[HN Gopher] The sea people: Alexander the Great trod in the foot...
___________________________________________________________________
The sea people: Alexander the Great trod in the footsteps of
forgotten Greeks
Author : rsj_hn
Score : 123 points
Date : 2021-12-05 13:36 UTC (9 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (nemets.substack.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (nemets.substack.com)
| anonu wrote:
| The Phoenicians have always been considered the merchant sea
| people of the Levant. I'm not too clear on why the article
| doesn't seem to make that connection. The Phoenicians made glass,
| and a prized purple dye harvested from the murex snail. Cedar
| wood that was in abundance was used to make ships. With these
| things, the Phoenicians were able to establish trade routes with
| far off cities to the West of them.
| wolf550e wrote:
| The Bible certainly doesn't think the people of Tyre and Sidon
| were the same people as those of Gaza, Ashdod, Ashkelon, Ekron
| and Gath.
|
| See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ithobaal_I and
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philistines
| philwelch wrote:
| I think he's writing more about where the sea people came from
| rather than where they ended up afterwards. But yes, the
| Phoenicians, and hence the Carthaginians, being descendants of
| the Mycenaean Greeks does provide yet another example of
| Greek/Italic conflict.
| mcguire wrote:
| I'm not sure what connection you refer to.
|
| The Phoenicians are not referred to until ~1500BCE, by which
| time the Mycenaean and Minoans had been doing their things
| (mostly trading) for a few hundred years. The Phoenicians
| didn't peak until after the Late Bronze Age Situation
| (~1200BCE).
| selimthegrim wrote:
| I'm not sure what he means by the most Slavic ancestry being from
| female slaves in the Middle Ages. Who was taking slaves besides
| the Turks?
| e44858 wrote:
| Most accounts I've read of ancient battles include the winners
| enslaving the losers, so it seems to have been common practice.
| danans wrote:
| > Even today, sea transport is cheaper than land transport. In
| the Bronze and Classical Ages the advantage of sea transport was
| even more extreme. There was no need for the construction of
| roads and tens of tons could be transported long distances.
| Travel times by sea were considerably less than those on land,
| and armies could be resupplied far away. Bronze Age states with
| strong navies would have a tremendous advantage over their rivals
|
| This is a fascinating observation to consider even terms of our
| modern era. Prior to the pandemic, the cost to ship a $20-retail
| pair of athletic shoes to the US from Asia via the sea was only
| $.30. [1]
|
| Every passing technological wave that triggers growth seems to
| concentrate it most in strategic maritime areas (even if much of
| the raw materials and goods flowing through maritime channels
| originate in landlocked/inland areas).
|
| One theory of these historical invasions is that that wealth
| eventually attracts the attention of inland peoples who
| eventually band together to attack the maritime cultures.
|
| 1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8d5d_HXGeMA
| theknocker wrote:
| Every time I look into this, it becomes obvious we know exactly
| who most of the "sea people" groups were, but everyone has to
| pretend we don't because extant race obsessed populations don't
| like the answers.
| savant_penguin wrote:
| If you are interested in the collapse of the bronze age with some
| comments about the sea people
|
| https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=M4LRHJlijVU
|
| Eric clines lectures are really cool
| [deleted]
| miltondts wrote:
| And one more resource with the history of many civilizations:
| https://www.youtube.com/c/FallofCivilizationsPodcast
|
| I especially enjoyed https://youtu.be/d2lJUOv0hLA, as I had no
| idea the first cities were already so advanced and lasted for
| so many centuries.
|
| EDIT: fixed youtube link.
| reactspa wrote:
| I'm watching the second link. Very very well made.
|
| It's astonishing to me that there's so much high-quality
| stock footage of the area that someone can create such a
| high-quality historical documentary while only calling it a
| "podcast".
| oogetyboogety wrote:
| Thoroughly enjoyed these. There is the tv version (not
| podcast) with nice video alongside each of the current
| podcasts. Sometimes they release a podcast and it takes a
| month or two for the tv one to come out.
| mcguire wrote:
| Whenever someone mentions the age of Stonehenge or the
| Egyptian pyramids, it's fun to point out that we have tax
| records from Sumeria from before either of those.
| jcomis wrote:
| Getting "This video isn't available anymore" on the youtube
| link
| pkdpic wrote:
| Excellent lecture. The slick TED talk guys at the beginning
| kind of freaked me out but Eric Cline did not disappoint. This
| guy is a beast. Wish I had known about him back when I was
| teaching Art Hist.
| vmh1928 wrote:
| "1177 B.C. The Year Civilization Collapsed" by Cline is also
| good. Focusing on the "sea peoples" is almost a distraction.
| The real story is about the world of city-states and trading
| relationships in 2000 B.C. and the sudden collapse, across the
| Eastern Med, of those same states resulting in several hundred
| year dark ages.
| vmh1928 wrote:
| sorry, meant to say 1200 B.C. - 1100 B.C., not 2000 B.C. (or
| B.C.E. if you like.)
| Pigalowda wrote:
| I like this video from Historia Civilis on youtube. It's a
| little more casual and shorter but it does address those
| major points.
|
| https://youtu.be/aq4G-7v-_xI
| kromem wrote:
| So much wrong despite so much right.
|
| Making the sea peoples all Greek totally flies in the face of the
| written records at the time, for example where Ugaritic leaders
| wrote to Cypress for help given the ships attacking them and got
| the response "it's your own ships."
|
| SOME of the sea peoples were Greek. But a single genetic result
| most closely matching Crete (which was only 40% not "almost
| completely") shouldn't be extrapolated to be all the sea peoples.
| And it ignores the research that the Minoan ancestry was in line
| with the Anatolian farmers of the Neolithic period.
|
| It also ignores the role of Lybia in the early Egyptian records
| of sea peoples battles, as well as Ramses II's capture of many
| peoples following Sherden/Lybian battles and then Hittite battle
| of Kadesh (where he captured 12 groups of tribes).
|
| And arguably the biggest oversight (not just by OP but by many
| looking at this period) is failing to put aside the myth of
| ethnocentrism and monotheism from the Israelite story of 12
| tribes fleeing Egypt under Moses with oldest part of that story
| referring to Dan "staying on their ships."
|
| The Greek story of the Exodus claimed many different people left,
| and placed the fleeing of Danaus alongside them. Danaus, the
| likely eponymous leader claimed to be a brother of the Pharoh
| with 50 sons and connected with Lybia. Sounds kind of like Ramses
| II, who had 50 sons and whose forensic report identified him as
| appearing to have been a Lybian Berber.
|
| Sure weird that a lot of the sea peoples conquered territories
| were then named for Mopsus/Muksus, including the Denyen of Adana
| who centuries later still had a ruling "House of Mopsus."
