4 ms·
> There's been this undercurrent in archaeology and historiography since the 1960s that interprets the past as a successful of peaceful cultural, technological,
by 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 agoThat 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 agoYou are attacking a strawman. No serious historian is claiming that.
- thrower123 7y agoHistorians, 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.
- quotemstr 7y agoHistorians ignore and discredit primary sources all the time. Consider ancient Carthage: after the Romans defeated Carthage in what was basically the classical world's equivalent* of WWII, Roman historians wrote that Carthage had been practicing ritual infant sacrifice --- which horrified the Romans as much as it horrifies us. In the 20th century, the "pots not people" crowd spent decades dismissing these ancient reports as mere wartime propaganda. Well, guess what archaeologists uncovered under the ruins of Carthage [1] --- pits full of hundreds of charred infant skeletons. From the article: "evidence for child sacrifice is overwhelming and that instead of dismissing it out of hand, we should try to understand it." A lot of recent historical revisionism really is shockingly wrong. I know that it's really hard to accept, but it's true, and it's the product of motivated reasoning and willful misinterpretation. Everyone is predisposed to imagine the past as a time of stupidity and ignorance and to imagine today as the height of enlightenment. Tragically, it's frequently the other way around. We have unlearned truths. [1] http://www.ox.ac.uk/news/2014-01-23-ancient-carthaginians-really-did-sacrifice-their-children# http://www.ox.ac.uk/news/2014-01-23-ancient-carthaginians-re... * in a surprising number of ways, actually
- thrower123 7y agoI agree completely, it's a little sickening. At least with history, you can mostly refute the zanier positions and the folks making mountains out of molehills. But boy there certainly seem to be some people highly opposed to the idea that the past was a violent place kicking around today.
- orhmeh09 7y agoFor all these claims about the claims of “pots not people” people, I’ve not seen a single citation of anyone making this argument on this thread—always some professor overheard two decades ago, or an anecdote from a family member. Yet everyone is coming armed with links to demonstrate that violent things did, indeed, happen. What I don’t understand is this: whom are you calling out, and why aren’t you posting these links in the thread?
- goto11 7y ago
- neffy 7y agoI think this is more of a problem in America than in Europe. After all, their native population got wiped out by disease, so they don't have castles littering the landscape, the way we do.
- pushpop 7y agoYeah maybe that’s the case. In the UK kids are taught about how how brutal our history was because it’s an important part of our heritage having been conquered multiple times and each time the culture of those invaders being incorporated into our own. One could argue that Americans have more of a reason to underplay their barbaric past because they’re a much younger culture who were the invaders. Not that I’m saying us Brits are without blame given we had the largest global empire in the history of this planet. And sadly we have a tendency to brush over some of our misnomers during that period too.
- ip26 7y agoAmerican here, I can only agree with u/pushpop. Was taught in school about the various times Rome was sacked, where the term Vandalism comes from, Viking raids, etc. I don't remember anything about peace.