an arrow in his eye. Kids are taught about the beheadings of Henry the 8ths wives (was it two that were killed?) at school. The violence of our ancestors has anything but been brushed under the carpet. But let’s also not forget that you don’t have to travel that far into our history to see how violent we can be.

xyzzyz 7y ago
That school does believe in violent past, just not far one. They believe it’s the emergence of states and modernity that brought out the violence, and the state of pre-state society was peace and bliss.
- goto11 7y ago
  You are attacking a strawman. No serious historian is claiming that.
  - thrower123 7y ago
    Historians, not so much. They would have to believe all their primary sources were lying. Archaeologists, quite often still have the Noble Savage archetype lurking underneath their theories, despite the massive evidence of violence among current-day hunter gatherer societies, and the extensive evidence of trauma to the remains of ancient skeletons. My aunt and uncle are archaeologists. I hear this claptrap about Native Americans living in harmony every family reunion.