|
| I wonder if that has anything to do with Dan, who "stayed on
| their ships" in the Song of Deborah - the earliest part of the
| Bible, in Judges 18 ending up with a grandson of Moses as chief
| priest.
|
| There's a lot more, especially in the Cretan/Lybian genetic
| overlap with the Ashkenazi, particularly given the 80% pre-
| history European mtDNA lineages. Or in Aegean archeology for
| details in claimed Biblical history. But suffice to say the sea
| peoples shouldn't be as much a mystery as it remains if only
| people would do a better job looking at what's clearly myth
| (Abrahamic lineages given Y-haplogroups and early Israelite
| monotheism) and who was writing the story (Judah, who wasn't a
| group present earlier on).
| phonypc wrote:
| TL;DR: Moses did the Late Bronze Age collapse?
| 1cvmask wrote:
| This alleged historical article calls Alexander the Great Greek.
| He is Macedonian. Macedonians are a completely different people
| with a different language and different alphabet. Would you take
| an alleged historical article on Stalin if the article mentioned
| Stalin to be German or that Cleopatra was Spanish.
|
| Macedons invaded and took over the Greek kingdoms:
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macedonia_(ancient_kingdom)
| hallarempt wrote:
| Whatever calls itself "macedonian" these days is completely
| unrelated to what used to live there BC.
| mannerheim wrote:
| > different alphabet
|
| Where is the source on this? According to this[0]:
|
| > The surviving public and private inscriptions found in
| Macedonia indicate that there was no other written language in
| ancient Macedonia but Ancient Greek
|
| So Macedonia was a kingdom where the aristocracy spoke Attic
| and later Koine Greek, and the vernacular being either a Greek
| dialect or other Hellenic language. So the written language
| would have been Attic/Koine. Alexander, being royalty, would
| have spoken and written in Attic/Koine Greek.
|
| [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancient_Macedonian_language
| turndown wrote:
| As we are being pedantic, technically Alexander the Great _was_
| Greek by standards of his time, since he could trace his
| lineage back to Alexander I, who had to prove they were a
| descendant of a Greek man in order to participate in the
| Olympic Games.
| varjag wrote:
| This is undermined a lot by sheer will of modern Greeks to
| fight tooth and nail for the name of Macedonia.
| buescher wrote:
| It's a controversy that predates Alexander. It won't get
| settled on HN.
| phonypc wrote:
| > _Macedonians are a completely different people with a
| different language and different alphabet._
|
| Sure but... Alexander and his countrymen didn't speak that
| language or use that alphabet, and were not of that people. You
| might as well say he was an Ottoman Turk, or a Roman.
| dr_dshiv wrote:
| I am so curious about the use of mushrooms and alcohol in ancient
| times. The historical record contains almost no evidence for
| psychoactive mushroom use, despite rather widespread
| availability. In the absence of evidence (and the assumption that
| people generally like drugs), I speculate that a cultural taboo
| arose after the brewers (agriculturalists) beat the trippers
| (nomads).
|
| And yet, "Mycenaean" translates roughly to the mushroom people...
| cblconfederate wrote:
| Mycenaeans get their name from Mycenae, but i doubt they ever
| called themselves mycenean. There are various theories about
| the use of mushrooms in the Eleusinian and the Dionysian
| mysteries among others.
| thechao wrote:
| > And yet, "Mycenaean" translates roughly to the mushroom
| people...
|
| This has _got_ to be my top-contender for wackiest HN comment
| if the week.
|
| Please: could you show _any_ sources for this assertion? Start
| with the sctual Greek; because, the actual Greek words are
| about as related as "moose" and "mouse".
| bigbillheck wrote:
| Most of that comment is kind of goofy but the etymology isn't
| absurd. Per https://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Pau
| s.+2.16.3&f... :
|
| So the prediction of the god to Acrisius found its
| fulfillment, nor was his fate prevented by his precautions
| against his daughter and grandson. Perseus, ashamed because
| of the gossip about the homicide, on his return to Argos
| induced Megapenthes, the son of Proetus, to make an exchange
| of kingdoms; taking over himself that of Megapenthes, he
| founded Mycenae. For on its site the cap (myces) fell from
| his scabbard, and he regarded this as a sign to found a city.
| I have also heard the following account. He was thirsty, and
| the thought occurred to him to pick up a mushroom (myces)
| from the ground. Drinking with joy water that flowed from it,
| he gave to the place the name of Mycenae.
| andybak wrote:
| It's actually in the etymology section on Wikipedia too:
|
| > Legend has it that the name was connected to the Greek
| word mykes (mukes, "mushroom"). Thus, Pausanias ascribes
| the name to the legendary founder Perseus, who was said to
| have named it either after the cap (mykes) of the sheath of
| his sword, or after a mushroom he had plucked on the site.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mycenae
|
| Even if that's true then it is still a leap from "People
| from Mushroom City" to "Mushroom People"
| kgeist wrote:
| Could as well be folk etymology. "Mykes" has stem myket-
| (*mykets > mykes, genetive "myketos") The -t- isn't found
| in "Mykenai"
|
| There was also "mykon" meaning "I mooed", and if you have
| enough fantasy you can link it to Minotaurus, for
| example.
| buildsjets wrote:
| The worldwide distribution of Psilocybe Cubensis
| hallucinogenic mushrooms are strongly correlated to the
| domestication and worldwide spread of cattle. And the
| Minoans certainly involved cattle/bulls as a part of
| their worship practices.
| dr_dshiv wrote:
| That is very compelling. And yet, no textual or visual
| evidence of deliberate psilocybin mushroom use in Europe
| until 1957. It's the strangest thing.
| dr_dshiv wrote:
| > He was thirsty, and the thought occurred to him to pick
| up a mushroom (myces) from the ground. Drinking with joy
| water that flowed from it, he gave to the place the name of
| Mycenae.
|
| This is fabulous, thank you. Very compelling.
|
| There are giant Neolithic carvings of mushrooms in Thrace.
| But apart from these small scatterings of ambiguous
| evidence--almost nothing supports the idea that
| psychoactive mushrooms were known to the Greeks. Which is
| just, well, odd.
|
| https://www.ancient-origins.net/history-ancient-
| traditions/m...
| buildsjets wrote:
| I'm sure you must know of Kykeon, the psychoactive
| beverage that ancient Greeks drank as part of the
| initiation into the Eleusinian Mysteries. Psychedelic
| mushrooms are one of the theorized ingredients, but as
| you say there is no hard evidence of that. However,
| residue of ergot fungus sclerotia has been found in
| Kykeon vessels. Another strong candidate is datura
| (Jimsonweed), based on it's regional availability and
| description of the effects of Kykeon.
