The History Thread!

PTSD Might be as old as humanity

edited 26th Jan '15 4:24:19 PM by TuefelHundenIV

Almost certainly. Ancient Greek playwrights covered the subject in their tragedies, I know. Athens was constantly at war, so the subject would have been familiar.

edited 26th Jan '15 4:48:03 PM by SabresEdge

"We survivors do not want our past to be our children's future"

Today the reminiscence of Auszchwitz's liberation was carried on by its ever dwindling number of veterans. The lessons that history leaves us are lessons we should strive to never forget.

Hello again fellas, thanks for the help with the naval aztec question. I have another question: What was the flag of the Spanish at the time they conquered the Aztecs?

The Red Cross of Burgundy on a white background.

This one.

edited 27th Jan '15 2:41:28 PM by Quag15

New tattoos discovered on Oetzi!: All of the skin marks on the mummy mapped: "With the aid of a non-invasive photographic technique, researchers at the EURAC-Institute for Mummies and the Iceman have been able to show up all the tattoos on the man who was found preserved in a glacier, and in the process have stumbled upon a previously unknown tattoo on his ribcage. This tattoo is very difficult to make out with the naked eye because his skin has darkened so much over time. The latest sophisticated photographic technology has now enabled tattoos in deeper skin layers to be identified as well."

Climatic history study suggests pre-Columbian Mesoamerican society's demise was more complex than just weather: "A team of researchers with members from Mexico, the U.S. and Germany has found that the demise of the pre-Columbian Mesoamerican society centered around a city known as Cantona, was likely due to a combination of weather and politics. In their paper published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the team describes their study where they compared lake sediments with archeological evidence to provide a clearer picture of life in the area back when the city was still active and what factors led to both its rise and fall.

The researchers note that little work has been done to gain an accurate portrayal of what the climate was like in Mesoamerica during the times when various early people lived there, creating civilizations that in many cases vanished leaving behind ruins for modern scientists to ponder. In the case of Cantona, a city whose remains now lie east of modern Mexico City, the assumption by many has been, as it has for other long gone societies in central and South America, that it died due to drought. In this new study, the researchers assumed there was likely more to the story and so sought to find out more about weather conditions during that time."

edited 27th Jan '15 2:53:16 PM by rmctagg09

Well, arguably, bad weather can cause poor harvests which causes famine which can lead into political dissent...

It being more than just bad weather has been something which many political scientists and economists have generally thought for quite some time - the big issue is in actually showing it.

Blaming it on bad weather is like saying the black death was only just caused by the disease itself - there were so many other factors involved like how ignorant Occidental society was of hygiene that one cause alone is insufficient.

edited 27th Jan '15 3:16:41 PM by RatherRandomRachel

Historical events without complex causal webs are rare. The American Civil War is one, WWII perhaps another. Even then, you can always go back in the chain to find ever-increasing complexity: why was slavery such a dominating institution in the South, for instance.

edited 27th Jan '15 3:19:07 PM by Achaemenid

Not even those two - we can look at how for example the culture between the Dixie and Yankee sides in the American Civil War started it, how post revolutionary American politics helped, how the southern aristocrats were too attached to their agrarian society, how some ideas later proved false meant that racial divisions in the USA only got worse...

Then there's a whole load more for WW 2.

I realize that, but there's a point you have to cut the chain - "slavery" is an adequate one-word answer to "why did the American Civil War begin?" If you like you could go all the way back to the Saxons, but it doesn't make for a taut analysis, does it?

edited 27th Jan '15 3:25:58 PM by Achaemenid

True. Still World War II would have to take into account World War I and the Great Depression.

You're asking a politics graduate to sum up a cause of war in one word - it won't happen because while slavery is quite obviously the casus belli, other factors that lead up to it need be mentioned because the divide between the two sides was evident from the get-go, and deserves to be bought forward as a matter of study.

edited 27th Jan '15 3:28:47 PM by RatherRandomRachel

I never said they didn't. My point, though, is that academic historians still write reams of paper debating the causes of, say, WWI or the English Civil War, but they are almost in complete agreement that slavery was the primary cause of the ACW. Yeah, you can highlight the complexity of the sub-factors that lead to slavery assuming the central role that it did in Southern and American history if that's the subject of your research or area of interest, but by the same token you aren't being intellectually dishonest or negligent if you don't.

Yeah but it was mostly slavery

edited 27th Jan '15 3:43:55 PM by LeGarcon

Don't worry, wasn't disagreeing with you - it's just the nature of my education to mention all those factors even when for most a few sentences would suffice.

Interesting if accurate Nutter warning. The guys blogs are a bit crazy but this one bit was pretty interesting.

Arguably, one could blame World War II on the collapse of the Roman Empire!

Easter Island mystery: Why did the native culture die out?: "Long before the Europeans arrived on Easter Island in 1722, the native Polynesian culture known as Rapa Nui showed signs of demographic decline. However, the catalyst has long been debated in the scientific community. Was environmental degradation the cause, or could a political revolution or an epidemic of disease be to blame? A collaborative study suggests that the island's native culture reacted to natural environmental barriers to producing sufficient crops."

Given that Assassins Creed was mentioned here, can we mention Koei's Warriors (Dynasty and Samurai) in here?

edited 30th Jan '15 9:36:23 PM by HallowHawk

Possibly, just don't expect them to be taken very seriously, giben that they take a lot of liberties.

In the example of "blaming" grand events to smaller ones...I mean if one wants to get pedantic, I guess that yes, indeed, it is really silly to think that a single thing would precipitate such huge events.

One guy was assassinated and the whole world plunges into war? Sounds silly if you put World War I like that.

Someone cheated at chariots? Sounds silly if you blame the political unification of Constantinople under Justinian and Theodora on that.

And so on and so forth. Examples from throwing tea to the sea, a football game, a comment on the nutritional value of brioche, or just being late by a couple of days setting of a major event is silly. But when one starts to consider history trying to find the main detonant serves not just as an interesting mnemonic strategy but also as a start from where to analyze things from before and after based on the focal event.

Take the proclamation of the Brazillian Republic for example, in the first few years of school I was taught it was because some members of the Government did not wanted the country to be ruled by a foreigner (Princesss Isabel was married to the Count of Eu, who was a Frenchman) but as I grew up and started reading a few more books about the topic, I learned about other stuff, such as the influence of the ideas of a Philosopher by the name of Auguste Comte on the Brazillian Military, the recent end of Slaveryn, the Rich Farmers feeling cheated on that and going on to support the miliatry, and other stuff such as Deodoro Da Fonseca first supporting the Monarchy and trying to delay the declaration of Republic as much as he could.

Plus, the King himself being a Republican.

edited 28th Jan '15 7:21:04 AM by SaintDeltora

Re: Easter Island: I thought scholarly consensus had settled on resource depletion due to overlogging and overpopulation, which in turn led to messy political collapse. Quite a while ago, too