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> You can find many ancient cultures who tortured babies for sport when they captured them in raids. Can you? Sources, please. And pay attention to the authors

by brazzy 9mo ago

> You can find many ancient cultures who tortured babies for sport when they captured them in raids. Can you? Sources, please. And pay attention to the authors of those sources and how they relate to the culture in question.

withinboredom 9mo ago
If you have to ask, you didn't even look very hard. I'm not a historian and I learned about this stuff in World History class. Hell, there's even movies about it (unless you think there just happened to not be any children in all those villages they burned down in the movies?)...
- Amezarak 9mo ago
  There’s revisionist claims that all the primary sources, even those corroborated by people of the cultures in question, are either just invented propaganda or actually just isolated instances because actually, everyone throughout all time and space is on board with 2025 Western social norms. I think that’s what he’s alluding to. It’s not a very fruitful path of discussion. Archeological confirmations and independent testimony can all be safely ignored by this view as well. But we are talking about specifically torture for sport, not just burning them alive. You can find many firsthand accounts of this throughout different times and places in different cultures. Steppe peoples and groups like the Comanche were particularly notorious for it, they seemed to find it funny.
  - withinboredom 9mo ago
    Ah. There was an interesting YouTube video I watched the other night that claimed the dark ages didn’t actually exist. Easily refutable, but I assume this is the kind of stuff you’re referring to?
    - Amezarak 9mo ago
      Yeah. That’s another good example. There are fads and trends in some academic circles that burst out into the Internet scene and become common “actually” rejoinders. Of course, some older claims about the Dark Ages were exaggerated and simplified. This led to an “actually the Dark Ages weren’t even real” reaction in a few papers which spread online. Of course there was a marked decline in social organization during that time period regardless.
  - brazzy 9mo ago
    It's not revisionist to point outthat a LOT of ancient texts, especially those describing particularly horrifying actions, were propaganda written by the enemies of the cultures in question - or embellishments written hundreds of years later. I'm not saying that "torture for sport" of children never existed, just that any account should be treated with skepticism, and that it was far rarer than you would think if you just take every text at face value, especially since it's the kind of thing that gets repeated (and embellished for shock value) far more than other historical accounts.
    - withinboredom 9mo ago
      Right... The historical texts were propaganda for the few people who could read and write ... for what, exactly? I assume you think genocides in modern times are just propaganda too?
      - brazzy 9mo ago
        The few people who could read and write were the educated ones - mostly those in power or close to them. So exactly the people you needed to influence to get something done. And of course written texts could be read aloud to those who cannot write. What exactly are you actually trying to say? That propaganda didn't exist back then? That it was never written down? What do you think "Carthago delenda est" was? > I assume you think genocides in modern times are just propaganda too? And why would you assume that? There is in fact a modern time example for exactly the kind of thing we're talking about: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nayirah_testimony https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nayirah_testimony
    - Amezarak 9mo ago
      Uh-huh. Here's the problem. Here's the way this almost always works: "Author X would have been BIASED because he belonged to Culture X that fought these people - so this is all fictional propaganda!" Nearly all the time this is the entirety of the evidence. That is, there is no actual evidence, just people churning out papers because we live in a publish-or-perish world that well, maybe he would have been hypothetically motivated to lie or embellish. So therefore, he totally did. It's all fake! The most notorious examples of this sort of pointlessness are claims that the Phoenicians and Carthaginians did not practice human sacrifice and it was all made up by Roman propaganda, nevermind the third-party information we have and now the archeological evidence. Rarely, in ancient examples, are they exhibiting much outrage over it. Same for the Aztecs, another frequent target - we have non-Spanish evidence, and we never had any reason to doubt them in the first place. Part of the problem is exactly that YOU think it is particularly horrifying when most of the time (as in the Roman example) the cultural tenor was probably something much closer to the US abortion or gun control debate, or at least from peoples who saw this happening regularly enough they were substantially number to it than you or me.

by brazzy 9mo ago

withinboredom 9mo ago

If you have to ask, you didn't even look very hard. I'm not a historian and I learned about this stuff in World History class. Hell, there's even movies about it (unless you think there just happened to not be any children in all those villages they burned down in the movies?)...

Amezarak 9mo ago
There’s revisionist claims that all the primary sources, even those corroborated by people of the cultures in question, are either just invented propaganda or actually just isolated instances because actually, everyone throughout all time and space is on board with 2025 Western social norms. I think that’s what he’s alluding to. It’s not a very fruitful path of discussion. Archeological confirmations and independent testimony can all be safely ignored by this view as well. But we are talking about specifically torture for sport, not just burning them alive. You can find many firsthand accounts of this throughout different times and places in different cultures. Steppe peoples and groups like the Comanche were particularly notorious for it, they seemed to find it funny.
- withinboredom 9mo ago
  Ah. There was an interesting YouTube video I watched the other night that claimed the dark ages didn’t actually exist. Easily refutable, but I assume this is the kind of stuff you’re referring to?
  - Amezarak 9mo ago
    Yeah. That’s another good example. There are fads and trends in some academic circles that burst out into the Internet scene and become common “actually” rejoinders. Of course, some older claims about the Dark Ages were exaggerated and simplified. This led to an “actually the Dark Ages weren’t even real” reaction in a few papers which spread online. Of course there was a marked decline in social organization during that time period regardless.
- brazzy 9mo ago
  It's not revisionist to point outthat a LOT of ancient texts, especially those describing particularly horrifying actions, were propaganda written by the enemies of the cultures in question - or embellishments written hundreds of years later. I'm not saying that "torture for sport" of children never existed, just that any account should be treated with skepticism, and that it was far rarer than you would think if you just take every text at face value, especially since it's the kind of thing that gets repeated (and embellished for shock value) far more than other historical accounts.
  - withinboredom 9mo ago
    Right... The historical texts were propaganda for the few people who could read and write ... for what, exactly? I assume you think genocides in modern times are just propaganda too?
    - brazzy 9mo ago
      The few people who could read and write were the educated ones - mostly those in power or close to them. So exactly the people you needed to influence to get something done. And of course written texts could be read aloud to those who cannot write. What exactly are you actually trying to say? That propaganda didn't exist back then? That it was never written down? What do you think "Carthago delenda est" was? > I assume you think genocides in modern times are just propaganda too? And why would you assume that? There is in fact a modern time example for exactly the kind of thing we're talking about: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nayirah_testimony https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nayirah_testimony
  - Amezarak 9mo ago
    Uh-huh. Here's the problem. Here's the way this almost always works: "Author X would have been BIASED because he belonged to Culture X that fought these people - so this is all fictional propaganda!" Nearly all the time this is the entirety of the evidence. That is, there is no actual evidence, just people churning out papers because we live in a publish-or-perish world that well, maybe he would have been hypothetically motivated to lie or embellish. So therefore, he totally did. It's all fake! The most notorious examples of this sort of pointlessness are claims that the Phoenicians and Carthaginians did not practice human sacrifice and it was all made up by Roman propaganda, nevermind the third-party information we have and now the archeological evidence. Rarely, in ancient examples, are they exhibiting much outrage over it. Same for the Aztecs, another frequent target - we have non-Spanish evidence, and we never had any reason to doubt them in the first place. Part of the problem is exactly that YOU think it is particularly horrifying when most of the time (as in the Roman example) the cultural tenor was probably something much closer to the US abortion or gun control debate, or at least from peoples who saw this happening regularly enough they were substantially number to it than you or me.