| thechao wrote:
| Fabulous!
| dr_dshiv wrote:
| I hope you are satisfied by the sources provided and your
| mind is sufficiently blown. Isn't it nice to reset one's
| standards for what sounds like unhinged craziness?
|
| This is my favorite kind of knowledge to collect.
| lr4444lr wrote:
| I think it's still fairly mainstream in Vedic scholarship that
| "soma" mentioned in ancient India was a psychoactive mushroom,
| even though which one is still contentious.
| baybal2 wrote:
| Some is not a mushroom, but an ephedra tea. Works like a very
| strong coffee. Can't believe you can get 10 years for it in
| some countries.
| buildsjets wrote:
| So, your claim is that the modern substance called soma is
| the same thing as the ancient substance called soma. Do you
| have any evidence that supports this claim?
| adrian_b wrote:
| A relationship between "Mycenaean" and mushrooms is very
| unlikely.
|
| "Mycenaean" comes from a feminine name, which in the older
| pronunciation before the 1st millennium BC would have been
| "Mukaanaa".
|
| The Greek name of the mushroom, in the older pronunciation
| would have been either "mukeet" or "mukaat", which is likely to
| be derived from a word meaning "mud".
|
| While the feminine name "Mukaanaa" starts with "muk", like
| mushroom, it is not formed according to the usual Greek rules
| for word derivation and there are also many other Greek words
| starting with "muk".
|
| There was indeed someone (Solmsen) who, in 1912, proposed
| seriously this etymology, but others (e.g. Krahe) presented
| counterarguments that this etymology cannot be true, which were
| considered much more convincing.
| dr_dshiv wrote:
| A detailed rebuttal to Krahe is presented by Wasson, p129.
| Note that you are basing your argument on Greek, but this is
| a preGreek term.
|
| https://books.google.com/books/about/The_Road_to_Eleusis.htm.
| ..
| adrian_b wrote:
| Thanks for the link.
|
| I have found online a fragment of Wasson, but unfortunately
| the fragment stops before page 129, so I could not see the
| rebuttal, only a mention by Wasson that some colleague
| derided him for believing that there is a connection
| between the name Mycenae and mushrooms.
|
| Wasson might be right about the use of mushrooms at the
| Greek mysteries, but that has nothing to do with the name
| of the city Mycenae.
|
| We know that the female name from which Mycenae is derived
| has been in use, e.g. in the Odyssey some nymph with this
| name is mentioned.
|
| It does not make much sense for a woman's name to refer to
| mushrooms.
|
| Assuming that you are right and the woman/city name is pre-
| Greek, then that removes any connection with the Greek name
| of the mushroom, which is likely to be Indo-European,
| derived from the same word with the Latin "mucus".
| dr_dshiv wrote:
| Here is Wasson's argument. The idea that it is preGreek
| comes from this etymology website.
| https://etymology_el_en.en-
| academic.com/6991/%CE%9C%CF%85%CC...
|
| "The etymology of Mykenai from mykes, although frequently
| proposed, was rejected by Krahe (Gnomon 17, 1945, 472).
| There seems, however, no reason why the city's name is
| not correctly associated with mykes. The declensional
| stem of mykes alternates between myket- (third
| declension) and myke- (first declension); the lack of
| -t-in Mykenai is therefore not significant. For a city
| related to a plant, cf. Mekone from the opium poppy
| mekon. Mykenai, furthermore, is a feminine plural, like
| Thebes (Thebai) and Athens (Athenai); as in the names of
| those cities, Mykenai derived from the nymph of the
| place, Mykene (Homer, Odyssey 2. 120; Hesiod, frg. 246,
| Merkelbach and West; etc.), the primordial bride whose
| descent into death there established, or continually re-
| established, the compact with the chthonic realm upon
| which union. the living city could be founded. There was
| also a tradition about an eponymous male founder,
| Mykeneus, whose father was Sparton, the 'sown man,'
| apparently an autochthonous inhabitant like the Spartoe
| at Thebes growing from the land (Acusilaus, frg. 16,
| Jacoby Eustathius on Homer, Iliad 2. 569 p. 289. 47; cf.
| scholia to Euripides, Orestes 1239). It is formulaic in
| foundation myths for the narrative to show a pattern of
| mediation between two versions of origin, autochthony and
| in migration; the autochthonous inhabitant quite
| naturally displays botanic characteristics and the
| mediation between opposite claimants to the place is
| effected via the sacred marriage. The name of the city
| Mykenai, therefore, would suggest that the mykes figured
| in Mycenaean religion. There was a tradition that at the
| neighboring city of Corinth, the original inhabitants
| were mushrooms that Sisyphus converted into men (Ovid,
| Metamorphoses 7.392-3; cf. Apollodorus 1. 9. 3)."
| adrian_b wrote:
| Thanks.
|
| However I do not see here any convincing argument here.
|
| While it is true that there was an alternative stem
| mukaa- for mukaat- (though attested only in the plural),
| deriving a female name as Mukaanaa from mukaa- is not a
| normal derivation in Greek.
|
| In my opinion, the most likely is that the woman name
| Mukaanaa and the city name Mukaanai were indeed pre-
| Greek, so of completely unknown meaning.
|
| A millennium later, the Greeks did not know more than us
| about what Mycenae might mean, so, as it always happens
| in such cases, they also thought about fanciful
| etymologies of the word, e.g. that it might be related to
| mushrooms, and they introduced such elements in their
| legends.
| mr_toad wrote:
| > widespread availability
|
| Was it really widespread? Compared to fields of grain?
| pomian wrote:
| You've got to listen to Dan Carlin's Hardcore History episode :
| "History Under the Influence". (In case you don't know, Dan
| Carlin hosts a series of amazing, breathtaking almost, history
| podcasts. Series ranging from ancient times through WW1 and
| WW2. He truly brings history alive, and is addictive.
| Especially great for long road trips.)
| bjourne wrote:
| The Egyptians used the word "Peleset" and the Assyrians
| "Pilistu". The term is most certainly related to the Greek word
| "Palaistine" which can be traced to 5th century BC. But it is not
| clear what region ("land of the Peleset") or what people the term
| referred to. It encompassed the Philistines' five city states -
| Philistia - in southern Palestine (this comes from the Bible, I
| think it is unknown how many Philistine city states existed), but
| may also have encompassed a region larger than that. Since
| Palaistine referred to most of Palestine one can speculate that
| Peleset/Pilistu also did.
|
| Another theory is that Palestine came to be known as Palaistine
| after the Philistines via "pars pro toto", which means that a
| part becomes the name of the whole. One example is Russia, named
| after the Rus people who inhabited merely a small fraction of
| modern-day Russia. In other words, the Philistines may have been
| the dominant people in Palestine and the Greeks may have referred
| to the whole region as Palaistine, just as many people (sloppily)
| refer to the United Kingdom as "England". Numismatic evidence
| shows that the Philistine cities were large trading centers and
| minted coins earlier and in larger quantities than in other
| Palestinian cities.
| el_nahual wrote:
| The linked article is about the bronze age: which to people
| living in biblical times was as far back in time as biblical
| times are to us.
| selimthegrim wrote:
| Was Rus Kievan Rus originally?
| trhway wrote:
| The Rus are the Vikings who started the original Russian
| states in Novgorod, Smolensk, Kiev, etc. together known as
| the Kievan Rus and ruled it for 8 centuries afterwards. The
| last Viking bloodline Russian tzar was Ivan the Terrible.
| varjag wrote:
| Yes, and the link of it to Russia is rather thin.
| trhway wrote:
| The "thinness" is subject to interpretation (and today
| especially because of Ukraine situation it has become a
| political issue with Ukraine actively developing its own
| independent history and claiming Kievan Rus for itself, and
| also in Russia there are people who don't like the idea of
| the state's Viking ie. non-Slavic origination) which one
| can decide for theselves by looking at historic facts. Yes,
| the south and western dukedoms (on the territory of modern
| Ukraine an Belarus) of Kievan Rus were for around 2
| centuries under Mongols and Grand Duchy of Lithuania, and
| thus the link was pretty much broken there. Where is the
| north/east dukedoms have existed without interruption,
| growing and expanding and ultimately getting unified into
| Moscow dukedom (later tzardom) which continuing expanding
| became the Russian empire. The Russian aristocrats direct
| descendants of the one of the early Kievan Rus Viking ruler
| - Rurik (whose descendants ruled the Rus and later the
| Moscow dukedom for centuries) - are still around.
| paganel wrote:
| Not an expert in Russian history by any means but I think
| that the instinct to associate Kievan Rus with Russian
| (and not necessarily Ukrainian only) history is also due
| to the fact that the Orthodox faith came to Muscovy
| Russia via Kiev, where it had been brought by the
| byzantines, of course.
| yyyk wrote:
| >Another theory is that Palestine came to be known as
| Palaistine after the Philistines via a process called "pars pro
| toto", which means that a part becomes the name of the whole.
|
| The history is well known, and there's no need for theorizing.
| You meant 'renamed by Emperor Hadrian to the names of nearby
| provinces, after crushing the local revolt as a method of
| erasing the province's residents'.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syria_Palaestina#cite_ref-9
| bjourne wrote:
| Well, if you look at the history of that page, you see that a
| helpful Wikipedian has deleted a pertinent paragraph that
| followed the text you cited: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index
| .php?title=Syria_Palaestina&...
|
| Herodotus in his travel diaries wrote about the region in the
| 5th century BC and he used the word Palaistine for the region
| and Palaistinian for the inhabitants. Aristotle in 340 BC
| wrote about the Dead Sea - "a fabled lake" - which he
| situated _in_ Palaistine. This suggests that the Greeks
| thought Palaistine was a greater region than merely
| Philistia.
|
| Why Hadrian choose to rename and reorganize the provinces of
| the southern Levant right after the end of the Bar Kokba
| revolt in 135 is a mystery. The record is silent. Although
| absence of evidence is not evidence of absence, if the
| renaming was intended to punish the Jews, why weren't the
| Romans explicit about it? If the renaming was to serve as a
| deterrent for future rebels? Afaik, the claim that Adrian
| renamed Iudaea comes from the Christian 4th century scholar
| Eusebius and is not found in other sources (such as the
| Talmud). To Christians at the time, God punishing the Jews
| for crucifying Jesus by having the Romans destroying their
| temple and erasing their province would have made prefect
| sense. I.e. Eusebius may have been putting two and two
| together here.
|
| Another problem with the "renaming as a punishment" theory is
| that in 135 the Philistines hadn't existed for several
| centuries. So if punishment was Hadrian's impetus for the
| renaming, he must have been well-versed in Hebrew religion,
| otherwise how could he have known that the Philistines was
| one of their worst enemies? That seems unlikely.
| yyyk wrote:
| It is undisputed the Philistines existed and were of Greek
| origin, that an area around today's Gaza was settled by
| them and later named after them, and that the name was
| known to Greeks - though even Gaza itself was assigned to
| the Judean province so it probably was much less used by
| Hadrian's time.
|
| Of course Greeks used the name given to them by fellow
| Greeks (when they existed at the province) and weren't
| clear on borders. However, every empire and kingdom which
| actually ruled there knew very well how the locales called
| it and that's why the province was named as it was.
|
| Now, Hadrian was acquainted enough with Judaism to
| specifically ban many of its practices like circumcision,
| reading the holy books, etc. Learning a tiny bit on a
| province after fighting a massive war there is rather
| expected. However, I believe it's much more likely that he
| chose the name from Greek language and history. This is a
| Roman Emperor we're talking about, Greek was a extremely
| popular language for the Roman elite, he must have been
| very familiar with Greek.
|
| Renaming the province is consistent with Hadrian's other
| moves which do have a well known rational of suppressing
| the Jews. There's no reason to think renaming the province
| just after the massive rebellion is somehow different,
| accidental or separate from all the other moves, like
| renaming Jerusalem itself or banning many of Judaism's
| practices.
|
| > the claim that Adrian renamed Iudaea comes from the
| Christian 4th century scholar Eusebius and is not found in
| other sources (such as the Talmud)
|
| The Talmud has no reason to care about how the Romans name
| things in their own language for their own empire. It's a
| religious text, not a history book. It's actually
| noteworthy that there is an ancient text mentioning this -
| most ancient historians cared little for such details.
|
| EDIT: I also note that Eusebius lived and wrote when the
| Roman Empire still existed, and probably did not have much
| need for guessing. A Roman historian living at that time
| could access Roman primary sources and common knowledge
| easily.
| netcan wrote:
| Undisputed is saying a lot.
|
| The Talmud, not by coincidence, light on a lot of
| political (and religious) detail from this period. The
| political turmoil leading (in Talmudic text) to the
| temple's destruction are somewhat taboo.
|
| Anyway... place names are resilient. The region is
| littered with Hebrew/Assyrian/etc place names that
| outsurvived the political/cultural entities for
| centuries.
|
| That Philistia survived as a regional name is not that
| big a stretch, especially as a greek-related culture
| during a greek-dominated era. We don't even know with
| certainty why our _current_ politicians do what they do.
| Cederfjard wrote:
| In your link it says "Hadrian's connection to the name change
| and the reason behind it is disputed". So I'm sure some
| theorizing is still warranted.
| yyyk wrote:
| Both cites following that sentence agree he's the likely
| suspect, and agree with the motivation. The difference is
| that the first is certain, while the second _merely_ thinks
| the evidence points to Hadrian (though I wonder who else
| could have authority to change a province name quickly).
| Both agree with the motivation. It 's a disagreement
| alright, but we should not overread it.
|
| 'Theorizing' that ignores well known data is suspect.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syria_Palaestina#cite_note-F9
| 0...
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syria_Palaestina#cite_note-
| FOO...
| throw0101a wrote:
| Reading a book of that title on the Polynesians:
|
| * https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/40536236-sea-people
|
| * https://www.npr.org/2019/03/13/702505578/sea-people-examines...
| JudgePenitent wrote:
| Well written article considering the very diverse time frames and
| sources.
|
| "Around 3000 BC, a group of savage tribes now known as the Indo-
| Europeans invaded Europe from eastern Ukraine and southern
| Russia, destroying the EEF civilizations east of the Rhine in at
| most two centuries. Not content with their new lands, the Indo-
| Europeans learned how to build boats and launched a new wave of
| bloody conquests 350-600 years later."
|
| "Two branches of the second Indo-European wave play a role in
| this story. The first was was the early Greeks themselves, who
| arrived in northern Greece (Macedonia and Thessaly) at the end of
| the 3rd millennium BC."
|
| "Ancient DNA finds from the Elati-Logkas site in western
| Macedonia confirm the identity of the invaders. The earliest
| known Greeks are found in this site, and despite several
| centuries of time separating them from the initial conquest, they
| were quite distinctive from their predecessors. About 2/5ths of
| their ancestry came from the original Indo-Europeans. Even more
| of their ancestry came from the subjects of the Indo-Europeans
| further north, who by the time of the invasion had mixed
| considerably with their conquerors."
|
| "Thucydides writes that the Greeks of the centuries before the
| Trojan War had no conception of national identity. Instead, they
| identified with their tribes, some of them named in Homer's epic
| poem "The Iliad"."
|
| A common theme of steppe peoples- settled tribes identify with
| lands; nomads identify with cultures.
|
| This source identifies the sea peoples as a mixture of middle
| eastern groups, using the Egyptian inscription on Ramses III tomb
| as a reference. Western Anatolia, Hittite (central Anatolia),
| Cilicia (modern southeastern Turkey), Carchemish (city on the
| banks of the Euphrates River), Amurru (Egyptian vassal in
| northern Lebanon and coastal Syria), and Alashiya (Cyprus). The
| Danuna are the Greek tribe of Danaans, among the groups (and some
| others whose identity is uncertain) that the Egyptians claimed
| were aligned as "Sea Peoples".
|
| The identity of the Sea People is a very important group to know
| because they were a major force in the Bronze Age Collapse; a
| collapse which set the stage for the rise of the Phoenicians, and
| 500 years later the Greeks.
|
| This article is confusing however, because it asserts that the
| Sea Peoples were Greek: "Alexander's destructive path down the
| Levantine coast was not unprecedented, even among Greeks. Over
| 800 years before, other Greeks had laid waste to the Levant,
| known only to their adversaries as the mysterious "Sea Peoples"."
|
| Yet as also quoted this article reads the Egyptian burial
| inscription of Ramses III as a conglomerate of Middle Eastern
| peoples- not Greek (except for Danaan).
|
| This chart from wiki is beautifully done and shows the evidence
| we have for the movements of peoples quite well, and might help
| explain the identity of the Sea Peoples:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Late_Bronze_Age_collapse#/medi...
|
| Notably, we see the black arrow (Proto-Indo-European/steppe/PIE
| peoples probably) pressing into Anatolia/Hattusa. Were these the
| same people rolling through the Greeks? Was it the pressure of
| these forces that forced the Sea Peoples to attack Egypt (because
| they lost access to safe coastlines for trade)? Did Phoenicia
| know this was going to happen, and made an alliance that history
| has long since lost?
|
| Here's the overall effect the Bronze Age Collapse had, from wiki:
| "The palace economy of Mycenaean Greece, the Aegean region and
| Anatolia that characterized the Late Bronze Age disintegrated,
| transforming into the small isolated village cultures of the
| Greek Dark Ages. The Hittite Empire of Anatolia and the Levant
| collapsed, while states such as the Middle Assyrian Empire in
| Mesopotamia and the New Kingdom of Egypt survived but were
| considerably weakened. Conversely, some peoples such as the
| Phoenicians enjoyed increased autonomy and power with the waning
| military presence of Egypt and Assyria in the Levant."
|
| Well summarized; the only certain winner here was Phoenicia.
| Thus, one would assume that if anyone wanted the Bronze Age
| Collapse, it was Phoenicia. A waning Egypt and Assyria meant
| stronger profits for long distance traders.
|
| Another question I've had about the Bronze Age Collapse is why
| the Sea Peoples fought on both sides of the Egyptian empire. I
| don't see the strategic value in doing this, and from what I
| remember the battles fought on the Western Egyptian border were
| years apart from the North-Eastern battles. Were fleeing Greeks
| pressing into Northern Africa, causing local tribes to attack
| Egypt?
| hallarempt wrote:
| What a load of nonsense...
| MPSimmons wrote:
| Can someone tell me why archaeologists don't believe that Minoans
| were the Sea People?
| rajandatta wrote:
| I think there are 2 primary reasons:
|
| First, if they were Minoan that would have been recorded in the
| annals of civilizations like Egypt and others which kept good
| records. The Egyptians and others of the Eastern Mediterranean
| had long links with Crete and the Minoans. It doesn't stand to
| reason that the Minoan could launch such a large movement (in
| the sense impact so many areas of the Eastern Mediterranean)
| and no one notices.
|
| Secondly - the nature of the sea peoples attacks, assaults
| suggests a group of people moving, migrating - not looting and
| returning. If the Minoan were doing this - why would they not
| return with their gathered spoils to their homeland. If they
| did return - where is the physical and archeological evidence?
|
| Those are the pressing ones that come to mind first. There's
| also the question why would the Minoan embarknon something so
| foolish as invading Egypt. Egypt was what a hundred times
| bigger? If you failed - first you'd expose yourself to
| retribution and secondly - you'd weaken yourself severely
| leaving you exposed to others.
| JudgePenitent wrote:
| Because of Egyptian inscriptions. If it was only one group, why
| do Egyptian inscriptions list 5+ groups? Here's the relevant
| article section:
|
| "The Philistines (known to the Egyptians as the Peleset) were
| among several groups listed as the Sea Peoples by the
| Egyptians. The other Sea Peoples were the Tjekker, the
| Shekelesh, the Ekwesh, the Shardana, the Danuna, and the
| Weshesh. An inscription on the tomb of Ramses III reads:
|
| "The foreign countries made a conspiracy in their islands. All
| at once the lands were removed and scattered in the fray. No
| land could stand before their arms, from Khatte, Qode,
| Carchemish, Arzawa, and Alashiya on, being cut off at [one
| time]. A camp [was set up] in one place in Amurru. They
| desolated its people, and its land was like that which has
| never come into being. They were coming forward toward Egypt,
| while the flame was prepared before them. Their confederation
| was the Peleset, Tjekker, Shekelesh, Danuna, and Weshesh, lands
| united. They laid their hands upon the lands as far as the
| circuit of the earth, their hearts confident and trusting."
|
| Arzawa is in western Anatolia, Khatte is the Hittite realm in
| central Anatolia, Qode is Cilicia in modern southeastern
| Turkey, Carchemish was a city on the banks of the Euphrates
| River, Amurru was an Egyptian vassal in northern Lebanon and
| coastal Syria, and Alashiya is Cyprus. The Danuna are the Greek
| tribe of Danaans referenced by Homer in "The Iliad". The ruins
| of the Hittite capital of Hattusa have been excavated, and the
| destruction of the city was between 1190 and 1180 BC. In the
| same decade, the city of Troy was destroyed as well, likely in
| what is remembered as the Trojan War.
|
| The identity of the other groups is less certain. The Mycenaean
| Greeks are known to have had contact with the EEF peoples of
| Sardinia - the Nuragics - from pottery finds. The etymology of
| Sardinia's name is unknown, but the the name predates the
| arrival of the Phoenicians. The Shardana referenced by the
| Egyptians as being among the Sea Peoples may be Sardinians,
| Nuragics recruited by Mycenaean Greek sailors for campaigns of
| plunder and conquest. The Sardinians certainly knew of the
| wealth of the east - their copper, valuable in the Bronze Age
| as one of the ingredients for bronze, originated from Cyprus.
|
| Similarly, the name of the Shekelesh may refer to the
| aforementioned Sicanians in Sicily. Alternatively, it could
| refer to the Italic-speaking Sicels (relatives of the Romans)
| who invaded southern Italy and Sicily in the late 13th or early
| 12th century during a massive drought in their home, the Po
| River Basin of northern Italy."
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sea_Peoples#Primary_documentar...
| mcguire wrote:
| The Minoan civilization had been on a downward arc for several
| hundred years (i.e. since 1600-1500BCE, including possibly
| being conquered by Mycenaeans around 1400BCE) by the time of
| the Sea Peoples' antics (about 1200BCE).
| pfdietz wrote:
| > After the terrible droughts that caused the Bronze Age Collapse
|
| This is still a matter of considerable debate. An alternate
| explanation for the LBA collapse was offered by Drews: a shift in
| military tactics from chariots with composite bows to armored
| infantry armed with Naue Type II swords (as well as javelins).
| colechristensen wrote:
| Like any complex system failure the best theories in my opinion
| for the causes of collapse aren't "this one thing did it" but
| several unrelated causes happening at once. Weather, warfare, a
| somewhat fragile interdependent system of trade, the somewhere
| between migrant, pirate, and raider sea peoples, and plain old
| state failure happening together.
| pfdietz wrote:
| Why should that be the best explanation? Surely many factors
| affected the collapse, but that doesn't mean many factors
| _caused_ the collapse.
|
| The systems collapse theory strikes me as a theory that's
| been elaborated to the point of untestability, and a
| violation of Ockham's Razor.
| colechristensen wrote:
| Because when you study complex systems and how they fail
| from famous examples (Chernobyl, Challenger, Air France
| Flight 447, etc. etc.) to (for me) personal experience
| addressing software systems downtimes... what you find is
| single causes are quite rare. What you do usually find is a
| dozen independent things, all of which need to be fixed,
| any of which if it were fixed would have prevented the
| failure.
|
| Attributing "cause" to any of them is an exercise in
| preference of importance. Do you pick the last one that
| happened? Do you decide which one had the biggest impact?
| Do you pick the one that was the easiest/hardest to find?
| It's a silly exercise to pick one. You will find that the
| failure was caused by a concert of things working together,
| the only reason to pick one is a personal preference for
| there to be one thing to pick.
|
| A common pattern is the "straw that broke the camel's back"
| in a relatively small aberration or mistake which pushes a
| system from a working state into a phase change to a non-
| working one revealing all sorts of structural deficiencies.
| Do you say that last straw was the "cause"? Only if you're
| particularly short sighted.
|
| I've experienced this personally many times. No we didn't
| have 3 days of downtime because there was a 5% performance
| regression in the last release, we had 3 days of downtime
| because systems A through G were constantly on the edge of
| collapse and nobody noticed until all hell broke loose.
| pfdietz wrote:
| That's true in engineered systems. It happens because
| when you make many copies of a thing and use them for a
| while, all the simple failure modes get worked out.
|
| But societies aren't like that. The world didn't make N
| copies of the bronze age Mediterranean. If, as Drews
| suggests, the collapse was a near-deterministic
| consequence of the overshadowing of expensive chariot-
| based centralized armies by armored sword bearing
| infantry forces, then it would have occurred the first
| time this technology came out (and it became widely known
| that previously protected rich cities were ripe for the
| sacking by Joe Conan and friends.)
| mcguire wrote:
| A couple of questions:
|
| How would you test that theory?
|
| Who introduced the armored sword-bearing infantry? It's
| not exactly cheap. If it was an existing civilization,
| would they not have simply taken over the region, like
| the Macedonians, Romans, and assorted others? If it were
| a migration of people, as the Egyptian writings indicate,
| why were they migrating?
|
| Why were the Egyptians and Babylonians able to survive,
| albeit with considerable losses, while others such as the
| Mycenaeans didn't? Why weren't the existing civilizations
| able to adapt and adopt?
| pfdietz wrote:
| The Egyptians adopted the new fighting style; it's how
| they defeated the "Sea Peoples" attack in the Nile delta
| (there are famous depictions of this battle in Egypt).
|
| Babylonia was soon afterward conquered by militaristic
| Assyria; Assyria also adopted the new approach and, later
| in the early iron age (as the neo-Assyrian empire),
| became the dominant superpower in the Fertile Crescent.
|
| The others? The Mycenaeans were closest to the part of
| Europe where the new sword technology had evolved and
| matured.
|
| I suggest you read both Cline's book (there's a new
| edition out) and Drews', and compare and contrast their
| takes on the subject.
| mcguire wrote:
| Cline mentions a goodly stack of other explanations, including
| migrations _into_ the region as well as _out_ of the major
| civilizations of the area.
| goatherders wrote:
| "After six months of exhaustive siegecraft, Alexander was able to
| breach the walls of Tyre and storm the fortress island. 6,000
| defenders were killed in the storm, 2,000 locals were crucified
| afterwards, and what was left of the population was sold into
| slavery."
|
| Well then.
| alexanderthe- wrote:
| This tale of this siege encapsulates the unwavering
| determination of Alexander to overcome and conquer. Anyone
| interested should read the accounts in Arrian and Quintus
| Curtius Rufus' biographies.
| Aidevah wrote:
| It's particularly striking how much skin in the game generals
| like Alexander had, fighting on the front lines. From
| Thucydides and Xenophon gives the impression that the
| casualties for pitched hoplite battles weren't particularly
| large as a proportion of the army, but it's surprising how
| often the general was killed in action. Alexander himself was
| hit in the head strong enough to be dismounted at Granicus,
| suffered a projectile would to the shoulder at the siege of
| Gaza, and nearly lost his life when he was shot in the chest
| by an arrow at the Mallian stronghold. Of course recounting
| those wounds and showing off the scars formed a part of his
| speech when he later tried and failed to persuade his army to
| advance further.
| fennecfoxen wrote:
| Welcome to the ancient world, where such things are common!
| Turns out the modern one made some sort of progress morally
| since then.
| kilroy123 wrote:
| I'm convinced this is a massive step in humanity's evolution.
|
| While yes, there remains some underground slavery, and it is
| indeed terrible.
|
| The world uniting and deciding to end this terrible practice
| is a hugely positive step for our species.
| ren_engineer wrote:
| how much "moral progress" is simply due to having choices due
| to technology?
|
| Pretty much every culture around the world in ancient times
| had some sort of moral explanation for why infanticide was
| allowed. Now that extra mouths to feed aren't an imminent
| threat of everybody dying, the practice is considered immoral
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infanticide
|
| we aren't genetically different from those people, we just
| happen to live in a time where we don't have to make as many
| tough choices
| yyyk wrote:
| >Pretty much every culture around the world in ancient
| times had some sort of moral explanation for why
| infanticide was allowed.
|
| >https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infanticide
|
| At least half of the history in the wiki describes major
| civilizations and religions which absolutely banned the
| practice. Ancient Egypt, all Abrahamic religions, ancient
| China... Apparently many people did thought infanticide was
| immoral and did ban it.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| How does technology or lack therof explain 2000
| crucifixions?
|
| I don't think anyone is claiming a genetic evolution. It
| has been a memetic evolution.
| AlbertCory wrote:
| By "explain" I hope no one hears "justify" (although
| someone will do it anyway):
|
| You see this with the Romans, too: they tell a city to
| surrender, it doesn't, the Romans conquer it and practice
| unspeakable brutality on whomever's left.
|
| So what's happening? They have very limited resources,
| you forced us to expend them, maybe lose some of our own
| soldiers, and waste a valuable campaigning season - ok,
| now you pay the price, and let this be a warning to the
| next city: if we tell you to surrender, you'd better
| surrender.
|
| What if the city _does_ surrender? Are those people
| killed or sold into slavery anyway? I don 't think
| historians bother recording those episodes.
| mcguire wrote:
| " _What if the city does surrender? Are those people
| killed or sold into slavery anyway?_ "
|
| Typically, no. The attacker may leave the city entirely
| intact, or may place their own proxy government. They may
| take the elites of the city as prisoners, either as
| punishment or as insurance.
| rfurmani wrote:
| It's not quite so simple, since we are looking at single
| examples. Alexander was predated by leaders (Cyrus the
| Great) who ruled in a much more progressive gentle way.
| Recent history has shown major powers performing very
| cruelly (genocides under colonialism) and there's
| definitely at least minor world leaders who would want to
| be just as cruel. So the question becomes more of why was
| it effective and strategic to be cruel at that scale in
| the past but not in the present world, and I would
| attribute that to technology: better communication,
| travel, and interconnectedness of trade.
| Super_Jambo wrote:
| I would attribute it to democracy. It's very hard to sell
| war to an electorate unless you can persuade them you're
| the 'good guys'. Which is harder to sell when you're
| openly butchering thousands of people.
| Amezarak wrote:
| Democracy didn't stop the Athenians from exterminating
| the Melians, every adult male being killed and the rest
| of the population sold into slavery, all because
| (according to Thucydides), "the strong do what they can
| and the weak suffer what they must."
| yyyk wrote:
| Many ancient societies had a very different conception of
| 'good guys' than the modern one. It was very easy to
| justify very aggressive war with some of these
| alternative conceptions.
|
| 'Good guys are the ones who worship the right god(s) and
| therefore we get to kill the bad people next door', or
| 'Good guys are guys who serve the King/Emperor and
| anything that advances his glory is good', 'Good guys are
| cultured people and everyone else is a barbarian' etc.
| fennecfoxen wrote:
| But why and how is democracy a thing?
| lazide wrote:
| Eh, I bet it's more the wide spread, high fidelity mass
| communication.
|
| You'd previously get word of mouth of what was happening
| (with lots of us vs them, dehumanizing, etc.). Now you'd
| get to see it 'in person' in 4K @ 60fps on YouTube.
|
| It's easier to say (and think) 'yeah, those bastards
| deserved it' when you aren't seeing a very human person
| have it done to them up close.
|
| Which is a good thing.
| mr_toad wrote:
| The Ancients were amateurs when it came to slaughtering
| civilians.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strategic_bombing
| blfr wrote:
| Mao was starving the Chinese into the sixties, sixty years
| ago. Soviets maintained a massive system of forced labour
| into the fifties. So whatever moral progress modern world
| achieved it is pretty recent, and imho remains shaky, based
| largely on the fact that we're too wealthy thanks to tech to
| bother with more brutal forms forms of exploitation.
| theknocker wrote:
| >I am a moron
| [deleted]
| lazide wrote:
| _looks at genocides, civil wars, etc. in the Middle East
| and Africa right now_
|
| uh, maybe we just disrupted the market for slaves, so it
| isn't so profitable it justifies the risk/backlash anymore
| (for all but a tiny subset anyway)? Which is good.
|
| Mass murder still seems to be on the menu though,
| unfortunately.
| mcguire wrote:
| Wait until you hear about the Assyrians.
| https://www.britishmuseum.org/collection/object/W_1856-0909-...
|
| And, well, everyone else. I have a very difficult time taking
| the number of people kill during or after an assault. Many
| inscriptions refer to the complete destruction of a city, where
| the city is back in business apparently untouched a few years
| later.
| [deleted]
| ren_engineer wrote:
| Alexander wasn't a fan of people who defied him. The Spartans
| wouldn't join him because they refused if they couldn't lead
| the army so after a major battle he sent back 300 suits of
| captured armor as spoils of war to the Parthenon with this
| inscription:
|
| 'Alexander and the Greeks, except the Lacedaemonians(Spartans),
| set up these spoils from the barbarians dwelling in Asia.'
|
| Have to respect a pretty good diss, the 300 suits of armor is
| an obvious reference to Thermopylae
| bpodgursky wrote:
| It was an effective way to make sure the next city surrendered
| quickly didn't bog you down with a six month siege.
| [deleted]
| natded wrote:
| "The Sea Peoples are a purported seafaring confederation that
| attacked ancient Egypt and other regions of the East
| Mediterranean prior to and during the Late Bronze Age collapse
| (1200-900 BCE).", interesting. I think the author is convinced
| they were Greeks, then?
| rsj_hn wrote:
| Yes he makes this case in the blog, supported by some recent
| discoveries. It also has a good overview of population flows in
| the region up to that time. Really a great blog with lots of
| references.
| panick21_ wrote:
| Its questionable if they were a confederation, or how connected
| they were to each other. I don't think people would usually
| call the vikings a confederation.
|
| I think there is fair evidence that some names refer to places
| in Greek. At the same time seem to refer to cities in other
| places. Those however could be Greek colonies in Italy and
| Sicily. Or maybe non Greeks in those places.
|
| I don't think single origin explanations work all that well.
| cmrdporcupine wrote:
| Calling them "Greeks" is more than a bit incorrect and a kind
| of back-porting of the concept of Hellenism into a very pre-
| Hellenic time. Even if it's true that the Sea Peoples were
| Mycenaeans or Achaeans, they did not call themselves "Hellenes"
| nor have anything like the sense of a Hellenic identity that
| developed much later in the iron age.
|
| I think of these people as groupings of war chieftans and
| landholding warrior aristocracies and their crews, conducting
| raids abroad and territory at home, similar to the crews of
| Viking ships. Similar in that they had skill with ships, and
| similar in holding onto older Indo-European traditions of
| raiding (back to Yamnayan cattle raids on the Pontic steppe),
| class structures (warrior/priest/farmer) and systems of
| managing subjects and fiefdoms.
|
| Calling them "Greeks" is about as accurate as calling the old
| Vikings "Norwegians" or "Swedish". Related by descent, but not
| nearly the same, and almost 1000 years separating them.
| adrian_b wrote:
| The article references some of the evidence that a part of the
| Sea People were Greeks.
|
| The ancient sources list a large number of different tribes
| which composed the Sea People.
|
| Whether all of them were Greeks or some of them had a
| completely different origin, nobody knows.
|
| Of the Greeks we know more, as they had later known
| descendants, so we have a chance to identify their ancestors,
| either by DNA tests or by some cultural aspects.
|
| Of the many other people that had existed in Southern Europe
| and who are mentioned in ancient sources, but who were later
| assimilated by the Greeks or by the Romans, we know much less,
| so it is difficult to identify any of the Sea People who might
| have been related to them.
| selimthegrim wrote:
| I thought Nuragic peoples (Sardinians) were in pole position?
| andygrd wrote:
| Reading that makes it abundantly clear that, as a species,
| humanity is pretty despicable.
| danans wrote:
| > Around 3000 BC, a group of savage tribes now known as the Indo-
| Europeans invaded Europe from eastern Ukraine and southern
| Russia, destroying the EEF civilizations east of the Rhine in at
| most two centuries.
|
| It detracts from the writer's argument to uniquely characterize
| the IE Europeans as savage here. Savagery was the norm for all
| groups at the time. Monopolies of violence didn't exist in any
| significant way, and institutions were also non-existent.
|
| Some civilizations appear more egalitarian than others, i.e
| Crete, Indus Valley, but the idea of non-savagery as a virtue
| didn't emerge until much later, and we don't know how much
| savagery those civilizations might have engaged in because we
| have lost their histories.
| JudgePenitent wrote:
| Well said
| jacobolus wrote:
| "Savage tribes" in this context means something like "less
| settled with a less specialized society/economy", and is not
| intended to be a value judgment or indication of some ethnic
| group's inherent qualities, or even a comment on their level of
| violence: it is possible for a tribe to be both peaceful and
| "savage"/"barbaric"/"uncivilized", or both "civilized" and
| brutally violent.
|
| For example, notice the author of this blog post starts with a
| description of a campaign of horrifying brutal violence
| perpetrated by "civilized" Greeks.
|
| One feature of language (for better or worse) is that words
| whose denotation involves some associations considered to be
| negative in one context tend to be used as slurs, adding and
| intensifying negative connotations until they eventually become
| confusing when used in the original non-normative sense.
|
| The word "savage" originally just meant "wild" (literally,
| "from the forest"), i.e. not domesticated. Under this original
| definition, a rabbit is "savage" but an aggressive guard dog is
| not.
| danans wrote:
| I understand what you are saying, but why then didn't the
| writer apply the term "savage" to the "Western Hunter
| Gatherer" groups they describe earlier:
|
| > By the mid to late 5th millennium, the peoples of Greece
| had diverged from their cousins. Europe was convulsed in a
| parallel set of conflicts involving tribes of WHGs conquering
| their EEF neighbors and establishing themselves as a new
| ruling class, catalyzing a new synthetic culture with their
| new subjects.
|
| The WHG by your definition are just as "savage" than the
| Indo-Europeans but they are described as "conquering" (which
| is a term of glorification), and "catalyzing a new synthetic
| culture". In contrast, the Indo Europeans are described as
| "destroying" and "not content their new lands".
|
| I have a hard time believing the intent, process, and outcome
| behind either circumstance was appreciably different from the
| other, at least in any way we can infer from archaeology.
|
| If the term "savage" as used in the article is simply a
| matter of "civilization" and not brutality, then the Indo-
| Europeans should be considered far less savage than the WHGs,
| since they had created the spoked wheel and chariot
| technologies, and were pastoralists who practiced
| wheat/barley agriculture and animal husbandry - they were not
| forest-dwelling hunter-gatherers. In this way, they were far
| more similar to the EEF in lifestyle.
|
| Therefore, I don't think that the author is using the term
| "savage" denotatively as you suggest, but rather is coloring
| their otherwise fascinating article with their own
| anachronistic opinions of the ancient Indo Europeans.
| phonypc wrote:
| I did not get the impression that the author intended to
| _uniquely_ characterize them as savages. Yes, it 's the first
| instance of that word, but the preceding paragraphs are about
| replacements/displacements/invasions by other groups.
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